In the midst of dizzying opinion polls and a seemingly unprecedented Tory collapse, it is worth remembering a basic political fact: Labour governments do not get elected very often, and it is a feat that is chronically difficult to pull off.
Some of this is down to the UK’s creaking electoral system, and the awkward coalition of voters Labour must build to surmount it, from pensioners in post-industrial towns to urban twentysomethings. But some of the party’s eternal challenge is also down to a set of deeply sceptical attitudes, in England in particular. Younger voters seem to be largely free of such ideas, but in other parts of the electorate, Labour is for ever suspected of being profligate and wasteful, while the wider political left – not entirely unreasonably – is seen as pious, privileged and unbearably bossy. On top of all that, there is a deep national queasiness about change that becomes even clearer at times of national crisis. Two centuries ago, it was summed up by that great English agitator William Cobbett: “We want great alteration, but we want nothing new.”
This time, those obstacles have been joined by aspects of the public mood that I encounter wherever I go. Voters are exhausted, and full of familiar doubts about politics and politicians that now seem to have turned into a kind of collective allergy – which, in some places, has created another opening for that nihilistic chancer Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Why? People have been through endless hard times, and serial political crises. Meanwhile, they have been promised a new global Britain, levelling up, the regenerative cartwheels of Trussonomics, and now Rishi Sunak’s mysterious “plan”. As a result, a lot of the din generated by the election sounds like white noise: rather than engagement and interest, it produces eye-rolls and endless shrugs.
Yet here we are, not just with the Tories crumbling, but a Labour party seemingly on the brink of triumph less than five years after a historic drubbing, thanks partly to its accurate reading of how people think and feel. The leadership’s sometimes unbelievable caution is said to be a response to all that wariness and exhaustion. Its emphasis on fiscal rectitude is often maddening, but it answers real popular fears. As evidenced by Sunak’s travails over his sharp exit from the D-day celebrations, moreover, Starmer’s sometimes cringe-inducing tilts towards flag-waving and a fuzzy social conservatism turn out to have served a well-taken strategic purpose.
Relative to the mess we are in, the Labour manifesto is slight. The documents produced by winning parties often are. There are real questions about its reliance on a level of growth that tests most economists’ belief. But in among its evasions and qualifications, Labour’s programme is hardly devoid of social-democratic purpose. By way of steps into a modern mixed economy, there are pledges to gradually renationalise the railways and create a publicly owned energy supplier. Proposals centred on the taxation of private education and the abolition of non-dom status may look small, but they open up other political conversations that have been shut off for too long: about privilege, and class, and the absurdity of a supposedly modern country still run by and for what remains of the aristocracy, and the jet-set rich.
Note, also, the moral core of what the document says about everyday working life, even if it comes with caveats. The party’s agenda includes “banning exploitative zero hours contracts; ending fire and rehire; and introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal”. It promises “a Single Enforcement Body to ensure employment rights are upheld”, and to change the remit of the low pay commission, “so for the first time it accounts for the cost of living”. These things may be too mild for some people’s tastes; once again, some of them reflect a very frustrating hesitance. But they are hardly the stuff of equivalence with the Conservatives.
There are very big questions hovering over all this. One is about Starmer, Rachel Reeves, their inner circle, and what will happen to their currently all-consuming caution. Here, the New Labour years offer instructive stories. Gordon Brown eventually expressed regret about not winning support for a more radical vision. Tony Blair and his disciples, by contrast, went from insisting that their party could not get the left-leaning change it wanted, to embracing its complete opposite: a disastrous foreign policy, experiments with privatising public services under the guise of “reform”, and a project that eventually lost just about all of its original moral worth. So far, the Brown tendency looks like one of Starmer and co’s defining features, but the Blair shift is always a danger; along with the kind of factional mania that reared its head again early in the campaign, it represents one of the things that Labour people will have to be most vigilant about.
The other central question about what is likely to happen after the election is a tad more optimistic. By definition, politics involves forces beyond the control of people at the top – and 4 July may well catalyse huge hopes of change, even in the midst of such huge national tiredness. The councils that urgently need money are not going to wait. Neither are the trade unions that have to deal with insecurity and precarity on a daily basis, nor a huge network of social enterprises, community organisations and grassroots charities. The expectations triggered by the end of such a nasty, failed, boneheaded regime will also be shared by people in power. Keep your eye on Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Lisa Nandy; and, beyond parliament, such politicians as Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan. Their role in the likely dramas and tensions of the next five years will be crucial.
After three weeks of a campaign that so far has produced much more heat than light, such prospects still feel distant and unlikely. Some pundits and partisans seem to have succumbed to their own version of the country’s fatigue, claiming that hope is nowhere to be seen in the mainstream, and virtue and good intentions can be found only on the fringes. But the truth, it seems to me, lies in a picture of ambivalence that the social media age probably cannot accommodate. The Labour party is a complex and confounding institution; particularly when it is close to power, it can be both heartening and infuriating. In much the same way, this election is turning out to be torturous and farcical, but also deeply significant – for one key reason.
It feels strange pointing out something so obvious, but still: if the expected result materialises, things will palpably feel better, fairer and saner, and unseen possibilities may slowly start to bubble to the surface. If you are feeling as tired as most people, that should surely put at least a modest spring in your step.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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