Over the last five weeks in the UK there have been four major political party conferences, three tough byelection battles, and two sharply contrasting leadership visions laid out by the Conservative and Labour parties. It all adds up to one inescapable conclusion: the country is gearing up for its most important general election scrap in more than 20 years. A new Battle of Britain is on.
The governing Tories, still riven with post-Brexit disunity and miles behind in the polls, is facing a resurgent Labour Party that is straining on the leash as it scents a return to power after 13 years in the political wilderness. A trio of thumping byelection victories this month in Glasgow, the Midlands and the Mid-Bedfordshire countryside north of London have sent hope coursing through the party.
The Liberal Democrats are also on the comeback trail after coming close to wipeout in recent years, and could yet end up holding the balance of power – Labour may be favourite to win but it must come from miles behind to overturn the Tories’ huge 2019 majority. Meanwhile in Scotland, where the new ‘Battle for Britain’ could be decided, a beleaguered Scottish National Party (SNP) is desperately trying to stave off Labour and a potential electoral collapse that could end its independence dream.
The UK’s crucial next election, which will be fought on the battleground of the economy, is expected to come next October although it could be as soon as May 2024. At an outside bet, it could even be dragged out until as late as January 2025. Whenever it comes, all parties consider that the starting gun has been fired since the end of this month’s conferences.
Among the first volley of shots was on the opening Sunday of the Tory jamboree in Manchester. Party chairman Greg Hands gave a fiery speech peppered with personal attacks on Labour leader Keir Starmer, who is odds on to replace Rishi Sunak as prime minister, possibly with outside support.
Tory strategists have concluded that the reserved Starmer is a weak link with voters and plan to target him relentlessly. The next UK general election is expected to be its dirtiest in many years.
“There is no liking for Sir Keir, and no trust,” said Hands, as the subdued Tory conference hall suddenly stirred into grumpy life at the first mention of their putative conqueror. “Who is the real Sir Keir Starmer? The friend and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn? The puppet of Tony Blair? Or the mouthpiece of Just Stop Oil? This is a man who will literally say anything that suits him,” said Hands, as he accused Starmer of “flip-flopping 60 times in three years”.
To emphasise his point, he held aloft a pair of red and black flip flops emblazoned with Starmer’s face. They were on sale for £16.99 in the Conservative party shop outside in the exhibition zone.
The party’s hardline home secretary, Suella Braverman, gave a dark and dystopian speech in which she warned of a “hurricane” of migrants coming to Britain’s shores – immigration ranks just behind the economy and the health service as the election issue in the minds of voters. Yet she also couldn’t resist personally jibing at Starmer, who she derided as the Tories’ “secret weapon” for the election. “Starmer lacks the personality to lead this country. [If] he became prime minister luxury beliefs would reign supreme [and] Britain would go properly woke,” she said.
Meanwhile, justice secretary Alex Chalk said Starmer was like a “seat cushion – he bears the impression of the last person to sit on him”. Sunak kept up a similar attack theme.
Starmer retorted that Labour was fully prepared to “fight back” in a dirty campaign against a “dangerous” Tory party. The stage is set for an election battle marked by personal mudslinging.
After several years of post-Brexit chaos, Sunak has recently tried to position himself through several policy pivots as a change candidate despite his party ruling for 13 years. Yet his attempts to move on from recent Tory psychodrama have been undercut by interventions from his predecessors, including former prime minister Liz Truss. She quit last year after a 44-day reign marred by financial turmoil.
Truss stole the limelight from Sunak this month with a feverish rally in Manchester’s Midlands hotel calling for the Tories to chase economic growth through tax cuts, which the prime minister says the UK cannot afford. The “Make Britain Grow Again” banners at her shebang unsubtly captured the Trumpian tone of Truss’s event, where the media was mocked and her successor undermined.
Meanwhile, financial experts were downbeat about the chances of her getting her way on taxes, with the UK’s spiralling debt and an economy choked by low productivity. “We are in quite an unpleasant place,” said Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and one of Britain’s top economic gurus. “There is no space for tax cuts unless they are really radical on [cutting] spending.”
Another ghost of the Tory party’s past showed up in Manchester in the form of Brexiteer Nigel Farage. He sat in the front row at Truss’s rally. Ostensibly now a sworn enemy of the Conservative Party, the former Ukip leader attended using a media pass for his job as a presenter for television channel GB News. “I didn’t know they let troublemakers in here,” beamed former cabinet member David Davis as he warmly embraced Farage out in the conference hall.
Some commentators have floated the idea that Farage could even rejoin the Conservative party to take a run at being its next leader should Sunak be evicted if the Tories lose heavily at the next election. As remote as it is, the prospect of a Farage leadership tilt has horrified the out-of-fashion moderate wing of the party, whose members have been pushed to the fringes of the party in recent years.
