It’s Election Time in the UK

Labour leader Keir Starmer speaks to a young girl at the Vale Inn on June 27, 2024 in Macclesfield, United Kingdom. (Photo by Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

This Thursday, the United Kingdom is heading for a historic day. Voters across the UK will go to the polls in the first general election since December 2019, when the Labour Party lost its fourth successive election to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, who won a thumping 80-seat parliamentary majority. Extraordinarily, it looks like the Labour Party will now win this election, and usher out fourteen years of continuous but chaotic Conservative governments.

In fact, pollsters are predicting not just a Labour victory but a Labour landslide and a Conservative wipe out, at the hands of a resurgent Labour Party, revived Liberal Democrats, and support for Nigel Farage’s new party Reform UK.  

Most of us who have fought for the last five years working for a Labour turnaround are reluctant to talk about election certainties. Part of this is our heads—polls have been wrong before, especially about “shy Tories.” A lot of voters are still undecided, and voters are much more likely to switch parties than they used to be. But part of this reluctance is our hearts, too.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking Labour have been the passive beneficiaries of the Conservatives’ collapse, waiting for the contradictions in the party’s electoral coalition and inter-political rivalries to take them down. They could not be more wrong.

From day one of being elected Leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer has charted a course back to power that has been a steep and difficult climb. He understood that the Labour Party had become too far removed from its founding purpose of being for working people, and resolved to put the party back in their service again. I joined his staff leadership team as executive director of policy alongside like-minded strategists, having advocated for a political strategy and program to win the hearts and minds of modern working-class voters in my book The New Working Class.

What we found was a party whose morale was rock bottom and in financial jeopardy. Most troubling was the party had failed to respond sufficiently to antisemitism in its ranks and would later be found to have breached laws on equality. Laws that we, the Labour Party, had created the last time we were in government when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. Labour was 26 points behind the Conservatives in the polls. We had lost parliamentary constituencies to the Tories that had never voted Conservative before, mainly working-class communities, so repelled were they by what Labour was offering. And day after day, more problems kept coming out of the woodwork.

So, if Labour folks are somewhat reticent to call it before the day, you will understand why.

From that low, Starmer has led the Labour Party to the point where they could be in government again, with a sizable mandate for change. If so then much will be written about how he did it (and if not, then more will be written on the failures of the polling industry). For Liberal Patriot readers, there are some important parallels between the predicaments both our parties have been in, which might be useful to draw out in a year which is so critical to the Democrats and the future of the United States.

The party of working people

Starmer and his team were clear pretty much from the outset that the Labour Party’s focus had to be on connecting with ordinary working-class voters. In the UK we would define this group as people on middle to low incomes, likely non-university educated, and would include many that in the United States would be described as middle class. As our vote share had reduced at the 2019 General Election and we lost many of the places that had been Labour for decades, we also lost an important voice in parliament for those communities.

Labour only wins when it successfully unites the electoral coalition that formed our party: working-class communities and more liberal urban voters. It is the former we had lost and who we had to be laser focussed on, in towns and suburbs across England, Scotland, and Wales.

Gaining the support of these voters requires relentless focus on the issues that matter most to them, and changing the party to reflect their values and concerns. For Labour that meant reassuring them of our commitment to the country’s interests and national security, as well as reassuring them Labour could be trusted on the economy.

If Labour do win Thursday’s election, they will show that it is possible to win back working-class voters they have lost, an essential task for all center-left political parties. But PPI’s research shows Labour’s lead among working-class voters is less than its lead among the general population, and many are peeling off the Tories to vote for the right-wing party Reform UK.

Labour will need to stay as focused in government on delivering for working-class voters, as they have been on speaking for them in opposition. This is necessary to retain their support, and pull more of them over from Reform by showing the credible center-left alternative to the right-wing prospectus for change, over the status quo that doesn’t work for them.

Dominate the center-ground

Under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party was perceived by voters as too left-wing. Corbyn had come from the far-left faction of the Labour Party, who took everyone by surprise (including themselves) when he won the leadership in 2016. Starmer’s Labour has shifted Labour through positioning, policy, and prospective candidates towards the center-left, and is now perceived by voters on most issues to reflect their own views.

Part of this change in perception is the hard work of Starmer and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in particular, who have prioritized increasing voters’ trust in Labour to manage the economy. Reeves has wasted no time beating up on big businesses, opting instead to work closely with business while in opposition to create pro-growth policies in every part of the country. She and Starmer genuinely perceive business as partners in their plans for a reformed economy, and while unafraid to challenge them, they have produced pro-business, pro-worker policies.

Part of what is remarkable about Labour’s turnaround is Starmer’s steel in standing up to antisemitism and putting the country above party interest. Some leaders would have sought deals to avoid confrontations on difficult matters, but Starmer has been very clear in his actions that Labour will not tolerate antisemitism. The words mattered, but the disciplining of politicians and members who could have brought the party into disrepute has been a large catalyst for cultural change. It has meant the ambition to be a party of government, not a party of protest, has real substance. Beyond the individual positions Labour takes, voters see Labour as a changed party, and for the better.

Of course, the occupation of the center-ground has been enabled by the Conservatives’ vacation. In 2019, Boris Johnson managed to weld together a new electoral coalition which combined center-left policies on the economy and public services with moderate to conservative social positions. Fast forward several years and the Conservatives have abandoned their commitment to “level up” the economy and fund more public sector workers, and have pursued a more aggressive strategy on cultural issues. The net result is that they have alienated a large bloc of voters for whom their cultural views seem immoderate, and have pushed other voters further to their political right.

In pushing hard to the right on cultural issues, the Conservatives have not only driven some of their supporters over to Reform UK, but have given themselves a long-term headache in how they reach younger voters. (And by younger, I mean anyone up to the age of retirement.) The average age that a voter would switch from Labour to the Conservatives was 39 in 2019. In 2024, that has risen to 71 years old.

Although it has not all been plain sailing for Labour, they have found a moderate tone and approach to social and cultural issues that promotes greater progress and equality, and rejects divisive identity politics. Starmer has championed unity and healing after a chaotic few years following the Brexit referendum, and will need to muster a new sense of national pride to overcome the forces that the right-wing populists in Europe are exploiting.

Looking to the future

Labour have put forward a future-facing campaign with few short-term fixes. They have embraced technological change, private sector innovation, and wealth creation. But the UK faces enormous challenges, at a time of global insecurity, with little room to maneuver on the public finances. A bad Brexit deal has made us worse off, compounding years of underinvestment and slow growth. While Labour has been careful to manage expectations that there is no “magic wand” to solve the country’s ills, and they will need to show results. And as Liberal Patriot readers in the United States know all too well, even results on the economy don’t always filter through to voters as might be expected.

The rules of the political game are changing, and the political right have been adept at changing with them. The UK Conservative Party may be down but they are not out. And we have a new challenger on the right in the form of Reform UK, which don’t need to be in government to have impact, as the Brexit campaign showed.

If Labour do win in the UK on July 4^th, it will be a jolt in the arm for center-left parties globally. The Labour Party under Starmer has the makings of a long-term electoral strategy that could be a blueprint for success. But they will also need to learn from the governing challenges from the Democrats and others, who are charting a new course for their countries in a changed world.

We cannot, in the end, win by default alone. We win by providing better answers to the challenges people face in their lives than the political right. That is the project for the modern center-left, and the real test comes in government.