Built On Sand

Taken in at a glance, the Labour government’s ­political position might look unassailable. Still ­little over 50 days into the role, Sir Keir Starmer has a working parliamentary majority just shy of that secured by Tony Blair after his 1997 landslide. Ordinarily, a government brought to power on the back of such a decisive result would enjoy a clear mandate for reform. Appearances, however, in politics as elsewhere, can be misleading.
Though large, Sir Keir’s victory was a fragile achievement. Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system has a tendency to magnify the effects of small swings in voting patterns. This it did handsomely to the advantage of the Labour Party, gaining it over 200 seats on the basis of a mere two percentage point uplift to their vote share. Turnout collapsed below 60 per cent. Only 34 per cent of votes cast were for Labour. Of those, many will have gone to the polls in a spirit of rejection: determined to evict the incumbent government, rather than to embrace the Labour Party’s political agenda. Labour’s landslide resembles a sandcastle: outwardly sturdy, but liable to be quickly swept away by the unpredictable tide of political trends.
Further undermining any claim the Labour Party might stake to having a strong mandate for bold political action is that it presented voters with an evasive, policy-light, manifesto. As even the ­politically even-handed Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, Labour was wilfully unforthcoming about its tax-and-spend plans in the run-up to polling day.
Though Labour’s “Ming vase” electoral strategy may have been advantageous, it has bequeathed the party a political dilemma. One cannot adopt a Ming vase approach to government. In an attempt to justify an impending programme of more decisive political change than they secured an honest mandate for, Sir Keir and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have tried to make the case that the political conditions left to them by their Conservative predecessors are far worse than they could have imagined. This, they argue, makes radical change necessary. The problem is that the public seem not to credit this explanation.
Polling for this paper indicates that most voters simply do not believe the government’s claims that the public finances are in a worse state than they anticipated. Some 57 per cent also say that Labour own some degree of responsibility for the tax hikes and spending cuts that are likely to be ­announced in the autumn budget.
This data should chasten the government. In just a few weeks, it has taken decisions of which there was no detail in its manifesto. Unions have received eye-watering pay deals in return for no guarantee of increased productivity; many pensioners have lost their winter fuel allowance; Sir Keir is quickly seeking to resurrect closer ties with Europe; and the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, casually mothballed the Higher Education Act, throwing into doubt ­Labour’s support for free speech on campuses.
Though their approval was not sought by the Labour Party, the reaction of the public to these steps is clear: approval ratings for the government have collapsed by 20 points in the space of a month. The government must tread carefully. Its victory was no mandate for revolutionary change. It must take responsibility for its own political ­decisions, proceed with moderation and remain careful to keep public sentiment on its side.