‘Turning the Page’? The 2024 UK General Elections and First Implications of Labour's Landslide Victory
本文分析2024年英国大选工党压倒性胜利的成因与初步影响，指出其胜利具有脆弱性，面临经济停滞、地区不平等及脱欧后遗症等挑战，对关注英国政治与选举的学者有参考价值。
On 22 May 2024, the UK Conservative Prime Minister (PM) Rishi Sunak surprisingly announced that a snap general election was going to take place on 4 July, around 6 months ahead of the expected end of the parliamentary term. Since Sunak's entry in Downing Street in October 2022, opinion polls had consistently put the Labour party 15 to 20 points ahead of the Conservatives. Rumour has it that the vote was anticipated by the PM after he was advised about the dire economic forecasts for the autumn. The attempt to avoid a large defeat, however, was unsuccessful, and the Conservatives ended up with the worst electoral crash ever (losing more than 200 seats – from 326 to 121 – compared to the previous election in December 2019). Though Labour won big in terms of seats, this was due to a record-high level of disproportionality of the plurality electoral system, which magnified a rather modest victory (33.7, with an increase of less than two percentage points over 2019), translating it into a comfortable margin of majority of over 170 seats. Seen in the context of the recent tensions and changes in UK politics, the electoral result was not very surprising, for at least three reasons. First, the Conservatives had governed since 2010. Like in the previous two long electoral cycles (Conservative with Thatcher-Major in 1979–1997; Labour with Blair and Brown, 1997–2010), voters clearly manifested an appetite for change, in what has been defined as a ‘valence vote’, in which the incumbent party lost ‘competence, leadership, and capacity to deliver’ (Surridge, 2024). Second, the political conditions were very different from the ones of the 2019 election (cf. Prosser, 2024). Back then, Boris Johnson won big, capitalizing, amongst other things, on the pledge to ‘get Brexit done’, in a process that, starting with the June 2016 EU Membership referendum, eventually led to the country's exit from the European Union in 2020. The electoral campaign, as well as the vote, also grafted onto a ‘geography of discontent’ (McCann, 2019), where many ‘left behind areas’ turned to the Conservative party, buying into its promise to ‘level up the country’ and address persisting socio-economic inequalities that drove also the support for Brexit (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). Most prominent amongst them were the Midlands and North of England constituencies, making up the so-called ‘Red Wall’. Ending a prolonged period of uncertainty, in 2019, Johnson won the necessary majority to achieve his goals also thanks to Nigel Farage's ‘informal alliance’, as his Brexit party did not contest candidates in seats with an incumbent Conservative Member of Parliament (MP). Yet, whilst Brexit was ‘done’, as it will be discussed later, its negative socio-economic effects have persisted, giving rise to further discontent across large swathes of the country. In the end, most constituencies that switched to the Conservatives in 2019 went back to Labour in 2024. Meanwhile, 14 years of Conservative rule – marked by unrestrained neo-liberal measures, austerity and a broader context of poly-crisis – left the UK economy depleted and its public services crumbling. Taken together, these factors contributed to a widespread perception amongst voters of the state as ‘failing to deliver for its citizens’ (Diamond et al., 2024a). Third, and related to this, 9 years after lack of trust had already emerged as a key determinant of the Brexit referendum (Clarke et al., 2023), opinion polls still signal that public opinion is dissatisfied and rather distrustful towards British institutions. In 2024, Farage's new party – Reform UK – not only won a record-high number of votes (14.3%) compared to the two previous parties led by him (UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party in 2015 and 2017, and the Brexit Party in 2019) but went on – in the 6 months following the vote – to increase its support in opinion polls towards 20%. Early analyses of the Reform electorate clearly indicate that the dividing lines that had emerged in the polarized Leave/Remain referendum vote are far from over (Heath et al., 2025). Against this background, the Labour party's success in 2024 can be considered a ‘fragile victory’. To assess the political dynamics and first implications of such victory, we first analyse its anatomy (Section I), moving then to the main developments at domestic (Section II) and international levels (Section III). In the 2024 Labour manifesto, ‘turning the page decisively on the Conservative ideas that have caused chaos’ (p. 6) was presented as a key objective for the new government. Thus, by looking at its first 8 months in government (July 2024–February 2025), we ask whether Labour did really ‘turn the page’ – and argue that what emerged from the analysis is a rather compound picture, marked by tensions between change and continuity. In the last decade, Brexit significantly contributed to disrupting British politics. In 9 years, four general elections were held (2015, 2017, 2019, 2024; the last three of them all snap votes, whilst the 2024 vote was the only one in which Brexit did not formally play a role). Before Sunak, four different Conservative Prime Ministers held office (David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss). With just 7 weeks in Downing Street, in 2022, Truss also hit the non-enviable record of the shortest-serving PM in British history. During the Conservative years in government (2010–2024), electoral behaviour in Britain has become more volatile. Even in a two-party system like the British one, there are fewer and fewer loyal voters, who support the same party in consecutive elections. This trend has also introduced uncertainty into the usually predictable two-party scenario of Westminster, already shaken by the growth of the Scottish National Party (in the 2011 Scottish election, which led to the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum), then with the rise of UKIP in the 2015 elections and, even more, by the Brexit referendum the following year. Such events were considered ‘unpredictable electoral shocks’ just 20 years ago (Fieldhouse et al., 2021). By 2019, with the ‘fall of the Red Wall’, the Conservatives managed to make inroads into the traditional working-class strongholds of central and northern England. Thus, the two-party game seemed restored, though in the context of profound shifts in the electoral geography and socio-demographic profile of the electorate of the two main parties. And yet, by 2024, turnout dropped to 59.7 (close to the nadir point of participation of 59.1, registered in 2001), and the two main parties struggled to preserve their 2019 electorates. This was particularly true for the Conservatives, keeping only slightly more than half of it (53%), whilst losing as much as 25% to Reform (whereas Labour was able to retain 71% of the 2019 vote). The Liberal Democrats – traditionally the third-most voted party – strongly enhanced their parliamentary representation (from 11 to 72 seats), with a very small increase from 11.5% to 12.2%. As it was the case in the last pre-Brexit referendum election of 2015, they were overtaken by Farage's party (then UKIP, now Reform) (YouGov, 2024). All this resulted in the most fragmented and disproportional election in UK democratic history (Pattie and Cutts, 2024). Whilst the Labour majority in parliament looks solid, there is no shortage of potential sources of tension. After several attempts, Farage finally entered Westminster as an MP for Reform. With 14% of the votes, Reform is not far from the average that similar populist radical right parties have obtained for years in many European countries. If Reform remains very under-represented (only five seats) compared to the votes obtained, entering Parliament provides a new institutional platform (after that of the European Parliament) to one of the major architects of Brexit (Baldini et al., 2022). Even to the left of the government, a group has formed that could give Starmer a hard time. In addition to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, expelled from the party on the eve of the 2024 election, four other pro-Palestine MPs, who are strengthening their collaboration with the four Green MPs, also won their seats as independents. If these numbers are very low compared to those of other European parliaments and of little relevance within Westminster, they reinforce a trend towards fragmentation that already emerged in the previous parliament (cf. Table 1). At the beginning of 2025, Kemi Badenoch, the newly elected leader of the Conservatives, appeared to struggle in her effort to revive the party's fortunes. Though Starmer also proved rather unpopular, enjoying no honeymoon in his first months in office, the smaller margin between the two main parties in opinion polls was matched by the rise of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK, which has been increasingly perceived as the main electoral threat to Labour. Looking at its voters, it has been underlined that ‘support for Reform in 2024 is slightly more polarised along Brexit lines than support for UKIP was in 2015 in the run up to the referendum, indicating that Reform has increased its base in more pro-Leave areas’ (Heath et al., 2025, p. 7). Such areas of the country, which are also amongst the most economically deprived, might become once again key electoral battlegrounds. As mentioned, Starmer's party entered government with a clear ambition to ‘turn the page’ from the era of Conservative government. In its manifesto, the party pledged to pave the way towards a ‘decade of renewal’, laying the ‘foundations of good government’ (p. 12). To achieve this goal, at domestic level, the new government has adopted a ‘mission-driven’ approach. It is no coincidence that from the start Labour's first mission and top priority has been to ‘kickstart economic growth, to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 – with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off’ (p. 13, italics added). Starmer and his cabinet knew all too well that reversing economic stagnation was key to ‘rebuild Britain’ and restore public services as well as citizens' confidence towards the state and its institutions. Yet, from the moment it entered public office, Labour has had to face a series of material and ideological challenges that have been hindering its ambition to deliver transformative change at speed. The first emerged just a few days after the vote, when a series of riots sparked across the country after the murder of three young girls of Southport, in Northern England. Some political and media commentators hastily tagged these events as an expression of radical right feelings exploited by extremist movements – not least in the wake of the continued prominence of immigration as a key in public opinion (YouGov, 2025). Yet, this is only a As by and events like the riots could from a profound of discontent that is in areas that – that so-called ‘left behind et al., 2024). many of the where the most emerged as and in the top most areas to the government whilst many are still the The United Kingdom is one of the most in the (McCann, et al., 2019). socio-economic are not just but have continued to over the the already between and the North of England has between 2019 and 2024 – a large of the in ‘left behind This is – between the North and the between and but also within and across – a of socio-economic perception of ‘left and political discontent et al., 2024). To be in recent years, areas economically have their to the as in the case of the Brexit referendum, to the and have also levels of electoral as it in the 2019 general election, with the of the ‘Red Wall’. Yet, to ‘level up the little has been by the previous Conservative to address economic in ‘left behind et al., et al., 2022). areas have also been hit by the negative economic effects of whilst immigration is still perceived as a Prosser, 2024). As a have continued to rather than This to the riots not be just as of by radical right but as the of of the that (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). This provides a for the new government – to to public after the Starmer's has not clear to address their Labour's victory was particularly in the ‘Red seats. the that Reform in in many of these seats that a profound of discontent is in these and could Labour's victory could be more to a of a Conservative support and a vote, to the of than to a for Starmer's This that the areas that are the of of and whilst in a context of stagnation and public is the the new Labour government will have to to in Against this background, on its mission to growth across the country is clearly for Starmer's this an economic that from the adopted in the last on which inequalities whilst also a radical of in to towards a of economic et al., 2024). whilst the new on these have been its first 8 months in office, has been This that, whilst a of in to the party and its electoral of Starmer's did not to what this in terms of its and economic and was for government. 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