Leading parties seek to woo pessimistic UK voters

British general elections are traditionally a two-horse race between the Conservative and Labour parties, with an assortment of smaller parties also attempting to gain seats, although aware they will not end up forming the next government. The 2024 election, recently set for July 4 by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — unless all pollsters have gotten it disastrously wrong — is looking more like a one-horse race. It is expected to be a mere lap of honor for Labour, while the Conservatives have already thrown in the towel and are waiting for what is, for them, a nightmare of an electioneering period to conclude with their own demise, which is threatening to be a wipeout.

For the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, the task between now and election day is to keep the party disciplined, on message and showing confidence but not complacency, while behind closed doors he and his team prepare to run the country until almost the end of the decade, if not beyond.

It is not unusual for a party that has been in power for as long as the Tories have — 14 years — to lose its way, but if the government and party were in chaos prior to the election announcement, in the weeks that have followed they have experienced a spectacular meltdown. Their leader, Sunak, has not avoided a single obstacle in the campaign minefield, while his party is divided and seems to have lost its will to govern.

Its campaign has been reduced to senior members of the Cabinet pleading with the electorate not to hand Labour a “supermajority” — and, by this plea alone, appearing to concede defeat. The smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and the Greens, have also followed this damage limitation strategy of accepting that the next government will be formed by Labour. They are urging the British people to allow more diversity of opinion in the House of Commons by voting for them.

The country is desperate for a robust and novel agenda, one that will reverse the UK’s long-term decline

Yossi Mekelberg

For Labour, the task is to project the message of a party confident and ready to govern, but that is not taking victory for granted, while promising a nation suffering from a widespread malaise that life under its rule would represent renewed hope and a change for the better. Considering the mess the Conservatives are likely to leave behind, the country is desperate for a robust and novel agenda, one that will reverse the UK’s long-term decline under the Tories.

To be sure, a succession of Conservative administrations and prime ministers have done half of the job for Labour. The Tories are deeply divided and appear out of sorts and out of touch with the electorate, as they inflict on the country an endless succession of failed policies. There are very few who think, for instance, that Brexit has been a success, that public services are doing well or that their economic situation has improved. Starmer, on the other hand, should enjoy great credit for making his party electable again and for putting together an impressive shadow Cabinet that, beyond exposing its counterpart’s many shortcomings, increasingly looks like a government-in-waiting.

Prime Minister Sunak surprised most people when he called a snap election. With hindsight, it looks as if he caught himself on the hop more than some of his political opponents, appearing wrongfooted and unprepared. Astonishingly, the “nasty party,” which has been extremely successful at winning elections for much of its 200-year history, is divided, at war with itself and appears to be fading into oblivion under its gaffe-prone PM. Even the party’s diehards are deserting this sinking ship, while quite a number of them have turned to supporting Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, led by the right-wing politician Nigel Farage, whose main party trick is to peddle extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric of the worst kind.

One watershed in any general election campaign is the release of the parties’ manifestos, as they share with the electorate their blueprint for the country and how they hope to build a rapport with voters. Skeptical as people may be about preelection promises, manifestos enable them to hold parties to account should such pledges subsequently be reneged on.

Releasing their manifestos was the last opportunity for all other parties to dent Labour’s poll lead and for the latter to consolidate that lead and the trust that it showed. The Conservatives’ attempt to lure the public has consisted of a showering of uncosted promises, which they usually accuse Labour of presenting. They have offered, for instance, a stream of hastily presented, half-baked policies, such as a compulsory one-year stint of national service for all 18-year-olds, which has done nothing to improve their standing in the opinion polls. By contrast, Labour’s manifesto balances ambition with prudence, in the vein of the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown era, during which Labour won three consecutive elections.

Whoever comes to reside in 10 Downing Street after July 4, they will have to deal with a difficult legacy

Yossi Mekelberg

Whoever comes to reside in 10 Downing Street after July 4, they will have to deal with a difficult legacy of crumbling public services, including the National Health Service, the education system, law and order and, in general, the previously underfunded aspects of the welfare society, which voters are most concerned with. However, Labour’s preferred approach to financing all of these issues, including tackling security and environmental concerns, is not through tax (or borrow) and spend, but to grow the economy — and that might mean a very long road without obvious short-term achievements.

More than the stilted, stifling format of TV debates between the leaders or other prominent figures, which do not even scrape the surface of the challenges the UK is facing, the manifestos are more revealing. They show, for instance, that Labour’s commitment to the environment will substantially increase investment in wind and solar power and block new licenses for oil and gas fields; and there are pledges to improve rail and bus networks and upgrade 5 million homes. Such policies will provide a solid foundation for meeting the challenges ahead, while the rudderless Sunak is drifting in the direction of climate change denial and culture wars.

The 2024 UK election finds the nation very pessimistic, unsurprisingly so, as a result of its welfare society being in acute crisis, the cost-of-living crisis hitting hard, especially for the most vulnerable, and the various wounds inflicted by Brexit, while the debate over immigration is toxic and extremely harmful.

Should Labour form a government in less than a fortnight’s time, it will have a clearer view of the magnitude of the task that the Conservatives have bequeathed it. It will have to fix a society that has been becoming more and more unequal for a very long time, with public services that underperform and growth that is unsatisfactory, while the country’s standing on the world stage has been greatly diminished during the years Labour has been out of office.

A new government will not only create a new mood in the country, but — if it is honest and transparent about the difficulties that lie ahead and how it will deal with them — it will also hopefully imbue the UK with a sense of common purpose and destiny that it has been without for too long.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at international affairs think tank Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg