Labour is having a really bad time. Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner recently resigned after a property tax scandal, Sir Keir Starmer has historically low approval ratings, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is facing calls to resign ahead of the Autumn Budget. Labour is also polling a distant second, and most of the UK is unsure what the party stands for.
Scratch the surface a little and see that Labour is actually in a stronger position than the British media and most experts give it credit for. Certainly, Sir Keir Starmer seems to be more potent than any other party leader right now. Keep it quiet, but Labour’s chances of winning the next election remain strong.
Before unpacking why, one must acknowledge that the party stands in a difficult position.
Reform performed well in last year’s local elections and the party’s leadership is openly eyeing up the government.
Add to this an economy labouring along (no pun intended), stubborn inflation, a police force which solves just 5% of crimes, and immigration numbers out of control. Starmer looks and sounds like a normal, professional and a decent person, but he lacks the media savvy of Nigel Farage, the Liberal Democrats’ Sir Ed Davey, and even the Green Party’s new eco-populist leader, Zack Polanski.
Labour’s messaging is equally poor. It has not done a good job at explaining what it is for or at highlighting its real achievements―deals with the EU and the U.S., a crackdown on fake businesses and some forms of socially deviant behaviour, and a gradual decrease in healthcare waiting times. But it has lost control of the narrative. Even if its solutions end up bearing fruit by the end of the parliament, it has lost ground with the public.
But politics is still a long game. Labour realises this. Its intense focus on ‘delivery’ is the right one in such a fragmented system. Labour is betting that ahead of the next general election in 2029 the economy turns around, immigration numbers drop, waiting times to see a doctor are back to normal, and the political landscape realigns. On top of that, it has a massive majority that it can use to push through popular policies closer to the election, when the general public is paying more attention.
By 2029, Rayner will be long forgotten (British governments have survived similar scandals before because the memory of the electorate is also short). And by then, the political landscape will be very different. There is a long way to go until the next election in 2029, and a lot would have to go right for Farage to enter 10 Downing Street.
The prospects of Labour’s other rivals are equally not great, but Reform is currently polling at around 28-31%. Reform is in kind of a three-way bind. Its leader and policies are unpopular with the wider British public. It lacks any sense of professionalism, which is starting to dent its popularity. Furthermore, Reform’s main rivals are not Labour, but the Conservatives, who might just recover in time for 2029.
A recent YouGov poll showed that 43% of Britons would prefer a Starmer-led Labour government to a Farage-led Reform government (37%). On top of that, another poll released last year, asking who voters would prefer as Prime Minister, had Farage in a head-to-head match-up with all the other party leaders, and Farage lost every match-up.
That alone indicates that when the time comes to put a cross in the box, swing voters may fall back to Labour, the Conservatives, or Liberal Democrats. Even if they like Reform, the problem is Farage. Also unclear is whether Reform could survive without him, as UKIP and the Brexit Party struggled to do. He gave them a huge polling boost and has helped maintain Reform’s lead.
In its council and mayoral election victories this year Reform won, but―and this is a very big but―on extremely low turnout (30%) in Conservative parts of Britain by small vote margins. That is hardly a reliable measure for future electoral success. Reform’s support elsewhere in Britain is more evenly spread, not regionally consolidated. That will make it harder to beat the traditional parties without appealing to a broader slice of the electorate, putting up better candidates and running a professional campaign. It will have to target individual seats and hope the Conservatives fail to recover before 2029.
The Greens recently elected Zack Polanski as its leader. He made clear in his acceptance speech that the Greens want to replace Labour. Indeed, the Greens are a solidly leftist outfit. Alas, it will not overtake Labour and is likely to bleed support.
The Greens won four seats (the same as Reform) in 2024, its highest ever. Yet Green voters were a fragile coalition. Two of its four seats were won from the Conservatives. Just 6% of the 2024 Labour voters say they plan to back the Greens next time. It will be hard to keep those voters bound together. Many will not like Mr. Polanski’s populist approach, hard left ideas, and background as a hypnotherapist who promised to enlarge women’s breasts.
Moreover, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also forming a new leftist party. That could split the far-left vote. The far-left vote might swing away from Labour, but there are more centrist voters who may swing back to one of the other parties.
Next comes Reform’s professionalism and policies. As recently noted by The Spectator, Farage will need a team capable of carrying out the massive transformation of the British state he has promised. Yet his list of former allies is long; even since last year’s election, he has lost two of his MPs. The ten Reform councils elected in May have mixed records at best and are a hodgepodge of longstanding groupies, D-list celebrities, lesser-known Conservative chancers, and pubescent teenagers. Standing outside a government building and shouting at it is easy, but running it from the inside is more difficult.
Reform strives to appear as a professional organisation. But Farage is not a team player, and there is no effort to enlist more talented people. Reform is not trying to broaden its appeal beyond a small segment of the electorate: its policies are catered to a small segment of British society―the socially and culturally conservative. They are especially concerned about immigration, doubtful about many equalities policies, and are skeptical about climate change. But scrutiny of its economic and social policies reveals a lack of detail and genuine understanding about what it takes to deal with those issues. Reform is all too often a politics of protest and ‘the feel good’ rather than serious opposition.
In its different incarnations, Reform has never obtained more than four million votes, or about 14% of the electorate. That is not enough to win a majority, and neither is its current support of 31%. It can only springboard them to power if the political landscape stays extremely fragmented. If it does not, Reform will end up with little to no representation and die a natural death.
Enter the Conservatives, which lost a quarter of its vote to Reform in 2024. Since then, three in ten voters from 2024 have also switched to Reform. Conservative insiders recently told LBC Radio that leader Kemi Badenoch has “six to nine months” to turn the party’s misfortunes around. Currently polling at 18%, Scottish, Welsh and English local elections next year look set to doom the party. If Badenoch is replaced by a capable leader―perhaps James Cleverly, who the public actually wants to listen to―voters will gradually begin returning.
As for the Liberal Democrats, The Economist recently described it as “the best job in British politics.” Britain’s third largest party has 72 MPs, is polling steadily, has a popular leader and policies, and performs well in local elections. On top of that, public and media scrutiny is extremely limited. When they get attention, Sir Ed Davey is both an impressive politician and popular with the public.
Now here comes ‘the however.’ Although Liberal Democrats is a center-left party, its voters are mostly center-right middle class from the leafy suburbs, shires, and Celtic fringes, i.e., very nice places to live in. For that reason, the party has not seriously tried to challenge Labour from the left and British Liberals are happiest taking on the Conservatives.
It therefore picks its battles very carefully, be it criticizing Donald Trump, Gaza, inheritance tax, water quality, or social care. Their long-term aim is to leapfrog the Conservatives in their heartlands. Doing so would return the Liberals to His Majesty’s official opposition for the first time in over 100 years. Not impossible, but improbable. It would require both a Conservative and Reform collapse, which though not out of the question, would be remarkable.
It should also take the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales seriously, as they threaten Labour from the left. It must listen to voters in these countries and show them that staying in the UK is beneficial.
Meanwhile, Reform lacks the discipline, policies and professionalism to take it to power. Cracks are already forming with new splinter groups backed by Elon Musk. The Conservatives are still licking their wounds and that process can take years. The Liberal Democrats lack much of a national focus and that seems to suit them just fine. Labour can also afford to ignore the far left.
Of course, things are difficult now, but time and circumstances are on Labour’s side. Things may yet all go wrong. And if they do, Labour will have only itself to blame.
