Economic woes, distrust and the inability to disagree: Why Labour's Victory Won't Bring Instant Change
DISCLAIMER: This was written the week BEFORE the election results were announced.
by Sam Waddell L6FWhen Britain wakes up to a Labour government on Friday morning, it will be a government which the majority of people have not voted for. Keir Starmer will potentially command the biggest majority of the post-war era, with the power to pass anything and everything he chooses to, manifesto pledge or not. The Labour party will have the power to, as the Conservatives did on no less than 4 occasions in the last decade, install a new, unelected Prime Minister with the same power as Keir. Ordinary Britons will see their tax burden increased yet again, having already risen to its highest level in the post-war era. And all of this without the majority of the British electorate backing the Labour party at the ballot box.
This article is not intended to be an attack on the UK’s ‘First Past the Post’ voting system, although it does desperately need reform. Neither, despite my obvious misgivings about a Starmer government, is it intended to be an attack piece on the Labour Party. The Conservatives fully deserve their impending defeat, having presided over 14 years of chaos, corruption and crashing the economy. Britain does, as Sir Keir would put it, need ‘change.’
However, it is beyond naive to believe that Friday will mark a shining new era for the nation for three, key reasons - a complete lack of support for or even trust in the establishment, the refusal to tackle the gravity of our economic situation and, most importantly, our inability to respectfully disagree.
First, the establishment. Long gone are the days of Blair, when the government was adored and wholeheartedly entrusted with governing the nation. The 2016 Brexit vote demonstrated just how much the establishment is despised in this country, with those in Westminster losing touch with the rest of the country. The leading figures on both campaigns fully expected the UK to stay in the EU, with even Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage admitting they expected to lose the vote. The anti-establishment UKIP polled as high as 25% in 2014, whilst only 24.4% of eligible voters turned out for the Conservative - who won a majority - in 2015. What was then hailed as a victory for David Cameron’s party was instead a damning indictment of voter apathy and distrust of those in power. Our deeply unfair voting system does not help, with the same election seeing more than 1 in 8 voters support UKIP, only for them to receive just 1 seat, 330 less than the Conservatives. By the same token, Reform UK now poll second nationally, yet will gain at best only a handful of seats, whilst the Conservatives form the official opposition with a similar number of votes.
A system which so blatantly skews results in favour of the main two parties will invariably lead to a deep mistrust of the establishment. That Sir Keir Starmer, despite being on track to win the biggest majority since 1832, has a negative net approval rating only further demonstrates that no matter how large the deserved revenge the electorate exacts on the Conservatives this week, the new Labour government will not be riding the crest of a wave of enthusiasm and optimism.
And undeniably, part of the reason for that is the bleak economic picture that’s hitting not just the news, but people’s pockets. The Conservatives, traditionally the party trusted with managing our economy and cutting taxes, has raised the tax burden to it’s highest level in the post-war era, and so the duty to tackle economic hardship, inflation and unemployment will now pass to Labour, the party of high taxes and the party which has left the nation in economic ruin the last two times it left office, in 1979 and 2010. After the latter, outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Bynre left his successor a note perfectly summing up the economic situation labour left behind - reading simply, “I’m afraid there is no money.”
But even ignoring the horrendous record of both major parties when it comes to the economy, the rhetoric from both is deeply concerning. Labour, living in their own fantasy land where the nationalisation of energy can be seemingly fully funded from private schools, and the Conservatives, who want to cut taxes whilst pouring more money into Rwanda, theSocial care and defence, both fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room: our NHS.
Nobody can dispute the incredible work done by our doctors, nurses and all other NHS staff during the pandemic, especially with regards to the speed and efficiency of the critical, world-leading vaccine rollout. What we can dispute, however, is the preposterous public spending spent on the NHS. Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Sweden, Denmark and all bar 6 nations worldwide spend less on healthcare as a percentage of their GDP - and those countries don’t currently have 8 million people unable to see a GP.
