They are just like the Tories

Different policies, same sense of misjudgement

A wilting red rose. Ellie Burgin

I don’t buy the argument that Keir Starmer’s government is indistinguishable from the Tories. There are a raft of policy decisions and choices that have been made in the last ten months that a continued Sunak administration would not have touched. After all, as angry as the left seems to be with them, the right is even more so—whether it is on economic choices, the response to the Southport riots, or more general cultural issues. Indeed, the claim really looks as ridiculous as those who claimed the last four, or even fourteen, years of Tory rule were some leftist seizure of the party. This argument is already happening, however, and points to the fundamental similarities between Starmer’s Labour and the government it replaced.

The first is the circumstantial one. Unlike some of their supporters, and especially their detractors from the same side of the aisle, they are hemmed in by reality. This is both economic and political. In government, both Labour and Tories must respect fiscal realities that constrain their options. Political forces also bind them. Ideological purity is for those either out of power or with Icarus-like self-belief. Eventually, gravity catches up to you.

The second, bigger issue is within Labour’s control. The leadership seems to have the same strategic hollowness that haunted the Tory Party in government. There is little clear idea of the world they want to create, which then flows through to an inability to think strategically. Decision-making defaults to chasing electoral trends without fully understanding where they will lead. An ambiguous centre undermines the effectiveness of those orbiting it.

This lack of strategy then flows into tactical failures. It is the root of what gets diagnosed as “comms problems”. Labour seems to be falling into the same tactical mistakes as the Tories. They are raising the salience of Reform-friendly issues without establishing themselves as the answer. They are failing to sell the success they have already achieved - the kind of thing their supporters would take heart in. A mixture of political and policy decisions sees them chipping away at their own electoral coalition. Most of all, they fail to understand that election-chasing ideas can lead to election-losing outcomes.

It is a pattern that has already played out once. A lack of central driving force and ambition leads to less effective government and the erosion of a political base. While Labour is not making the same policy choices as the government they replaced, it seems like they are already being drawn into the same impasse. This, in its own way, will lead to electoral challenges—and we could well see their undoing after just one term.

Stuck on the Salient

The most straightforward answer for why the Tories lost the last election is immigration. You quite simply cannot spend a decade and a half talking about lowering net migration to the tens of thousands while putting it up to nearly a million and expecting to survive the electoral consequences. The Conservatives did this because they never really had a migration strategy. The successive governments ultimately did not want the showdown that would come from restricting the labour supply, either for private businesses or state services increasingly dependent on cheap workers. More than that, however, they spent the last years of government making a total tactical calamity of the issue.

Sunak’s big error was around small boats. The electoral approach was understandable on some levels. Asylum seekers and refugees are the least popular category of immigration, especially so when it comes to illegal and irregular entry. It aligns with people’s biggest fears around migration: that the people who come here are destitute and can’t work, so they must be provided for at state expense, unvetted by any immigration process, and most difficult to remove should their asylum claim fail. The Channel crossings were an evocative and unpopular issue. The government had to grapple with it in some way, but the Sunak approach amounted to a huge tactical blunder.

The problem is that the small boats issue is a hard one. That’s why it has kept rising through successive governments. By pinning themselves to it, Sunak’s Tories only highlighted their own failures. The Rwanda plan was slow, clunky and unlikely ever to work. Instead of making the government look strong, it simply boosted the salience of their failures. It empowered, rather than defanged, Reform and helped seal the size of the election defeat.

At times, Labour seems to be drifting into the same mistake. They talk tough on immigration in a way that is unconvincing to those flirting with Reform, and alienating to their base. It starts to sound like “Farage is right, but please don’t vote for him,” by boosting awareness of issues around migration. Most Labour efforts will be overshadowed by warm weather pushing up Channel crossings and problems with the cost of housing and caring for new arrivals. No tough stance can really outshine these, especially when it is just picking around the sides of migration. Either you need something really effective, or you need ways of reframing the debate.

At best, on immigration, Labour should focus on easing the numbers down without talking tough. It is never going to be an area in which they are strong. Focusing only on it emphasises this and plays into the hands of those who are perennially disappointed. The net numbers are, for various reasons, likely to come down over this parliament. They should bank that and use it as an electoral shield, rather than talking tough and looking weak.

The Polling Paradox

This is a small example of another mistake the Tories made—becoming too obsessed with the polling of policies. Throughout their time in office, the Conservatives went after policies that met with approval on issue polling and focus groups. It helped them with short-term popularity but ultimately became a hindrance if those policies had bad outcomes.

