Labour’s ideological dilemma in poll-bound UK reflects wider European trend

The year 2024 looks set to be important for global politics, with eagerly-anticipated elections in the United States, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico, among other countries.

The United Kingdom will also hold elections on a yet-to-be-decided date, due no later than January 2025, although its likely outcome already seems to be certain.

The Conservative Party, currently led by Rishi Sunak, is expected to suffer a devastating defeat, as it trails the opposition Labour Party by almost 20 points in opinion polls.

Even many past Conservative voters look set to opt for change, with 68 percent now saying the country had gotten worse since 2010 when the Conservatives took power.

Yet, Labour leader Keir Starmer seems to be reluctant to oppose the Conservatives on key topics.

This reflects a wider trend in Europe, where many left and centre parties are moving towards right-wing positions, bearing wider economic and social implications.

It raises serious questions about Labour’s philosophy, as the Conservative government's rhetoric sometimes resembles the far-right-wing populism seen in other parts of Europe.

Conservatives’ ideological shift

The flagging popularity of the Conservatives follows a series of unfavourable economic policies, which have adversely affected most segments of British society.

This includes austerity measures – seen as shifting the economic burden of the 2007-08 financial crisis away from the wealthy – like cuts to local funding and domestic investments, which had eventually eroded the party’s economic credibility.

Any notion of credibility was further tarnished following the brief and tumultuous 45-day tenure of Liz Truss in autumn 2022, whose foolhardy experiment with ‘trickle-down economics’ almost plunged the UK into a recession.

Although the UK averted a recession under Sunak, the economy will remain the central concern for voters in the upcoming elections.

Indeed, many Britons still feel their livelihoods have worsened under the Conservative Party and that it has failed to manage wider global economic challenges, such as from the Covid pandemic or the fallout from the Ukraine war.

However, the government's focus on migrant baiting also reveals an attempt to appeal to voters and divert attention from its own shortcomings.

Recent proposals, such as an income threshold for residency visas for non-UK relatives to £38,700 (about US$ 49,000)– a restrictive sum for many workers – further reveal this hardening ideological position.

The government's approach, exemplified by mantras like "stop the boats" targeting asylum-seekers crossing the Channel from Calais in France, echoes a broader migrant-baiting strategy.

This follows the even more controversial plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, strongly supported by controversial former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who said it was “her dream” to bring the plan to fruition.

The Boris Johnson-era plan was initially ruled unlawful by the UK Supreme Court in November 2023, after the policy was deemed unsafe. It also contracted Britain’s legal obligations as a member of the European Court of Human Rights. That didn’t stop parliament from passing an amended bill on January 17, which aimed to circumvent sections of human rights law where it contradicts the Rwanda scheme.

The bill’s next stop is the House of Lords for a critical second vote, which has already faced delays following scrutiny from the Upper House, in a clear blow to Sunak’s administration.

Raising further questions that government policy could have been at odds with its own laws, Braverman tried to ban pro-Palestine marches in November 2023, describing them as “hate marches”. Yet even the head of the London metropolitan police and his deputy had to remind Braverman of the legal right to protest prior to her dismissal that month.

This ideological shift didn’t come out of nowhere. Amid the days of the Brexit impasse, prior to Britain’s eventual departure from the European Union in 2020 and after the 2016 referendum, Boris Johnson sought to empower nationalist pro-Brexit and anti-migrant xenophobic elements of the party while sidelining more moderate voices.

His moves helped mainstream such populist views, which had gained traction in the wake of the financial crisis.

Such normalisation of far-right rhetoric is evident given the changing perceptions of policies. Fifteen years ago, views over policies such as the Rwanda plan would have been unequivocally condemned as far-right, even within the Conservative Party.

Yet, such narratives are becoming increasingly mainstreamed.

Labour following the right

Given the Conservatives’ expected defeat, it’s arguably not a matter of if the opposition Labour Party will win but by how much.

However, while the rising cost-of-living crisis presents an opportunity for Keir Starmer to advocate for better economic policies, he appears determined to prioritise proving he is more credible than the Conservatives rather than offering substantial political changes.

Starmer, a former lawyer, has shifted from many promises upon becoming the leader in 2020 that reflected Labour’s traditional pro-working-class values, including strong support for unions and strike actions and ensuring a fairer tax system.

He has moderated his views on welfare reforms, reducing university tuition fees, nationalising key utilities and the transport sector, and halting privatisation of the National Health Service (NHS). Additionally, his commitment to funding green energy projects in the UK appears to have wavered.

In his quest for power, Starmer has sought to distance himself from his leftist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who suffered a heavy defeat to Boris Johnson in the last UK election.

Meanwhile, seeking to win over Conservative voters, he has appeared in right-wing tabloids like The Sun and The Telegraph.

He recently wrote a column that praised Margaret Thatcher and her neo-liberal and pro-privatisation policies during the 1980s while promising voters he would “make Brexit work”.

Beyond the economy, he also sought to embrace Conservative ideas in other spheres. Indeed, Starmer’s party has reportedly prepared a legally “watertight” alternative to the government’s Rwanda plan, seeking to stave off criticisms that he is ‘soft’ on immigration.

Yet this absence of proposing more forward-thinking and novel economic policies, which could offer something new to voters, may leave voters fixated on these social issues.

It leaves a vacuum, which may later be filled by hardline factions within the Conservative Party or partly consumed by parties like the populist Reform UK, which is currently polling at about 10 percent.

For the UK, given its 'First Past The Post' electoral system, electoral success is generally contested between the Conservatives and Labour.

This situation simply makes these two major parties more susceptible to right-wing influences rather than enabling a far-right party to have greater political success.

Moderates chasing hardliners

Ultimately, the UK is engulfed in a rightward shift echoed across Europe, which in turn boosts more hardline political views.

In the Netherlands, the prominent People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) proposed more stringent policies to tackle migration, seeking to pinch votes from Geert Wilders’s far-right and populist campaign.

Yet rather than countering Wilders, this arguably boosted and legitimised his rhetoric, contributing to his November 2023 electoral victory.

Similar patterns appear to be unfolding in France, as President Emmanuel Macron passed a hardline immigration bill in December, which the far-right Marine Le Pen claimed as an “ideological victory”.

Germany’s far-right AFD, which is increasingly popular in the polls, may hope to benefit from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s attempts to implement stricter migration policies, indicating another rightward shift.

Naturally, the outcome of the US presidential election in November 2024 may influence this trajectory across Europe, especially in the UK.

For now, as European politicians continue to blend increasingly right-wing beliefs with traditional neoliberal views, it leaves question marks over how this evolving phenomenon may impact societies and livelihoods in the coming years, particularly with debates shifting away from economic reform.