Starmer’s supermajority: How a bland leader is set to win big

Polls for tomorrow’s general election in the UK show Keir Starmer on the cusp of a supermajority with a 20-point lead over the Tories. This could potentially give Labour a 200-seat majority, surpassing the 179-seat majority that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule.

What is incredible is that Starmer is set to win big despite not being particularly liked. An Ipsos poll published on 26 June showed that only 34% like Starmer, while 57% dislike him. The silver lining for Labour is that the Tories are hated by an even greater margin: 67% dislike Sunak and 72% dislike the Conservative party.

The toxicity of the Tory brand, contaminated by infighting and fiscal austerity which kept people struggling to make ends meet, is the main reason for Labour’s success. These poll results explain why Labour is not complacent, fearing that the lack of enthusiasm for Starmer, coupled with the sheer certainty that Labour will win anyway, could result in a narrower majority on polling day.

Playing it safe

To avert this outcome, Labour has played it safe, banking on widespread disenchantment with increasingly dysfunctional Tory rule while refraining from any commitment to reverse Brexit, despite a growing realisation that it has contributed to the country’s decline. Moreover, Labour has shunned the radical policies that characterized its platform during the Jeremy Corbyn years. Labour advanced by 30 seats in 2017 by garnering its highest vote share since 2001 (40%), only to implode in 2020 when the Tories tore into Labour’s red wall under Boris Johnson, whose populism tapped into the sentiments of Leave voters.

A move to the centre

This time around, Labour has put wealth creation at the heart of its pitch to voters, with the Labour leader vowing to provide political and economic stability to help businesses reignite the country’s paltry rate of economic growth.

Elected Labour leader in 2020 on the promise of repackaging Jeremy Corbyn’s radical economic policies into a more electable platform, Starmer has proceeded to demolish his predecessor’s legacy and return Labour to the centre ground.

Gone are a number of commitments Starmer himself had initially endorsed, including the promise to abolish tuition fees for university students, plans to nationalise energy companies, railways, the Royal Mail, and water companies, and the promise to introduce a new top tax band for the country’s highest earners. Instead, Labour has limited itself to promising to invest more in the National Health Service with clear targets on cutting waiting lists, building more affordable homes by relaxing planning rules, and notably forming a new publicly owned energy company run on clean energy with the aim of lowering energy bills.

Party purge

Despite being elected Labour leader as a ‘unifier’ who would keep the left on board while appealing to centrist voters, Starmer proceeded to purge his party of left-wingers, including Jeremy Corbyn himself, who was expelled on the pretext of anti-Semitism by conflating the left’s criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish prejudice. As far back as 2021, Starmer had made it clear that winning big is more important for him than party unity. Asked by the BBC whether his priority was winning or party unity, he replied: “Winning. Winning a general election. I didn’t come into politics to vote over and over again in parliament and lose and then tweet about it.”   

Starmer also realised that his party’s priority should be winning back  working class constituencies in the north of England lost to Boris Johnson in 2020, through a policy mix combining social democratic economic policies with mainstream positions on migration, crime and defence.

But Starmer’s compromises have created frustration in Labour’s traditional base,  especially among university-educated voters in big cities, trade unions, Muslim voters (over Gaza) and ardent Remainers.

Labour activists are now asking; what is the use of winning big in the absence of bold plans for change and a reversal of Brexit?    

But Starmer’s allies reply with another question; what is the use of making bold promises if the best you can hope for a narrow and shaky majority?

Moreover, the significance of a centre-left victory in the UK cannot is remarkable amidst a global drift to the far right as mainstream conservatism is increasingly merging with the far right and social democracy is in crisis.

Toxic Tories

While his constant backtracking on promises and his recent unwillingness to call for a ceasefire in Gaza has angered left-wingers, the prospect of change after 14 years of chaotic Tory rule has been enough to make Starmer a prime minister in waiting. While Starmer can be credited as the architect of a new majority for a centre-left party at a time when other centre-left parties are sinking, the extent of Labour’s lead can only be explained by the toxicity of the Conservative Party.

It all started with partygate, which exposed the Tories as a posh, self-serving elite detached from the suffering of common people during the pandemic. This proved disastrous for the Tories in their bid to hold on to Johnson’s gains in Labour’s northern strongholds. Moreover, Starmer’s boring sobriety proved to be an asset in comparison to Tory excesses.

The Tory brand was further weakened by internal divisions that saw the party elect four leaders since David Cameron resigned after losing the referendum to keep the UK in the European Union in 2016. Brexit was the last nail in the coffin for Cameron’s political project to reposition the Tories as a more socially liberal party, which won power by governing in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. From then on, the party was increasingly defined by Brexit as right-wingers sabotaged Theresa May’s plans for a soft Brexit, paving the way for Boris Johnson, who in 2020 managed to increase his party’s majority by sweeping Labour’s ‘leave’ constituencies.

After dethroning Boris Johnson amidst partygate, the party first lurched to the right under Liz Truss—who had to resign after 50 days in office characterized by turmoil in the markets—and then back to the Tory mainstream under Rishi Sunak. Despite throwing a bone to right-wing voters by pressing on with a botched plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, Sunak still ended up losing support to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. Nothing was more evocative than Sunak’s rain-drenched announcement that he was calling a snap election in his last attempt to galvanize support for his party, except perhaps the vanity of party insiders, including close aides to the PM, who were taking bets on the election date.