SNine months after Labour’s biggest landslide in a generation, the new government is already mired in quagmire. Starmer’s lead in the polls, which had built a majority, has all but disappeared, leaving Labor in a three-way battle with the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s resurgent Reform Britain, but further down the list. Both the Greens and Liberal Democrats have also made gains.
Voters have historically favored new governments, with most maintaining their support or gaining support in the first six months. Blair’s first two New Labor governments enjoyed a poll honeymoon. Starmer had no such luck. Labor’s seven-point drop since the general election was surpassed by the Conservatives’ eight-point drop in the past 40 years after 1992’s “Black Wednesday.” Starmer’s initial approval ratings are also the worst of any current prime minister. ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) post-crisis phase excluding majors. The Major was unable to regain the ground he had lost in the early stages and suffered a landslide defeat.
But history is only a rough guide, and Labor’s current predicament partly reflects two features of the unprecedented electoral climate. No government with a majority has ever started with a lower share of the electorate, and no government has ever faced a weaker constituency or electorate. An even more divided opposition.
The narrow support that Labor has built becomes clear when you combine two figures: vote share and turnout to estimate the proportion of all voters who supported the government. Labor won a landslide victory in last July’s election, with the second-lowest turnout ever. As a result, just two in 10 voters voted for Starmer’s Labor Party, the lowest ever for a government with a real majority. A big electoral victory usually means that a sizable group of voters is invested in the success of the new government. Not this time.
A narrow base poses another problem. Labor had to be thin in order to win so many seats with so few votes. More than half of Starmer’s MPs had a majority of less than 20%. Never before have so many members of Congress had to worry about their future prospects so early. Anxiety can breed rebellion. Loyalty has no value to politicians who fear defeat, and even less to politicians who expect defeat. The worse Labor falls in the polls, the worse this problem will become.
The new government can take at least some solace from the fate of its vanquished enemy. Opinion polls to date have been a see-saw trend, with the government trailing and the opposition rising. Not this time. The Conservative Party has made a lukewarm recovery from its worst defeat in history, winning less than a single point in the polls. Almost half of those who currently support the party reject both traditional political parties and support the new party.
The unprecedented polarization of the political race in last summer’s election has only accelerated since then. Mr Farage’s rise has grabbed the headlines, with the Reform UK poll now showing him significantly ahead of last July’s results. But the fragmentation of voting means that electoral maps become more complex. Labor and the Conservatives were in the top two positions in fewer than half of the contests, which is also a record. For many Labor MPs, the local challenge comes from the Greens, Independents or SNP, but for the Conservatives, the main challenge in many seats is the Liberal Democrats.
Fragmentation has several benefits for Labor. Mr Farage’s party still has more Tory supporters than Labor-leaning votes, and has pulled Kemi Badenoch’s opponents away from the centre, so any progress on reform will be beneficial to the government, at least for now. be. The rise of new left-wing competitors is a burden for individual Labor MPs, but it could open up opportunities for Labor in a more closely divided House of Commons. Unless reforms make truly dramatic progress, Labor is likely to find a more natural ally in a dysfunctional parliament than the Conservatives.
It is still too early and Labor has time and supermajority power to turn things around. Perhaps Starmer could take inspiration from Margaret Thatcher, the only recent prime minister to bounce back quickly from an initial sharp recession. She staked her majority on a radical reform program in 1979, then held on through a deep recession and reaped the benefits of the recovery. Thatcher inherited a struggling economy and a rebellious electorate. But she did not consider these reasons for alarm. Instead, she put all her chips in change and bet big. For Labor, the vigilance was ineffective. Perhaps it’s time to start rolling the dice.
Robert Ford is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester
