Back in December 2023, Morgan McSweeney gave Labour’s shadow cabinet a lesson in electoral volatility. He showed them graphs from eight contests in which the polls turned against the apparent frontrunner including the 2015 and 2017 UK elections, the 2017 Norwegian election, the 2019 Australian election, the 2021 German election and the 2023 Spanish election (one future cabinet minister called them “the slides of doom”).
To these cautionary tales we can now add the extraordinary example of the 2025 Canadian election. At the start of this year, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was feted by the global right as a prime minister-in-waiting (his party led by 25 points). He ended the election by losing his own seat.
For liberals yearning for a Love Actually moment from Keir Starmer, Mark Carney’s defiant patriotism offers a model. But No 10 aides point out the obvious differences: Starmer operates to a different “time horizon” to Carney (barring a third term, Trump will not even be president in 2029) and the US has not threatened to annex the UK.
Are there any lessons Labour can learn from the Liberals’ triumph? MPs believe so. One close to No 10 argues that “to win as an incumbent, you need an enemy”. Consider the strength that Margaret Thatcher – an initially unpopular prime minister – drew from her foes: the Argentine junta, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Soviet Union and the IRA.
On her Downing Street desk was a copy of Scottish poet Charles Mackay’s “No Enemies” which she referenced repeatedly. “You have no enemies, you say?” it begins. “Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done.”
During his 10 months in office, Starmer has made no shortage of foes: pensioners, farmers, small business owners and benefit claimants among them. But these skirmishes have rarely been put at the service of a greater cause. While Thatcher used feuds to define herself politically – naming allies and adversaries – Starmer has struggled to do so. Rather than running towards the sound of gunfire, Labour has often appeared to shrink from it.
Could Nigel Farage be the foe the Prime Minister draws strength from? For Labour, even as Reform surges, there are some encouraging indicators. Though a populist, Farage is not an especially popular one (47 per cent of the public have an unfavourable view of him compared to 29 per cent with a favourable one). His professed admiration for Vladimir Putin and Trump – two reviled figures among the British public – is a drag on his support.
Polling suggests potential for Starmer to summon a French-style “republican front” if Farage is its main opponent in 2029. Research by Persuasion shows that Labour’s vote share would rise from 19 per cent to 36 per cent under such a scenario (with Reform on 27 per cent). In Canada, as the Liberals ascended, support for the centre-left New Democratic Party collapsed (it won just 6 per cent, down from 18 per cent). To achieve re-election, Labour will, among other things, need to squeeze its progressive rivals.
But to do so it will not only require a record worthy of defending. It will, like Thatcher, need to name the enemies who must be defeated.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Labour has nothing to be happy about in Runcorn and Helsby]
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