The nature and significance of Labour’s general election victory on 4 July is already being contested. There is one view, popular across the Atlantic and in the seats of besieged liberal democracies, that Keir Starmer’s victory represents a chink in the populist armour. After fourteen years of turmoil, the UK elected a shrewd centrist, defying the dual tides of populism and polarisation by granting Labour a commanding majority.
It is a story so compelling, reassuring even, because it diverges drastically from the realities unfolding in other democracies. The Labour leader, Saint Keir, has slayed the populist leviathan at the apparent peak of its powers globally. Starmer’s is a story replete, this telling runs, with lessons for like-minded small “l” liberals the Western world over. A version of this tale is popular in Labour circles too: that Starmer’s path to power can be plotted through the defeat of at least two populists, namely Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson.
But this “How Labour Defeated Populism” narrative, seductive as it seems, misunderstands both the nature of Starmer’s victory and the enduring threat posed by his political foes. Before one accounts for the election’s low voter turnout or Labour’s 33.4 per cent share of it, the slightest squint at Britain’s reforged political landscape reveals a novel force: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, winner of five seats on 14 per cent of the vote.
The threat posed by Britain’s ascendant Faragists in Reform will be both familiar and not to this new, politically ascendant Keir Starmer.
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During his time in No 10, Rishi Sunak often indulged in the policies, rhetoric and tropes of those to his populist right in a failed process of accommodation. Viewed in full, the ex-PM’s administration was less scandalous than some of its precursors — but Starmer deftly dismissed it as of the same “performative” strain.
The inexorable demise of Sunak’s government coincided with its embrace of “wedge” issues, such as the symbolic upending of the net zero consensus and its brave intervention in Labour’s “war on the motorist”. On the axis of the Conservative Party’s Uxbridge by-election — won by stressing Starmer’s ULEZ complicity — the focus, if not the fate, of Sunak’s government swung.
Suddenly, Sunak abandoned simple governing for governing’s sake and prioritised a more pressing objective: ensuring Keir Starmer feels as uncomfortable as politically possible. Throughout the summer of 2023 and beyond, Sunak undertook to provoke Labour weekly on some new divisive, salient issue; (unfortunately for the PM, they were often the former, but rarely the latter).
Sunak’s post-Uxbridge tilt enabled Starmer to stress the continuity of recent Conservative administrations and their alleged obsession with “exhausting”, “fatiguing” politics. On these terms, Starmer began to mould his own election “dividing line”, as he highlighted the potent contrast between “performative” and “effective” government.
This rhetorical dichotomy featured front and centre of Labour’s election pitch. Starmer stressed, endlessly but effectively, that a political divide and rule strategy erodes a nation’s political culture, fuels public cynicism and drives disaffection.
In sum, Starmer’s promise to pursue “a politics which treads a little lighter on all our lives” successfully capitalised on the public’s collective fatigue of Johnsonian scandal, Trussite chaos and Sunakian performance. That, in essence, is what Starmer defeated this election — and it is in conscious renouncement of these old Tory modes that Labour governs today.
The rise of Reform UK, Starmer’s argument develops, is an indirect consequence of Britain’s recent governing malaise. But still, Labour’s campaign rhetoric failed to stem the Faragist insurgency, archetypal though it was of the “anti-politics” Starmer so spurns.
During the election, Reform blasted both the Conservatives and Labour as the “different sides of the same socialist coin” — a more sibilant, but likely less effective, way of decrying all politicians as alike. Nor did Reform pen an election “manifesto” — a word tainted, they say, by broken promises. Farage signed a “contract” with voters instead.
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Keir Starmer’s populism strategy: the message
Starmer views Reform as a symptom of Britain’s stagnant governance, delivered he contends by consecutive Conservative administrations. It follows then, that the way to diminish Farage’s appeal is to make the state function on behalf of those disaffected with it.
This was a calculation that formed the political centre of the King’s Speech — the first delivered under a Labour government in fifteen years — last week. Speaking in the commons after Charles III’s Lords address, Starmer argued that, “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era”.
The prime minister went on: “The era of politics as performance and self-interest above service is over.… The challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer. The snake oil charm of populism may sound seductive, but it drives us into the dead end of further division and greater disappointment.”
