Playing to a perennial electoral trope, Labour’s electoral campaign slogan promised a simple but vaguely defined ‘Change’.
With the election won, what form of change can we expect, and will it be the substantial transformation that’s so desperately needed or merely a tempering of the excesses and depredations of the last decade or so? Will Labour implement policy that will have a substantial impact on the lives of the multitude of the British public blighted by austerity, crumbling public services, shoddy and expensive housing, rundown localities, crippling poverty and the low wages and threadbare safety net that provides little to no safety at all? The alarm bells have been ringing loudly that we shouldn’t expect too much as we have been here before, with the Labour landslide of 1997 raising hopes of wholesale transformation only to deliver limited reform within the confines of the political ‘reality’ that has prevailed since the Thatcher pro-market revolution.
From what’s been revealed thus far, as with Blair’s New Labour, there will doubtless be a measure of pro-social intervention from a ‘new’ Labour government that will have little difficulty in appearing progressive, at least in comparison to what has been experienced over the last 14 years. An essential reset of climate policy as well as other measures on labour and housing markets, and our post-Brexit relationship with our European partners, have all been flagged up and will likely gain some traction.
On many other proposed measures, however, there has been a good deal of vagueness, prevarication and back-pedalling, as fairly ambitious commitments became more equivocal as the election approached. Notably, the much-trumpeted measures to reform workers’ rights, critically including the ending of 19th century-style ‘hire-and-fire’ and zero-hours contracts, have seemingly been diluted to become a more qualified set of aims, prompting Unite leader Sharon Graham to suggest that the policy now had ‘more holes in it than Swiss cheese’. Taken together with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s serial ‘business-friendly’ pronouncements, courting of the city, adherence to tight fiscal rules etc., and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s proposed NHS ‘reforms’, including more use of the private sector, there is a feeling of democratic déjà vu tinged with a sense of familiar despair. Once more, neoliberal solutions are being touted to resolve neoliberal-generated problems. While there is genuine hope that Keir Starmer’s declared progressive and ‘socialist’ leanings are more than just rhetoric, the omens do not look good, not least in terms of the apparent pre-election purging of the left. Overall, there is an uneasy feeling that following the bout of socioeconomic and political vandalism that we have endured since 2010, a second potential landslide vote for real change since 1997 may merely usher in another neoliberal tribute act.
Among others, there are two clear dangers should Labour stick to a piecemeal and ‘grown-up’ agenda that retains its former incarnation’s obeisance to markets, finance and the corporate sector. Firstly, there is the obvious observation that, despite a landslide majority, Labour only secured this courtesy of a capricious electoral system, with around 34 per cent of the vote, less than 2 per cent more than that which resulted in Jeremy Corbyn’s resounding 2019 defeat. It was a fortuitous combination of the SNP’s collapse in Scotland and the Conservatives’ haemorrhaging of votes to the Lib Dems, and notably the rise of Farage’s Reform Party, that produced a huge but ultimately fragile majority. Herein lies the second danger. Labour’s wind-assisted win appeared less to do with any enthusiasm for Keir Starmer and his team than the fact that, after five years of calamitous government, they were simply not the Tories. While some commentators have bullishly proclaimed that a large Labour win would suggest that the UK has bucked the right-wing populist tide that is spreading across Western democracies, this looks far from being the case. From a standing start, and with little in the way of campaigning across numerous constituencies, Farage’s Reform Party secured around 14 per cent of the vote, slightly higher than the Lib Dems’ showing at 12 per cent, albeit with a huge disparity in terms of seats with five and 72 seats respectively.
It’s been heavily implied that Farage considers the Conservatives a target for takeover. However, even if that remains off the table, some kind of accommodation or merger with a depleted, demoralised or further-divided Conservative Party is by no means out of the question. In that case, should Labour fail to deliver, particularly for many of those who did not vote and who see little difference between the two major parties’ likelihood of improving their situation, a reinvigorated right under Farage might provide a significant threat, mirroring what is happening across many European nations including France, where only an unprecedented collective effort halted the progress of the hard right, at least for now. Of course, many will suggest that Reform’s ‘Marmite’ leader has limited appeal for most of the UK public. However, as we are becoming acutely aware, particularly as the US election draws near, that may not be the obstacle that many once confidently assumed as, bizarrely, Trump’s popularity appears undiminished even as people are beginning to become aware of Project 2025, the agenda published by his elite support aimed at effectively supplanting US democracy with a form of fundamentalist right-wing authoritarianism.
We may not be as far from that as we like to believe, as we observe how swiftly the US has deteriorated since the Obama years when that similarly well-meaning administration also dashed many of the raised expectations of its poor. A further few years of distress and disappointment here may well resurrect the motivation to vote among the marginalised that emerged with Brexit, but which has subsided since, with a low turnout in poorer areas this time around. Should this once more be led by the right, we may see, as elsewhere, the emergence of a potent political force, once more produced by a paradoxical coalition of the opportunistic economic elite and those they have furtively and effectively dispossessed.
John Bone is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen and past Chair of the British Sociological Association.
The Great Decline by John Bone is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £19.99.
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