What would a Labour supermajority tell us?

By a crushing margin, the Labour Party is set to win Thursday’s UK election. The range of predicted outcomes is wide, reflecting the punishing influence of the First-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system on vote shares under 25%, but the incumbent Conservative Party should be reduced to between 50 and 150 seats. 

Of course, such a result would reflect Conservative failures. Despite an 80-seat majority in the 2019 election, the party has governed poorly. My opinion of Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, is more charitable – he inherited an extremely difficult situation – but the failures of his predecessors are glaring. With his disregard of lockdown regulations, Boris Johnson disgraced the office of prime minister. Liz Truss was worse, bringing about economic catastrophe.

Many assume that a Labour supermajority would reflect these failures. Some who are hostile to the Conservative Party would go further, arguing that the electorate is ‘coming to its senses’.

Such interpretations have problems. The ‘coming to its senses’ hypothesis is inconsistent with data on value change. Typically, this is slow; though the British electorate may be more liberal than it was in 2019, the change is not major. Certainly, this is much smaller than the large Conservative to Labour swing which should take place on Thursday.  

Though more feasible, the ‘poor performance’ hypothesis has problems. The capacity of voters to evaluate government performance has limits. Whilst voters may conclude that Johnson’s behaviour and Truss’ economic policy were egregious – I agree and, on Thursday, will vote accordingly – other metrics are more difficult to establish. In an important 2020 paper, Dynes and Holbein argue that key performance metrics, such as unemployment and the quality of healthcare, tend to lie outside political control. Yet in Thursday’s election, many voter rationales and party appeals fixate on such metrics.  

Therefore, a Labour supermajority may tell us more about the development of the UK political system. This is in a state of flux, many calling for reform, and we must understand relevant changes. On this Substack, I have underlined the role of declining partisan identification. As the Electoral Shocks book argues, voter loyalty to parties is historically low and this creates instability. Certainly, this helps explain Thursday’s likely result; in Britain, the Conservative shift from an 80-seat majority to fewer than 150 seats would be unprecedented.

However, this factor does not fully explain Thursday’s probable result. As Electoral Shocks shows, partisan identification has been low for some time and, in the 2010s, there were not such drastic swings. In this election, the Conservative Party face a perfect storm of voter unhappiness with incompetence, desire for change and poor economic conditions. There was a similar combination in the 1997 election – though the economy had recovered from 1992’s Black Wednesday – yet higher levels of partisan identification may have saved the Conservative Party from a worse fate. 

Therefore, a Labour supermajority would reflect a generational perfect storm, interacting with contemporary weaknesses of the British political system. From a democratic perspective, such a result would be far from ideal; healthy democracies need strong oppositions.

Understanding the meaning of a Labour supermajority sheds light on future trajectories. Some commentators, mainly conservative ones, predict that Labour will soon encounter significant problems. Certainly, this is consistent with the cases of other governing left-wingers; in the US and Germany, for example, left-wing incumbents have considerable problems.

Whilst a Starmer government may lose initial popularity – results in midterm elections could be sobering - I would be more cautious. A Starmer government will have considerable advantages. Beyond a large Commons majority, such a government will have new ideas and personnel and good will. In contrast, the Sunak government has had none of these advantages.

I would be equally wary of calls for institutional change. After Thursday, there are likely to be renewed calls for electoral change; parties such as Reform and even the Conservative Party are likely to win seat numbers which are disproportionate to their vote share. However, this election may be a generational one-off and, as I have argued before, major institutional change seems unwise so soon after Brexit. In any case, the Starmer government will have limited incentive to undertake this reform with such a large majority; this is the diabolical logic of FPTP.    

On Friday morning, the UK will surely wake up to a new political era. No one can predict the future – in the last parliament, my record was very modest (!) - but the road ahead will certainly be interesting.  

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