Blog/Analysis

Britain stands on the cusp of a Labour supermajority. Normally we’d be talking about the next Labour decade or 15 years. Recent history has taught us to be wary of declaring supremacy and defeat too permanent. Political coalitions these days are more like sandcastles - impressive on the outside, but liable to be swept away at a moment's notice.

From UKIP’s 2014 European Parliament election victory, the 2015 SNP’s landslide and Liberal Democrat collapse, the 2016 Brexit vote, Jeremy Corbyn’s rapid ascendancy in the 2017 election and Boris Johnson’s victory in the Red Wall – all these political ups and downs have been reversed at warp speed. The space between hagiography and obituary is becoming shorter. The question is why?

Firstly, voter ties are weaker. Party identification is in long term decline and voters are more contractual. In the 1960s, almost one-in-two Brits had a ‘very strong’ identification with a political party. By the midpoint of the New Labour years, that figure was 10%.

Correspondingly, the number of voters switching parties between elections has risen rapidly, with over two-in-five switching between 2010 and 2015, up from 1 in 5 in the 1970s and 80s. Our latest polling at Focaldata suggests one-in-three voters are set to flip next month. We are in a state of permanent revolution.

Jubilant pictures involving the inflatable Boris and claims of a decade-long Johnson premiership after the 2021 Hartlepool by-election already seem like ancient history. An Economist poll yesterday put the Conservatives on just 10% in Hartlepool, down more than 40 points. We have arrived at “Sandcastle politics”; with political coalitions built at pace with disparate elements packed together only to wash away - like a Sandcastle - with the tide.

From 2010 to 2019 the Conservatives built up their vote among very different groups; middle-class professionals in 2010, West Country liberals in 2015,  Labour-UKIP defectors and Scottish Tories in 2017, and Leave, lower-education and older voters everywhere throughout the period. The Conservative 2019 coalition managed to poll 40% or more among many groups diametrically opposed on some social and many economic values. How to reconcile the voters of Kensington and Clacton? With Labour set to take the former, and Farage potentially the latter we may find our answer. In seeking to serve all, you may end up pleasing none. Perhaps the only way to ever hold the Clacton to Kensington coalition was via economic growth, real-income rises, and a country of vital public services and strong communities. This hasn’t happened. 

To promise real fixes to UK plc is to wrestle with unpopularity. To aim not for a wide coalition, but one that can weather the storm. Political parties have proved themselves as adept at election-winning machines and less adept at governing and going for growth. The Conservatives’ ‘triple-lock plus’ received a net rating of +46 when we polled it at Focaldata – highly popular, but representing another transfer of wealth from Britain’s already-saddled young to the older generation. Likewise, politicians refuse to think through the options of long-term funding of the NHS with its impregnable polling numbers, confront NIMBYism, and be honest about why net migration is 685,000. A Mafia-like code of silence between the major parties exists about how to repair the relationship - and ultimately trading arrangements - with Europe. British politics chases votes rather than reform. Until this stops we could see political sandcastles falling as quickly as they were erected.

Labour’s mission of ‘change’ this election is about uniting people under a general sentiment, for a one-time vote. Sound familiar? It’s like 2019 on steroids. Our polling recently showed that Labour is likely to win the ten most pro-immigration seats and a majority of the most anti-immigration as well as the most pro and anti-tax seats and voters. The sheer breath, heterodoxy and thinness of its win will store up issues for the future. There will be an imperial phase. Labour’s vote will likely go up post election. But wide and shaky Sandcastle coalitions look impressive until they collapse entirely. Starmer’s government will face pressures from the Greens on foreign policy and climate change, Liberals on tax rises and business, Reform on immigration and identity and the Conservatives – eventually – on leadership. Campaigning with a Union Jack and a one-word slogan of ‘change’ will work for a six-week election campaign, but not long after. Just ask the people who thought that “Get Brexit done” would secure decade-long supremacy. Until politicians realise their job is to govern for 5 years, and campaign for 5 weeks, and not the other way round, “Sandcastle politics” could be here to stay.

This article was also published in The Times.

Sandcastle image