Well, that settles nothing. The night of three byelections gave just enough of a split decision for all sides to claim victory. And by all sides, I do not mean the three main parties in England that each chalked up a win. No, I am referring to the factions currently slugging it out within Labour over the best route to power at the next general election. For them, these results offered something for everyone.
Start with the unexpected Labour failure to capture Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone, or Ulez – which imposes a tax on drivers of old, polluting cars – appears to have provoked enough Tory voters to stay loyal. That will embolden those Labour voices, especially in the trade unions, who warn of a “greenlash” – already visible in France, Germany and the Netherlands – among working people reluctant to pay the price for action on the environment.
That will give rise to a familiar cry: act on the climate, by all means, but let the cost fall on someone else. The Tories have already spotted the opening, with Jacob Rees-Mogg seeking to brand Labour as the party of “high, green taxes”. (If the Conservatives follow the lead of other rightwing parties and set their face against any policy to tackle the climate crisis, forget the political impact: the victim will be the planet.)
Still, the Uxbridge result, like the spectacular win in the deep Tory terrain of Selby and Ainsty, will also be seized on in the wider argument over Labour strategy. The fight is between two groups. One says Labour needs to offer a bold, radical vision that will inspire voters and match the scale of the task now facing a country all but broken by 13 years of Conservative rule. The other says that Labour’s primary task is to reassure the electorate that the party has changed since it was so roundly rejected in 2019, and that it must do nothing that risks it being deemed too irresponsible to be trusted with office.
The second group, enthusiasts for the leadership of Keir Starmer, points to Selby as proof that the current approach is working. The first group, which includes much of the left, cites Uxbridge as evidence that it’s not enough. The Starmerites hit back and say that it was precisely a radical policy popular with the left – namely Ulez – that cost them a seat. And round it goes.
Where you stand on this argument depends on how you view the next election. Will it be a referendum on the merits of Labour – or will it be what might be called a revulsion election, comparable to the US presidential contest of 2020, when enough Americans were repelled by Donald Trump to do whatever it took to eject him from office? There are good reasons to suggest that the next British general election will be animated by just that kind of revulsion – at the lies of Boris Johnson, the recklessness of Liz Truss and the damage that the Tories have done: to an ailing NHS and a raft of public services, but above all to the economy, mortgage rates and millions of Britons’ ability to make ends meet.
In this context, the first task of the opposition is to become an acceptable vehicle for that revulsion, to remove all possible obstacles that might stand in the way of voters thinking of crossing over from right to left. Joe Biden pulled that off for the Democrats: he offered none of the charisma or oratorical fire of Barack Obama; he excited almost nobody. But he was inoffensive, leaving a small barrier for any would-be defector to clear.
Starmer has clearly effected the same transformation in Labour, and at an exceptional speed and scale. Recall that the Labour defeat in 2019 was the heaviest since 1935; many forecasted that Johnson would be in Downing Street for a decade. Yet less than four years later, Labour has overturned a 20,000 Tory majority in North Yorkshire.
The Liberal Democrat win in Somerton and Frome is part of the same success story. Lib Dems do best when Labour is viewed as sufficiently unscary that voters in previously Conservative seats feel able to turf out a Tory MP. (It was no coincidence that the Lib Dems reached their high-water mark in the era of Tony Blair.) They did not feel that way in 2019, which is why a lot of remain-minded “blue wall” constituencies stuck with a Tory party promising to “get Brexit done”.
But Starmer does not scare them. The result is the kind of tactical voting on Thursday that saw Lib Dems lend their votes to Labour in the north of England, with Labour supporters returning the favour in the West Country – depriving the Tories of two rock-solid seats. It is efficient tactical voting that walloped the Conservatives in May’s English local elections – “blue wall” seats for the Lib Dems, “red wall” for Labour – and which could remove Rishi Sunak from power.
All of which will hearten the leadership as the party gathers in Nottingham for its National Policy Forum this weekend. They will say that it is their efforts to shake off the legacies of the Jeremy Corbyn years that have delivered double-digit opinion poll leads and massive byelection swings to Labour, and that they have been right to strive for fiscal credibility – even when that means having to forswear promises the party would dearly love to make, such as a commitment to overturn the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, a policy Labour once called “heinous”.
This argument – that when faced with a revulsion election, caution and minimalism are the wisest course – has plenty to commend it. Voters are more frightened now than they were in 1996, on the eve of New Labour’s landslide win: the economy is doing worse, and they need more reassurance. The revulsion is more intense now than then, too: Johnson’s lies outstrip any John Major-era sleaze. And the electorate is more sceptical, even cynical, of big promises. Johnson said Brexit would bring wealth and sunshine, and it hasn’t; the Tories said they would level up, and they haven’t.
Labour faces a nation that has lost faith in the notion that politics can change anything – and, if it wins power, it will not have at its disposal the cash that was around in the late 1990s. For all those reasons, to say nothing of Starmer’s own personality, it makes sense that, as one senior Labour figure puts it, the party offers “no Obama visions”.
But the combination of revulsion and reassurance is not, on its own, sufficient for victory. As Uxbridge shows, one big local issue can be enough to stop the traffic from Tory to Labour. Voters are clearly being pushed away from the Conservatives, but they need to be pulled to Labour too. Not by grandiose, impossible dreams, but by a few costed, immediately understandable pledges that illustrate how life would be better under a Labour government. (The Nottingham meeting will be part of that effort.) These byelections show that Starmer has already done something remarkable, taking Labour ever closer to Downing Street. But he’s not there yet.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
