As Britain faces strikes unprecedented in over forty years, Rishi Sunak’s Tories and Keir Starmer’s Labor are hatching their strategies to overcome the slump. On January 4 and 5, in speeches, the leaders of the two major British parties thus sketched out what could be called “government programs”. If the Tories are gambling on their survival, the Labor Party is preparing their return to power after twelve years in opposition. For Labour, which is twenty points ahead in the polls, the next elections, in eighteen months, are indeed an opportunity for great introspection and an ideological adjustment.
Let’s start with the conservatives. Gone is the “red experiment” à la Boris Johnson, combining public spending and cultural conservatism; Also over are the plans for drastic tax cuts and the Liz Truss-like contempt for public accounts. Return to calm and austerity. Sunak makes five promises to the British: reduce inflation, contain public debt, revive economic activity, reduce waiting times for medical treatment and stop migrant boats in the Channel. But some sectors, such as health, are suffering from a crying lack of resources and a haemorrhage of qualified personnel due to Brexit, and it is hard to see how Sunak’s intransigence, particularly in terms of salaries, will help the public health system (NHS) to recruit more and treat patients better.
Of the Tories and Rishi Sunak, British public opinion actually expects little more. The spotlight is now on Labour, with this nagging question: what is Labor today the name of? After ten years spent on the far left under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, an anchor largely responsible for the defeats in the general elections (2010, 2015 and 2019), Keir Starmer must reinvent Labour. However, the wave of strikes hitting the country since last summer is forcing it to take unexpected decisions from a left-wing leader. Thus, he did not hesitate to “sack” Sam Tarry, deputy in charge of transport within his shadow cabinet, for having supported the strikers.
Outraged, the general secretary of the rail union, Manuel Cortes, declared “to be ashamed for Labour”: “If Labor hopes to win the next elections by rejecting our seven million members, they are dreaming!” “A government does not go to picket lines, it works to resolve wage disputes,” replied Keir Starmer. Rather than supporting strikes in Britain, Labor prefers to focus its attacks on the Conservative government, which refuses to negotiate with the unions.
A balancing act. Isn’t the Labor Party, above all, the party of the workers? It is precisely on this ambiguity that the left separatists of Nicola Sturgeon, who fear a victory for Labor on their Scottish lands, attack Starmer: “We are going to have to choose between two Conservative Prime Ministers!” they say, ironically. In fact, Keir Starmer applies the strategy of Tony Blair in 1997. Play it safe; say that “we will not reopen the purse strings”, as he repeated on January 5; show competence and rigour, even a certain conservatism. Objectives: to defuse the usual criticisms made of Labor and to convince public opinion, from the center right to the center left.
For now, the maneuver works, especially among those disillusioned with conservatism. The conservative daily The Times no longer hesitates to state in his editorials: “The voters now know that Keir Starmer is competent. They know that he is serious. They know that he is an ardent patriot who loves his country and his king. Now they want know how he will rule.” By appropriating, with a certain nerve, the slogan of the Brexiteers “Take Back Control”, Starmer provides some elements of an answer. He has indeed promised to “really” restore power to the regions. Conceptualized by Gordon Brown, his major decentralization project plans to increase the administrative, fiscal and financial autonomy of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom, but also of the regions of the north-east of England, poor and disenclaved, which have voted overwhelmingly for Brexit and Boris Johnson in 2019. Starmer hopes to win back the hearts of these key voters, but also of the hesitant Scots on the question of independence.
Some analysts, such as Michael Jacobs, professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield, predict that Starmer will be more radical once in power: “When you look closely at his economic principles, they are far from timorous.” With his £28 billion annual action plan and the nationalization of state-owned energy companies, Starmer is promising far more climate action than Corbyn did. Decentralization, on the other hand, should give the means and the power to local authorities to carry out major investments. On the fiscal level, the abolition of the status of “non-domiciled residents”, wealthy foreigners residing in Great Britain and not paying tax, should bring in 26 billion per year, a windfall that Starmer intends to reinvest in the health system. .
“When the economy is bad, Labor has always opted for interventionism and structural reforms. In power, Clement Attlee (in 1945) and Harold Wilson (in 1964) had convinced the British of the need for their economic programs. ” But for Keir Starmer, everything in its time. The race for power has only just begun.
