In the early hours of July 5th, 14 years of Conservative party rule came to a shuddering halt. During the six-week General Election campaign, called by a rain-soaked Rishi Sunak to the ironic soundtrack of the New Labour’s 1997 victory anthem “Things Can Only Get Better”, Tory candidates across the United Kingdom (UK) failed to turn the tide of public opinion. Instead, after storming to an opposition-crushing majority at the last election (and a historic defeat for Labour), over 250 Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) lost their seats and the party failed to hold strongholds, including the seats of four of their five most recent Prime Ministers. In five short years, the balance of power in Westminster has been completely reversed, and the incoming Labour government will wield a majority more than twice the size of Boris Johnson’s in 2019.
Many observers will spend the coming weeks much as they have the weeks of the election campaign: asking “How did we get here?”. Perhaps the Conservatives were merely the victims of Britain’s now-usual cycle of long-term party rules ending as they approach their teenage years: Thatcher ousted in 1990 after 11 years, only for John Major to limp along until the rise of New Labour; New Labour itself being cast aside in favour of the coalition government after a further 13 years in 2010; and now the Conservatives’ turn. For much of the population though, it seems to be the overwhelming perception that, in the course of five successive occupants in Number 10 Downing Street, nothing has improved, or even changed.
Waiting lists for hospital treatment via the National Health Service (NHS) have more than tripled since 2010, with nearly 45% of patients waiting over four hours in the emergency room. Average weekly wages have stagnated for 15 years, while the cost of living has increased. Between December 2022 and 2023, 12.1% more households have had to resort to temporary accommodation, further exposing the seriousness of the housing crisis. It is for these reasons and more that government disapproval was at its second-highest since 2011 (73%) on election week.
The other question pundits will ask is “What happens next?”. Perhaps the most effective critique of Labour’s campaign (sometimes branded a ‘Ming vase’ strategy – designed to reassure floating voters rather than appeal to the base with more radical proposals) was that there was little policy substance in their messaging. While it is true that key figures often opted for the surest solution of bashing the incumbents, there is a policy platform, there is a manifesto, and, with a landslide victory, there is no excuse not to implement it. The more important question though, for the 48% who voted to Remain in the European Union (EU) in 2016, for the 17% of Leave voters who now regret their decision, and most importantly for the 3.4 million EU nationals living in the UK and 1.3 million UK nationals living in the EU, is about what future perspective there may be for the EU-UK relationship.
The elephant in the room
Three-and-a-half years following the end of the transition period, there is no need to re-litigate the merits of Britain’s decision to leave the EU: the facts are clear. Much though then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to link the country’s economic underperformance to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine, and much though these crises did indeed have an impact on the UK economy, Brexit is the one underlying factor that cannot be ignored. It may not directly have caused the crisis in the NHS, wage stagnation, or many of the myriad failures of the last 14 years, but it has become an albatross weakening any attempt to tackle these issues.
Recent steps have signalled a rapprochement of sorts between the EU and UK. The Windsor Framework made changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol to ease the flow of goods between the two markets, while acknowledging the historic challenges on the island of Ireland. It was a step in the right direction, reducing the risk of new divides jeopardising the peace of the Good Friday Agreement. Nonetheless, Unionists remain unconvinced, and more work will need to be done. The UK joining the Horizon Europe research programme, too, has been positive news, reversing the costly impact of Brexit on Britain’s leading research sector. Talks of regulatory cooperation in financial services, and of cooperation with Frontex, reveal a willingness on both sides to work together where close cooperation is required. At the end of the day, though, this work may not even have been needed in a soft-Brexit scenario.
Nonetheless, at its core the 2024 election was about domestic challenges. The fallout from COVID-19, the cost of living crisis, the 49 days of Liz Truss’ tenure and the ruinous ‘mini-budget’ put the incumbent party on the path to electoral disaster. There was no serious discussion of Brexit. Even in the Conservative manifesto, one of the most consequential constitutional changes in recent British history is mentioned only a handful of times; not as a legislative achievement or commitment upheld, but as a vehicle to re-introduce the messaging which helped them win big in 2019 (“taking back control”, “new freedoms”, and unnamed “Brexit benefits” etc.). The Labour manifesto, meanwhile, speaks of a need to “make Brexit work”, implicitly ceding ground, rather than that acknowledging the reality of Brexit as a massive strategic error. Both documents mentioned plans to pursue closer relations with the EU where relevant and necessary, but Keir Starmer foresees no major re-integration with the EU within his lifetime, neither in the form of re-joining as a full Member, nor on the basis of negotiated access to the Single Market or Customs Union.
