Labour campaigned for 14 years to eliminate the Tories, and emerged from the overall election with the largest majority in latest historical past. So why, after solely six months, accomplish that many Labour supporters really feel anxious? The persistently miserable polling figures and Labour’s vote dropping like a stone in lots of council byelections don’t assist.
The tough actuality is that Labour was not elected on a wave of recognition. The primary-past-the-post vote system masked Labour’s low vote share, which was simply 34%. The primary six months in workplace have additionally been marred by an inventory of insurance policies which have unnecessarily alienated part after part of Labour help: slicing the winter gas allowance, refusing to scrap the two-child profit restrict, denying Waspi (Ladies Towards State Pension Inequality) girls a semblance of justice and growing tuition charges for younger individuals. In the meantime, the social gathering has been largely mute on Gaza, and has given the looks of getting to be dragged to say or do something significant to cease the genocide.
The usual response from the management is “don’t panic”. It’s 4 years to the subsequent election and by then the federal government could have turned across the financial system, securing the expansion wanted to generate the taxes that may fund dramatic enhancements in our public providers. Don’t fear: the electoral genius Morgan McSweeney is already working up the plan for 2029.
True, 4 years can appear to be an eternity in politics. However individuals typically have a view on a authorities by the midterm, and staking your future on attaining exceptional development in 18 months’ time is what Sir Humphrey in Sure Minister would describe as “courageous”. The electoral plan additionally seems to be primarily based on tackling the menace to Labour from the proper. In assertion after assertion, ministers have spoken about immigration, generally coming dangerously near echoing the “stop the boats” line beloved by the Conservatives.
What if the menace to Labour’s future isn’t solely from the proper – however from the left? The social gathering was based and punctiliously constructed over generations on the precept that it was a broad church, able to bringing collectively a breadth of progressive concepts and goals and harnessing the dedication and abilities of all kinds of people from the left, proper and centre. Its present decision-makers have dismissed this custom, focusing as a substitute on breaking apart the broad church by eliminating the individuals and insurance policies of the normal Labour left. Many staunch Labour supporters really feel as if they’re not needed.
If the technique has a foundation, it’s maybe Peter Mandelson’s outdated argument that in a first-past-the-post electoral system there’s nowhere realistically for progressive and left voters to go aside from to Labour. In the intervening time, that’s largely true. However there are warning indicators of pending issues. For the reason that 2017 election, when Labour gained an extra 3.5m votes, elevated its share of the nationwide vote to 40%, and received beforehand “blue wall” Conservative seats corresponding to Canterbury and Kensington, some progressive and leftwing voters have shifted to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. Many who’re involved about Gaza voted for independents.
Up to now none of this has occurred on a decisive scale. Labour council byelection defeats appear to be brought about extra by the disillusionment of stay-at-home Labour voters than by these voters actively switching their allegiances to different events. However in lots of the parliamentary seats that it received in 2024, Labour’s majority could be very slender. The first hazard in any future election is that current, disillusioned Labour supporters keep at house, however there’s a broader, secondary threat that the first-past-the-post system not supplies the safety to the bigger events that it has up to now.
Single-issue events corresponding to Reform are already posing severe electoral challenges to incumbent events. True, new events on the left have typically floundered underneath the first-past-the-post system. Traditionally, they’ve lacked credibility, or degenerated into sectarian infighting. Regardless of this, Labour strategists must take care. Even when a leftwing challenger social gathering solely took a restricted variety of votes, this might nonetheless value Labour dearly in lots of the seats the place its MPs have razor-thin majorities.
Labour staffers and politicians ought to think twice earlier than they proceed breaking apart their social gathering’s broad church. In any other case, they could possibly be jeopardising Labour’s possibilities not simply in 2029, however lengthy into the long run. As Nigel Farage and the Conservative social gathering shift even additional to the proper, emboldened by interventions from figures corresponding to Elon Musk, the necessity for a robust and united progressive left is bigger than ever.
