The Labor Party, London politics professor Anand Menon said on the phone on Wednesday, is like Arsenal in recent years: “They lead 2-0, and yet they’re afraid they’ll lose.” Football analogies always work in England, but the comparison between Arsenal London and Labor is particularly good now – not only because Labor boss Keir Starmer likes to emphasize that he is a passionate Arsenal fan. The club last won the league title under Arsène Wenger in 2004, after which the team became increasingly fragile. The distrust of one’s own strength is still there today.
If there were a table of UK political parties, Labor would currently be where Arsenal are in the Premier League: number one. In poll terms, the lead over the Tories is 17 points, the widest gap in 20 years. At that time, a certain Tony Blair was Prime Minister. The party conference in Liverpool was correspondingly brilliant, but beyond the main stage in the hall there remained the carefully whispered skepticism that brought Menon to the Arsenal comparison. In the past twelve years, Labor has lost elections so often and sometimes so clearly that skepticism will probably only disappear once the title or election has actually been won.
Parallels were often drawn in Liverpool to the New Labor era with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, those years when Labor was at times more popular than ever before and never since. On Wednesday, for example, Labor Deputy Leader Angela Rayner had a Brown moment as she enumerated the achievements of previous Labor governments, her voice rising as she did so, and the people in the Chamber jumped and cheered as Rayner continued to speak – as Gordon Brown once did the party congress. Except Angela Rayner isn’t Gordon Brown, Keir Starmer isn’t Tony Blair. New Labor was not a time of skepticism and, importantly, the next election was not two years away.
Liz Truss would be foolish to call a snap election now
Of course, all opposition parties are now calling for snap elections, but Truss would be foolish to actually call a snap election before the end of 2024. It is hard to imagine that the Tories, who won an 80-seat majority with Johnson in 2019, are currently even close to winning the elections. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the situation in the country and thus also for Liz Truss will improve again when the winter is over and energy spending falls. But it seems more likely that Labor will increase to 3-0 or 4-0 next year with captain Starmer. A 5:0 also seems possible.
Keir Starmer’s poll numbers are no more than solid. He is not an instinctive politician, nor is he a stirring speaker, everything he does is weighed up several times. For the first few years as Labor leader he has set himself a three-phase plan, to which he has so far stubbornly stuck as if he were in a sealed basement laboratory. After phase one (reforming the party) and phase two (pointing out the government’s weaknesses), phase three now begins: positioning one’s party as the ruling party. Starmer ticked off phase one alone, with phase two Boris Johnson helped him. In phase three, Liz Truss could now become his most important player. No, Keir Starmer is not Tony Blair. But maybe he doesn’t have to be.