Of the major parties, the Liberal Democrats have been the most openly pro-European, though also non-committal on what their proposed new relationship with Europe would have looked like had they achieved power. Their success however, gaining more than 60 seats after a dismal showing in 2019, does not represent a public push for realignment with Europe. They ran a locally-focused campaign, aiming at key Tory seats in danger of being lost, and succeeded where they had failed last time around: the party’s share of the national vote rose by less than 1%, yet thanks to the first-past-the-post system, a solid campaign strategy and tactical voting in key constituencies paid dividends. Their success is much more a reflection of citizens’ desperation to get rid of the Tories.
Don’t be complacent
There is evidence of similar dynamics at play with Labour’s victory. Its vote share increased, but only from 32.3% in 2019 to 33.7% this time, while overall turnout decreased substantially, from 67.3% to 60%, the second lowest turnout since 1885. The result? More citizens voted for Labour in the party’s historic 2019 defeat than did in the biggest Labour landslide since 1997. It is easy to forget that in May 2024, when the election was called, the leader of the now-victorious Labour party, though much more popular than his opposite number, remained at a -17% net favourability rating. Finally, while Labour gained 36 seats in Scotland, this result should be interpreted not necessarily as an active measure of willing support, but as a reflection of the collapse of the Scottish National Party (SNP), mired in scandal and reduced from domination of the Scottish political scene to only nine constituencies north of the England-Scotland border. The electoral system has combined with political circumstance to produce a highly disproportional Parliament, with pundits already bemoaning the “loveless landslide”.
Challenges stemming from Britain’s broken electoral system do not stop there. Arguably the biggest victims are the pro-Brexit, populist far-right, raising the prospect of a much nastier politics in the years to come. In fact, the impact of first-past-the-post can best be observed in the results of Reform UK, a Private Limited Company of fifteen shares, thirteen of which are owned by two of their now five elected MPs: leader Nigel Farage (eight shares – the controlling majority), and former leader and apparent main funder Richard Tice (five shares). Mr. Farage insists the company will “democratise over time”. Incorporated in 2018 under the moniker “The Brexit Party” by defectors from the increasingly toxic UK Independence Party (UKIP), Reform’s campaign received a significant boost from the decision of Nigel Farage to reinstate himself as party leader and stand in the heavily pro-Brexit seat of Clacton, one of the most underprivileged parts of the country.
Despite comments by Farage perceived as showing support for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, and an exposé of one campaigner using racial slurs to describe Rishi Sunak, calling for migrants in the Channel to be “used as target practice” by army recruits, and describing the pride flag as “degenerate”, Reform secured 14.3% of the vote nationally, but only five seats in Parliament. This means that with over half a million more votes nationally than the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK have fewer than 5% of their seat tally. Liberal advocates for electoral reform may be campaigning a little less fervently following the 2024 election.
Irrespective of one’s assessment of the Reform UK Party Ltd., this poses a significant challenge to the new Labour government as it seeks to establish its place on the government benches. Neither Reform nor its new leader has ever found it particularly difficult to gain press coverage in the UK: between 2000 and 2024, Farage has appeared on BBC Question Time, a leading political television debate show, 32 times. This despite not having been elected to the British Parliament until his eighth attempt in the 2024 election.
A significant national vote share coupled with a lack of parliamentary representation has been a continuing bête noire of Farage’s political projects, with UKIP’s performance in the early part of the last decade another example of first-past-the-post transforming national popularity into electoral disaster at the constituency level. Nonetheless, this was a significant contributing factor in the momentum of the Brexit movement, insofar as it played into the narrative of a ‘forgotten silent majority’ in British politics. With the Commons as a soap box, Reform will likely use the coming term to court more attention for its projects and build momentum either towards increasing electoral success in the current system or a push for proportional representation (or more likely both).
