It began with the Prime Minister standing in Downing Street at the lectern in the midst of a heavy downpour. Having already visited the King to request the dissolution of parliament, Rishi Sunak was there to tell the country there would be a General Election on July 4th. This now infamous rain-soaked announcement was not quite the propitious start the Conservatives might have hoped for. It was also a sign of things to come. In the days immediately after the announcement, Sunak visited the Titanic Quarter in Northern Ireland, prompting predictable jokes about captains and sinking ships. New, embarrassing scandals quickly followed, including some of Sunak’s close circle placing bets on the date of the election, and some politicians betting they would lose their own seats. As Nigel Farage entered the campaign, the Conservatives sought to appeal to potential Reform UK voters, resulting in a shift even further to the right, unpopular policies such as national service for teenagers, and ever-tougher rhetoric about immigration.
Throughout the campaign, Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, lost no opportunity to remind voters that the Conservatives had been in power for 14 years. This was intended as a reminder not just of how long the Tories had been in charge, but also doubtless to indelibly mark on the public consciousness the events of this period as being a product of Conservative rule.
The list of policies, events and worsening conditions voters might have thought of as they marked their X in the voting booth on election day is too long to catalogue exhaustively here, but they include: the tragic Grenfell tower fire; rising inflation; Brexit; longer waiting times for GP and hospital appointments; cuts to policing; a flatlining economy; significant rises in the use of food banks; various forms of austerity, including welfare reductions and cuts to local government funding crippling local service provision; ‘Partygate’ during the Covid pandemic; Boris Johnson; Liz Truss’s disastrous 49 days in power, including her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget which caused a financial crisis, sending mortgage rates skyrocketing in the process; Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’; the introduction of Universal Credit; the failed scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda; stagnant wages, which for many have resulted in real-terms pay cuts; and rising inequality between the highly paid and just about everybody else.
It has not been necessary to closely follow politics or the news to know that in many ways life has become more challenging in the UK since 2010. Even Theresa May, in her maiden speech as Prime Minister in 2016, said that her government would be driven by the interests of those who were ‘just about managing’. For many, this status will have changed since then from just about managing to no longer managing as inflation, alongside increases in mortgage costs and rent, have wiped out what little they had to spare. Boris Johnson subsequently introduced the idea of ‘levelling up’, with the promise of the ‘sunny uplands’ Brexit would bring for a prosperous new Britain and its left-behind areas. When Sunak took over, he made no such promises, but instead argued that focusing on reducing inflation (to the extent a government with an independent central bank can do this) would best help so-called ‘hardworking families’. His pitch to voters was that ‘the plan is working’; he simply needed more time for people to feel the benefits.
In the final stretch of the campaign, the Tories were reduced to desperate and negative messaging. They began pleading with voters not to give Labour a ‘supermajority’, which has no constitutional meaning in the UK parliament. This was used either to scare, and therefore motivate, potential but apathetic Tory voters into assuming Labour would wield an unusual amount of power unless they were stopped, or to make potential anti-Tory voters think they needn’t go to the polls because Labour would win even if they stayed at home on election day. The Conservatives also tried to tarnish Keir Starmer as being a potential ‘part-time prime minister’ for wanting to protect Friday evenings as family time, despite his acknowledgement that this would not always be possible. Rishi Sunak had previously said he admired this about Starmer, but then changed his mind – or had his mind changed – and turned it into an attack line. Evidently, protecting family time was no longer cause for admiration, but something voters should be concerned about.
While nobody could argue Labour’s pitch to voters was exciting, it displayed a clear contrast to the Conservatives with their ‘rats-in-a-sack’ approach to party unity, which continued as they attacked each other even during the election. It can of course be said that after the last 14 years, excitement is the last thing UK politics needs, so this was perhaps to Labour’s benefit. However, there were two points of criticism levelled at Labour. First, the selection process led to some Labour candidates on the left of the party being told they could not stand due to social media posts or allegations of improper behaviour dating back several years, which was viewed by some as a way to purge candidates who did not or would not always toe the party line. Second, and perhaps the main point of criticism, was the lack of detail about exactly how some of the above issues would be addressed.
In any case, Labour, of course, won the election and Keir Starmer is now the Prime Minister. Aside from the focus on the Conservatives’ record, Labour’s campaign strategy was centred on a single word: change. It is noteworthy that Labour won with a large majority (or a supermajority, depending on how one wants to define this made-up term). While psephologists will point out that Labour didn’t win their large majority with a large vote share historically speaking, change is presumably what many people wanted whether they voted Labour or one of the other parties that made gains such as the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK or the Green Party. The focus for this issue of Futures of Work is therefore on what the new Labour government can or should do to address the myriad problems they have inherited and turn the slogan of change into actions that might begin some desperately needed improvements not only for those in work but also for those unable to work.
First, Annie Irvine argues that focusing on mental health can obscure other factors that ultimately lead to the challenges those with mental health problems face in trying to ‘retain, regain, and sustain’ employment. Next, Ellie Farmahan outlines how progress with a living wage can be achieved through place-based schemes such as Living Wage Places, alongside other policy recommendations. In a similar vein, Martin Quinn argues that place matters and needs to be taken into account in relation to regional development priorities if interventions are to be effective in growing work opportunities outside London, rejecting the now defunct ‘levelling up’ framing in the process. Katy Jones highlights how the existing ‘any jobs’ approach to welfare taken by successive governments pushes people into poor-quality work which they then often struggle to get out of. Finally, Harry Pitts explores the development of Labour’s ‘New Deal for Working People’, arguing that it has the potential to align workers’ interests with the national interest through its role as a ‘propellant of productivity’.
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