The unfounded narrative pushed by politicians, doctors and journalists that there is some deep-rooted Conservative conspiracy to defund the NHS is not only patently untrue, but dangerous. Dangerous, because the failures of the NHS are placed at the feet of Conservative politicians, who have, for all their faults, increased healthcare spending by 14% over their time in office and went to great lengths to keep the NHS functioning during COVID. (Real spending fell, only nominal spending rose. Ed.)
The NHS is the closest thing we have to a national religion. What began (clap for carers) as a well-meaning show of support for all our frontline staff during the pandemic quickly became a ritualistic, mindless show of solidarity for the NHS, a sentiment still present during this year's 75th anniversary ‘celebrations.’ Labour and the Greens love to accuse the Conservatives of seeking to privatise the NHS, an accusation the Conservatives strenuously deny (you’d have thought that were this their plan, they’d have done it at some point in the 32 of the last 45 years they’ve spent in power). Yet, whilst preserving the essential principle that healthcare ought to be ‘free at the point of use,’ more private sector involvement is no bad thing if it helps to break the neverending deadlock in our healthcare system.
The private sector makes up just 10% of the UK hospital sector, compared to 60% in Germany and 100% in the Netherlands, which manages to provide universal healthcare with minimal waiting lists, whilst spending just 70% of what the UK does as a percentage of GDP.
Privatisation is not necessarily the answer, as Norway (also a universal healthcare system) has had a longer average wait time than the UK over the last 15 years (with equal private sector involvement compared to the Dutch). However, what is evident is that our NHS desperately needs reform, having swallowed up over 75% of the money budgeted for social care since 2021. Whilst universal healthcare is a non-negotiable, that only Reform UK (who have many major red flags of their own) are willing to acknowledge the need for change is of deep concern.
Our failure to a nation to even discuss this issue is indicative of the third, and most important of the three key factors as to why the UK is set for continued discontent, stagnation and public apathy - we have lost the ability to disagree.
No longer do we live in a society where debate and discourse are universally accepted, where people can respectfully disagree. Arguably, this stems from the Brexit debate, most potently with the murder of Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, by the group ‘Britain First.’ The EU referendum rightly sparked a public debate around the future of our country, in which the vast majority of those on both sides participated respectfully. However, the murder of Cox, and the (less violent, but more notably on a larger scale) vitriolic clashes between ‘Remainers’ and ‘Brexiteers’ from social media to the House of Commons underlined the divisions between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives across the country. Disagreements are good, but the vengeful aftertaste of the Brexit debate still looms large in the UK to this day. At some point, we forgot how to move on.
Take the case of Labour MP Rosie Duffield. Like Harry Potter author J.K Rowling and University professor Kathleen Stock, forced out of her post in 2021 due to student protests, Duffield has been subject to a torrent of abuse on social media and in person due to her “gender-critical” approach to transgender issues, with the abuse reaching the point where she requires police protection, and was told to stay away from her own parties conference for her own safety. Likewise, the response from both the Conservatives and Reform UK to the weekly pro-Palestinian protests was to attempt to ban them. Whilst the fivefold increase in antisemitic hate crime since Hamas’ deplorable acts on October 7th is unacceptable, the failure of the government itself to even tolerate genuine concerns about Israel’s actions in Gaza is not only indicative of our inability to respectfully disagree as a nation, but an assault on the rights to freedom of speech and to protest enshrined by the UN.
Perhaps the chief culprit in the case of the UK’s public discourse crisis is the rise of social media, most notably on X, formerly known as twitter. With more people on twitter than ever before, it’s easy to fall into an echo chamber of confirmation bias, whilst the rise of ‘cancel culture’ has turned the internet into a world of treading lightly, and conforming to the opinion of the so-called “woke mob.” Such a sentiment inevitably causes a backlash from the right, which we saw in part with the triumph of the ‘silent majority’ in the 2019 election ,and we continue to see in the rise of Reform UK today.
Ultimately, this inability to respect each other’s opinions makes it near impossible to resolve the fundamental issues with our society. How can we honestly tackle the economic, social and moral conundrums facing us as a nation when we can’t even have a discourse about them? Until the UK learns to have an honest conversation, we’ll forever be stuck in this cycle of inaction, toxicity and economic downturn. Unlike 1997, things can certainly get worse.