In this sense, Labour’s overwhelming majority may serve to bolster Reform’s position: the 2022 Labour party conference backed a motion to endorse proportional representation which was ignored by leadership and never made it into the 2024 manifesto. With 64% of seats in the new Parliament coming from only 33.7% of the vote, it is unlikely that a Labour government will push to change a system which has benefitted them to such a degree, opening the door for Reform to pursue their plans to “go after the Labour vote” by pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of a Labour Prime Minister not listening to his party. This Parliament will see a bolder, more dangerous far-right populist force on the rise, whose messaging is boosted by the contrast between their national vote share and final seat tally. Labour finds itself in a political Catch-22: if it does nothing on electoral reform, it opens itself up to valid criticism that risks empowering the far-right; if it opts to change the system, Reform will do much better in 2029. It will be the duty of the moderate smaller parties, most importantly the Liberal Democrats, not to fall into the trap of pushing for an admittedly much-needed electoral reform in concert with such a malicious political force as Reform.
How to move forward on Europe
Low turnout in this election results from a number of factors: Conservative messaging during the campaign warning voters against giving Labour a “supermajority” likely contributed to an overall feeling of inevitability around the election result. Gains made by traditionally marginalised single-issue parties like the Greens, who grew from one to four MPs, might suggest some voters decided to put their support behind issues that matter to them, safe in the assumption that Labour was going to win anyway. Likely the most significant contributing factor, though, is revealed in an Ipsos study from late 2023, which found that government ministers and politicians generally are the least trusted professions among UK citizens, with neither group crossing the 10% mark. Citizens certainly seem to have been sick of successive Conservative governments and ready for change, but following years of economic and political upheaval, they also seem to have been sick of politics writ-large. Eligible citizens who did not vote were the largest group in this election.
Among that turnout, much of the Conservative vote from 2019 seems either to have flipped back to Labour (after an initial shift to Conservative under Johnson), gone to the Liberal Democrats as a result of both good strategy and tactical voting, or to have defected to Reform. With several moderate Tories losing their once-safe seats in the home counties, of the remaining cohort a much larger percentage skew to the far right of the party: where the more moderate side (figures like Grant Shapps and Gillian Keegan) has largely been voted out, the further-right side of the party (such as Marc François and Suella Braverman) have retained their seats. The likelihood is high that remaining MPs and the notoriously right-wing party membership will rebuild the Conservatives in their own image (or, rather, in an approximation of the image of Reform). With a further-right Tory party in opposition, working hand-in-hand with a more visible Reform and the furthest-right sections of the press, any premature attempt at closer relations with Europe would precipitate a new round of vociferous mud-slinging on the issue, with old slogans returning and increasing disengagement with the political process.
The groundwork at home
If Labour means to reconsider the UK’s relationship with the EU – and there have already been positive statements in this regard – then the first priority must be to build trust. The quirks of this election mean that Labour did not win so much as the Conservatives were kicked out by citizens, less “Things Can Only Get Better” and more ‘anyone but the Tories’. A wise Labour government would do well, therefore, to begin with a systematic overview of citizens’ broader political concerns. It should alleviate them if they are unfounded, and work to address them if valid. The suggestion to use citizens’ assemblies as part of Labour’s governing strategy, a possibility raised by now-Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier this year, would be a novel way of starting this process of national reflection. Second, it should recognise that while its strategy in 2024 worked well, the next election will not be about ejecting the Tories from power: delivery will be crucial. With the new majority, there should be no reason for a “fully costed, fully funded, [and] credible” manifesto not to be implemented. Third, it should further its delivery by being bold: Labour must avoid a situation where its “tax lock” for working people combines with its courtship of British businesses and prevents any meaningful work to overcome income inequality or address the pitiful state of social services. The aim should be to enter the 2029 election with a list of promises made, delivered, and improved upon. Fourth, seriousness, honesty, and decency must be put at the forefront of Labour’s self-management. The contrast between the conduct of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and Boris Johnson or Liz Truss (for they were the worst offenders), as well as between the conduct of each of their respective governments, must be night-and-day. Finally, Labour must complement this work with solid communication between government and public. Citizen assemblies can be a forum for this on a policy level, but in the current British media landscape, much more will need to be done to overcome the broad public’s lack of faith in the system. Only once this is done can a serious Labour government do what is necessary and start anew the conversation about Europe.
