As the United Kingdom heads to the polls today, the broad outlines of the result appears a foregone conclusion. Perhaps the fight will be closer than we suspect: there is a suspicion that the Conservatives might outperform dismal expectations; Nigel Farage’s Reform Party might even nick some votes that pollsters had counted on going to Labour. But the contours are established: the United Kingdom is awaiting a new political era under the managerial, uninspiring but level-headed Keir Starmer. This seems no bad conclusion.
The country may have endured 14 years of Conservative rule – better in parts than Ireland gives it credit for, worse in ways that Ireland cannot detect. But unlike in Ireland, the United Kingdom does experience vertiginous governmental change. Rather than politics dominated for so many years by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, that inevitably cohere around the centre, in Britain the politics shift between Labour and the Conservatives. And little about Starmer’s Labour will resemble in any way Boris Johnson’s or Liz Truss’s Conservative administrations.
The same goes for Rishi Sunak, though we could argue he was never really given a fair shot at enacting his vision for the country, considering the hand he was dealt by his predecessors. But what does Britain feel like on the precipice of shaking off Blue and heading, after all this time, back to Red?
The simple answer is not that different. London looks nice, awash in July sunlight; the bars and pubs are full-ish; summer is underway and the football team disappoints (as was ever thus). There is no itch nor excitement for this so-called vertiginous change. The love for Starmer is simply not there. The campaign has been devoid of passion, driven by an unexcited but fed up body politic (one that is more interested in binning the Tories than offering Starmer a hero’s welcome). Most importantly the election has been policy-light, and instead focussed obsessively on polling figures. The numbers, the margins of error, the preferred modelling systems – these have dominated the conversation, to general public lack of interest.
This is an election for cautious types, those who prefer the fine and predictable lines of a Canaletto over the messy edges of Turner
It makes sense: if Labour is cruising to victory anyway, why get into the policy weeds, at the risk of exposing a manifesto’s inadequacies or fantastical costing? Labour has every motivation to be cautious, to keep its eyes on the numbers and away from the detail. Everyone knows that Reform will not be in government and so their policy platform is more akin to a loose expression of protest and fantasy, but nothing serious. The Conservatives had some cut-through criticising Labour’s tax plans, but ultimately they still cannot shift the electoral behemoth of the incoming Labour landslide. And so the public has had precious little focus on the substance of the politics and a lot of chatter on the small shifts in the data.
The numbers, the margins of error, the preferred modelling systems – these have dominated the conversation, to general public lack of interest
This is all well and good up until today. But the polling figures on the size of a Labour landslide are completely irrelevant tomorrow. And so what then? Starmer might look like a safe pair of hands, but he is inheriting a difficult situation. What is the plan to channel disquiet over immigration? A question that has long fed the flames of Farage and the Reform Party; an issue that – had the Conservatives handled it well – could have improved their fortunes to an extent.
Starmer also wants people to feel “better off” under his watch (thank goodness!). But the route to that conclusion remains foggy. Labour has gone untested on its foreign policy too: what relationship does Starmer plan with Donald Trump? What is the party’s stance on Israel? In an election where the results had not been so clear from the outset, all of these things would have been tested.
The campaign has been devoid of passion, driven by an unexcited but fed-up body politic
There is a more profound issue for Labour. This is an election for cautious types, those who prefer the fine and predictable lines of a Canaletto over the messy edges of Turner; for adherents of the political scientist over the political philosopher; for those who raid data for truth and wonder about what is going to happen rather than why it matters; for wonks, analysts, the opposite of romantics. Starmer will emerge as prime minister tomorrow morning with no cultural movement behind him, no galvanised body politic, but a large stack of issues to slowly wade his way through.
This might be just what the country needs. But it cannot help but feel flat. On election night in 1997, Tony Blair famously asked: “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” In 2005, at his first PMQs as prime minister, David Cameron pointed to Blair and said that “he was the future once”. On the week of the Brexit referendum, The Spectator ran a cover of a Union Jack emblazoned butterfly, with the caption “Out, and into the world.” Whatever you make of any of these moments, it is impossible to deny that they were, at least, moments. And whatever you make of Starmer, it is hard to imagine anything like this happening under him.
Maybe that is what Britain needs. And perhaps Labour – replete with a majority as large as predicted – will be more radical in government than during the campaign. But for now, on the day of an historic election, it is hard to detect that the country will feel much different at all tomorrow.