Last week’s United Kingdom general election delivered a historic result. The Labour Party under Keir Starmer won a landslide majority in the House of Commons, within a few seats of Tony Blair’s epochal 1997 victory.
The Conservatives were shattered. After 14 years in power — and 32 years of the last 45 — the center-right party was reduced to just 121 Members of Parliament out of 650. Eight sitting cabinet ministers were defeated. This is the smallest number of seats the Tories have won since the Conservative Party’s founding in 1834, and they received less than a quarter of the vote.
Everyone had expected a sizable Labour win and a bad night for the Conservatives. But the overall picture turned out to be much more fractured than anticipated. A campaign carefully targeted on winnable seats saw the Liberal Democrats, for so long the third party of British politics, soar from only 11 MPs to 72, although their share of the vote grew by only a half percent. Reform UK, the populist anti-immigration group led by Trump ally Nigel Farage, won more than 4 million votes and stole huge swathes of traditional Conservative support but, due to the quirks of the electoral system, won only five seats. They are few but they will be noisy, and they will claim that their voters are disenfranchised.
The Green Party, which had until this election only ever seen one MP elected, increased its tally to four. And a system that favors established parties saw six independent MPs elected. One was Labour’s left-wing former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expelled from the party he commanded over accusations of antisemitism. Four MPs, however, were elected on a platform of opposing the conflict in Gaza, winning in constituencies with substantial Muslim populations.
When the dust settled, however, one thing became clear: Labour’s position is, for the moment, crushingly dominant and Starmer will not lose much sleep over parliamentary opposition as he begins the hard slog of governing.
Starmer’s first speech as prime minister, given outside the famous black door of 10 Downing Street, rammed home his message that there would be change. Principally he talked about a new mood and approach: he promised “a return of politics to public service,” “the simple acknowledgment that public service is a privilege, and that your government should treat every single person in this country with respect.” He talked — which respectable politician does not? — of putting “country first, party second.” Again and again, he and his ministers have said that there will be a “reset.”
Starmer has taken over from a Conservative Party that was exhausted, internally divided and fractious. Those problems had sapped much of its effectiveness in administration, and the rapid turnover of prime ministers — five in less than 10 years, including Liz Truss’s 49-day tenure in 2022 — demonstrated its inability to get a grip on events.
It is no slight on Starmer to say that ousting the Conservatives was a major factor in the election. Labour won twice as many seats as it had in 2019 but increased its share of the vote by only 1.7 percentage points. Nevertheless, Starmer has the opportunity to present himself as a leader of new purpose and determination, as well as greater seriousness and duty than those whom he succeeds.
The Labour Party was, however, elected on a manifesto that had been brutally stripped of major commitments, especially any involving greater public spending. The new chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has repeatedly promised that she will not raise income tax, National Insurance (the welfare levy first introduced in 1911) or value-added tax, a 20 percent purchase tax on most goods and services. These are the three biggest sources of government revenue, so it is a harsh self-denying ordinance, made to reassure voters that Labour would not be profligate if returned to power.
Labour’s platform was built on five “missions to rebuild Britain”: encouraging economic growth, enabling environmentally friendly energy generation, reducing crime, improving education and restoring the National Health Service. These are huge challenges, generational issues which in some cases will require fundamental reform of the architecture of the state. Achieving any of them without significantly increasing public expenditure seems to verge on the impossible.
Starmer and his team believe that stability and seriousness will unlock enormous private-sector investment, and they have worked tirelessly, and in many ways effectively, to satisfy the financial and business communities that they are responsible custodians of the economy.
Starmer, who will turn 62 this year, came to politics late in life after a legal career that included five years as chief prosecutor in England and Wales. He is focused, sober-minded and hard-working. He will also enjoy a political honeymoon, like any political leader who achieves huge electoral success.
But he leads a country as distrustful of politicians and political institutions as it was a month ago. And although he carefully made few measurable commitments, there is a tangible popular expectation of change and improvement, especially in public services. The electorate will be content to suspend judgment for two or three years, but that is the window in which Starmer and the Labour Party must deliver on their promises. It will not be easy — but then, if it was, anyone could do it.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.