A New Labour Government - So What Next?
The 2024 General Election has been and gone. What many people saw as a lacklustre campaign resulted in one of the largest political earthquakes in history. How did that happen and what does it mean for the future? Here we look at some of the big themes around this election and its consequences for the UK.
Who voted…and who didn’t?
The British do not passionately care about democracy. As long as they get a vote every few years…they are prepared to put up with almost anything politicians throw at them. - The Guardian, 15 September 1988
This election has two different stories running through it. First there is the story of Labour winning a landslide. Almost equalling the number of seats that Tony Blair won when he swept to power in 1997 and Things Can Only Get Better was playing on stereos across the country. The other story is of how the Conservatives lost the election, not just to the Labour Party, but to whoever their local opponents were.
Turnout at the election this year was less than 60 per cent. That means that two out of every five people in the country weren’t motivated enough to vote at all. This apathy mighty actually have also been present in those that did vote. The Conservatives lost a lot of seats to Labour, sure. But they also lost a lot of seats to the Lib Dems, who now have 71 seats, more than at any other time in history and all at the expense of the Conservatives. The Tories also lost a seat to the Green Party, which overturned a 22,000 Conservative majority to win. They lost four seats to Reform UK. In other words, in many seats voters weren’t making an active decision to vote for someone, rather they were voting against someone.
Who did we vote for….or rather, who did we get?
And by some fluke of the first-past-the-post system, the one with the most votes is the winner. - The Guardian, 26 May 1990
There was also a strange skew in the vote share of all parties. The first past the post electoral system means that the winner in each constituency - whether they win by 30,000 votes or just one - gets elected and all other votes count for nought.
This means that the number of seats may not be reflected in the number of votes. For example, the Liberal Democrats got 12 per cent of the vote and 71 seats. Reform UK got 14 per cent of the vote and 4 seats. Why? Because Lib Dem votes were concentrated in a relatively small number of seats while Reform votes were dispersed across the country. This concentration of votes can happen for good reason: Sinn Fein got seven seats with just 0.7 per cent of the vote. It may seem tiny on a national scale but of course Sinn Fein only puts up candidates in Northern Ireland so most of the UK can’t vote for that Party.
That said, the imbalance between the number of votes cast for each party and the number of seats allocated will undoubtedly lead to calls for reform of the electoral system. The Lib Dems, Reform and Greens all support this but with Labour and the Conservatives opposed, it is unlikely to get through any time soon.
Who lost out? The big beasts no longer in Parliament
I have, of course, encountered this evening something that many people have encountered before me tonight…you live by the sword, you die by the sword. - Nick Clegg, 9 June 2017
In North East Somerset and Hanham, Jacob Rees Mogg lost out to Labour’s Dan Norris by over 4,000 votes. In Welwyn Hatfield former Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was removed from the House of Commons. And in South Norfolk, former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost a seat that had been Conservative for 70 years.
This presents a problem for the Conservative Party – with few big names left, who will lead them? And if the name is not big enough, who will follow?
What does it mean for housebuilding in the UK?
Housing….is a question of humanity. - Harold MacMillan, 1951
Labour has promised to build 1.5 million new homes within the next five years and to upgrade 5 million existing homes. These are ambitious targets and the property industry will welcome seeing them come to fruition. But governments have set targets before, the problem comes in trying to hit them. In order to do so, the incoming government will need to do two things: firstly, reform the planning system to ensure that applications go through quicker and it is easier for applications to be approved; and secondly to ensure that the skilled workforce is trained and available to commit to doing this.
These are no mean feats. Reform of the planning system has been tried and thwarted over the years. The size of the Labour majority does offer hope to those in the industry – if they can’t change the rules now, they never will. Labour has also made a manifesto commitment to put more money directly into planning authorities in an attempt to speed up the process; to fast-track applications made on brownfield land; to redesignate some low quality greenbelt as ‘grey belt’, which can be built on, and; to invest in jobs and skills to get people, particularly young people, into trades. As early as today, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce that local authorities will be given mandatory housebuilding targets which they must meet, in the belief that a boost to the housing market will provide a boost to the overall economy.
What does it mean for net zero?
Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that. - David Attenborough
Labour has made some big commitments on clean energy. So much so that the Conservative Party made a campaign out of Labour’s pledges to reach Net Zero threatening to bankrupt the country. Let’s leave the cost to one side for the moment – we can come to that later – what has Labour actually promised?
Well, their headline was to “make Britain a clean energy superpower”. This meant, becoming energy independent, creating 650,000 high quality green jobs and building better insulated homes. They are aiming for clean power by 2030. How? Double onshore wind. Triple solar power. Invest in carbon capture and storage. Invest in hydrogen. Invest in tidal power. Getting new nuclear power stations online. No new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, no new coal licences, and a ban on fracking. All of this in the next five and a half years, largely funded from a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
What about the North?
It is obvious that greater regional prosperity means more customers and more business for our national metropolis. - Boris Johnson, 15 July 2021
Boris Johnson first coined the term ‘levelling up’ in 2021 but Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner have both stuck with the term. In fact they have praised the analysis of the Government’s levelling up White Paper, which talked about the problems of regional inequality, even if they didn’t agree with the proposed solutions.
So if everyone agrees levelling up is a good idea, why hasn’t it happened? Well going back to Boris Johnson, he would argue that his Chancellor, one Rishi Sunak, didn’t believe in it, meaning he could never get it off the ground. Sunak would deny this and laid the blame with Johnson, but who was right is largely irrelevant, the point is that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor must both buy into a plan for it to succeed. There have been no indications that Keir Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor – Rachel Reeves – is not in lockstep with him on economic policy, so perhaps the future is bright. So, what have they said? Well, the Labour manifesto commits to deepening devolution across England, giving councils multi-year funding settlements, and reviewing Combined Authorities’ governance arrangements to allow for quicker decision-making – something which has been pushed hard by northern Labour mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram.
Furthermore, Rayner has been named Levelling Up Secretary in the new Cabinet, suggesting that the new Government will take it seriously, given that she has been vocal about it over recent years.
Will the North get the investment it needs? Only time will tell, but the noises coming out of the Labour leadership are certainly encouraging.
What next? 100 words on the first 100 days
In 100 words here is what Keir Starmer could be doing in the next 100 days:
- Appoint a cabinet
- Attend his first summit (NATO) in Washington on Tuesday
- Introduce legislation to increase workers’ rights
- Introduce legislation to increase housebuilding and relax the rules for onshore wind farms
- Define the role of Great British Energy. They’ve said they want to set it up, but not said what it is
- Scrap the Rwanda scheme
- Talk with the British Medical Association (BMA) about holding off industrial action for doctors
- By Autumn we could see the first budget, meaning VAT on private schools and potentially the first tax rises to pay for the promises above. We know there will be no raising of VAT, Income Tax or National Insurance to pay for this. So what do you think it will be?