As Europe turns right, UK steers to centre

The centre-left Labour Party’s crushing victory in the British election stands in stark contrast to recent gains by the far right across Europe.

But the party’s triumph was not so much a rejection of populism by voters, but rather an echo of the same disenchantment with their political leaders.

Keir Starmer swept to power yesterday winning a large parliamentary majority and condemning Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party to its worst defeat in history.

The victory comes days after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party scored historic gains to win the first round of the parliamentary election in France.

That followed similar advances by populist parties in last month’s European Parliament elections where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats recorded their worst result ever.

Before his poll triumph, Starmer said progressive politicians had to demonstrate that they had learned the lessons from the rise of nationalism and populism.

But rather than a bulwark against a European populism wave, Starmer’s success was built on the same voter desire for change and to punish perceived incompetence by incumbent governments that is driving support for the far right.

Britain, once renowned for political stability, has lurched from crisis to crisis since the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, through the Covid-19 pandemic, increasingly stretched public services and a cost of living crisis.

The Conservative Party, in power for 14 years, had increasingly followed a more populist agenda with a focus on immigration, including a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, promising to tackle immigration and to reshape the economy, but its credibility was shattered by years of economic stagnation and the failure to stop tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in small boats.

“The Tories were populist, but it hasn’t gone very well so people are fleeing,” said Professor Geoffrey Evans from Oxford University.

“I wouldn’t say that is a reaction against populism. I would just say that is a reaction against the perceived incompetence of the party and generally bad economic circumstances that the country finds itself in.”

The strong performance of Reform in the British election, where it won four seats and four million votes, would appear to bear that out.

Labour’s likely foreign minister David Lammy said: “The truth is when we see the tide of nationalism across Europe and in other parts of the world, he (Starmer) knows if he doesn’t deliver for the working people, then populists and those with a different account of how you deliver will be coming back and will be biting at our heels.”

Meanwhile, Britain’s Labour Party suffered significant election setbacks in areas with large Muslim populations yesterday amid discontent over its position on the war in Gaza, despite a landslide victory in the parliamentary vote.

Pro-Gaza independents also won in Blackburn, and Dewsbury & Batley, beating Labour into second in both. Labour also failed to win in Islington North, where its former leader, veteran left-winger and ardent pro-Palestinian activist Jeremy Corbyn won as an independent.

Corbyn resigned as Labour leader in 2019 after the party suffered its worst election defeat since 1935, and Starmer threw him out of the parliamentary party less than a year later, accusing him of undermining efforts to tackle anti-Semitism.

While Labour has said it wants the fighting in Gaza to stop, it has also backed Israel’s right to defend itself, angering some among the 3.9 million Muslims who make up 6.5% of Britain’s population.

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party posted its worst showing at a British parliamentary election since 2010, a major setback for its push for a new independence referendum, as a resurgent Labour Party made gains in former heartlands.

The SNP had said that winning a majority of Scottish seats would give it a mandate to pursue independence talks, but won only nine of 57 Scottish seats, its lowest since the six won by the party in 2010, with one seat yet to declare. The SNP is now the fourth-largest party behind the Liberal Democrats.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has ruled out another independence referendum. Recent polling has indicated that Scots favour remaining part of the United Kingdom by a slim margin.

Elsewhere, Irish nationalists Sinn Fein became Northern Ireland’s largest party in the British parliament for the first time yesterday, capitalising on a poor election for its main unionist rival, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), to cross another milestone in a campaign to end British rule.