Why the Labour Party won in the UK

Britain’s left-wing Labour Party won a resounding victory in the national election on Thursday, returning to power after 14 years under the Conservative Party.

Labour made many promises during the campaign and delivering on them will be a daunting task that requires addressing Britain’s biggest problems, including the cost of living, immigration and rebuilding services such as the country’s health and transport systems. Poor policies and world events beyond the government’s control have left the UK economy in a slump, leading to stagnant wages and underinvestment in government services.

The specifics of how the Communist Party will approach these issues are still being formed as it gradually figures out how to use its newfound power.

After a chaotic run of three Conservative prime ministers in less than four months, Labour’s message of stability resonated with voters, who voted for members of the party to win a majority of the 650 seats in the House of Commons and its leader, Keir Starmer, to become prime minister.

Starmer is something of a mystery figure, and his platform in this campaign has often been vague or bland, with the British public apparently unimpressed. temperature To him, he was a character. But he Successful recovery His advantage is that he is not a Conservative.

“(The Conservatives) have been in power for 14 years and it’s been miserable.” Ben Ansell“It’s going to be very, very difficult to win another election anywhere at that point in time,” the professor of comparative democracy at Nuffield College, Oxford University, told Vox.

Labour’s campaign slogan was simple: “Change”. But now it is not enough to simply be the alternative to the Conservatives; Labour must actually deliver on the key policy issues that people care about in order to build the stable government it needs to stay in power.

Britain’s multiple crises have been building up over many years and will not be solved immediately by a mere change of leadership.

Take the hard-hit public services sector in the UK. In 2010, the Conservative Party (also known as the Tories) came to power under the leadership of current Foreign Secretary David Cameron, just as the world was reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. The UK was hit particularly hard because a large part of its economy depends on the financial sector.

In order to help the country out of its serious financial difficulties, the Cameron government Decided to reduce investment in social services picture National Health Service The choice still has lasting consequences today, meaning long waits for doctor visits, crumbling state schools and stagnant wages in the nursing and state service sectors, with workers striking to protest working conditions and pay.

While the economic and cost of living crisis is not unique to the UK, some decisions by the Conservative Party have made it particularly difficult. The Brexit choice, initially decided in a 2016 referendum and pushed through by Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019, has had adverse effects on trade, jobs and the cost of living. An independent analysis estimated The UK’s real GDP is currently 2% to 3% lower than it would have been if it had remained in the EU. The Brexit decision is now deeply unpopular.

Ansell said Britain had experienced “its worst economic performance in a decade since Napoleon” under the Conservatives, so Labour’s promises of reform – however vague – were attractive.

Scandals and policy inconsistency haven’t helped the Conservatives either. Johnson falls from grace Previously, he was involved in a series of scandals known as “Partygate”, in which he allowed or participated in social gatherings while other parts of the United States were in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2022 RemovalJohnson’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, won the leadership of the party and the country with proposals to cut taxes on corporations and the super-rich, but her implementation was so bad that Global bond markets in panic For weeks. Current Chancellor Rishi Sunak followed suit, positioning himself as the adult in the room who could solve problems.

But his signature policy stance has been to “stop the boats,” referring to the surge in irregular migration across the English Channel from Europe in small boats. To that end, his government has adopted a policy of detaining and deporting irregular migrants to Rwanda. In addition to effectively violating the right to asylum, the program has been ineffective; no one has been sent to Rwanda, although some migrants have been detained under the program. The government is losing around £8 million a day. It is worth noting that asylum seekers account for Only about 11% of immigrants in the UK population.

Although overall 2022 hits record highmost voters don’t actually see immigration It has become one of the three issues that they are most concerned about. How people feel about immigration Highly brokenIn a sense, the Conservative government has suffered a crisis of its own making over its Rwanda policy and the illegal immigration bill – the tough policies enacted have not been successful and voters have seen them as costly.

All these failures ultimately led to the Conservative Party’s defeat. The Economist even endorsed the Labour Party for the first time in nearly two decades.

Labour’s signature achievements in the post-World War II era were the creation of the NHS and the creation of a national minimum wage. Now the party must tackle three major overlapping issues: the economy and the cost of living; government services in trouble; and immigration policy. But as it outlines in its report, Election ManifestoFor the most part, Labor’s policy proposals are not very specific or detailed. In the short term, the party is likely to focus on building a stable government to prove that it should remain in power.

In the short term, Starmer and Labour have pledged Rescind the Rwanda policy immediately Labor said the government was seeking powers to focus on people smuggling syndicates who profit from dangerous ferry operations. Illegal immigrants will again be allowed to apply for asylumand promised to address the backlog of asylum cases that have not been processed under the Illegal Immigration Act.

As for the economy, Labour promised Invest in industry and create a business-friendly environment, But it did not specify what that would mean. In terms of managing the cost of living crisis, Labour could increase the minimum wage or encourage cities to adopt a “living wage”, Like Oxford Universitya localized norm that recognizes the different costs of living in different regions.

Labour will opt for “improving the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU by removing unnecessary trade barriers”, but will not rejoin the EU or the common market. Negotiations on agriculture and livestock are aimed at reducing food costs, while a professional services agreement will help UK professionals work in EU countries.

The Labour Party also promisedSaving the NHS” and build a health service for the future. But this will require public investment, as Starmer’s party has pledged that the service will always be publicly funded. That means the money has to come from somewhere, and raising personal income tax right now is not an attractive option given the economic challenges facing many voters. In the short term, Labour has pledged to reduce waiting times, get the private sector to help with large numbers of cases, and improve relations with health care unions.

How exactly Labour intends to achieve its goals remains an open question. Labour does not actually have a strong new economic policy; nor does it have a grand, compelling ideological framework.

In response to Brexit, one of the main factors dragging down the British economy, the Labour Party plans to reach an agreement with the EU on agriculture and livestock to reduce food costs, and hopes to reach a professional services agreement to help British professionals work in EU countries. Much of the economic pain from Brexit is likely to remain.

On immigration, apart from abandoning the Rwanda plan, there are few differences between Labour and the Conservatives.

"The current administration has taken law enforcement very seriously," Ben BrindleA researcher at the Oxford Migration Observatory told Vox that Labour’s approach “is still doing a lot of what current enforcement actions are already doing” to stop illegal immigration. As for immigration of students and skilled workers, net migration was likely to fall anyway, due to the policies already in place, rather than anything Labour actually did.

The Labour Party does have Proposals to address housing issues and transportation crises—including Relaxation of building restrictions This would allow for the construction of real new housing, infrastructure and transport services, helping to stimulate the economy.

“We have a planning system that was written in 1948, it’s very restrictive and it means we can’t build anything anywhere,” Ansell said. “We have a housing crisis. We have a transport crisis, we have a public infrastructure crisis and an energy crisis – all because we can’t build things. It gives (Labor) a narrative. It also gives businesses the expectation that there will actually be a lot of infrastructure or investment and that it may continue for quite some time.”

But ultimately, Labour sees building a stable government as a useful framework, especially after years of uncertainty following Brexit, but that may be part of its mission. The party’s manifesto is built around the idea that “the chaos” that has exacerbated external problems and led to national crises during Labour’s time in power can be stopped.