At 5 o’clock on Friday morning, just as the faint London dawn broke, Sir Keir Starmer walked into the huge Turbine Hall at the city’s Tate Modern museum to meet his supporters. He wore a smile that mixed delight and uncertainty and his eyes darted across the room. “We did it!”, he shouted, almost in disbelief.
Seen from overseas, that disbelief might cause surprise. Like Anthony Albanese’s Labor party in 2022, Starmer’s Labour party went into this election as a firm favourite. It had, after all, led the Conservative government by over 20 points in opinion polls ever since Liz Truss’ disastrous 49 days as prime minister in 2022.
But Labour so rarely wins elections in the UK – only three Labour leaders had previously won parliamentary majorities in its history stretching back more than 100 years – and bitter defeats have often replaced expected victories before, as in 1992 and 2015.
What has made this time different, though, has been the complete and utter collapse of the Conservative party, which went far beyond the collapse of the Liberal party in Australia. Rishi Sunak was no Scott Morrison. Whereas Morrison had a proven track record as an election winner, Rishi Sunak was entirely untried at the beginning of this campaign. He will now go down in history as a prime minister with the most stunning disregard for the normal rules of political campaigning. From launching his campaign in the pouring rain without an umbrella, to leaving the solemn D-day ceremony in Normandy in order to conduct a TV interview, Sunak’s political incompetence created an enviable opening for Starmer.
A one-word campaign slogan – “change” – was all that Labour needed to demonstrate that it was more in touch with the concerns of an increasingly angry electorate than the Conservatives. And Starmer’s fortunes were given a further boost, when the former Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, returned to the fray as the self-appointed leader of the anti-immigration, rightwing populist Reform UK.
This has now resulted in the worst ever performance for the Conservative party. Labour, in contrast, will enjoy a parliamentary majority that rivals those of Tony Blair.
Not everything on this astonishing night went quite as Labour wanted, though. Labour won their majority with barely more than a third of the vote, hardly an improvement on the dire performance of Jeremy Corbyn five years ago. They also lost seats of their own to pro-Palestinian independents and to Greens, with two members of Starmer’s shadow cabinet failing to be returned.
These challenges themselves will be eerily familiar to Australian Labor, who now face similar forces as they look ahead to the next federal election and have stumbled recently as a result.
Indeed, many senior advisers in Starmer’s circle speak urgently of needing to learn from the missteps of the Albanese government. There is a strong sense in the new UK government that the ALP lost focus from the core issues motivating voters when it pursued the referendum on the voice in its early months. There is a deep desire too to learn from the ways in which Albanese and colleagues have sought to steer a middle ground between the demands of progressively minded, Green-leaning voters in the big cities, on the one hand, and more traditionally working-class voters, perhaps tempted by the anti-immigration arguments of the right, on the other.
The situation facing Starmer is in many ways far harder than that facing Albanese though. Year after year, distrust of politicians has grown ever more intense in the UK. People of all backgrounds, ages, ideologies and from all parts of the country feel that their political leaders have ignored them and disrespected them. They have been promised the earth – especially with Brexit – and nothing has been delivered. They have made huge sacrifices and have received nothing in return.
It was no surprise, therefore, that this distrust was the theme of Starmer’s first speech as prime minister. Having got over his excitement and his shock in the echoing gallery at the Tate, he soberly outlined the need to win the public back round to his side. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age,” Starmer said. “Respect is the bond that can unite this country.”
Few people at the beginning of his premiership know precisely how Starmer intends to demonstrate this respect and restore lost trust. Perhaps he does not fully know himself yet. But if he wants his time in office to end more happily than Rishi Sunak’s, he will have to find a way to do it, and fast.