Starmer has been called boring, but maybe that’s what the UK needs
- After 14 tempestuous years of Conservative rule, change was long overdue. Labour and the new prime minister deserve to be given a chance
Britain’s new prime minister Keir Starmer held his first cabinet meeting on Saturday as he embarked on the daunting task of changing Britain for the better. There is much work to be done.
The Labour Party’s landslide election victory is one of the biggest ever, with a majority of more than 170 seats. It has a strong mandate.
Starmer has promised to pursue economic growth, fix the “broken” National Health Service, build 1.5 million new homes and improve living standards. But there remain uncertainties about precisely what the new government will do.
It is clear, however, that after 14 tempestuous years of Conservative Party rule, by five prime ministers, a change was long overdue.
The era was marked by the madness of Brexit, a chaotic response to the pandemic, economic turmoil during the disastrous six week reign of Liz Truss, a cost-of-living crisis and multiple scandals.
This was the first general election campaign I had experienced for decades, having returned to the UK in 2022 after 28 years in Hong Kong.
Many former residents of the city would have enjoyed voting in an election which gave them the opportunity to oust a government. That was not an option when they lived in Hong Kong.
The Hongkongers might, however, have been left a little underwhelmed by the lacklustre election campaign. Prime minister Rishi Sunak sought to catch Labour off guard by announcing a surprise snap poll. But the move left many of his own candidates unprepared.
Labour went into the campaign with a 20-point lead in the opinion polls. It never seemed likely Sunak would be able to close the gap. That became an increasingly distant prospect as the Tories were beset by a series of controversies.
As for Labour, the party’s approach has been described as like protecting a porcelain vase. It was all about safety first. With such a big lead in the polls, it was careful not to say or do anything to rock the boat.
During debates Starmer stuck rigidly to his key messages while Sunak sought to strike fear into the hearts of voters with claims of Labour tax hikes. It became repetitive. The election couldn’t come soon enough.
The scale of the Labour landslide and catastrophic defeat of the Conservatives suggests the new government is popular. But a closer reading of the results suggests otherwise.
Britain’s first-past-the-post election system, with each constituency electing a member of Parliament, means a party’s national vote haul is not necessarily proportionate to the number of seats it wins.
Labour won 64 per cent of the seats, but only 34 per cent of the votes. The party’s vote share is only 2 percentage points higher than in 2019, when it suffered its worst election defeat for more than 80 years.
Longer term, the most significant development in this election might be the shift away from voter support for the main two parties towards their challengers, from the Liberal Democrats to the Green Party and a variety of independents.
The results in many constituencies were very close. This is partly due to tactical voting by those determined to oust Conservative candidates. But the rise of the right-wing Reform Party, with its anti-immigration agenda, was also significant.
Reform won five seats, but secured more than 14 per cent of the vote. Leader Nigel Farage, a friend of former US president Donald Trump, has vowed to forge a mass movement and make the party the main opposition, promising to be “a bloody nuisance”.
Starmer, meanwhile, has pledged to rebuild Britain, with stability and moderation, making politics about service and respect. The former human rights lawyer (and keen football fan) deserves to be given a chance to show what he can do.
The new prime minister has been described as boring. But after all the dramas of the Conservatives, a little quiet pragmatism is what the country needs. I wish him luck. He is going to need it.
