Taking stock
Last year's election victory can only be consolidated by making peoples' lives better, writes Luke Raikes
The next election is several years away. Yet even now, some of the tectonic plates are sliding into place. Labour has been busy governing, while laying out weighty legislation in parliament, and all the while facing no small amount of hostility. But it must take time to understand these more fundamental shifts in the landscape, to make sure people feel the country has truly changed by the end of Labour’s first term.
The fortunes of the Conservative party will be decisive in the next election. The ‘natural party of government’ is getting used to life in opposition; week after week, Tories face the unenviable task of returning to the scene of their own vandalism, and offering solutions for the repair job. And they are dogged, day-in, day-out, by the same question that once haunted Labour: “What would you do differently?”
Their task is altogether different from what Labour’s once was. They tend to have more of the media on their side, which makes their life a little easier. But their defeat was unprecedented in living memory. And they face a battle on all fronts, needing to take on Reform, the Lib Dems and Labour in different parts of the country.
That said, Labour can’t get too comfortable. The Conservatives are arguably the world’s most successful political party. The last few years of Tory rule may have been farcical, but as a party it can be thoughtful, strategic and ruthless. In response, Labour must continue to repeat, all the way to the next election, that it is repairing the mess the previous government left. It makes for boring speeches and commentators will roll their eyes, but the party cannot relent.
For both parties, Reform is a common enemy. Their support may well sputter out, but they could also build momentum as an anti-establishment party through local, Scottish and Welsh elections in 2025 and 2026. How this plays out in the next general election will be crucial: will people currently intending to vote Reform instead vote Conservative, to punish the incumbent Labour government? Or will Reform undercut the Conservatives, particularly on immigration, and deprive them of their own momentum?
Labour will now have to manage the challenge of being an incumbent government. Electorates rightly punish any government that fails to deliver. But this challenge contains an opportunity: Labour can change the narrative by improving people’s lives. By repairing public services, building infrastructure, and rebalancing the economy, Labour can replace people’s sense that “everything is bad, and only getting worse” with “everything was bad, but now things are starting to look up.”
It is always difficult to move into government; especially because being in power presents a wide target, even for supposedly ‘friendly’ voices, to attack. But it is made easier by clear forward momentum, which is why the government is right to refocus on the five missions and put living standards centre-stage. Forthcoming Fabian Society work will show how to secure buy-in, rewire government and communicate a clear story, so that by the next election people are genuinely better off, feel better off, and credit the government for improving their lives.
And despite how it has sometimes felt in recent months, this government has been incredibly active. Between the King’s Speech and the Budget, there is a major agenda for change: bus franchising, employment rights, rail nationalisation, industrial strategy and English devolution to pick just a few. These are policies which Fabians, unions and other progressives have been championing for more than a decade. They are being written into law within the first year of this government.
There will be times in this parliament when it feels like the government is powerless. It will then be more important than ever to look back to those long years of opposition – of real powerlessness – and remember that Labour is no longer just an onlooker, carping from the sidelines. Labour is in government. It has the agency to both change the conversation, and change the country.
Image credit: Number 10 via Flickr
