Ever since former British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s rain-sodden announcement to call a general election on Thursday, one question has hung over British politics: Would Labour win by a landslide or just a regular majority?
The BBC exit polls published at 10pm on Thursday suggested it would indeed be a landslide, predicting Labour to win 410 seats in the 650-seat Parliament, the Conservatives 131, the Liberal Democrats 61, Reform 13, the Scottish National Party 10, Plaid Cymru 4 and Green 2.
Early Friday morning, Labour passed the 326 seats needed for a House of Commons majority. Votes have been counted and the overall outline is clear. Keir Starmer won a historic victory, perhaps the second-biggest for the party after former British prime minister Tony Blair’s 179-seat majority in 1997. The Conservative Party might have secured the lowest share of the vote and the lowest seat tally in the party’s history, bringing a humiliating end to 14 years of Conservative rule.
This election was more of an anti-Conservative election than a pro-Labour one. There was none of the excitement that surrounded Blair and New Labour or even former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 to 2019. Rather, it has been more a sullen determination to get rid of the Tories by whatever means necessary, including a large amount of tactical voting, which is a relative rarity in the British system.
It is also likely that Labour’s huge majority would rest on a narrow share of the electorate. The right-of-center vote split between the Conservatives and Reform. The Liberal Democrats have done well. This contains a warning: The electorate might quickly turn against Starmer if he fails to deliver the improvements he has promised. In broken UK, anti-incumbency is king.
Yet, whatever qualifications you offer, a landslide is still a landslide.
When Labour grandee Hartley Shawcross said in 1946, “we are the masters now,” Labour had a majority of 145; after Friday, Labour’s Westminster dominance is significantly bigger than that. The shattered Conservative Party would be consumed by faction fighting between the ultras who argue that they lost, because they were not pure enough and moderates who want to move back to the center — a fight that would be all the more toxic with Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, who was just elected as MP in Clacton. The Liberal Democrats are broadly supportive of Labour’s plans. However, more important is that the Whitehall machine, which leans left and is fed up with Conservative chaos, would be delighted by a Labour victory.
What can we expect from the UK’s new masters? Labour has been careful to preserve the maximum degree of freedom of maneuver by giving vague answers to important questions. Starmer remains something of an enigma even after six weeks in the limelight of an election campaign. However, three things are clear.
The first is that New Labour would be a force for stability. Starmer exercises ruthless control over the party machinery. His first priority after winning the leadership was to root out the hard left, which he did with admirable ruthlessness, including expelling Corbyn himself (who stood as an independent candidate for his old seat of Islington North). However, in de-Corbynizing the party, he also Starmerized it, putting his own people in positions of power and establishing complete control of the selection process for parliamentary candidates. The one thing that the vast crowd of incoming MPs has in common is that they are loyal to the party leader.
This stability is a sharp contrast to the chaos of the Conservative years, which have been more like a merry-go-round than a serious exercise in government: five prime ministers, one of whom lasted just 49 days, seven chancellors, eight foreign secretaries and 16 housing ministers. Former British prime minister Theresa May was crippled in her attempt to craft a Brexit deal by her lack of a majority. Former British prime minister Boris Johnson had a majority, but no aptitude for government.
This new stability is also in contrast to the chaos in much of the democratic world. In the US, the chances of a second Donald Trump administration are increasing. In France, the political system faces paralysis. In Germany, the government is weak. The UK’s relative newfound stability could make it an attractive refuge for capital and turn Starmer into a leader among the dwindling band of defenders of the liberal order.
The second clarity is a more conciliatory attitude to Europe and global institutions. Starmer has ruled out any attempt to rejoin the Single Market or the Customs Union any time soon, let alone the EU. Brexit would not be undone, not least because the electorate would not endure a repeat of the political nightmare that the referendum entailed, even in reverse. However, Starmer is by training a human rights lawyer who believes in the international liberal order, and by instinct an institutionalist who believes in solving problems through collaboration and due process. His biggest problem might well be that he is too rules-focused in a Europe increasingly dominated by national populists and dealmakers.
The third is that Labour would take a pragmatic approach to government. Starmer is not interested in grand visions or ideological templates. He has taken lots of advice about how government works from Blair, for example, and may well recruit staff from the Tony Blair Institute, but he has refused to mimic his predecessor’s enthusiasm for pro-market reforms.
The Labour leader has made it clear that he would focus on one problem above all others: improving the UK’s dismal growth rate. However, he would approach that from different directions and different intellectual traditions — building houses, creating a national energy company, improving training and reforming planning.
Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin likens his leadership style to a ratchet: Starmer focuses on solving particular problems and then works outward from there, iteratively, but relentlessly. The vagueness of his aims may well be coupled with the precise logic of his chosen cogwheels.
There is much to worry about in all this, as argued before. Starmer’s party is rooted firmly in the public sector. His powerful Chief of Staff Sue Gray, for example, is a former civil servant whose only private-sector experience comes from running a pub in Northern Ireland. Starmer’s education policy is redolent of the old Labour of class resentment and leveling down.
Perhaps before worrying, we should allow ourselves time for celebration. Starmer is well-positioned to restore some energy into a British government machine that has been plagued by division and chaos in the center. He is focused on the issue that matters above all others — improving growth rates and therefore providing the wherewithal to fund public services and improve living standards. He stands a good chance of restoring global respect for a country that has too often in recent years become a laughingstock.
With a towering majority, a well-disciplined team and a ruthless instinct for power, Starmer is in a good position to restore some of the respect the Tories have gone out of their way to destroy.
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is a former writer at The Economist, and the author of The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
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To our readers: Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, from Sunday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 2, the Taipei Times will have a reduced format without our regular editorials and opinion pieces. From Tuesday to Saturday the paper will not be delivered to subscribers, but will be available for purchase at convenience stores. Subscribers will receive the editions they missed once normal distribution resumes on Sunday, Feb. 2. The paper returns to its usual format on Monday, Feb. 3, when our regular editorials and opinion pieces will also be resumed.
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