Opinion
When the map of British politics was redrawn last Thursday, the only surprise was the magnitude of the upheaval, not the fact of it. Writing on these pages in January, I said that “no amount of expectation management will be enough to inoculate Labour against its looming electoral calamity” on May 7. Yet the scale of Labour’s losses surprised even the most pessimistic pundit. Is there an order of magnitude beyond “calamity”?
The elections were for English councils and the Welsh and Scottish provincial assemblies. They are as much party contests as general elections. The party in power in Westminster invariably does badly, as voters vent their dissatisfaction without changing the national government. In that respect they somewhat resemble byelections, but they are much more consequential. Since every elector in Britain can vote, they are treated as proxy general elections. Sir Keir Starmer may not have been on the ballot paper, but he might just as well have been because it was all about him, and the Labour government he has led for less than two years.
Labour went into the election controlling 68 of the 136 councils. It lost 40 of them; 1496 of the 2564 seats it was defending (58 per cent). The result was terrible for the Conservatives as well who, starting from a lower base, lost 563 of their 1364 seats (41 per cent). The big winner of the night was Nigel Farage. His insurgent Reform Party started the night with two seats and ended with 1454, as well as control of 14 councils.
If one transposes the vote share to the House of Commons, Reform would be within 40 seats of a majority. Of course, the next election is a long time away; a lot will happen in three years. Nevertheless, Reform can no longer be written off – as it was until quite recently – as a fringe party. In the likely event that no party has a majority in the next parliament, it will be the key player.
Labour’s result was even worse in the elections for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, in which nationalist parties complicate the politics. The Scottish Nationalist Party was, as predicted, returned to office. But it was Wales that broke Labour hearts. This is Labour’s birthplace and heartland; so many of its tribal heroes emerged from its dismal mining towns and dark valleys. Ever since 1922 – the breakthrough election which saw Labour displace the Liberal Party as the main opposition – it has held most of the Welsh seats in the House of Commons. It has dominated the Welsh provincial assembly, the Senedd, since it was established 27 years ago. Last week, it lost all but nine of its seats; its vote share fell to 11 per cent.
If there was one bright spot for Labour, it was in the relative underperformance of the Greens. Although it made significant gains, taking control of five councils, the party did not make the major breakthrough in London many had expected. The Greens’ new leader Zack Polanski – young, fashionably gay, anarchically edgy in a way vaguely reminiscent of Johnny Rotten – had enjoyed a brief political honeymoon but as the campaign wore on, he was increasingly exposed as a creepy, gap-toothed moron, riding the wave of antisemitism. Starmer’s strong opposition to the war in Iran also helped Labour to contain a big split on the left.
Commentators and political scientists will endlessly discuss how it all went so wrong so soon for a government which was, less than two years ago, elected with the biggest swing and the second-biggest majority, in British history. Almost all the attention has focused on Starmer himself. A Labour MP whom I know, reflecting on his experience knocking on doors, told me “It’s all about Keir. Everybody hates him.” Certainly, he is very unpopular: his net approval rating before the election was -48.
Starmer is an uninspiring public figure, preachy and flat-footed, who is constantly outperformed by the more nimble Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. He has run a directionless, scandal-ridden government which seems incapable of rising above tedious class resentment and relentlessly hectoring political correctness.
Yet I sense that there is something deeper going on in British politics, of which hostility to Starmer’s underwhelming government is merely a symptom. The deep-seated pessimism which has beset Britain for more than half a century – interrupted only by the bracing radicalism of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and the cheerful optimism of Tony Blair after 1997 – is back. As well, the nation is yet to recover from the double shocks of Brexit and COVID.
Unlike Thatcher and Blair, Starmer won his landslide without offering any clear idea of where he wanted to take the country. His one-word slogan – “Change” – could not have been emptier. “Vote for us because we’re not them” is not a vision for a better future. Now, the public senses that, having in 2024 elected a government out of sheer frustration with the Tories, the country is led by an empty suit struggling to manage a cabinet of retro 1970s class warriors and student politicians who never grew up.
Still, memories of the disgraceful shambles of recent Tory governments are fresh. So the public has turned to Reform. Nigel Farage may well be a false prophet – the beneficiary of exasperation with the traditional parties of government rather than a credible alternative prime minister. But today, the man who, just 10 years ago, David Cameron described as a “swivel-eyed loon”, is looking like the only winner.
George Brandis is a former Liberal Party senator and attorney-general. He also served as Australia’s high commissioner to the UK.
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George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at the ANU’s National Security College.