The groundwork abroad
Much though EU officials, including recently the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, have repeatedly insisted that “the door remains open” for the UK to re-integrate, any serious reconsideration of relations must recognise the political realities abroad as much as it does at home. A perfect reversal of Brexit and return to the ‘old deal’ with the EU, replete with its famous opt-outs, is certainly off the table. The UK would necessarily approach any negotiation in a weakened state, having tried to go it alone and failed. Even if this were possible within the next five years in the context of domestic challenges, the EU has its own – serious – issues to deal with at home and abroad. There are nonetheless some clear next steps to build a better EU-UK relationship. One of the only positives to come from the Johnson era was the UK’s work to support Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s war of aggression starting in February 2022, a support which has continued in the years since. Work with European allies in the context of NATO can be a good starting point to build back trust in partnership. Continued efforts to build piecemeal cooperation in relevant areas, as shown by the UK’s entry into Horizon Europe, can be another. The work of the Specialised Committee on the implementation of the Windsor Framework could also become a forum not only for cooperation in managing trade flows in Northern Ireland, but also in future for starting to open a wider discussion about the trading relationship between the UK and the EU. Only once these collaborations are seen to be effective and the domestic situation has improved will a more trusted government be able start to talk about more fundamental questions of re-integration.
A unique political moment
Between the start of September 2022 and the end of October the same year, the UK cycled through three Prime Ministers. None of them came to power in a general election. Rather, all of them were candidates in an internal party decision made by MPs and around 170,000 members of the Conservative party. The leader who preceded them, Theresa May, initially came to power via the same mechanism. In fact, the last opposition leader to become Prime Minister with a parliamentary majority was Tony Blair in 1997.
More than 25 years later, the new government faces a much different set of challenges by comparison, and its startling majority rests on the foundation of one of the least proportional Parliaments in recent history. With a comfortable (though highly disproportional) majority, the government’s main job will be to unite a divided population. Consultation, delivery, and communication will be crucial if it is going to build the kind of trust in politics that it needs to successfully raise the conversation about Europe without re-opening old Brexit wounds.
The importance of this political moment should by no means be underestimated, nor should the challenges facing the new government. But there is also an opportunity to renew Britain’s domestic politics, and in doing so lay the groundwork for renewing the UK’s partnership with its closest allies. It should not be ignored.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
UK 2024: A path back to Europe?
In the early hours of July 5th, 14 years of Conservative party rule came to a shuddering halt. During the six-week General Election campaign, called by a rain-soaked Rishi Sunak to the ironic soundtrack of the New Labour’s 1997 victory anthem “Things Can Only Get Better”, Tory candidates across the United Kingdom (UK) failed to turn the tide of public opinion. Instead, after storming to an opposition-crushing majority at the last election (and a historic defeat for Labour), over 250 Tory Members of Parliament (MPs) lost their seats and the party failed to hold strongholds, including the seats of four of their five most recent Prime Ministers. In five short years, the balance of power in Westminster has been completely reversed, and the incoming Labour government will wield a majority more than twice the size of Boris Johnson’s in 2019.
Many observers will spend the coming weeks much as they have the weeks of the election campaign: asking “How did we get here?”. Perhaps the Conservatives were merely the victims of Britain’s now-usual cycle of long-term party rules ending as they approach their teenage years: Thatcher ousted in 1990 after 11 years, only for John Major to limp along until the rise of New Labour; New Labour itself being cast aside in favour of the coalition government after a further 13 years in 2010; and now the Conservatives’ turn. For much of the population though, it seems to be the overwhelming perception that, in the course of five successive occupants in Number 10 Downing Street, nothing has improved, or even changed.
Waiting lists for hospital treatment via the National Health Service (NHS) have more than tripled since 2010, with nearly 45% of patients waiting over four hours in the emergency room. Average weekly wages have stagnated for 15 years, while the cost of living has increased. Between December 2022 and 2023, 12.1% more households have had to resort to temporary accommodation, further exposing the seriousness of the housing crisis. It is for these reasons and more that government disapproval was at its second-highest since 2011 (73%) on election week.
The other question pundits will ask is “What happens next?”. Perhaps the most effective critique of Labour’s campaign (sometimes branded a ‘Ming vase’ strategy – designed to reassure floating voters rather than appeal to the base with more radical proposals) was that there was little policy substance in their messaging. While it is true that key figures often opted for the surest solution of bashing the incumbents, there is a policy platform, there is a manifesto, and, with a landslide victory, there is no excuse not to implement it. The more important question though, for the 48% who voted to Remain in the European Union (EU) in 2016, for the 17% of Leave voters who now regret their decision, and most importantly for the 3.4 million EU nationals living in the UK and 1.3 million UK nationals living in the EU, is about what future perspective there may be for the EU-UK relationship.
