The next general election does not have to be held until 15 August 2029. Yet the question looming over Keir Starmer is not whether he will make it that far, but whether he will even make it past 7 May.
To survive, as he knows, the Prime Minister needs to convince Labour MPs and ministers that he has a route to recovery. That is one of the reasons this week’s political cabinet meeting included a discussion of the lessons from the re-election of centre-left parties in Australia, Canada and Norway.
David Lammy, who is now more closely involved in the government’s political strategy as Deputy Prime Minister, first explored these case studies in his recent New Statesman article. “In Canada, the Liberal Party was once 20 points behind. In Norway, Labour lagged by 16 points. And in Australia, our sister party trailed by ten. All three roared back from deep midterm lows to win again decisively,” he noted.
It is the Australian election that represents the most useful precedent for Starmer. Anthony Albanese, to whom he bears a striking political and physical resemblance, was dismissed as a doomed prime minister, yet went on to achieve his party’s best result since the Second World War. “They ignored the noise, got on with tackling the cost of living, and delivered,” remarks a No 10 source. “The result was not survival; they came back stronger.” Key pledges, by the way, included cutting university student debt by 20 per cent, building 1.2 million homes and extending “cost-of-living” tax cuts.
Canada, however, is a more complicated example. As several ministers have noted to me, since the Liberal Party swapped an unpopular leader (Justin Trudeau) for a popular one (Mark Carney), it invites observers to draw precisely the conclusion that Starmer does not want. Carney, of course, also benefited from a rally-round-the-flag effect as Donald Trump threatened Canada. But it is worth noting that, in office, he has often emulated Starmer’s quiet diplomacy – and that Trump, in the absence of a constitutional amendment, will not be president by the time of the next UK election.
As for Norway, there was no change of leader, but the Labour Party’s fortunes were transformed by the return of Jens Stoltenberg, the former Nato secretary general, as finance minister. Pollsters took to referring to the “Stoltenberg effect” after the party gained 10 points in the polls within a few days of his appointment – partly due to the spectre of conflict with Russia. Again, I am not sure that appointing a new chancellor, much as some Labour MPs would favour that, is the lesson Starmer would want his party to take.
Unpopular governments can recover but, often, only if something big changes. Think of John Major replacing Margaret Thatcher in 1990 – Major still holds the record for the most votes won by any UK prime minister (14 million) – or Boris Johnson succeeding Theresa May in 2019. The next election is eminently winnable for Labour: Reform is not polling at the levels usually required to be confident of victory and inspires high levels of tactical opposition. But for Starmer, the challenge is to prove to MPs that the big change does not have to be him.
[Further reading: Europe’s American Dream has become a nightmare]
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