A hated leader moves towards crushing victory

 

British politics
Soon we will learn what it means to win through the failures of others

Owen Jones

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.

Published at 05.00

Labor is heading for a historic victory in the general election. Photo: Aaron Chown/AP

Here are two extremely revealing facts about the UK general election. First: the opinion polls unanimously indicate that Labor is heading for its biggest ever victory, while the ruling Conservative Party is heading for its worst election since 1832, when the system was given the modern guise used today. Second: Labour's Keir Starmer is the most unpopular opposition leader since the 70s, when such polls began.

How can these factors coexist? One of the most convincing victories in modern times - for the least popular future Prime Minister ever?

The answer is simple: no government in modern history has imploded with such self-immolating single-mindedness as the latest one. During the pandemic, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his officials broke the rules they themselves had set up and communicated. In some cases, they partied until they vomited down the government's own walls, while ordinary citizens were not allowed to hold the hands of their dying family members.

You might think this should be enough to bring down a government - and you'd be right - but there's more to come.

Because of his consistent denial of this filthy hypocrisy - along with the Torie's sexual harassment, abuse and corruption scandals - Johnson was forced to step down. This alone would have been enough to bring down most governments. That turned out to be the least of Tories' problems.

Britain has now suffered the biggest decline in living standards since the Napoleonic era. A poor household in the UK has an average of £4,300 less per year than their German or French counterparts. Real wages have barely changed since the Tories came to power, when the party used the financial crash as an excuse for government withdrawal.

The result: a crumbling public sector where healthcare – once described by Margret Thatcher's finance minister as "the closest the English get to a religion" – is paralyzed by record long queues. A fragmented infrastructure, especially outside the capital – the country's privatized, expensive, unreliable and congested railway is a standing joke – creates a sense that this is a country that no longer works.

Then came Liz Truss. Boris Johnson's successor wanted to immediately introduce tax cuts for the rich, contrary to the mandate her party had secured in 2019. Her stated reason: to break the trend of dismal economic growth. The diagnosis was indeed correct, although the truth is that it is a result of the legacy of Thatcher. Growth was at its strongest during the post-war period and associated nationalisation, government intervention, strong trade unions and tax increases for the well-off. After privatisations, tax cuts, disbanded unions and the deregulations of the 80s, growth had both declined and become more unevenly distributed.

          
           Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under intense pressure. Photo: Phil Noble/AP

But Truss's shock therapy triggered the great disaster. The market crashed, mortgage rates and rents soared, forcing her to backtrack so far that she was eventually swept from power, remembered as Britain's shortest-serving prime minister ever. 

 

You might think this should be enough to bring down a government - and you'd be right - but there's more to come. The Tories have done their best to reinforce prejudice against immigrants, with the aim of gaining partisan advantage. This played a decisive role in the 2016 Brexit referendum, where free movement and immigration were central arguments.

Public attitudes towards immigration have actually softened markedly since then. But immigration is higher than ever – positive for those with a progressive bent, traumatic for those who voted to leave the EU for this very reason. The Tories have mixed toxic rhetoric with a number of anti-immigration measures. But it has only bitten the core voters, and they have not managed to satisfy that anger. The supporters have instead jumped over to Nigel Farage's radical right Reform Party.

Labor will therefore win a landslide victory for lack of alternatives. But then?

If Rishi Sunak had been a competent Prime Minister, he would probably have perished in this toxic wreck. Unfortunately, he is perhaps the most overrated leader in history. His crisis-ridden leadership culminated in the decision to call an unnecessarily early election, which is currently swirling around a scandal in which his allies allegedly bet money on the election's timing.

That Labor is on the threshold of a historic majority is confirmation for Starmer's allies: the party leader was right to pull them to the right. Starmer was elected by party members on promises of taxing the rich, public investment, reversing the failed privatization experiment, abolishing tuition fees and sweeping labor law reforms. Starmer paid tribute to his left-wing predecessor  Jeremy Corbyn - for whom he was a spokesman on the Brexit issue - and criticized the demonization of him.

After being elected, Starmer scrapped his promises, purged anything reminiscent of Corbyn and went on a frontal attack on the party's left. But he has not succeeded in filling this vacuum with a clear vision of his own. His new flagship became a £28bn-a-year green investment fund, which has since been almost completely abandoned. His leadership even accepted the Tories' cuts to social security benefits, which are pushing hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. Even Tony Blair's New Labor offered anti-poverty measures. Starmerism has nothing like that at all.

It is striking that Labour's poll numbers are no better than the party got under Corbyn in 2017, when it won 262 out of 650 seats and the Tories became the largest party but without their own majority. This time Labor could get the same share of the vote and still win 450 seats or more. Welcome to the capricious British electoral system, with majority voting in single-member constituencies – this time coupled with a total collapse for the Tories, with Farage's party now splitting voters to the right of centre.

 

But none of this helps Starmerism - whatever it is. Starmer's popularity is lower than Corbyn's before the 2017 election. The difference is that Corbyn was subjected to a relentless media campaign - accusing his Labor Party of everything from terrorist sympathies to antisemitism - while Starmer has enjoyed the most favorable media treatment of a Labor leader since Tony Blair.

Corbyn faced hostility from most Labor MPs - even during the 2017 campaign. Starmer, for his part, has forced unity through brute authority. The lack of enthusiasm he evokes is striking.

Labor will therefore win a landslide victory for lack of alternatives. But then? There is a black hole of around £20 billion a year in the country's finances. It needs to be filled just not to expand, and the UK is already in bad shape due to years of Tory austerity. But Labor has taken over the Tories' fiscal rules and ruled out tax increases for the super-rich. The political issues, from standard of living to education, are given low priority.

Starmer lacks the charisma of his ideological ally Blair. So what happens when an unpopular opposition leader with no vision or solutions to a troubled nation's many crises wins power, solely because of the catastrophic failures of the previous government? In the coming year, we will get the beginning of an answer to that question.

Waiting in the wings is Nigel Farage, who may switch to a broken Conservative party and become its leader. Germany's Olaf Scholz and France's Emmanuel Macron came to power with similar political projects: just look at the far-right revolts that followed. This is the danger in Britain too, unless a demoralized, beleaguered and fragmented left pulls itself together – and offers a response to the disillusionment ahead.

Owen Jones  is an author and journalist.