Change has come to the UK and it matters for South Africa. But will it be enough?
Sir Keir Starmer promised “Change” in his electoral campaign slogan. As the UK general elections results came in last Thursday night, one thing was clear. Change, to the British political landscape, had come. Labour won a landslide victory, of similar proportions to that of Tony Blair in 1997.
On Friday morning Sir Keir travelled to Buckingham Palace and accepted the invitation of the king to form a government, as the fifty-eighth prime minister of the UK.
After 14 years of Tory-led chaos, British voters had had enough. Since a fresh-faced David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street in 2010, the UK has contended with austerity, Brexit, Covid-19, an energy price shock, Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership, Boris Johnson being ousted from Number 10 after lying to parliament, record-high migration, the tax burden hitting a 70-year high and NHS waiting lists swelling to 7.5 million people.
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The country feels broken, and the Tories paid for voters’ frustrations. This was, simply put, the worst result in the 190-year history of the Conservative Party.
“It is clearly a terrible night for the Conservatives,” said former minister and talismanic Brexiteer Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who later lost his seat in the House of Commons.
It is clear why this happened, and Sir Keir said as much in his speech outside 10 Downing Street on Friday morning. Starmer promised one thing, above all; to work towards restoring the trust of the British people in their politicians. In his words; “To return the politics to public service. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that. That is how we will govern. Country first, party second.”
Never could this be more needed. The Westminster political elite are openly reviled. A new report entitled “Damaged Politics” from the National Centre of Social Research states that “Trust and confidence in governments are as low as they have ever been.” A total of 45% of Britons would “almost never” trust a politician to place the needs of the nation over those of themselves. Reversing this decline into ignominy, which has happened under Conservative governments, will be Starmer’s central challenge.
The UK matters
For the rest of the world, change in the UK matters, particularly in countries with close historical ties like South Africa. There can be no doubting the heavy-handedness of the Tories towards Africa in particular. Neither will African countries forget the unprecedentedly warm and passionate approach of the last Labour PM to win a landslide, Tony Blair, towards the continent.
Those were heady days. Labour created a state-of-the-art development department (DfID) superbly headed by Clare Short. The UK became the world’s second-biggest aid donor, playing a leading role in the World Bank and other multilateral institutions and creating international policy frameworks for development assistance.
Vulnerable legacy
But the legacy was vulnerable. A messianic approach to devoting 0.7% of GDP to aid spending (mostly in Africa) resulted in gross mismanagement and unfortunate consequences. Having abandoned the target, the Tories finally took the retrograde step of folding DfID into the Foreign Office.
Under the Tories, Britain’s reputation in international development has plunged. It will be up to Starmer to resurrect it. A UK conscious of South Africa and Africa in general, and a South Africa that is less in the throes to the overtures of Russia and China, can only be a good thing. One can also hope for a UK more openly and actively sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
The hard work starts now
Yet despite the optimism, the distorting electoral system of the UK overstates the mandate Labour has won. While they achieved a crushing majority with 65% of seats in the House of Commons, this was done with the support of only 34% of votes.
As it has in the past, this means that despite his relative security in parliament, his popularity will be rather less assured. The challenge for Labour is not just to govern well, but to restore trust in doing so. If it fails to do both, there is a good chance that it will be swept out of power sooner than might be expected.
Starmer cannot take his decade in Number 10 for granted. He should feel the pressure to move fast to deliver the change, especially on the NHS and public services, that he promised.
In one momentous week for European politics, “change” has come to the UK. It is too facile a comparison to even try to draw parallels between the earth-shattering election results in the UK and France. Yet as its neighbour across the channel has shown, centrist politicians like Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are increasingly rare in an ever more polarised world.
The challenge for him will be to deliver on promises made in order to neutralise the ever-present nationalist threat from Farage and Reform on the extreme right.
That will not be easy. Much like South Africa’s new government, the hard work starts now. The world will be watching.
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