When Boris Johnson led the Conservative Party to a landslide victory in 2019, helped by the ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan, commentators across the political spectrum assumed that the Tories would be in government for at least another ten years.
A combination of cock-up’s, scandals, and splits resulted in a crushing defeat for the Conservatives in July – and although the self-inflicted wounds, from Partygate to Truss, Barnard Castle to D-day disaster- played a huge part in that setback, it must also be recognised that the pandemic, the Ukraine war, the Middle East conflict, and volatile energy prices had an impact too.
Just five-years after a tumultuous triumph, Rishi Sunak’s Tories were swept aside by an even greater landslide than his party had enjoyed at the previous General Election – and now commentators from across the political spectrum are assuming that Labour will be in power for at least ten years.
That is to ignore a number of crucial factors. First, Keir Starmer has inherited a litany of major, mammoth challenges. A £22bn black hole in the UKs finances, record NHS waiting lists. A creaking social care system. Universities and local authorities facing bankruptcy. Nervous money markets. And those global conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East still rage on.
Second, voters are way more transient now than ever before. Unlike many of my generation who have almost tribal, instinctive support of a political party, most electors nowadays have as much patience with their political leaders as the owners of Chelsea Football Club have with their managers. If Labour doesn’t start to find solutions to the myriad of problems from the above list and beyond, there is no guarantee that they will get the benefit of the doubt in 2028 or 2029.
Third, events, dear boy, events. The government may have handled its first crisis well. However, nobody could have predicted the shocking scenes that we have witnessed across the country during the past month – and there will be other unforeseen crisis’ ahead for sure.
Finally, the big challenge, and one that broke the last government, holding together the broad coalition that Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Jonny Reynolds and others have built, stretching from those who felt let down from the lack of levelling-up, through to business leaders who were frustrated with economic stagnation.
You can make a case for ending strikes that have dragged on for far too long with generous pay awards. But rushing through changes in employment law that will greatly damage an already fragile SME sector is absolutely the sort of thing that could bite the new government on the bum.
Of course, the performance of the opposition will matter too. Labour learned its lesson from its trouncing under Corbyn. From the early skirmishes in the Conservative Party leadership race, I’m not convinced the Tories have learned the right lessons from its catastrophic performance last month .
Nevertheless – a guaranteed ten years for Labour? Don’t bank on it.
