The UK General Election took place this summer, with Labour celebrating a historic landslide victory, achieving the largest majority in the House of Commons since Tony Blair’s famous victory in 1997.

However, the election was historic for another reason; the turnout of all voting-age adults in the UK was only 52%, which is the lowest since universal suffrage in 1928. Labour’s vote share was 33.7%, a mere 1.7 points higher than in 2019 when the party suffered one of its worst election defeats in almost a century. Moreover, they won over 3 million votes less than in the 2017 election, yet won 411 seats in the Commons compared to their 2017 haul of 262 seats.

The result is being celebrated as a vindication of Starmer’s sidelining of the Labour left and repositioning of the party back to the centre ground of politics. However, one does not need to look too far beyond the headlines to see the hollowness of Labour’s victory. They won by virtue of being the lesser of two evils in a contest with the Conservative party, whose austerity-led governance over the past 14 years has seen public services massively underfunded and unable to meet the needs of the population.

More of the same

The country wanted change, which meant a long-overdue end to the Conservatives’ time in power, but they will not find it with Starmer’s Labour. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves wasted no time in announcing that ‘difficult decisions’ will have to be made regarding public finances – the rhetoric of austerity we have heard so much in recent decades.

This has so far included cuts to winter fuel payments, meaning that payments to pensioners for heating in the winter will now be means-tested rather than universal, and the retaining of the two-child cap on benefits. It is estimated that removing the two-child benefit cap, which was introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, would lift 250,000 children in the UK out of poverty. Yet not only have Labour kept the cap in place, but they have also suspended seven of their MPs for voting in favour of a motion calling for an end to the policy.

Labour’s first Budget included higher levels of spending than one may have anticipated, given how low expectations had been set. However, the sums for local councils and public services will not be enough to repair the damage inflicted on them by the previous government. On top of this, the welfare system will remain ‘fundamentally as cruel as it was designed to be by George Osborne and successive Tory chancellors’,compounded by the fact that Reeves didn’t mention the word ‘inequality’ once during her speech, indicating that economic fairness is not a priority for this government.

To those who have paid attention to Labour’s shift to the right under Starmer, the path they have taken in power will have come as no surprise. In March, I argued that this is precisely why we must resist voting for the lesser of two evils; Labour’s large majority, despite its hollowness, legitimises their unambitious economic plans which will continue the misery inflicted by the Conservatives’ austerity programme. They can claim, however disingenuously, that they have the confidence of the public to make the ‘difficult decisions’ that will ultimately perpetuate the rise in poverty and inequality in the UK.

The argument against voting for the lesser of two evils is not to declare the current political situation hopeless and to disengage with it entirely by flat-out refusing to vote. Instead, the idea is to use your vote only for politicians or parties that can offer solutions to the many crises we are facing. Voting for the lesser of two evils option does active harm to this end by legitimising the tried-and-failed politics of Starmer and Reeves and blocking the path for candidates who are offering genuine solutions to our problems.

Warning signs for Labour

This election demonstrated how the refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils can be effective in amplifying the voices of those whose views are representative of public opinion, and silencing those who are not. For example, Labour’s support for Israel early in their war on Gaza, and the party’s subsequent refusal to back an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire meant that for many, voting for them was too much to stomach. This led to four pro-Palestinian Independent candidates being elected to parliament for the first time – Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohamed, and Ayoub Khan – some of whom displaced prominent figures for Labour who would have played a significant role in their new government. On top of this, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected as an Independent MP in a campaign which heavily featured support for Gaza.

As well as the four pro-Palestinian independents who were elected, the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Green Party made significant gains. The Liberal Democrats won 72 seats – a record for the party – whilst Reform and the Greens also achieved record amounts of seats for their parties. In the cases of Reform and the Greens, the amount of seats won (five and four respectively) was not reflective of their share of the votes; Reform had 14.3% of the vote, which was the third highest behind Labour and the Conservatives, whilst the Greens’ 6.7% of the vote is significantly higher than the 0.6% of seats they now hold in the Commons.

This fragmentation of the vote indicates that the electorate are disillusioned with the state of UK politics and are willing to vote for parties other than the ‘big two’. The days are gone when Labour can take for granted the vote of the working class. The Brexit referendum in 2016 and Labour’s loss of the ‘red wall’ in 2019 indicated that the divide between social liberals and conservatives is now a key factor in voting choice, with the importance of class declining. Traditional Labour voters no longer see Labour as the lesser of two evils, putting the onus on the party to give them a positive and more profound moral reason to vote for them beyond the fact that they don’t wear blue.

What now?

Given the historically low voter turnout and the gains made by fringe parties and independent candidates, it is clear that Labour’s large majority is deceptive, and is masking the growing disillusionment with the two main parties on offer in the UK.

Labour will enjoy their moment in the sun, but by the time of the next election, the disillusioned electorate will be asking: what has changed? If Starmer cannot point to tangible changes that have been made over the course of his first term as Prime Minister, he will struggle to convince people to give him the chance of a second.

After only five months in power, the limits of the Starmer project are already becoming apparent; having ran a low-risk campaign in which he did not offer a clear vision for the UK, he is seemingly bereft of ideas now that Labour are in government and is unable to deal with the criticism Labour are receiving now that their short-lived honeymoon period is over.

With the decline in party identity and the rise of disillusionment with politicians and the political system as a whole, the public are becoming bolder with their voting choices, whether this be to vote for a smaller party, an independent candidate, or to not vote at all. If Labour are to hold on to their hollow majority, they must pay heed to this, and acknowledge that being the lesser of two evils may not be enough to win them a second term in power.