Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide in Britain’s July 4 general election. The previously all-powerful Conservatives were reduced to rubble. Labour won 412 out of 660 constituencies, and the Conservatives dropped to just 121, their lowest score ever.
Behind the headlines, more complex movements can be discerned, with gains for the populist right in the form of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party and those on the left. Former left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had a good night — expelled from the party by Starmer, he stormed to victory in his North London constituency as an independent socialist.
Starmer gained the victory he was looking for. Labour had previously been reduced to their lowest number of MPs since 1935 in the December 2019 election. Tory leader Boris Johnson won a huge majority, and the so-called “Red Wall” collapsed.
Red Wall constituencies tend to be in the North of England, often in former mining towns, traditionally bastions of the working class and the Labour Party. They were seduced by Johnson in 2019.
This time, Labour won nearly as many seats as former Labour PM Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. Starmer carefully planned his election strategy, patiently implemented it and succeeded beyond his own expectations.
The rise in Labour seats from 202 to 412 might have been seen as unachievable even a year ago. Given the scale of the Tories 2019 win, most commentators expected Labour would be out of office for a generation. Instead, they stormed to dramatic victory.
Right splits and Labour's shallow victory
Winning is winning, but Labour’s success is perhaps shallower on examination. On just 34% of the vote, Labour gained 63% of constituencies. This is one of the lowest ever percentage votes for a government party at a British general election and barely 2% points higher than Labour gained under Corbyn’s leadership in 2019.
The voter turnout was low at just 60%. Despite the seat gains, several previously safe Labour seats were lost. The percentage gain in votes came from Scotland. In most English constituencies, Labour’s vote flat lined.
Voters of all social classes, diverse political opinions and in different regions were united by a passion for voting out the Tories. The once hegemonic Conservative Party is in bits.
The big election story is about an increasingly sophisticated electorate that voted for whichever party was best placed to beat the Tories. Such tactical voting was very common, and with the Conservative vote dropping from 43% in 2019 to 24% this time around, the Tories lost on an astonishing scale.
It is no mystery why the Tories are so unpopular. Living standards have been either stagnant or falling in recent years. Brexit, whatever one’s assessment of the European Union, has been a disaster and the Conservatives have ruled in a chaotic way.
Johnson was popular and used Brexit to build electoral success, but his addiction to lying and revelations that he partied enthusiastically while British citizens were being arrested for meeting during the COVID-19 lockdowns, led to his exit as PM.
Johnson’s successor Liz Truss nearly crashed the British pension system with an eccentric budget introducing big tax cuts for the super rich. She lasted just weeks as PM. Rishi Sunak’s rule has been a picture of mismanagement.
Voters have rightly punished the Tories — sometimes this meant voting for Labour, but not always.
The Reform Party, the latest incarnation of right-wing populism, had a good election. It gained five MPs, with its leader Farage — best known for driving opposition to the EU — winning in the deprived Essex constituency of Clacton.
Rather than a Labour win, it has been widely argued that the entry of the Reform Party, which contested 600 constituencies, split the right-wing vote and pushed the Tories out of office.
Indeed, the Tories’ 24% plus Reform’s 14% would have put the right on 38% of the vote, well ahead of Labour’s 34%.
The assumption is that Reform’s success with its low-tax, anti-immigration platform will push the Tories further to the right. This is the scenario for the next general election, likely to be held in 2029, of a centre-right Labour Party being challenged by a far-right force.
British politics would neatly mimic United States politics, with Farage perhaps joining and leading the Tories or pushing them out of the way to act as an English version of Donald Trump.
There are several reasons why this may not happen. The Tories can’t simply shift further right and add on Reform votes. Neither can Reform neatly displace the Tories.
Shifting right would shift more Tory voters to the Liberal Democrats, who gained 12% but with careful targeting won 64 new MPs, making Reform’s total of five MPs look rather weak. Reform are far from being a powerful force, while some voters have an appetite, sadly, for racism and Trump-style rhetoric.
Reform polled below expectations and failed to turn votes into many seats. Exit polling on election night promised they would gain 13 MPs. There are dark allegations that some of their candidates were AI-generated and weren’t real humans. They lack strong candidates and election teams on the ground.
Gains for greens, independents, openings for the left
A clear lesson of British politics is that strong local campaigning is essential to winning constituencies.
This is a lesson that the Greens and independent socialist candidates have learnt. Five independent MPs, including Corbyn, were elected on a pro-Palestine platform, in previously very safe Labour constituencies. This is astonishing, as independents almost never win in English constituencies.
The Greens replaced their sole retiring MP, Caroline Lucas, with four new MPs.
Andrew Feinstein, a former African National Congress MP in South Africa and ex-Labour Party member, standing on a peace and pro-Palestine platform, came second to Starmer in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency. He had no national publicity and only a couple of months of organising.
While Starmer won with 48% of the vote to Feinstein’s 18%, Starmer’s vote fell by 15% compared to 2019.
Leanne Mohamad, another pro-Palestine candidate, challenged Wes Streeting — Starmer’s new health minister and close ally. He scraped in with a majority of 528 votes, a fall of 20%.
Labour is losing the Muslim vote.
It is not all good news for the forces to the left of Labour.
In Scotland, where the election was dominated by the anti-Tory vote, the Scottish National Party dropped from 48 MPs to just 9. Labour made significant gains and the Scottish independence movement seems to be in crisis, at least for the time being.
The fallout between the Scottish Green Party — which is significantly to the left of the English and Welsh Greens — and the SNP, has led to large gains for Labour. Even with a stronger SNP and cooperation between the Greens and Scottish Nationalists, Labour would likely have made gains.
While failures over climate change and a change in leadership are part of the picture, a full analysis of the SNP’s current decline would require another article.
In the North of Ireland, unionism has splintered, reflecting the crisis of the right in England. Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionists lost his constituency to the even more sectarian Traditional Unionist Voice Party. Sinn Fein increased its vote and held seven constituencies, most with large majorities. A united Ireland is increasingly likely.
So, how will Starmer govern?
An ex-Labour party councillor Christopher Foxon tweeted “I just hope Keir Starmer does not run the country in the same unjust and appalling way he has run the Labour Party”.
Starmer has earned a reputation for dishonesty and intolerance. He won Labour’s leadership on a soft ecosocialist program, and then ditched this except for some action on climate. He expelled those on the left, including Corbyn. He is also a stout opponent of Palestine and an authoritarian with pro-war instincts.
With broad but shallow support, if he treats voters with disdain and continues with unpopular neoliberal policies, he could lose in 2029. However, rather than this heralding a victory for Conservatives/Reform, it might provide space for the Greens and others on the left to advance.
[Derek Wall is a former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and a prominent ecosocialist, academic and writer.]