The Tories are down but Labour still has to win UK election

With all the talk of elections in these parts, it could be missed that our nearest neighbour also has a general election on the horizon. Who is likely to win and what factors will determine the result? Is a Labour victory certain, and what does it all mean for our relations with Britain, and what would it mean for politics here on the island of Ireland?

We may not know the result yet, but we do know the timescale and the accepted wisdom about the outcome. The election has to happen by this time next year, and the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has indicated that it will likely be in late Autumn or November. Whatever the exact date, the common view is that the Tories are doomed, and cannot possibly win the election.

The economic legacy of the disastrous short premiership of Liz Truss; the public disgust at all the Covid parties held in Number 10 while Boris Johnson was Prime Minister; and the seeming inability of the latest resident of Number 10, Rishi Sunak, to get a grip on the issue of immigration, has – it seems to most commentators – given the Tories no chance of winning. It also doesn’t help that the party is bitterly divided and that it has spent eight years championing Brexit – a policy that almost no one thinks is working, even if the majority is too tired and fed up to think of overturning it.

It’s a mountain to climb. The opinion poll results for the party are terrible.

But it is one thing for the Tories to lose. Labour has to win, and under the British system that’s harder than it sounds, even though the Labour slogan from their massive landslide win in 1997 – ‘Things can only get better’ – might seem even more true now.

Broadly, the difficulty for Labour is that with a first past the post-election system, the opposition party has to turn enough voters in the tightest and closest constituencies from Tory to Labour in order to win a majority. This is what they call ‘the swing’ in the vote. Without subjecting us all to a maths lesson, suffice to say that Labour needs a big swing in vote to overturn the considerable majority that the Tories – under Boris Johnson – won in 2019. They might well get it, but it is by no means a given. 

This is one of the reasons why Labour has decided to stay silent on Brexit, to try and win back those working-class Brexit supporters they lost to Boris Johnson in 2019. Those working-class, pro-Brexit swing voters will decide – with only a few thousand votes in each constituency – a whole swathe of seats in northern England. There has been a constituency redraw in recent weeks, bringing more seats to where the population is – in the more Tory south and east of England – which has made that alp for Labour to climb that much higher.

The situation is made even more complex by Scotland. In Tony Blair’s time, Labour won the overwhelming majority of Scottish seats, a vital part of the Labour Party’s UK majority from 1997-2010. But since then, the overwhelming majority of seats in Scotland have been won by the Scottish Nationalist Party. That factor is a huge element in British elections. Ever since, Tory politicians have warned English voters that Labour would try and form a government in coalition with the Scottish Nationalists, taxing England to pay for things in Scotland in return. It has hurt Labour in England in every election since 2010. But polling now suggests that Labour could win at least half of the SNP’s seats in Scotland. The SNP has had a terrible few years arising from its loss of control of the political agenda, something which has happened for many reasons, not least because its drive towards independence has stalled.

That has given Labour an opportunity. For if they can credibly show they can solve their ‘Scottish Nationalist votes ruling English pockets’ political problem, it could change the dynamic in Labour’s favour. But if the SNP can regain some of their verve, that pendulum could swing back again.

If it does, the chance that the Tories will lose but that Labour would not win would grow. This would produce what in Britain they call a ‘hung parliament’ – with no party having a majority. We in Ireland see this as no big deal. The last time we had an overall majority for any one party was in 1977. We just put together a coalition. But the British seem to think that coalitions are some sort of conspiracy, even though they had one as recently as ten years ago. If they do get a hung parliament, somebody will have to do a deal with somebody whether they call it a coalition or not. That may be very consequential in Northern Ireland. If DUP or other unionist votes mattered in a hung parliament, we would be wise here to presume nothing about how a new Labour government would behave.

But let’s say that Labour do win an outright majority. On the surface, that would be good news for us as it would likely bring some respite from all the Brexit excesses of these past eight years. But note, the Tory party in opposition will become more rabidly right wing and nationalist than your ears will believe – and with a possibly unsecure Labour government, failing like so many other governments to tackle big issues, it might not be long before those even more extreme Tories were back in power again.

The timing of the election in Britain is also interesting for another reason, as we may also have our general election at the same time. With Sinn Féin riding so high in our opinion polls, that would make for a very interesting dimension. It would on the one hand be a tremendous opportunity – symbolically and in material electoral terms – for the party to demonstrate the size of its vote on the island of Ireland. On the other hand, having to fight two general elections at the same time will stretch resources. In that scenario, how the election debate in one part of the island impacts on the other would be fascinating.

The election in Britain will also see the results of the latest trends in technology: with artificial intelligence, disinformation and bad actors influencing and often trying to damage the electoral process. We will see – many commentators claim – a rise in the Americanisation of British politics, with it becoming much more personal and personalised. This will result in waves of what Americans call ‘attack ads’ focusing in on aspects of the personality and track record of candidates, often using information in an out of context way to damage them. That will also be happening while the US election takes that process into hyperdrive.

On any number of fronts, the next few months are a going to be a fascinating time politically. Watch this space.