Politics

Don’t write Labour off just yet

Politics has never moved faster—it is too early to draft the party’s obituary

May 18, 2021
Keir Starmer seeming to dismiss Angela Rayner and then promote her in his recent reshuffle added to Labour's impression of chaos. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Keir Starmer seeming to dismiss Angela Rayner and then promote her in his recent reshuffle added to Labour's impression of chaos. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Politics, like comedy, is about timing. The best joke will fall flat if the pacing is off or the audience is not prepared. Sometimes events intervene beyond the comedian’s control. A theme can progress well until, suddenly, everything falls apart. 

Labour’s current predicament is the stuff of bad comedy. It had a theme—competence—which disintegrated when the NHS rapidly vaccinated millions of people and the government, rightly or wrongly, claimed the credit. It had a leader who appeared to be holding his electoral coalition together until both flanks seemed to desert him. As a party it fell victim both to bad timing and to itself. 

The question is whether Labour’s crisis is temporary or terminal. 

On multiple metrics, Keir Starmer has failed. Last week YouGov placed his approval rating at -48 points. An Opinium poll found that Boris Johnson’s lead over Starmer as preferred prime minister had moved from three to 17 points in just a fortnight. It is scant comfort that, according to Opinium, a majority of the public believe Starmer has performed better than Jeremy Corbyn; Starmer’s approval has dropped 30 points among 2019 Labour voters, with a third now wanting him to resign. A consensus seems to be building that Starmer has lost his way. 

At first, Starmer succeeded because he purported to offer an alternative to the prime minister’s evident weaknesses. Increasingly, however, his selling point of diligent mangerialism has appeared to expose a lack of guiding principles, or the enthusiasm to espouse them. Candidates entered the local election campaign with little to offer the electorate. It was not, in the end, sufficient to ask people to vote for competence and against sleaze. 

Labour’s civil war does not help. Over the last year Starmer has needlessly alienated much of the base, from the ousting of personnel to ambivalence on previously established policies. Many on the party’s right look to the New Labour era and affirm that Labour can only become electable once it has defeated the left. Many on the left suspect that Starmer wishes to eject not only Corbyn but his worldview. This weekend saw particular anger when Starmer signalled that he would no longer consider the 2017 manifesto as a foundation for policy—despite his earlier promises to the contrary, and despite the document’s broad popularity. 

The problem is both theoretical and practical. Electorates do not, on the whole, vote for divided parties. And while few suspected Starmer was ever firmly wedded to Corbyn’s agenda, his transition from ideology to pragmatism has left people wary across the spectrum. 

And yet, of course, the problems transcend the leadership. Labour’s long-term difficulties are well-rehearsed. The party is consolidating support in cities and among young people and the middle class, while the Conservatives are cementing a much wider base in former industrial towns and among older and working people. Ominously, voters are now far less likely to support Labour based on tradition or loyalty. The gradual drift away from the party was turbocharged in Scotland by the 2014 independence referendum, and in England by Brexit. Conversely, there are signs in Wales that the party remains strong—helped, in part, by support for First Minister Mark Drakeford and his government’s response to Covid. 

These trends are not about to disappear. It is possible both that the long-term rot has already set in, and that the short-term impression of Starmer will not improve. And yet circumstances, like everything else in life, can change. 

Political trends can seem obvious or inevitable until they don’t. After the Tories’ second consecutive landslide defeat in 2001, pundits also predicted that party’s demise. Their generational resurgence began nine years later. 

Currently, the Conservatives find themselves in the sweet spot. Covid-19 rates are low, vaccine rates are high, and the reality of the economic hit is yet to come. But if this month’s elections had been held at the height of the Barnard Castle drama, for example, the results might have been quite different. 

Politics in Britain has never moved faster than now. The Conservatives enjoyed a 25-point poll lead last March, which Starmer rapidly reduced and then overturned. Labour was leading in the polls by four points as recently as four months ago. Johnson, meanwhile, was relatively unpopular in the first few months of his premiership, and has seen his ratings fluctuate ever since. 

This also reveals a deeper problem with political analysis. As with all history, we often emphasise grand narratives that frequently obscure the forgotten specificities of individual votes. The theme of Brexit became people alienated and left behind, but there is a chance the pro-EU side would have scraped over the line if, say, Johnson had submitted the alternate newspaper article backing Remain.

Corbyn performed well in the 2017 election, but Theresa May also led a dire campaign and botched her signature policy on social care. Modern elections are about deindustrialisation and the rise of nationalism, but also about who and what leads the bulletins. Narratives, like luck, do not move in one direction only. 

But Labour shows no obvious signs so far of grasping the narratives it could control. Starmer’s recent reshuffle, in which he appeared first to dismiss Angela Rayner and then promote her, diverted the news agenda from the party’s successes in Wales, London and the south and west of England. The media narrative was therefore not one of good news, but chaos and division. 

The good news is not insignificant. Attention is increasingly focusing on the “blue wall,” where the Tories’ cultural conservatism (and apparent statist economics) are repelling both economic and social liberals. Starmer will have to find a way to energise the existing Labour base and draw back lost voters from the 2000s. He may need to bow to the inevitable and either negotiate with the smaller parties, or go all in and support proportional representation. That may not suit his cautious nature, but an electoral landscape which concentrates the Labour vote in big cities and spreads the Tory vote everywhere else may keep Labour out of office for generations. 

Despite the gloom, Labour has a lot going for it. In the last year, it has shown that it can capitalise on Tory disarray, gain public confidence, and actually win in areas outside London. It has also shown that the party’s problems neither began nor ended with Corbyn. Many elements of the next three years before another general election will be outside Starmer’s control but others will be within it. Johnson’s luck will not last forever. Labour will need to craft good policies and take opportunities—and get there in time.