Unlike Brenda from Bristol, I usually love elections – but not this one. Theresa May’s self-destruction in 2017 was one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever seen. The high-stakes tension of Boris vs. Corbyn in 2019 had me gripped to the TV. Even as a child, I couldn’t get enough of the high drama of politics: on Friday June 10 1983, I threw a sickie from school just so I could sit at home and read all the newspapers about Thatcher’s triumph: it was my pitiful idea of fun at fifteen years old. Yet Sunak vs. Starmer feels like even more of a foregone conclusion than 1997, when Tony Blair’s New Labour crushed the Tories. It’s hard to get excited about the 4 July election.
With Labour we’ll just be getting more of the same, but worse
The 2024 election feels so tawdry – and there is no sense of enthusiasm or vigour to it, on any side. It all seems so pointless and perfunctory. It’s not even a Hobson’s choice, more a Buridan’s ass situation. It’s like choosing between bread and bread.
But there is some hope for politicos like me: the election after this one, whenever it may come, will be fascinating. The 2029 poll has already got me bubbling. That’s when things might get very lively and absorbing indeed.
Nigel Farage appears to have noticed this too. His late entry to the fray as leader of Reform and candidate for Clacton – after an uncharacteristic dither and a major comms slip-up – promises to add zest to the affair. There’s no show without Punch, after all. Yet despite this injection of vim, this is still going to be the dullest of elections. What comes next, particularly if Farage wins in Clacton, will be the good stuff.
Farage is convinced that Starmer will win in July and go on to make such a hash of running the country that voters will kick him out at the first opportunity in five years’ time.
It seems like a credible prediction, given that Britain’s likely next prime minister can’t even handle Diane Abbott. If the last few years have taught us anything though, it’s that making certain predictions is a fool’s errand. So many of the great political storms of the last decade – Corbyn, Brexit, Covid – could not have been foreseen, and indeed were not foreseen, by anybody. There is almost certainly another something, or somethings, we don’t even know we don’t even know about lurking in the wings to surprise us.
This strange and unsettling century has knocked our faith in the political norms. I used to have a fairly reliable sense of what the future might generally hold, but like the Delphic Oracle the prophetic spring has been silenced.
So maybe I have it all wrong about the incoming Labour government. I suppose it’s possible that they will herald a bold new age of peace and prosperity. That the many extremely disturbing things besieging us – from the effects of AI to the housing crisis to the flatlining health service – will evaporate like the morning dew under the assured stewardship of the likes of Jonathan Ashworth and Lucy Powell. That the towering intellect that is Anneliese Dodds will bring us racial harmony and an end to sectarian strife. That Yvette Cooper will stem the flow of immigration. That Rachel Reeves will bring plenty of cornucopia. That the threats from China, Iran, and Russia, will be deftly knocked into their pockets by David Lammy.
I mean, that could happen. In the same way that there could be an invasion from outer space, or that there could be a zombie apocalypse in Cleethorpes.
But, even though my predictive powers have waned like the Norns at the twilight of the gods, it’s far more likely that with Labour we’ll just be getting more of the same, but worse. First past the post has served up gridlock. We are about to lose the very few protections against the lunatic fringes of what calls itself ‘the left’. We will wave goodbye to Kemi Badenoch, the one-woman firewall fighting a rearguard action, the only minister taking the initiative and doing her job. We may possibly even lose her from parliament if the more extreme polls are accurate, though that prospect seems thankfully remote. The Labour replacements for her, and for her fellow, blithely unaware, minsters aren’t oblivious to or cowed by the grim ideology of the ‘sensible’ middle class. They march in lockstep with it. That can only lead one way: to disaster.
The only slightly reassuring thing about Starmer is that he’ll break any promise and drop any cast-iron commitment as if it was a casserole dish and he’s forgotten to put on his oven gloves. The Labour leader’s solemn oaths are written in sand. Miliband’s Great British Energy wheeze, for example, is so barmy that Starmer will surely be forced to drop it very quickly. How will his MPs react when he changes his tune as he has done before?
If disaster strikes, there will, at least, be some fun to look forward to under a Labour government. The prospect of Starmer and Trump in the same room is hilarious, sitcom heaven. Starmer visibly thinks about everything he’s about to say: it’s like watching an ancient grandfather clock grinding its gears up to strike the hour. Trump, meanwhile, has no filter at all between brain and mouth. The ‘special relationship’ will be in trouble.
This election is a squib, but the fireworks of the late ‘20s – a Labour government that swiftly turns out to be even worse than its loathed predecessor, Farage on the loose as the established head of a mass movement, a very angry country that will make today feel like an oasis of calm – promise to be spectacular. Personally, I can’t wait.
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