It’s the sort of deliberate, politically charged passage that directs one to reevaluate Starmer’s full speech and the surrounding legislative raft. Of course, that the prime minister felt compelled to address “snake oil” populism directly, is indicative of one thing at least: Starmer’s battle with Faragism has just begun.
The King’s Speech contained the most clearly deliverable and least noisy aspects of the Labour manifesto (no votes at 16, for instance), which Starmer will seek to implement over the course of the next year. Consciously imbuing his government with a purposefulness that its predecessors sorely lacked, Starmer plans to utterly undermine the populist refrain that promises no longer matter.
Part of the answer to the Reform question, Starmer supposes, is to style his government as insurgent and ensure relentless policy delivery. Speeches from the Throne, since 2010, have on average contained 20 bills. Starmer’s had 40. (No 10, in its King’s Speech trail, had set expectations at “over 35” pieces of proposed legislation).
This approach, it should be said, is not wholly the reserve of Starmer’s new administration. Upon first entering No 10 as PM, after months of malaise, Rishi Sunak also styled his government as insurgent, seeking to curate a record of delivery so undeniable, so straightforward that the public would feel compelled to reward his party with an unprecedented fifth term. That was the essence of Sunak’s politics by pledge.
What resulted however — for manifold reasons — was this strategy’s logical antithesis: Sunak’s “zombie government”, in the end, careered aimlessly from one uncomfortable news day to another, with the PM, Britain’s nominal lead, appearing every so often to trot out some banal, overly-rehearsed line for the media.
The sight of Sunak’s self-conscious busyness — with little recompense — undoubtedly contributed to the Conservatives’ electoral demolition. And it is a manner of governance Starmer’s “mission-driven” administration is designed to entirely eschew.
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Keir Starmer’s populism strategy: the frontline
In his battle with populism, unlike recent skirmishes between Reform and the Conservatives, Starmer’s primary battlefield will be in Westminster. Having established a commons bridgehead, Faragism is finally a parliamentary force — represented today by the man himself (Clacton), deputy leader Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness), chief whip Lee Anderson (Ashfield), Rupert Lowe (Greater Yarmouth) and James McMurdock (South Basildon and East Thurrock).
For years, Britain’s populist right benefited from its aloof relationship with power, making advances in “mid-term” polls (EU parliament, by-elections), but otherwise sniping as an outsider force from the sidelines and media studios. Today, 5 MPs will not afford Farage and co much influence in Westminster, but representation comes with responsibility beyond mere provocation. There remain questions over how effectively Reform’s messaging can adapt to the forum of the commons, especially considering Farage and co — a pretty puny parliamentary force — will be granted limited time to contribute.
In this regard, an exchange during the commons statement on Labour’s “Clean Energy Superpower Mission” last week provides some instructive lessons as to possible paths forward. Rising as the first ever Reform representative to question a Labour minister, Lee Anderson addressed supposed problems with Ed Miliband’s GB Energy plan.
From the fourth row back on the commons benches, Anderson argued that the scheme would “rob from the poor and gave to the rich”. Likening Labour’s plan to a Nottingham city council initiative called Robin Hood Energy, he asked: “How much GB Energy will cost the taxpayer?”.
There followed, according to standard commons procedure, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero’s response: “First of all”, Miliband began, “let me explain to the hon. Gentleman that Robin Hood Energy was a supply company; this is a generation company.”
He went on: “Robin Hood was a retailer, so it is different, but I have to say that I am surprised at the position that he takes. I thought his party was in favour of publicly owned energy. I think it produced lots of videos on social media to that effect.”
Or to put it another way: is that the best you’ve got? Miliband’s exchange with Reform’s most senior parliamentarian in Anderson reflects the straightforward, detail-oriented tone Labour will take with Westminster’s populist battalion over the course of this parliament.
And a further example from Monday, during the new home secretary’s statement on immigration. The speaker again called Lee Anderson, Reform’s most experienced parliamentarian, to probe the new home secretary on Reform’s favourite subject, illegal migration.
“We saw the Border Force agency take a boatload [of asylum seekers] back just last week”, Anderson charged. “Will [Yvette Cooper] now, with that advice, grow a political backbone and order the Border Force to send the boats back the same day?”
