Round Table: The Starmer Labour Government in Historical Perspective

The election of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party on 5 July 2024 after fourteen years of Conservative (mis)rule may represent an important turning point in British political history. At any rate, this was how the new Prime Minister represented his party’s ‘landslide’ victory. Starmer made two short speeches that day, the first to supporters outside London’s Tate Modern art gallery, the second to the wider public outside 10 Downing Street. Similar in many ways, they were angled differently. The keynote of the first was the necessity for ‘Change’, which had been Labour’s endlessly repeated slogan during the election campaign. What that would mean in terms of practical policies designed to transform the country had been unclear to say the least, and Starmer was loath to provide any real illumination still. But he was emphatic about what had made his electoral success possible, which was that he and his supporters had ‘changed the party’ – thinly veiled reference to the defeat of the left alternative that developed after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader in 2015