By the end of next year, Keir Starmer will reside in 10 Downing Street as the 58th British prime minister. This near inevitability is widely understood at Labour’s annual conference: from the Cheshire cat grins on the faces of those who are there, to the sheer number of suited corporate lobbyists striding around Liverpool looking terribly important.
Prod a delegate, and they will utter some caution: taking voters for granted is a bad look, after all, and the Conservatives remain the world’s most formidable electoral force. The traumas of 1992 and 2015 – when the party faithful dared to dream, only to collide with brutal political reality – have left deep scars.
Those nerves are ill-founded. There is no precedent for a government with such calamitous polling to turn its fortunes around in the final year before an election. Rishi Sunak is a man promoted beyond his talents, devoid of a coherent strategy, dependent on throwing crude culture war fodder to an increasingly hardcore base. Even if it wasn’t for multiple Tory scandals, an unprecedented cost of living crisis, and disintegrating public services and infrastructure, Liz Truss’s disastrous attempt to turn voters into lab rats for hard-right economics was sufficient to fatally poison the party’s prospects.
Treating Labour as an almost certain government-in-waiting matters, because it determines where scrutiny should be focused. After the most calamitous spell in office of any administration in British democratic history, it remains important to expose whatever further damage the Tories will inflict on our social fabric in their remaining months. But even this must be seen, at least in part, through the prism of what comes next: that is, to what degree Labour will heal the deep wounds left by 13 grim years.
It is natural for Labour to resist such an approach. The impression of a done deal breeds complacency among voters. But they also surely know that solemn warnings to never underestimate the Tories helpfully shifts scrutiny away from the coming Labour administration. That effort is aided by something comparable to a “rally round the flag” effect enjoyed by governments in moments of national crisis: a rally round the opposition phenomenon, with voters desperate to eject the Tories suppressing their disquiet with the alternative. Labour is their liferaft, and they fear that burdening it with concerns could sink it.
But voters have most leverage in the run-up to an election, when political parties seek their endorsement. Waiting until a government is safely ensconced in office is a grave error. Scrutiny is necessary precisely because of the depth of the multiple crises that define our society. In his conference speech, Starmer revealed he understood the gravity of the British nightmare: he referred to 1945, when Labour rebuilt the country after the trauma of collective sacrifice, to 1964, when the party modernised the economy, and 1997, when it rebuilt a public realm – and said that the challenge of 2024 was to do all three. The problem remains that the transformative policies which logically follow from such an analysis are absent.
That isn’t to say Labour’s cupboard is empty. The party’s package on workers’ rights would help trade unions organise, a precondition to a lasting solution to a crisis in living standards now baked into our economic system. Labour’s green transition plan has been scaled back, but still represents a break from a Tory party committed to underinvestment and reneging on net zero. A publicly owned rail system and clean energy company remain commitments, and a promise to build 1.5m houses in a single term isn’t to be dismissed.
But it is hard to see how Labour will rebuild a shattered public realm under its current plans. It has reversed Starmer’s leadership commitments to hike taxes on the well-to-do, and imposed what it calls “iron-clad fiscal rules” which severely limit what it can spend. Reversing the NHS’s increasingly existential crisis – accentuated by an ageing population – alone requires vast sums of money. The damage inflicted on the country’s social architecture, from crumbling schools to substandard infrastructure, can only be reversed with huge resources. If Starmer wishes to valorise 1945, he should surely be inspired by a Labour government that refused to allow an economic crisis to become an excuse for lack of ambition.
Many in the Labour tribe are understandably desperate to finally escape the political wilderness. It is difficult, though, to escape a widespread sense that simply removing the Tories will drag Britain from its postwar nadir. Some crave a return to what they regard as some form of normality, when politics wasn’t defined by turmoil. The truth, of course, is that this tranquil past is a fiction: long unaddressed insecurities and inequalities are what have led to our political tumult.
Despite a lack of public enthusiasm for the Labour leadership – Starmermania there is not – the party will undoubtedly enjoy a honeymoon. There will be widespread relief at the ejection of what is more of a rabble than a government. But Starmer’s team have bet the house on economic growth to drive new investment: if that doesn’t arrive, what then? Two years into a Labour government, will gratitude at the Tories’ political demise give way to disillusionment if living standards remain stagnant and insecurity still defines the existence of millions? In 1997, Labour could keep the social peace with mild reform because it inherited substantial economic growth and rising living standards, even if that was thanks to an unsustainable financial bubble. It will have no such luck this time.
Will a resurgent trade union movement, and younger generations who suffered the brunt of the Tory nightmare, remain placid in these vastly more troublesome circumstances? If the coming Labour government fails to address a social order which has failed to meet the basic needs of ever growing numbers, their patience may be swiftly tested. For those who believe the coming Starmer era will mark the conclusion of our age of turmoil, a brutal collision with reality may soon beckon.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
