German politicians used to know where they were with their voters. If they gave you one term in power, they were likely to offer a second serving and quite possibly third and sometimes even fourth helpings. Konrad Adenauer, the Christian Democrat who was the first chancellor of West Germany, had more than 14 years in the role. The social democrat Helmut Schmidt clocked up more than eight. Helmut Kohl, whose captaincy encompassed the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, was at the helm for 16 years. It was seven for Gerhard Schröder and 16 for Angela Merkel. Chancellor of Germany used to come with lots of job security.
Read those numbers and weep, Olaf Scholz. The recent implosion of his “traffic light” coalition is to be followed by early elections. Given how he’s polling, it will be a huge surprise if Herr Scholz is returned as chancellor. He won’t have managed to get to the end of one term, never mind enjoy the multiple ones awarded to most of his predecessors.
Chalk that up to another lash of the anti-incumbent fury that has been raging around the world in this year of many elections. We’ve seen Japan’s Liberal Democrats put in their worst performance in a quarter of a century. South Africa’s ANC lost its majority for the first time in 30 years of full democracy. Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party went to the polls in India seeking to achieve a “super-majority” only to be shorn of one. Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance didn’t fare well in the national assembly elections that he rashly called in June, while Poland’s hard right Law and Justice party was booted out of power last year. In this context, Kamala Harris’s defeat by Donald Trump is not perhaps such a total shocker. Less a case of American exceptionalism, more an example of the US conforming to a global trend.
The anti-ruler rule is not completely cast iron. In Mexico, the presidency was retained by the incumbent party. In Indonesia, the presidential election was won by the defence minister, amid complaints from the opposition that it wasn’t a fair fight. These are exceptions. The anti-incumbent tidal wave of the past 12 months has manifested itself in places as diverse as Argentina, Austria, Botswana, South Korea and Sri Lanka. The trend is so unmistakable that you can probably see it from outer space. It is certainly visible to, and being twitched over, by Number 10. Labour was the happy beneficiary of anti-incumbency at the July election when the intensity of the loathing for the Conservatives buried them under a landslide defeat. After barely four months in the saddle, now public opinion is bucking like a bronco against Labour. One face of the fury is coming to town borne on tractors as protesting farmers plan to mass on the streets of London.
Incumbency, often in the past held to be an advantage when it came to winning elections, is now a serious liability. The wave is sweeping away governments of right, left and centre. It is happening pretty much regardless of longevity, location or ideological complexion. It is coming after you whether you are a charismatic leader or a technocratic one. It is hitting parties that were dominant for decades, as in South Africa and Japan. It is also besetting parties that came to power relatively recently, as in Germany. It is not so long ago that Herr Scholz was being held up, in some Labour circles, as a role model for Sir Keir. Now, not so much.
A conventional explanation would say the unpopularity of the German social democrats is mainly down to the woes of the country’s economy, quarrels over which collapsed the coalition. But “it’s the economy, stupid” won’t do as a sufficient account for what happened to the US Democrats. Ms Harris was rejected even though she was a high-profile member of an administration that created a lot of jobs and had the best growth rate in the G7. Yet many Americans said they weren’t feeling it in their own pocketbooks and what the Democrats’ campaign most lacked, notes one Labour strategist, “was any sense of a plan to make people feel personally better off”.
Phobia towards incumbents in the western democracies is connected to the stagnation in living standards that has persisted in most developed countries since the financial crisis. Politicians find it very hard to persuade people to feel well disposed towards government when they are not feeling happy about their own circumstances. Discontent has been exacerbated by the post-pandemic spike in inflation. Funnily enough, people really hate it when their groceries suddenly cost a lot more. This isn’t rocket science: voters who feel they’ve been made poorer tend to hand out a beating to whoever is in charge.
Sir Keir’s people might note that this makes it extra-lethal when politicians look out of touch. Endorsements of Ms Harris by countless wealthy celebrities didn’t swing it for her with American voters who felt their living standards had been squeezed. Rishi Sunak would have sacked his helicopter pilots and gone everywhere on a scooter had he been more alive to how corrosive it is to look remote from the everyday experiences of the public. The freebies saga damaged the Starmer government’s reputation because there was no good answer to the question the typical voter asked themselves: why isn’t the prime minister paying for his clothes and family treats like everyone else has to do?
It has just been reported that permanent migration to OECD countries reached a new record last year with the numbers of temporary migrants and asylum seekers also rising sharply. The damage done to the US Democrats by hostility to cross-border population flows illustrates another factor in the unseating of incumbents. There is no challenge that makes Number 10 more apprehensive than keeping Sir Keir’s promises to “control the borders”. He’s taking a risk making it his self-described “personal mission to smash the people-smuggling gangs”. If the government doesn’t succeed, the prime minister is going to directly own the failure. But his allies argue that trying to avoid talking about difficult subjects, “hiding under the table” as the Democrats did, just makes voters angrier.
Borders are a big obsession with the recast team in Downing Street. So is another b-word, “bills”. One of Number 10’s responses to anti-incumbency will be to talk less about the “five missions”, a concept that Labour MPs complain has never caught the imagination of voters, and focus more intensely on living standards. The improvement in median incomes in the UK has been so meagre since 2009 that earnings growth over the past quarter of a century was probably the slowest in more than 200 years. If you want a core explanation for why so many voters have been feeling so down on politicians for such a long time, then this is good place to look.
“Growth, growth, growth” is supposed to be Labour’s remedy to rescue Britain from the doom loop of suppressed living standards, high taxes and poor public services. So it is not glad tidings for the cabinet that the economy barely expanded at all in the first three months of the government’s life. Some business leaders are blaming the long period of fear-fuelled uncertainty in the run-up to the budget. Some ministers will tacitly acknowledge that they overdid the doom and gloom. They had better be sure that they are putting in place the right planning reforms, infrastructure investments and industrial strategies to lift growth off the floor. If they can’t improve Britain’s economic performance, they aren’t going to be able to achieve any of their other ambitions either.
In the first flush of victory in July, many Labour people thought they had time on their side because the size of the parliamentary majority could be interpreted as a 10-year mandate for Sir Keir’s “decade of national renewal”. The paucity of the vote share was a warning against that kind of complacent thinking. An analysis by Labour Together, the influential campaign group, rightly cautions: “This Labour government has been cautiously hired, on a trial basis, liable to prompt dismissal if it deviates even slightly from its focus on voters’ priorities.”
Some, even from within the party’s own ranks, are already catastrophising that this is doomed to be a one-term administration. It is way too early to forecast that the Starmer government is destined to suffer that fate. But the Labour leader and his cabinet must try to learn from the growing heap of cast-aside incumbents if they are not to be added to it.
• Andrew Rawnsley is the Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
