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British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak and Opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer. Darren Staples, Justin Tallis/Getty Images
John Rapley is a writer and scholar based in London, Johannesburg and Ottawa, whose books include Why Empires Fall (Yale University Press, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
Unless the polling industry fails on Thursday on a scale not seen since the 1948 “Dewey beat Truman” US election, Britain will have its first Labour government in 14 years. British media have recently begun to speculate that this week's election could be a similar “extinction event” for the British Conservative Party, pointing to the 1993 Canadian election (in which the Progressive Conservatives fell from 156 seats to just two). But even if this doesn't happen, Britain seems poised for catharsis, desperate for a fresh start.
Britain is struggling, and not just because of Euro soccer matches. Like Canada, Britain's GDP per capita is falling, but the decline is even steeper in Britain, and incomes are lower than they were 15 years ago. Labor productivity has all but stagnated. Britain was once a magnet for foreign investment, but since the 2016 Brexit referendum, foreigners have begun to turn up their noses at the UK. Yet despite this stagnation, Britain's inflation rate remains the worst in the G7.
Strapped by funds during this recession, the country's public sector is collapsing: schoolchildren are starving, hospitals are overcrowded, the country's rivers and beaches are filling with raw sewage dumped from crumbling water plants, trains outside London are often delayed (or sometimes don't even come at all), and everyone has an anecdote about calling the police in an emergency only to be told they aren't staffed enough to respond.
However, with the economy squeezing the tax base, Brits are having to pay more tax, with the state's burden at its highest since the 1950s and set to rise. Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, housing is becoming unaffordable for those who can't rely on their parents. This means Brits are paying more for everything, but getting less. Needless to say, they're angry.
But while people are yearning for a major change in direction, neither of the two major parties are proposing one. The Conservative government says the country has reached a turning point and that a bright future lies ahead, while the opposition Labour Party says a little reform and some changes to the tax system can restore growth.
Few believe this. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain's most respected independent body on government finances, gave a scathing assessment of both parties' manifestos. It said the next government would face “tough choices”: raise taxes, cut spending, or borrow more. Yet both parties have stuck to what it called a “conspiracy of silence”, demonstrating an “unwillingness to confront the real challenges” and making many “promises that are not effectively funded”.
The government's cynicism is understandable: It is running on a record that most people consider terrible, so it has no choice but to pretend that things are only getting better. Moreover, with a major election defeat on the horizon, no one feels the government has any reason to follow through on its promises.
But Labour's silence is even more puzzling. The party argues that planning reforms and other reforms can make the economy grow again and generate the revenue needed to repay its promises. But while few doubt that the upbeat mood around the end of the Conservative government could unlock pent-up investment, the kind of growth Labour predicts will almost certainly not be possible. That's because Labour has also ruled out the only measure that could restore growth most quickly: reversing the failed Brexit deal, which has cost the economy an estimated 4%.
Thus, once in power, Labour will almost certainly be forced to either break its promises and make further significant changes to its plans, or stick to its promises and watch the economic downturn deepen. Already during the election campaign, Labour has begun to hint at choosing option 1, using the old trope that once in power the government's financial situation may turn out to be worse than expected, forcing it to abandon its manifesto promises.
But this old tactic is unlikely to have much effect: since David Cameron's government created the Office for Budget Responsibility in 2010, government finances have been regularly updated and available for all to see. There are now very few secrecy measures, so trying this approach with the British public would only exacerbate the poor opinion they currently have of politicians.
Labour may decide that the best way to win the election is to make itself as small an object as possible. That may be smart politics, but it's no way to run a country. The British people have never forgiven Boris Johnson for his lies, including his promise that Brexit would make them rich. They will soon rebel against a Labour government that makes a similar fool of them.
