It may be back to the future with a very different ending to Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 landslide for Rishi Sunak when it is the Right rather than Left that is terribly split in 2024. Back then, Michael Foot’s
Labour and the Roy Jenkins-David Steel SDP-Liberal Alliance together polled 53% of the votes and, fighting each other seat-by-seat, gifted the Conservatives a thumping 144-seat majority. The split on the centre-left was the decisive factor in that bitter three-way contest more than four decades ago, not the Falklands War a year earlier, which is regularly and mistakenly cited as the crucial factor. Fast-forward and return to today and the rise of
Nigel Farage ’s anti-migrant Reform
UK on the hard-Right threatens to inflict on the Conservatives what the SDP-Alliance did to Labour. This time round, Keir Starmer will be the beneficiary. Because three in five Reform supporters voted for
Boris Johnson ’s Tories in 2019 and only one in 20 backed Labour, then under
Jeremy Corbyn , a huge disparity wrecking Conservative prospects and propelling Starmer closer to Downing Street. Pollsters YouGov put Reform on 15%, nudging the Tories on 19%. It shows flailing Sunak is still marooned in the Liz Truss dire straits he was supposed to lead the Government out of. It is a free gift for Labour, with a massive lead on 44% Predictions that Farage might suspend his money-making to lead Reform from the front and overtake the Tories would be the cherry on Labour’s cake. Wiser Labour heads are concerned about the poison that Reform is spreading by turbo- charging bigotry and rocket fuelling culture wars, fearing that it will permanently pollute
British communities. But when there’s an
election to be won, Farage and Reform are Starmer’s unlikely assistants, unleashing a merciless drive to destroy the Tories to then either supplant or be a cuckoo taking over the nest of a devastated rival on the Right. The SDP-Liberal Alliance secured only 23 seats in 1983 yet had a significant impact, to Thatcher’s glee. Indeed, the party was over for the SDP, which was created in 1981 by Labour defectors Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers – the one nobody remembers – before dissolution in 1988. Reform may never gain a single General Election seat or hold Tory defector 30p Lee Anderthal’s Ashfield meal ticket. Its lasting legacy may be a decent Labour working majority. No wonder Keir Starmer is increasingly confident, while ensuring no complacency from his party.