The elephant in the room
Three-and-a-half years following the end of the transition period, there is no need to re-litigate the merits of Britain’s decision to leave the EU: the facts are clear. Much though then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to link the country’s economic underperformance to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine, and much though these crises did indeed have an impact on the UK economy, Brexit is the one underlying factor that cannot be ignored. It may not directly have caused the crisis in the NHS, wage stagnation, or many of the myriad failures of the last 14 years, but it has become an albatross weakening any attempt to tackle these issues.
Recent steps have signalled a rapprochement of sorts between the EU and UK. The Windsor Framework made changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol to ease the flow of goods between the two markets, while acknowledging the historic challenges on the island of Ireland. It was a step in the right direction, reducing the risk of new divides jeopardising the peace of the Good Friday Agreement. Nonetheless, Unionists remain unconvinced, and more work will need to be done. The UK joining the Horizon Europe research programme, too, has been positive news, reversing the costly impact of Brexit on Britain’s leading research sector. Talks of regulatory cooperation in financial services, and of cooperation with Frontex, reveal a willingness on both sides to work together where close cooperation is required. At the end of the day, though, this work may not even have been needed in a soft-Brexit scenario.
Nonetheless, at its core the 2024 election was about domestic challenges. The fallout from COVID-19, the cost of living crisis, the 49 days of Liz Truss’ tenure and the ruinous ‘mini-budget’ put the incumbent party on the path to electoral disaster. There was no serious discussion of Brexit. Even in the Conservative manifesto, one of the most consequential constitutional changes in recent British history is mentioned only a handful of times; not as a legislative achievement or commitment upheld, but as a vehicle to re-introduce the messaging which helped them win big in 2019 (“taking back control”, “new freedoms”, and unnamed “Brexit benefits” etc.). The Labour manifesto, meanwhile, speaks of a need to “make Brexit work”, implicitly ceding ground, rather than that acknowledging the reality of Brexit as a massive strategic error. Both documents mentioned plans to pursue closer relations with the EU where relevant and necessary, but Keir Starmer foresees no major re-integration with the EU within his lifetime, neither in the form of re-joining as a full Member, nor on the basis of negotiated access to the Single Market or Customs Union.
Of the major parties, the Liberal Democrats have been the most openly pro-European, though also non-committal on what their proposed new relationship with Europe would have looked like had they achieved power. Their success however, gaining more than 60 seats after a dismal showing in 2019, does not represent a public push for realignment with Europe. They ran a locally-focused campaign, aiming at key Tory seats in danger of being lost, and succeeded where they had failed last time around: the party’s share of the national vote rose by less than 1%, yet thanks to the first-past-the-post system, a solid campaign strategy and tactical voting in key constituencies paid dividends. Their success is much more a reflection of citizens’ desperation to get rid of the Tories.
Don’t be complacent
There is evidence of similar dynamics at play with Labour’s victory. Its vote share increased, but only from 32.3% in 2019 to 33.7% this time, while overall turnout decreased substantially, from 67.3% to 60%, the second lowest turnout since 1885. The result? More citizens voted for Labour in the party’s historic 2019 defeat than did in the biggest Labour landslide since 1997. It is easy to forget that in May 2024, when the election was called, the leader of the now-victorious Labour party, though much more popular than his opposite number, remained at a -17% net favourability rating. Finally, while Labour gained 36 seats in Scotland, this result should be interpreted not necessarily as an active measure of willing support, but as a reflection of the collapse of the Scottish National Party (SNP), mired in scandal and reduced from domination of the Scottish political scene to only nine constituencies north of the England-Scotland border. The electoral system has combined with political circumstance to produce a highly disproportional Parliament, with pundits already bemoaning the “loveless landslide”.
