Britain witnessed a new dawn on Friday as the Labour Party won a landslide victory under the leadership of its leader Keir Starmer. Rishi Sunak, the first Indian-origin prime minister, led his Conservative Party to its worst defeat in modern times. Its vote share fell to just 25.8% – worse than the previous lowest vote share of 29.25% recorded by the Duke of Wellington in the 1832 election.
Although Sunak retained his seat – Richmond and Northallerton in Yorkshire – about a dozen of his cabinet ministers lost their seats, including Penny Mordaunt, who had been seen as a future Conservative Party leader, and Defence Minister Grant Shapps. Some of the seats the party lost in Thursday’s election had been Conservative held for more than a century.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose ill-planned tax cuts collapsed the British economy in 2022 and forced her to resign just 45 days into office, also lost. Her resignation brought Sunak to power, who was then seen as the only person in the Conservative Party who could be trusted to fix the broken economy.
People wanted change
The main reason for the Conservatives’ defeat was that people were demanding a change after 14 years of rule. Although Sunak was able to stabilize the economy immediately, it was not an easy task to fix something that was badly affected by Brexit, Covid and the Russia-Ukraine war. It was during this time that India replaced the UK as the fifth largest economy.
Sunak may know a thing or two about business and economics, but he has never been a popular politician. He lacked charisma and sound political judgment and was often accused of being a weak leader. Despite his promises and efforts, he could not improve the National Health Service and stop small boats of illegal immigrants from reaching Britain’s shores.
However, Sunak, a former Brexit supporter and right-wing politician, was regularly attacked by supporters of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who blamed him for forcing Johnson to resign. During his tenure as Prime Minister, he was also targeted by a group of ambitious right-wing fellow MPs, including Suella Braverman, another Indian-origin MP who was removed by Sunak as Home Secretary.
The chariot of reform
But the biggest blow to Sunak and his Conservative Party in this election came from the right-wing party Reform. Led by Nigel Farage, a fiery veteran anti-immigrant politician, Reform won a large share of the Conservative vote across the country, causing them to lose at least a hundred seats. Farage himself was elected to Parliament this time, after seven failed attempts before. Three other members of his party have also been elected.
This is a landslide victory for the Labour Party in Britain, which is a left-wing party. It is even more remarkable because of how much of Europe is tilted towards right-wing ideology, with six countries on the continent having hard-right governments. Labour’s victory is close to the victory it had under 43-year-old Tony Blair, when he won 418 seats with 43% of the vote. In this election, Labour under Starmer has won 412 seats with just 35% of the vote.
So, why is Labour’s vote share so unremarkable in this election? First, like Sunak, Starmer is not a charismatic politician. Coming from a working class background, he is a former human rights lawyer, but is not a popular figure outside his own party. Many traditional Labour voters were angered by him for moving the party to the centre and abandoning its socialist principles and his support for Israel. It lost some seats to independents in heavily Muslim areas who successfully fought a pro-Palestinian campaign.
Some Labour supporters unhappy with Starmer’s environmental policy switched to the Greens, who won four seats in Parliament for the first time.
Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour Party leader and India critic, won as an independent candidate after he was expelled from the Labour Party over anti-Semitic remarks.
How did Indians vote?
A large number of Indians also voted against Labour and helped flip Labour’s traditional seat in Leicester in central England in favour of the Conservatives. Shivani Raja’s victory in Leicester East was one of the few good things for Sunak’s party in this election. Bob Blackman, a vocal supporter of India in the British Parliament, also retained his Harrow East seat by a large margin. This also indicated that at least some Indians remain loyal to the Conservatives.
Although India gained independence from Britain under a Labour government, relations with India have improved in recent times under the rule of the Conservative Party. There is a strong pro-Pakistan lobby within the Labour Party that tries to influence policies, although not very successfully. This has alienated many Indians.
But Keir Starmer is a pragmatic politician. As Prime Minister, he will try to maintain good relations with India, although a Labour government can be expected to criticise human rights violations and any unfair treatment of minorities in India.
One of Starmer’s priorities will be to conclude a free trade agreement with India, on which the previous government had already done a lot of work. Indian students, health workers, financial and computer experts play a vital role in the British economy and wider society. This is unlikely to change under the new government in the UK.
The tough road ahead
Like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, the Conservative Party too has a strong electoral machine. So, after a post-mortem and some blame game, the party is expected to regroup, as it has done in the past. But this time it will take a lot of time for them to fully recover from the scale of the defeat.
Rishi Sunak is expected to resign the party leadership but will remain in the role for a short time until a new leader is chosen. He has already pledged to stay in parliament, despite reports that he may return to the US to take up a lucrative corporate job. The election of a new leader will determine the direction the party wants to take. A challenge from Nigel Farage’s Reform Party will push the Conservatives to the right. But there are others in the party who will argue they must return to the centre if they are to beat Labour at the next election.
(Naresh Kaushik is a senior journalist and commentator based in London.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author