Austerity is perhaps the best example of this. It was broadly popular, especially among Conservative and Conservative-leaning voters. In 2015, 4 in 10 voters wanted cuts to go further. By the end of the Tory term in office, however, it had obviously proven their undoing. The state of public services was another major contributor to defeat last year, much of it downstream of the early, largely popular, economic decisions of Osborne’s Treasury. There is a clear lesson here: when asked about individual policies, the public sort of assumes they work with only the intended consequences. When the downsides bite, the politicians still get blamed.

For Starmer, the Child Benefit Cap is likely to have the same effect. Labour has resolutely refused to consider removing it. This suits them in terms of fiscal policy, and they can point to plenty of polling that shows people are on their side. In a few years, however, it will have driven up child poverty even further. It is hard to see a scenario where that doesn’t come at an electoral cost. No one likes child poverty, even if they support the policies that push it up, and they will blame the government for that situation. Especially if and when Labour faces a greater challenge from the left.

Selling Success

A further problem for the last Conservative government was that they became poor at convincing people of their achievements. This was partly because they were so riven by division and rivalry, but also because their various turns had made them unclear of what they even thought “good” was anymore. It was a bad mistake, which saw them struggle to persuade people to vote for them. By the time of Sunak, Gove’s successes in education were both old and out of favour. Only the real policy wonks were talking about them by the time the election came. Partygate had soured any goodwill around the vaccine rollout, while the party’s retrospective disavowal of pandemic spending limited their ability to boast that part of their economic record. Even its environmental achievements seemed like an embarrassment, rather than a boast. It all resulted in underplaying its record to persuadable voters.

Labour seems stuck in the same trap. It seems hesitant to trumpet what it’s already achieved—and those achievements aren’t cutting through. When you see the argument online that “Labour are just like the Tories,” activists have plenty to reply to: the IHT changes, the Workers’ Rights Bills, and the VAT on school fees. Each of these may not be universally popular, but they should be striking a chord with Labour’s base. They should tally with the sort of world the government is trying to create, and help people buy into the project.

At the moment, however, they don’t seem to be landing. In part, this is because a mostly right-wing press makes them seem more controversial than they are. Again, however, listening too much to the right-wing press is another avoidable Tory mistake. Labour should be bolder about getting these things out there and tying them back to a vision. It seems unable to convey that these are the actions of a government that has decided whose side it is on, and that it is working for them.

Ever Decreasing Circles

This tips into the other mistake the Tories made—gradually alienating almost every bit of their electoral coalition. Through the various fights, the party picked and the policy decisions it made, it hived away those willing to vote for it. The most noticeable was the combination of Brexit, house prices, and general rhetoric pushing them away from young, higher earners. But it happened elsewhere too. Indeed, by the end, they were struggling to hang on to pensioners, who were starting to worry that they would be taxed too much. This is a great way to lose.

Labour, however, seems again to be copying it. Lots of Labour voters want to see things like increased support for people on benefits or a more compassionate immigration system. Some of these will be people who benefit directly from them, and others will be those who just see these as good things. For many, they will be the sort of thing that they backed Labour to deliver. If you don’t, they are going to drift away and punish you.

A recurring complaint from historic Conservative voters in the run-up to 2024 was that they felt the government hadn’t delivered for them. These were people who wanted lower taxes, more spending on the things they cared about, or opportunities around housing and growth. Typical Tory things that Tory voters like. When they weren’t delivered, it persuaded them to stay home or look elsewhere. You have to look after your base in politics—all of it—and if you gradually chip it away, you will end up with nothing left.

Elision

It doesn’t feel right to argue that Starmer’s government is Tory-lite. It is, however, making some of the same category errors: talking up the challenge of immigration while looking impotent against it, chasing popular ideas that deliver long-term problems, and failing to sing of your success while alienating bits of your bloc. It is an eerily familiar problem, just sped up due to fiscal and other constraints. Indeed, it feels funny to see Tories saying, “We spoke right but governed left,” while Labour voters make the mirrored complaint about the government that replaced them.

These tactical errors are the result of the same strategic mistake as the Tories. Or rather, the same lack of strategy. There is little sense of what Labour wants beyond winning the next election—what its vision looks like. The flashes of success it has had reinforce this. It looked good when it looked like it knew who it cared about and what it wanted to do for them. Where that is missing, it is listless.

Without it, it devolves into this lack of strategic ambition, this hedging of bets. It is the same mistake the Tories made, but it’s only now being accelerated by Labour’s own internal contradictions and external pressures. Without something bigger than “winning” itself to drive the ship, Labour risks becoming little more than a reaction to the Tories, Trump, Reform, and the world —a hollow opposition rather than a transformative force.

The Tories reached that crisis point through broader mistakes. Circumstances prevailed upon them that Labour didn’t have in the same way. Starmer’s party, if it wants to succeed, needs to wrestle free of its self-imposed limitations and not fall foul of the same mistakes that wrecked the Tories.

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