The Five Key Takeaways from the UK’s Seinfeld Election

A Tory loss, more than a Labour win?

The so-called ‘change’ election has gone ahead and produced its massive change; Labour is in with 412 MPs at the time of writing, a 170ish seat majority. Now it’s time for more of the same. As in, the country’s problems remain and the solutions are still nowhere in sight. In other words, Labour’s impressive win will also serve as a high-water mark for their new government.?

That’s right. Unless Labour interprets its mandate correctly, it will be all downhill from here.

Takeaway #1 - Starmer had better have enjoyed his honeymoon - because it’s over

It feels good to see off your sworn political enemy and have your commitments endorsed by the electorate in an election. We’ve been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt. Only that’s not what’s happened here. Sure, Labour have buried the Tories in terms of seat count, but more people held their nose voting for Labour than rushed into the polling station aflame with burning Labour desire. To wit, Labour produced last night’s result on just shy of? 34% of the vote, a mere point or so improvement over their ‘disastrous’ 2019 figure. As one pollster put it, we’re witnessing the erection of a ‘political sandcastle’ (one that thankfully includes a much diminished SNP in Scotland).

Why? Well, Keir Starmer is still a mystery, as are most of the details supporting the ‘missions’ of the Labour programme for government. Moreover, now that the glue holding the Labour coalition together? - i.e. a massive dislike of Tories - has now passed its July 4 best before date, Starmer will learn that keeping a party together in government is a lot of hard work (especially when the majority of your MPs won’t have government jobs). It’s already been hard work, as the loss of seats like Blackburn and Leicester East over the question of Gaza demonstrate. (Worryingly, Labour did very poorly in seats with a Muslim population of over 25%.) The left/centre factional splits in Labour have also let some seats slip away, as was the case in Chingford, where former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith retained his seat thanks to the presence of Faiza Shaheen, the former Labour candidate who ran as an independent after she was turfed by Team Starmer in favour of a less radical candidate.

And then there’s the small matter of the intractable problems facing Britain. While Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves will undoubtedly (and disingenuously) pull some version of ‘we didn’t know the books would be THIS bad’ as they enter Downing Street, the complete fiction they peddled during the campaign that Britain’s fiscal problems could be solved without (major) tax hikes and/or (major) spending cuts will quickly unravel. Add this to incoming Prime Minister Chief of Staff Sue Gray’s reputed ‘bucket of shit’ of other issues that could go wrong - like a Thames Water implosion - and Labour will be straight into the long, hard slog of government.?

Takeaway #2 - Stop gloating Nige, it’s all downhill for you, too

Nigel Farage will surely cackle as he snarfles a pint (or twelve) to celebrate his victory in Clacton. He will cackle as a handful of other Reform UK MPs join him. He’ll even cackle that one of them happens to be Richard Tice, the former Reform UK supremo he so rudely bumped aside at the start of the campaign. But that will be the end of his laughs. Having finally climbed the mountain after seven previous failures, Farage will quickly realise that being a backbench MP with a tiny cauc(us) is a tough gig.

Farage will further bristle if Starmer goes ahead and bans second jobs for MPs; he’ll be fuming that he won’t be able to get paid for continuously humping Donald Trump’s leg during the US campaign. And while the UK media will continue to come to him because he gives good quote, he won’t be the force he was outside of Parliament. Which is why Farage should make the issue of proportional representation his pet issue inside Parliament, even if Lib Dem leader Ed Davey suddenly loses his appetite to discuss it, having just produced 67 more seats than Reform with two percent less of the vote.?

Takeaway #3 - The Tories need to get their act together

Per our last point, the surest way to frustrate Nigel Farage is to keep him in his teeny tiny Reform tent. This means not inviting him into the bigger Tory tent, which is really where he wants to be. Wreaking havoc. Which would be bad for the Tories. Do you hear us, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman? The public might be disappointed with the Conservatives after 14 bruising years in government, but the answer isn’t to serve up a half-fat version of Reform UK; people will just buy the real thing. More to the point, the people won’t have the chance to buy the real thing for approximately five years. That’s a lot of time for Nige and Reform UK to come off the boil.?

And so, the best thing the Conservatives can do now is move to the naughty corner, put on their thinking caps, and come up with some policies that alleviate the pain Britons are now experiencing. A realistic plan on immigration. An aggressive plan on housing. Maybe even some real tax reform that will actually boost economic growth. Ideas are the surest way back to power - not trying to out-Farage Nigel Farage.?

Takeaway #4 - Britain’s biggest problems still don’t have answers

Which brings us back to Keir Starmer and Team Labour. For all of their pro-business talk, it’s not at all clear that Labour have any policies that would actually produce a significant uptick in Britain’s economic activity. Moreover, there is no more low-hanging fruit. If there was a growth switch ready to be flicked it would have been flucking flicked already. Well, there is one switch ready that could make a difference, but that switch is re-joining the EU, which Starmer has now ruled out for his lifetime. So much for growth.?

The Canadian comparison political pundits have been making in this election is between the British Tories of today and their Canadian cousins of 1993. What they should be comparing is the Liberal government that replaced the Canadian Conservatives in 1993 and went on to make the swingeing cuts needed to bring the budget back into balance, paving the way for 13 years of uninterrupted government. Of course, those cuts included gutting a military that still had lots of flesh to cut, not the bare bones British military of today. It also involved downloading a lot of pain onto the provinces, which isn’t an option available to Starmer either. He is entering a world of picking poisons, not more political platitudes. Will the new prime minister have the steel to make the tough calls? Early talk from Wes Streeting on the need for NHS reform suggests yes. But where will that talk be on the economy?

Takeaway #5 - The media has never been more important - or more ineffective

An often underappreciated key to an effective government is having an effective opposition. Britain suffered during the May-era Brexit negotiations because Labour was run by a militant Trotskyite and secret Leaver who was rubbish at holding the government to account. And so a similar vacuum is likely to manifest in the early days of the Starmer SuperDuperCalafragilisticSupermajority. Pace our caution above, the Tories are likely to be fighting like rats in a sack. Meanwhile, a more or less ideologically-sympatico Ed Davey will probably still be carroming off some inanimate object while Farage humps whatever is holding a microphone. The point being, no one will be highly motivated to hold Starmer & Gang to account. No, not even John Swinney.?

Which brings us to the media. The media shed a lot of heat during the campaign while providing very little light. But a strong and vibrant press is another key to good government. It could be the press will need to be the official opposition whilst the actual opposition recover from their post-election convulsions.?

It’s too bad, then, that the modern information economy is antithetical to the production, distribution and consumption of good journalism. As we like to say here in Trafalgar HQ, the news is a vegetable and the internet/social media is a giant sugar shack. Which isn’t a request for the media to sugar coat their vegetables so much as it is a call for the new government to have a pop at the social media platforms for pumping so much misinformation into our democratic air. Giving the Online Harms Bill some real teeth, anyone?

That’s all for now. We’ll be back in your inboxes once the new cabinet is picked.?

Team Trafalgar?