by Jonathan Todd
The local elections showed that Keir Starmer has put Labour on a trajectory to form the next government, irrespective of whether a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) prevents him making it to Downing Street.
I offered 5 reasons for Labour optimism at the end of last year. Each has strengthened.
- Boris Johnson will never again be the political force that he was in December 2019
The unique circumstances of the 2019 general election will never be repeated. They were unusually favourable to Johnson.
Now he is one of the least popular prime ministers ever and blamed by his party for larger than expected losses in the local elections.
There is little sunlight on Johnson’s horizon. Cost of living crisis. Record NHS waiting lists. Northern Irish unrest bound up with his Brexit deal.
Many leaders suffer midterm challenges and recover. Johnson may be another. But he confronts big problems, which will not create a context as hospitable as December 2019.
- The next general election will not be about Brexit
We – as I wrote last December – are tired of Brexit. We do not want to refight old battles. We just want things to work properly.
But things are not working properly. In Northern Ireland. At our borders. With our exports. These problems all follow from Johnson’s Brexit.
If only these were the only failures of 12 years of Tory government. The rot of austerity and endemic poverty goes deep.
We see this all around us: homelessness and food banks; whenever we try to access NHS services; when we work long hours to not meet ever rising bills. These Tory failures hobble our civic life and economic performance.
We cannot sustain the growth needed to pay for the public services that we need. The Tory response is to further weigh us down with taxes. They are, as Rachel Reeves has said, a party of high taxes because they are a party of low growth.
The right approach is to liberate our potential. We are so much better than they have allowed us to believe. We can thrive with proper backing.
The next election won’t be about ‘getting Brexit done’ but getting Britain started. It is a turn the page election. The next Tory page is ‘Brexit opportunities’ and ‘levelling up’.
Labour needs messages and messengers to own the future much more convincingly.
- Johnson’s kingdom of sand bequeaths little to the next Tory leader
In the morning of his 1997 defeat, John Major drew warm applause from Tory activists for saying that they could look back with pride on what they had achieved in government. Applause in equivalent circumstances in 2024 will be entirely hollow.