IT is impossible for a political party committed to policies of austerity to remain in office forever. Austerity policies cannibalise social life, cutting everything that makes it possible for humans to live in the modern world. When the Conservative Party’s David Cameron became the prime minister in 2010, after thirteen years of New Labour rule which had already pursued an austerity strategy, he pushed an ultra-austerity budget that cut investments in health and transportation, in education and community life. The impact of the Cameron budget has been devastating for Britain, where the National Health Service workers are not only underpaid but understaffed, and where the train systems – largely privatised – have deteriorated rapidly. No prime minister after Cameron (neither Theresa May nor Boris Johnson nor Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak over eight years) knew how to undo the deep austerity cuts or to increase taxes; and since growth in Britain has been dismal (less than 1 per cent for most of the time, but 0.1 per cent in 2023), there simply has been no revenue to invest in necessary social services. British decline was demonstrated amply when Sunak went to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester to cancel the much-hyped high-speed rail project called HS2. Over the past few years, the Conservative Party has been surrounded by the ruins of its austerity project.

When Sunak called an early parliamentary election, it was clear that the Conservative Party would be battered at the polls. Once Nigel Farage decided to back the Reform Party’s parliamentary ambitions, the man who drove the Brexit agenda appeared as a place for otherwise right-wing voters to depart from the Conservatives but not to either go to the Labour Party or stay home. Reform’s gains came mostly from the Conservatives, with Farage being sent to parliament for the first time (from Clacton, which had the only United Kingdom Independence Party representative since 2014). It was Reform votes that stole a large number of seats from the Conservatives and causing its rout (they came second in 98 seats, winning the third largest vote share of 14 per cent behind Labour at 34 per cent and the Conservatives at 24 per cent).

The ambition of Farage is to vanquish the Conservatives, become the main standard-bearer of the right-wing, and drag Britain into the new European phenomenon of rising far-right projects. It is ironic that the leader of Brexit is now taking Britain into a new European trend, the rise of a far-right of a special sort that has emerged from Hungary to France. In many seats, particularly in the old Conservative heartland, Reform went ahead of the Conservatives to get the second largest number of votes after the Labour Party candidates. This far-right of a special sort is very comfortable with democratic institutions and pierces the neoliberal rhetoric with appeals to the decline of their countries; but rather than locate that decline within neoliberalism, they blame the decline on immigrants and on new cultural forms that have emerged in their countries while they pursue neoliberal policies with as much gusto as the centre-right and traditionalist parties.

Wealthy and comfortable liberals in England’s south, who felt contented in the Conservative Party because of its economic policies, abandoned the party for the Liberal Democrats, who had their best parliamentary result (they took away sixty of Conservative seats to win 71 seats in the House of Commons). The Liberal Democratic Party has a peculiar role to play: certainly, fully committed to neoliberalism and austerity, but uncomfortable with the necessity of anti-immigrant and racist sentiments that come with it from the far-right. Therefore, in many ways, the Liberal Democrats provide a hypocritical shelter for the well-heeled liberals who have no problem with rising social inequality but do have a problem with too much social hostility.

The Conservative Party, therefore, lost the election because of the austerity trap and because there were other homes for its followers to flee.

LABOUR’S ADVANTAGE

The implosion of the Conservative base and its electoral coalition meant that the electorate fragmented, giving the Labour Party a decisive advantage. The Labour Party won 411 seats in the House of Commons, which has 650 members. That means that Labour now holds 63.7 per cent of the seats, an enormous majority. The new prime minister Keir Starmer is necessarily delighted by this result. However, a closer look at the numbers shows that the majority is inflated by the first past the post electoral system. Labour won only 33 per cent of the votes to get almost 64 per cent of the seats, a mismatch that has been commented upon widely by the mainstream press in Britain. Indeed, it is important to note that in the last two general elections, Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn won 10.8 million votes (2017) and 10.2 million votes (2019), higher than the 9.7 million votes won by Starmer. In each of the seats that Labour won back in its ‘Red Wall’ in the northern part of England, Reform’s vote share edges close to that of Labour. In seats such as Burnley and Hyndburn, in middle England, Labour’s vote share was lower than what they got in 2019 but they won the seats because of the collapse of the Conservative vote and the rise of Reform.

One reason why Starmer should not see this election result as a vindication of his manifesto and his rightward policies is that this is not exactly an election won by him. Even in Scotland, where Labour defeated the Scottish National Party (SNP) in several key seats, the problem lay with the SNP which has undergone a serious internal crisis after corruption scandals wracked the leadership and after its attempt to drive an anti-austerity policy ran aground in the shoals of the SNP right-wing. If the SNP revives its base with another round of arguments about Scottish independence and the failure of Brexit, Labour might face a serious problem in the seats that it has now won. The problem that Starmer will face is that his agenda is utterly neoliberal and committed to the growth-austerity model that has dessicated Britain. He was unable to liven up the election, offering cardboard cutout policies with a smile that did not inspire anyone who wants to see an end to austerity, which means less favour to the oligarchies of finance, energy, and weapons, and less militarism and more social care. In his own constituency, Starmer faced a challenge from Andrew Feinstein on the grounds of austerity and war, with Feinstein winning 20 per cent of the vote and Starmer’s own majority dropping from 41,000 (2017) to 37,000 (2019), to 18,900 (2024). This is a sign of his own failure as party leader.

PRO-PALESTINE
TO ANTI-GAZA?

It is due to the hunger for those policies against war, in particular, that Jeremy Corbyn, brutally vilified by Starmer’s Labour top brass and thrown out of the Labour Party, nonetheless triumphed against his opponent (he earned 24,120 votes, 7000 more than his opponent). Corbyn will have a number of important allies in the parliament, including four independent candidates who focused their campaigns on ending the war in Gaza (Shockat Adam in Leicester South, Ayoub Khan in Birmingham Perry Bar, Adnan Hussain in Blackburn, and Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury and Batley). When Starmer got up to speak after the vote count, he was interrupted with cries of ‘Free Palestine’. The Green Party won four seats, but also came second in 47 other constituencies, lifted up by their party leader Carla Denyer’s strong statements about a ceasefire and an arms embargo. With these nine MPs and a few on the Labour bench, there is the rump of an anti-war bloc in the parliament. But can this anti-war section grow an anti-austerity project within the halls of Westminster? This is a question that relies as much on the capacity of one of the MPs to offer leadership to this bloc, as much as on the political vision that has to be crafted of a post-austerity, post-imperialist agenda for Britain.

Meanwhile, across the Irish sea, in the northern counties of Ireland, the republican political force, Sinn Féin won more seats than any other party. Now, Sinn Féin commands the largest number of local councils, the most seats in the devolved assembly in Belfast (Stormont), and in the parliamentary delegation from the six counties of the North to Westminster. With Sinn Féin as one of two of the largest parties in the Republic of Ireland (with the same number of seats as the centre-right Finna Fáil), and now in majorities in most elected offices in the North, Sinn Féin has the moral authority to argue for constitutional change. Of course, the Sinn Féin members of parliament do not take their seats in Westminster, but the argument for change will come in other avenues. It is also clear that Sinn Féin’s popularity has grown largely because it has attacked the neoliberal housing policies enacted in both the Republic of Ireland and in the North. These anti-austerity moves alongside a resolute position for Palestine have earned it a commanding authority in all of Ireland. The future for Britain might come from its oldest colony, from where a new model of a post-austerity, post-war region might indeed be born.

Starmer will beam from the dispatch box in parliament, but he must know that his majority can crumble easily since he does not have a project to turn around the decline of Britain. Other forces are being incubated, and if they arise, Britain – in a new form – will have a better future.