It isn’t possible to predict now whether Britain, or the world, will already be in recession at the time of Starmer becoming prime minister, or whether that will lie ahead.
We can predict, however, that he will become prime minister.
The Tories got 26% of the vote in the 2023 local elections and opinion polls since have consistently put them at that level or even lower.
To win the next general election Sunak would need a bigger swing than any post-war Tory government has achieved, including Thatcher’s re-election in 1983 in the immediate aftermath of the Falklands war.
There is no prospect of that taking place.
It is possible that Starmer’s Labour will win a big ‘1997-style’ majority.
At the time of writing the latest opinion polls predict it will be even bigger.
However, even if his victory is on the scale of 1997 in terms of the number of seats, it will be very different in enthusiasm and probably the absolute number of votes.
In 1997 there was a 71% turnout, and Labour received 13.5 million votes.
By the time of Labour’s last election victory, in 2005, the turnout had fallen to 61% and Labour’s vote to 9.5 million.
Since then, Labour has only got over 10 million votes twice, in 2017 and 2019 under Corbyn’s leadership.
These elections – particularly 2017 – were exceptional in the modern era.
In 2017 82.3% of voters voted for either Tories or Labour.
It was not only Labour that had an increase in votes – the 42.3% that voted Tory was the highest percentage since 1987! Prior to this, the percentage of the electorate who voted for the two main parties had been in steady decline, with just 65.1% voting for them in 2010, for example.
The reason for the temporary reversal in that trend is clear: it was a partial return to class politics, albeit with the limitations of ‘Corbynism’.
On the one hand, wide layers of the working class and young people voted Labour because they hoped for a government that would stand in their interests, while the capitalist class did all it could to mobilise the Tory vote as the means to stop Corbyn being elected.
Now, with a return to ‘New Labour’ and no fundamental class differences between the major parties, we have again increasing fragmentation, protest votes, and lower turnouts.
For example, Labour won both the Mid-Beds and Tamworth by-elections, but its votes flatlined compared to the supposedly ‘dire’ 2019 result; it was only the collapse in the Tory vote that enabled it to claim victory.
It is perfectly possible that Labour will fail to break the 10 million barrier again in the next general election, yet still win a sizeable majority as a result of a low turnout and small Tory vote.
This was true before the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, but Starmer’s slavish alignment with US imperialism on the issue has enormously added to the anger with him.
In the 2019 general election 71% of Muslim voters supported Labour.
Polls vary on what that has fallen to, but it is clear it is substantial.
The growing anger and distrust in Starmer demonstrate the space that exists to the left of Labour.
If the absence of authoritative forces from the workers’ movement stepping into that vacuum continues, however, it will lead to more people staying at home, and an increase in votes for other parties including the Greens, and also perhaps Reform UK.
Obviously, though, it will not do anything to rescue the Tories.
Nonetheless, it is not excluded that it could deprive Starmer of a majority, forcing Labour to rule as a minority government or in coalition with the LibDems.
The LibDems will hope to gain additional MPs in constituencies where they can pose as the party most likely to defeat the Tories.
However, their image has been tarnished by the ‘Post Office’ scandal revealing their current leader, Sir Ed Davey, failed to support the sub postmasters when he was Postal Affairs Minister from 2010-12.
This has served as a wider reminder of the LibDem’s role in implementing vicious austerity as part of the Tory-Liberal coalition government between 2010 and 2015.
