‘Would total Tory wipeout really be in Labour’s interests?’

The countdown to polling day will soon be measured in hours – not weeks, or days. And, still, despite Labour’s ironclad refusal to project any hint of complacency, opinion polls place the party 20-or-so points ahead of the Conservatives.

While an insurgent Reform siphons off disillusioned support from the right, the rest of the country perceives a national sense of malaise and – polls suggest – pins it on 14 years of turbulent Tory rule in which there have been as many Prime Ministers as in the previous 31.

And so, despite a bruising defeat in 2019, the fickle and tricky nature of the First Past the Post system means that Labour is feasibly on the cusp of securing a parliamentary majority on a scale previously unseen in British history. But as Labour fortunes swell, Tory fortunes sink. The question is: how deeply, and does that really benefit Labour?

A Labour supermajority?

It seems counterintuitive to suggest that a Tory wipeout would be anything other than a gift for Starmer’s Labour government.

With only 100 or less Tory MPs on the opposition benches, Starmer and Reeves would be given carte blanche to address the country’s issues.

Any reforms deemed necessary to drag the country out of stagnation become eminently achievable, without serious parliamentary obstacles. But – whisper it – history indicates that there’s also no guarantee the Tories would be able to recover from such a collapse, and that creates a dangerous trap for Starmer’s Labour.

The rise of the new right

The sentiment behind the rise of the radical right across the West – visible in the US, Canada, Hungary, Argentina, France, Germany, and The Netherlands, to name only a handful of countries – now has a tangible outlet in the UK.

Farage’s Reform has efficiently positioned itself to capitalise on dissatisfaction with the failures of Tories specifically, and dissatisfaction with the failures of the mainstream centre-right status quo more broadly.

After the election, as a fierce internal fight among the Tories commences, Reform’s appeal – that it represents a new kind of right-wing politics in service of the interests of working people – isn’t going to dissipate.

And, depending on the outcome of that leadership contest to replace the visibly crestfallen Rishi Sunak (currently managing to project himself as simultaneously apologetic and obstinate), could continue to grow. There is a potential scenario where – facilitated by Tory electoral wipeout in this election – Starmer’s Labour is faced with Farage’s Reform as its chief opponent at the 2029 election.

The future of the Tories isn’t a guarantee

This isn’t necessarily the ‘likely’ scenario: the Tory party is a historic British institution with deep roots. If it is ever supplanted – temporarily or permanently – as the party of the British right, it won’t be overnight.

But, as the history of the Liberal party shows us, the extinction of a leading political party in the UK is a possible outcome.

READ MORE: ‘This election, apathy is Labour’s biggest obstacle to victory in Scotland’

It’s happened before, and even with the protections ingrained by the First Past the Post system, it can happen again, especially given the context of radical right-wing insurgency across the West.

For Labour, this creates the prospect of a situation unprecedented within its history; a situation in which its primary opponent isn’t the Conservative Party.

What does Labour look like without the Conservatives?

Across its century of existence, the Labour Party has been shaped as much by its opposition to the Tories’ values as it has by the propagation of its own. Since the end of the First World War, the two parties have defined each other; each reacting to the other’s success and failures, oscillating between periods of governance and opposition, creating the boundaries of the political landscape.

Throughout his leadership, Starmer has dogmatically used the electoral success of the three most titanic figures in Labour history, Atlee, Wilson, and Blair as a template to mould his pitch as the face of ‘competent change’.

His notion is that, for Labour to win, it has to rigidly adhere to the rules established by his victorious predecessors, rather than seeking to overturn them.

There would be no template for Starmer to follow in a world where Labour’s opposition isn’t the Conservatives; a world where political convention has burst into flames.

In 2029, in this scenario, would Starmer really be nimble enough to buck global trends and defeat this new form of right-wing opposition without any lessons from history to draw from; without any template?

Reform’s threat to Labour

This poses a meaningful threat, not least because a Labour majority looks set to be predicated on broad support, yes, but shallow; the type of support that could quickly – and will inevitably, whether it takes months or decades – dissipate in favour of some alternative.

Starmer has spoken of a 10-year mission and has ambitions for a government of two terms. To that end, his best hope is that the country’s alternative, come 2029, is the Tory party, and the devil he knows, rather than the threat of the unknown.

READ MORE: ‘I used to work for Liz Truss. Here’s why I’m cautiously optimistic about Labour’

There’s a widespread theory online that a few years ago, Starmer captured a genie and has since been extracting a steady stream of infinite wishes.

Day by day, as Tory fortunes sink ever lower, that theory becomes more credible. But, there is a tipping point when a disastrous Tory outcome could also be disastrous for Starmer.

However likely or unlikely, is the theoretical threat of Reform as Britain’s leading right-wing opposition really one that Starmer wants to put to the test? If not, he’d be wise to use his final wish to continue decades of convention and hope that the Tories end up wounded, but, come 2029, ready to fight again.

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