‘People want change’: U.K. election results continue global push against incumbent governments, say politicos

U.K. Labour’s rout of the Conservatives in the July 4 general election in the United Kingdom was a continued rejection of incumbency playing out around the world as fatigue from years of the pandemic and of economic hardship leads voters to seek alternatives, according to some former senior Canadian election campaign staffers. “This was a vote against the Tories, not a vote for Labour,” said Tyler Meredith, a former senior economic adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) and lead author of the Liberal Party’s 2019 and 2021 election platforms. The U.K. Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, returned to government after 14 years in opposition on July 4. The party won 412 of 650 seats in that country's House of Commons, up 211 from the 2019 election, while the incumbent Conservatives were reduced to 121 seats. Despite its massive majority, Labour received 33.7 per cent of the total votes, up just 1.6 per cent from the previous election. The party fielded candidates in 613 seats, and in every constituent country of the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland. Poll aggregates during the campaign showed Labour with between 39 per cent and 45 per cent support. In comparison, Canadian parties that have won majority governments in the last 40 years have hovered around the 40 per cent mark in the popular vote. Dan Arnold, who led the Liberals’ research programs at the last three federal elections, and who previously served as the Prime Minister’s Office’s research, advertising and correspondence director, said the result seems to be more a repudiation of the Conservatives than an endorsement of Labour. “That's consistent with what we're seeing in other parts of the Western world right now where there's a lot of frustration that is being taken out on incumbent governments, and a lot of people looking for any alternative,” he said. “They don't really care if it's right, or left, or—in the case of the U.S.—not criminally culpable, but they're looking for pretty much any alternative, because people want change.” Meredith noted that the U.K. election was one in which voters overwhelmingly sought change, but the type of change desired remained fluid through the campaign. He noted two differences between the July 4 vote and historical change results: a relatively low plurality for the winner, and low voter turnout. Turnout for the election was approximately 60 per cent, the lowest since 2001 and second-lowest since 1885. Starmer, while handily winning re-election in his riding of Holborn and St. Pancras, also suffered a 17.4 per cent swing in favour of Independent, Green, and Reform candidates. “A certain element of the people who were originally parked with Labour before the campaign shifted in a bunch of directions,” Meredith said. “Not all of them went to the Conservatives, but the Conservatives did a very good job over the course of that campaign in seeding doubt and pulling down Labour's vote… it would suggest that there's a certain element of people who are just parking themselves in that space, and may not be fully confirmed as a change voter.” As previously reported in The Hill Times, Labour ran on a small series of priorities in areas such as housing, health care, and energy. The party has also sought a more centrist image following its disastrous showing in the 2019 election under then-leader Jeremy Corbyn when it won its fewest share of seats since 1935. “Labour ran, to some extent, your classic frontrunner campaign where you play it safe and, when your opponent is stepping on rakes all over the place, you let them do that,” said Arnold. “They let the Conservatives effectively become the story and presented themselves as a largely safe, comfortable alternative, and avoided any dramatic, polarizing issues that could have dragged them down.” But for any progressives in Canada seeking lessons from the election, Meredith warned against over-analyzing Labour’s win, pointing again to their relatively low vote and turnout. According to polling aggregate 338Canada, the governing Liberals under Trudeau currently have 24 per cent support. That figure is close to the 23.7 per cent the U.K. Conservatives received at the election. “If anything, what it demonstrates, I think, is that simply offering a kind of incrementalist, pragmatic, ‘centrist’ proposal may not be the kind of antidote to change—or even the propeller for change, depending on who you are—that you would want,” he said. “What we see in this result is that there continues to be a need to put an offering to voters that is inspiring, that is authentic, that is ambitious, because that reflects the current moment that we're in globally.” Unlike Labour, Canada’s Conservatives have not pursued a similar incrementalist pitch to voters. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) has pitched himself as a “true blue Conservative,” and has not shied away from “taking positions that might be a little bit more extreme,” Arnold said. “But I think in terms of an issue set, the types of things Labour was talking about, and the issues they focused on are not actually that dramatically different from the types of issues that Poilievre is playing to Canada,” he said. On the conservative side of politics, more lessons could be coming from Ottawa to Westminster than vice versa. In the lead-up to the recent election, British newspapers such as The Independent, The Guardian, and The Evening Standard evoked the prospects of an incumbent defeat on the scale of Canada’s 1993 federal election, when the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two seats. Right-wing party Reform U.K., which ran on a platform that included a freeze on “non-essential” immigration, the scrapping of net-zero rules, leaving the World Health Organization, and introducing a “patriotic” curriculum in schools, had a 14.3 point gain compared to the 2019 election when it ran under the Brexit Party banner. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told CBC News in June that he had been thinking “very much of our Canadian cousins” who ran the party of the same name between 1988 and 1997. He added that he holds Canada’s former Reform leader Preston Manning in high regard. Arnold said that, while the U.K. Conservatives had avoided a 1993-level wipeout, the rise of Reform in that country would be a lingering question for the party, and risked future continued Labour wins on the back of a splintered right. “Reform hasn't taken over yet. They see the armada in the distance, but it hasn’t come on shore and taken over, but I think there are certainly those concerns if you're a conservative in the U.K. to see that splintering of the right vote,” he said. “I imagine over the next decade or so in the U.K. that the real political question is how they deal with the fracture, which is something that Canada dealt with in the '90s.” The rise of Reform provides lessons for parties at all ends of the political spectrum, Meredith said, particularly as economic anxieties are central to voters’ choices. “It's easier to attract people when you have a very clear, ambitious offering. With Reform, you may not agree with what they stand for, but it's very clear what they stand for,” he said. “What is less clear is when you're talking about Labour, where the offering is, ‘We'll give you thousand more appointments in the National Health Service.’ How do I actually measure that in my own personal experience? That sounds great, but a four or five per cent increase in capacity in the National Health Service, is that really going to meaningfully change my experience in healthcare? Probably not.” “It's hard for those ideas to compete in a space where bold and sometimes destructive policies have a much more attractive offering.” On the diplomatic front, Trudeau congratulated Starmer in a July 5 statement. “Our countries enjoy robust economic ties, and I look forward to further strengthening them with Prime Minister Starmer,” Trudeau said. “We will advance our relationship through progressive action on shared priorities such as clean technology, human rights, gender equality, and building economies that are fairer for every generation.” The two leaders met at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., last week. sjeffery@hilltimes.com The Hill Times

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‘People want change’: U.K. election results continue global push against incumbent governments, say politicos

Voters in the recent U.K. election overwhelmingly sought change, but the type of change desired remained fluid through the campaign, said former Canadian PMO staffer Tyler Meredith.

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