Challenges stemming from Britain’s broken electoral system do not stop there. Arguably the biggest victims are the pro-Brexit, populist far-right, raising the prospect of a much nastier politics in the years to come. In fact, the impact of first-past-the-post can best be observed in the results of Reform UK, a Private Limited Company of fifteen shares, thirteen of which are owned by two of their now five elected MPs: leader Nigel Farage (eight shares – the controlling majority), and former leader and apparent main funder Richard Tice (five shares). Mr. Farage insists the company will “democratise over time”. Incorporated in 2018 under the moniker “The Brexit Party” by defectors from the increasingly toxic UK Independence Party (UKIP), Reform’s campaign received a significant boost from the decision of Nigel Farage to reinstate himself as party leader and stand in the heavily pro-Brexit seat of Clacton, one of the most underprivileged parts of the country.
Despite comments by Farage perceived as showing support for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, and an exposé of one campaigner using racial slurs to describe Rishi Sunak, calling for migrants in the Channel to be “used as target practice” by army recruits, and describing the pride flag as “degenerate”, Reform secured 14.3% of the vote nationally, but only five seats in Parliament. This means that with over half a million more votes nationally than the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK have fewer than 5% of their seat tally. Liberal advocates for electoral reform may be campaigning a little less fervently following the 2024 election.
Irrespective of one’s assessment of the Reform UK Party Ltd., this poses a significant challenge to the new Labour government as it seeks to establish its place on the government benches. Neither Reform nor its new leader has ever found it particularly difficult to gain press coverage in the UK: between 2000 and 2024, Farage has appeared on BBC Question Time, a leading political television debate show, 32 times. This despite not having been elected to the British Parliament until his eighth attempt in the 2024 election.
A significant national vote share coupled with a lack of parliamentary representation has been a continuing bête noire of Farage’s political projects, with UKIP’s performance in the early part of the last decade another example of first-past-the-post transforming national popularity into electoral disaster at the constituency level. Nonetheless, this was a significant contributing factor in the momentum of the Brexit movement, insofar as it played into the narrative of a ‘forgotten silent majority’ in British politics. With the Commons as a soap box, Reform will likely use the coming term to court more attention for its projects and build momentum either towards increasing electoral success in the current system or a push for proportional representation (or more likely both).
In this sense, Labour’s overwhelming majority may serve to bolster Reform’s position: the 2022 Labour party conference backed a motion to endorse proportional representation which was ignored by leadership and never made it into the 2024 manifesto. With 64% of seats in the new Parliament coming from only 33.7% of the vote, it is unlikely that a Labour government will push to change a system which has benefitted them to such a degree, opening the door for Reform to pursue their plans to “go after the Labour vote” by pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of a Labour Prime Minister not listening to his party. This Parliament will see a bolder, more dangerous far-right populist force on the rise, whose messaging is boosted by the contrast between their national vote share and final seat tally. Labour finds itself in a political Catch-22: if it does nothing on electoral reform, it opens itself up to valid criticism that risks empowering the far-right; if it opts to change the system, Reform will do much better in 2029. It will be the duty of the moderate smaller parties, most importantly the Liberal Democrats, not to fall into the trap of pushing for an admittedly much-needed electoral reform in concert with such a malicious political force as Reform.
How to move forward on Europe
Low turnout in this election results from a number of factors: Conservative messaging during the campaign warning voters against giving Labour a “supermajority” likely contributed to an overall feeling of inevitability around the election result. Gains made by traditionally marginalised single-issue parties like the Greens, who grew from one to four MPs, might suggest some voters decided to put their support behind issues that matter to them, safe in the assumption that Labour was going to win anyway. Likely the most significant contributing factor, though, is revealed in an Ipsos study from late 2023, which found that government ministers and politicians generally are the least trusted professions among UK citizens, with neither group crossing the 10% mark. Citizens certainly seem to have been sick of successive Conservative governments and ready for change, but following years of economic and political upheaval, they also seem to have been sick of politics writ-large. Eligible citizens who did not vote were the largest group in this election.
Among that turnout, much of the Conservative vote from 2019 seems either to have flipped back to Labour (after an initial shift to Conservative under Johnson), gone to the Liberal Democrats as a result of both good strategy and tactical voting, or to have defected to Reform. With several moderate Tories losing their once-safe seats in the home counties, of the remaining cohort a much larger percentage skew to the far right of the party: where the more moderate side (figures like Grant Shapps and Gillian Keegan) has largely been voted out, the further-right side of the party (such as Marc François and Suella Braverman) have retained their seats. The likelihood is high that remaining MPs and the notoriously right-wing party membership will rebuild the Conservatives in their own image (or, rather, in an approximation of the image of Reform). With a further-right Tory party in opposition, working hand-in-hand with a more visible Reform and the furthest-right sections of the press, any premature attempt at closer relations with Europe would precipitate a new round of vociferous mud-slinging on the issue, with old slogans returning and increasing disengagement with the political process.
