These ought to be great times for Labour. The worst Tory government in decades has just imploded. A discredited Boris Johnson lingers sulkily in Downing Street. The competition to succeed him is like a bad gameshow. Michael Gove, a key minister until two weeks ago, admits that some of the state “is simply … not functioning”. Most voters are rapidly getting poorer. Brexit is steadily unravelling. After 12 years under the Conservatives, much of Britain feels underfunded, worn out, even close to collapse.
Just as governments-in-waiting are supposed to, Labour recently won a byelection seat from the incumbents, and leads most polls by double digits. Well-targeted attacks on the government are emailed to journalists by Labour many times a day. In the Commons, increasingly confident shadow ministers such as Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner treat their Tory counterparts with contempt. With New Labour veterans among Keir Starmer’s allies and advisers, and the Conservatives associated with sleaze and shambles, British politics occasionally feels like a rerun of the mid-1990s, when Tony Blair was about to take power.
But only occasionally. The rest of the time, Labour’s position feels more fragile. The party’s ascendancy is only about nine months old, having begun with the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal. Its previous periods ahead in the polls have come and gone, such as the autumn of 2020, when the government’s pandemic disasters had yet to be obscured by the relative success of the vaccine rollout. Before Starmer, Labour leaders from Jeremy Corbyn to Ed Miliband to Neil Kinnock all enjoyed similar periods, when Downing Street fleetingly seemed to beckon. Often these happened when a Conservative prime minister was unpopular and on their way out, as Johnson is now.
What happened next during Corbyn and Kinnock’s leaderships ought to worry Starmer – and anyone who wants a Labour government: in 1990, 2016 and 2019, the Conservatives chose a new leader and won the next election. Each time, the Tory contest seemed a gift to the left at first, as it does now. In leadership races, the party’s divisions are on display: between social conservatism and disruptive free-market capitalism, between pragmatists and fanatics, between poisonous rivals. Meanwhile, the rather self-satisfied, ever-shifting rules of the contests are Conservatism in unattractive microcosm: ruthless, unreliable, ultimately interested only in itself.
And yet, these messy competitions can also revive the party. They introduce new narratives and solidify previously hazy characters. The media helpfully provide nonstop, disproportionate coverage. Despite all the current British and global crises, broadcasters cleared their schedules for the leadership debates. Thus prompted, many voters pay attention to at least parts of the races, despite almost all of them having no say. This attention may start as mockery and derision; but then it can become fascination, and finally enthusiasm for the winner. During the 2019 contest, despite a squabbling crowd of candidates no more impressive than today’s, the Conservative lead over Labour in Ipsos Mori’s monthly survey grew from two percentage points to 10. In some recent polls, the Tories are rising again.
Their leadership rituals give the impression that big changes are taking place – that some politicians are being appropriately punished and unpopular policies discarded, while promising new people and ideas are elevated – without the need for a different party to enter government. The election victories of John Major, Theresa May and Boris Johnson as fresh party leaders, while on different scales, all featured strong recoveries in the Tory vote.
Despite this ominous history, Labour often seems to spend Tory leadership contests as if a proactive opposition is temporarily not required. In 2016, instead of laying out its alternatives to a likely May premiership, Labour was preoccupied by an attempt to unseat Corbyn. In 2019, instead of offering a rival vision to Johnson’s, the party was preoccupied by antisemitism.
In Labour’s defence, during a Tory leadership race it is even harder than usual to get journalists and voters interested in what Labour is up to. Last week, Starmer went to Berlin to meet arguably Europe’s most important politician, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who won power last year through a cautious and not very charismatic centre-left approach. Yet, despite the obvious parallels with what Starmer hopes to achieve, British coverage of the visit was sparse. Such incuriosity about Labour, like the national obsession with the Tories, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But Starmer has also not done enough, so far, to show he is a fresher option than whoever the Tory members choose as premier. His lack of leftwing policies – supposedly a shrewd strategy, according to the New Labour logic he appears to be following – means that what policies he has can be stolen by the new Tory leader, as Labour’s relatively small-scale windfall tax on the energy companies already has been. A Starmer premiership might well be very different from a Conservative one – kinder, more competent, less corrupt – yet his repetitive, no-frills political style means that his leadership has aged quite fast. Compared with the novelty of a new Tory premier, he risks looking stale.
That Tory novelty, it is true, may not last long. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss both have an old-fashioned Thatcherite faith in free markets, shared by most Conservative MPs but not by all the voters their party needs if it is to stay in power amid all 21st-century capitalism’s malfunctions. Under Starmer, Labour’s promise of “a new economy” with more “security” and “fairness”, while vague, at least sounds in touch with the real world.
Yet when Truss or Sunak takes office, the next election will be two years away at most. For such a short period, it is possible that either of them will be able to maintain the illusion that they have a new vision for Britain. If that happens, and the Tories win the next election, Labour’s ascendancy in 2022 will be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as yet another paper victory.
In September, assuming our society makes it there intact, the Conservatives will have a new leader and Labour will hold its annual conference. For Starmer, and for all non-Tories, the next couple of months are really going to matter.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
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