Cooper responded: “That operational co-operation is important, but I would just say to him that ‘co-operation’ is the really important word. … It is that co-operation that he and some others in his party have quite often refused, but it will be important and is our best way to stop the criminal gangs.”
Then it was the turn of Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader. In his debut commons question, he asked of Cooper: “How long will you give your policy … before realising that the only policy that will work is the policy you actually started last week which is to pick up and take [small boats] back to France?”. Tice’s ability to answer his own queries should save ample parliamentary time in the long run.
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Keir Starmer’s populism strategy: the public mood
Reform, Keir Starmer has suggested, thrives off public cynicism and disaffection with politics. As such, the polling news of recent weeks that suggests optimism is slowly returning to our politics will be greatly welcomed.
One such poll, conducted by Thinks Insight and Strategy, found that net optimism has grown from -23 in March to -7 in July. The most optimistic are those, expectedly, who voted for Labour at the election. The least optimistic, equally unsurprisingly, were those who voted for Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK, whose net optimism was -44.
The results also reveal that voters, on the whole, are willing to be patient with the government as it tries to deal with its dire inheritance, with nearly two-thirds of people (62 per cent) saying that even if the Starmer administration is effective “it will take a year or two before we start seeing improvement”. Meanwhile, around a third (29 per cent) said they would expect to see “real improvement within the next year” if the government is effective.
The data suggests Starmer’s insurgent incrementalism, as practised over the course of this parliament, could exact a significant electoral windfall in time. In fulfilling its promises to voters and capitalising on voter good will, Starmer could place a low ceiling on Reform’s support of 14 per cent of the vote — its election total when, in theory, the public mood was at its lowest ebb.
Of course, Starmer’s emphasis that Britain needs a “decade of national renewal”, inherited into government from the campaign trail, amounts to a plea for patience. The last place Labour wants to be in 2029 is hailing progress that voters either cannot feel or won’t give him credit for. As Sunak’s messaging underscored, such a chasm between rhetoric and experienced reality — implicitly urging voters to suspend their political disbelief — creates fertile ground for a Faragist insurgency. This points to the most pertinent dynamic of this parliament: if Starmer succeeds, his political supremacy will strengthen. If he fails, the PM will empower those who thrive on disillusion.
So what will this parliament make of Keir Starmer: a progressive paragon or populist handmaiden? The dichotomy of outcomes underlines what’s at stake over the coming five years. Reform, forebodingly, finished second in 98 seats last election — of which 89 were won by Labour.
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Keir Starmer’s populism strategy: what he does not control
Several factors, of course, operate outside of Starmer’s control: the state of the Conservative Party being one.
As stated, disillusion with the Starmer project isn’t inevitable — but nor is its prime beneficiary preordained as Reform and Nigel Farage. The Conservative Party, if in a stronger position by the end of this parliament, could re-emerge as the natural receptacle for those disillusioned with Labour governance. It’s a reminder that despite Reform’s recent rhetoric, Farage’s primary battle this parliament will be with the Conservative Party. Ultimately, confusion over what slice of electorate Reform should prioritise — wavering Labour or Conservative voter — could hurt the coherence of the party’s messaging.
And what if the Reform insurgency begins to stall? Farage has committed to leading Reform for five years (culminating in the 2029 election), but if he fails to note any progress over the coming period — and green shoots of a Tory recovery sprout — who would count on him renewing his tenancy as party chief? The former UKIP leader, as his recent foray at the Republican National Convention reflects, is always allured by the relative wilderness.
There is, of course, the equal and opposite eventuality: that Reform professionalises all of its political, policy and campaign operations — just as its parliamentary “bridgehead” bolsters the party’s legitimacy in by-elections and council contests. Meanwhile, Tory defections — with Suella Braverman in particular shunned by her party — could see Reform’s caucus grow beyond 5.
As such, uncertainty is the foremost feature of Starmer’s battle with populism, both in terms of the PM’s strategy, Farage’s response and — naturally — its outcome. But this lack of precious detail only makes Starmer’s challenge, with its capacity to define his premiership, all the more pressing.
Starmer, after all, has stated plainly his intention to cure Reform’s “snake oil” populism. Success or failure in these terms, set by Starmer himself, could well be his government’s legacy.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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