Former justice secretary David Gauke, who quit in protest at the party’s lurch to the right under Boris Johnson, argued at a conference fringe event that the Conservative party has recently “lost its economic sense”. With its moderate wing cowed, the party is in a “cul de sac,” he said. Gauke warned that if the party loses the next election yet chooses to double down on its recent populist and, in his view, economically reckless approach, it “will be in opposition for a long time”.
In the meantime confidence was draining this week from Conservative MPs in Westminster. Sunak’s recent reset, which included a rollback of climate change measures, has so far failed to boost its standing with voters. Its byelection loss to Labour last week in Tamworth was the second biggest swing against it since the second World War. Sunak’s best hope may lie in hanging on for an economic turnaround, which might tempt him to drag out the election date as long as he can.
If the mood in the Conservative party is solemn, it is ebullient in Labour. Its members have recently taken to drinking “Keir Royale” champagne cocktails at party events. There was an hours-long queue to get into the karaoke party at Labour’s conference this month in Liverpool, where shadow cabinet members belted out Pulp’s Common People.
Labour has remained close to 20 points ahead of the Tories in the polls for about a year, although those numbers are expected to tighten as an election get closer. Polling experts such as John Curtice, a professor at Strathclyde University, say it needs to beat the Tories by at least 13 per cent to gain a majority under the UK’s first-past-the-post system. Otherwise Starmer may be reliant on help from the Lib Dems or even the SNP to wrest the keys to Number 10 Downing Street.
The Labour leader’s strategy has been marked by caution as he has tacked to the centre ground, which Tony Blair conquered in his 1997 landslide. Spook no horses has characterised his approach. Starmer has relentlessly courted the business community by promising economic stability, while also being careful not to alienate working class Brexit voters with any loose statements about the European Union. He must keep these voters onside if he is to rebuild the so-called Red Wall of traditionally Labour seats in northern England that were stolen away by Johnson in his 2019 triumph. Immigration will be a key concern for voters here – Starmer has also talked tough on migration.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, exemplified the party’s strategy on the EU earlier this month while brushing off a question about whether Labour in government might be prepared to move closer to the bloc in search of more trade and economic growth. Lammy likened Britain’s exit from the EU to a “very bitter divorce” that cannot easily be reversed. “You can’t get married again without even going on a date. Let us get back to proper dialogue [with the EU] first and then we’ll take it from there,” he said.
Starmer’s natural caution has also been exuded in how he has dealt with questions over Labour’s attitude towards the prospect of a united Ireland. He has been careful to act as a defender of the union who does not foresee a unity vote. Political sources say he is wary of being portrayed as weak on the union, which would damage Labour in Scotland in its crucial battle to win seats from the SNP.
While Labour eyes up the Red Wall seats of the north of England, the Lib Dems are planning to attack the Conservative party’s so-called Blue Wall seats in the south of England, most of which are in affluent areas clustered around London. These would all have been considered Tory safe seats in the past, but the Lib Dems have proven in a handful of byelection wins over the past 18 months that they are vulnerable.
A don’t-scare-the-Tory-voters strategy adopted by Lib Dems leader Ed Davey means that his party has also had to temper any talk of a return to the EU, which remains official party policy. In a brazen attempt to redraw England’s political map the party is even targeting Tory seats in pro-Brexit constituencies in affluent areas in the rolling downs of southwest England.
Many voters in these areas may be put off by Sunak’s recent attempts to roll back on climate change measures, leading Davey to recently proclaim that “the Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country”.
Davey and Starmer are both said to be careful not to give the impression that they have a deal already cooked up to co-operate after the election should it be required to form a government. They refuse to be even seen in the same room as each other, according to one source.
Yet back channels may be required now if co-operation between the two parties becomes necessary after the election. Former Labour Party deputy leader and current House of Lords member Tom Watson, who is seen as close to Starmer, caught the eye among the crowd at the Lib Dems’ recent party conference in Bournemouth. He was officially there in the capacity as chairman of UK Music. But sources speculated about whether he might in fact have also been trying to foster a discreet line of Labour communication with the Lib Dems leadership.
Up in Scotland last week the SNP was trying to rouse its troops who are reeling after a financial scandal engulfed the party and its former leader Nicola Sturgeon. Her successor and Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, has struggled to arrest the party’s slide. The SNP’s travails come as the party experiences a steep drop in its once unassailable position in the polls north of the border with England.
Labour currently looks on course to take as many as 25 seats back off the SNP in Scotland, which would surely set Starmer on course for Downing Street. Meanwhile, the SNP, whose route to a fresh independence referendum has been blocked by the UK’s supreme court, last week also tried to reboot its approach.
“William Wallace must be turning in his various graves,” quipped one angry SNP party member of its somewhat confusing strategy, which revolves around trying to force a new referendum by weaponising the results of its next Westminster vote.
Much is at stake for the UK as it enters its next election cycle. Battle lines are drawn. The contest is set.