The groundwork at home
If Labour means to reconsider the UK’s relationship with the EU – and there have already been positive statements in this regard – then the first priority must be to build trust. The quirks of this election mean that Labour did not win so much as the Conservatives were kicked out by citizens, less “Things Can Only Get Better” and more ‘anyone but the Tories’. A wise Labour government would do well, therefore, to begin with a systematic overview of citizens’ broader political concerns. It should alleviate them if they are unfounded, and work to address them if valid. The suggestion to use citizens’ assemblies as part of Labour’s governing strategy, a possibility raised by now-Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier this year, would be a novel way of starting this process of national reflection. Second, it should recognise that while its strategy in 2024 worked well, the next election will not be about ejecting the Tories from power: delivery will be crucial. With the new majority, there should be no reason for a “fully costed, fully funded, [and] credible” manifesto not to be implemented. Third, it should further its delivery by being bold: Labour must avoid a situation where its “tax lock” for working people combines with its courtship of British businesses and prevents any meaningful work to overcome income inequality or address the pitiful state of social services. The aim should be to enter the 2029 election with a list of promises made, delivered, and improved upon. Fourth, seriousness, honesty, and decency must be put at the forefront of Labour’s self-management. The contrast between the conduct of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and Boris Johnson or Liz Truss (for they were the worst offenders), as well as between the conduct of each of their respective governments, must be night-and-day. Finally, Labour must complement this work with solid communication between government and public. Citizen assemblies can be a forum for this on a policy level, but in the current British media landscape, much more will need to be done to overcome the broad public’s lack of faith in the system. Only once this is done can a serious Labour government do what is necessary and start anew the conversation about Europe.
The groundwork abroad
Much though EU officials, including recently the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, have repeatedly insisted that “the door remains open” for the UK to re-integrate, any serious reconsideration of relations must recognise the political realities abroad as much as it does at home. A perfect reversal of Brexit and return to the ‘old deal’ with the EU, replete with its famous opt-outs, is certainly off the table. The UK would necessarily approach any negotiation in a weakened state, having tried to go it alone and failed. Even if this were possible within the next five years in the context of domestic challenges, the EU has its own – serious – issues to deal with at home and abroad. There are nonetheless some clear next steps to build a better EU-UK relationship. One of the only positives to come from the Johnson era was the UK’s work to support Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s war of aggression starting in February 2022, a support which has continued in the years since. Work with European allies in the context of NATO can be a good starting point to build back trust in partnership. Continued efforts to build piecemeal cooperation in relevant areas, as shown by the UK’s entry into Horizon Europe, can be another. The work of the Specialised Committee on the implementation of the Windsor Framework could also become a forum not only for cooperation in managing trade flows in Northern Ireland, but also in future for starting to open a wider discussion about the trading relationship between the UK and the EU. Only once these collaborations are seen to be effective and the domestic situation has improved will a more trusted government be able start to talk about more fundamental questions of re-integration.
A unique political moment
Between the start of September 2022 and the end of October the same year, the UK cycled through three Prime Ministers. None of them came to power in a general election. Rather, all of them were candidates in an internal party decision made by MPs and around 170,000 members of the Conservative party. The leader who preceded them, Theresa May, initially came to power via the same mechanism. In fact, the last opposition leader to become Prime Minister with a parliamentary majority was Tony Blair in 1997.
More than 25 years later, the new government faces a much different set of challenges by comparison, and its startling majority rests on the foundation of one of the least proportional Parliaments in recent history. With a comfortable (though highly disproportional) majority, the government’s main job will be to unite a divided population. Consultation, delivery, and communication will be crucial if it is going to build the kind of trust in politics that it needs to successfully raise the conversation about Europe without re-opening old Brexit wounds.
The importance of this political moment should by no means be underestimated, nor should the challenges facing the new government. But there is also an opportunity to renew Britain’s domestic politics, and in doing so lay the groundwork for renewing the UK’s partnership with its closest allies. It should not be ignored.
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