For anyone on the right, a Labour government under siege is one of the most reassuringly familiar sights in British politics. The party’s intermittent attempts to rule this country usually face regular policy controversies, proliferating enemies and relentless press attacks. There are often deteriorating Labour poll ratings, panicky government communications and policy lurches to the right. Minor scandals are magnified and ministers forced to resign. Despite attempted relaunches, Labour’s sense of momentum in office begins to ebb away. The many people hostile to the party look up the dates of coming elections and lick their lips.
From Labour’s first short-lived governments in the 1920s and its struggling ones in the 1970s to Gordon Brown’s gloomy premiership in the late 2000s, most Labour administrations have become beleaguered sooner or later. No matter that the Tories have often been more out of their depth in office, as Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s administrations have recently reminded us: it’s Labour that is most associated with government as crisis management.
