Semafor Signals
Labour wins landslide victory in UK election
Insights from The Guardian, The Economist, and the Financial Times
The News
Keir Starmer was appointed as Britain’s prime minister on Friday after his Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Friday morning that he would resign as Tory leader once a successor had been found, after his Conservative Party suffered their worst ever result.
SIGNALS
Starmer has brought Labour back to the center
In 2019, Labour, then led by far-left veteran of the party Jeremy Corbyn, suffered its worst defeat in a general election since 1935. Corbyn was later suspended after falling foul of Starmer’s “zero tolerance” on antisemitism, a decision some on the party’s far left criticized as a “cynical” move to make the party more electable. Regardless, Starmer’s tactics seem to have worked. He has abandoned various Corbyn-era pledges, and promises fiscal prudence alongside growth-minded infrastructure projects to reassure an increasingly centrist electorate, an expert told The New York Times. Ultimately, Starmer has “traveled light” on ideology, The Economist noted — and has a distinct lack of baggage compared to his counterparts.
How Britain fell out of love with the Conservatives
This election campaign has seen the Conservatives try to walk back their role in the country’s economic state, but their sheer length of time in office means it is hard to ignore that they have been the country’s architects for 14 years, The Economist wrote. Their record is now defined in voters’ minds by broken or breaking public services, Brexit, and Liz Truss’ budget (not to mention the lettuce) — in an editorial, The Guardian argued the party “could stand unopposed and only come second.” External shocks like the financial crisis, a global pandemic, and the war in Ukraine almost certainly did not help. But Brexit, in particular, has proven to be perhaps the most “grave act of economic self-harm” to the UK, and the Conservatives, the party of fiscal responsibility, oversaw it all, the Financial Times noted.
