Next year will be a key test of the Labour mandate, with over 2,000 council seats up for grabs. The May local elections will also prove critical for the Tories, who currently hold over half these seats.
Both Labour and the Conservatives face a huge challenge meanwhile from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which will be hoping to make big gains and establish the party as a major force in time for the next General Election.
But, if the goal of the British Right is to unseat Labour, the risk is that — longer-term anyway — the Right-wing vote gets split, allowing Labour a clear run for the next ten years.
If, after all, Reform’s model is what the Canadian Reform Party achieved with its reverse takeover of the-then established Canadian Tories back in the 1990s, then it should be remembered that Canadian Reform’s achievement allowed the Liberal Party to win three consecutive elections.
The May elections will also be a key test of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservatives, and certainly, given Sir Keir Starmer’s approval ratings, it would not be hard to imagine the Tories doing better than expected in May.
Still, without working together, there is a possibility Reform eats enough into the Tory vote share to allow Labour to come through the middle (which is exactly what happened in July).
Yes, Reform is also eating into Labour’s vote share in what are fast becoming three-way marginals in many parts of the North and coastal areas, but one cannot help but suspect Reform remains a bigger challenger to the Tories.
That aside, it must be remembered that — however bad Labour’s approval ratings — to be ousted from power would require a herculean task in terms of overturning a colossal majority in the Commons.
True, Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide was overturned in 2024, but the Tory majority was stil considerably below what Labour achieved in July, and its overturning was helped by the freak event of Covid on top of an unbelievable sense of betrayal among the Tory faithful over Brexit and immigration.
Sorry, but unless Sir Keir and Wes Streeting start flogging the NHS off at knockdown prices between now and 2029 I don’t see history repeating itself in quite the same manner.
Moreover, getting unpopular measures out of the way early on may be a smart move by Labour, believing as the party likely does that voters have short memories and by the time of the next election the economy, among other things, will have turned a page.
The Right, for its part, needs a more consistent and positive message than Labour’s-worse-than-us guv. Frankly, no one believes what the Tories have to say anyway, even with a new broom in Kemi Badenoch, since so much of the party leadership remains associated with the old regime.
Reform has far more ideological credibility but the voting system remains the party’s Achilles Heel. That said, if anyone can read the room and prepare the ground to become the major party of the British Right it is Nigel Farage.
But will that rise come at the price of Tory decline, thereby opening the way for Ten-Year Keir?
Who knows? But the possibility cannot be discounted, nor should anyone underestimate how tough it will be to overturn Labour’s supermajority in the first place.
Regardless, Labour has at least five years. We have barely hit five months and look at the direction of travel, at least from the perspective of British “conservatives” out in the country.
If the goal is to guard against a decade of this then new alliances may need to be formed, alongside a very clear and concise message of what exactly will be offered versus this Labour juggernaut.
