The lessons Keir Starmer can learn from 1951

The 1951 UK General Election stands out to be one of the most unfortunate ones in its history. The incumbent Labour Party led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee was forced to relinquish office in favour of the Conservative Party led by Leader of the Opposition and war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The irony being that Labour was ousted from office despite securing 48.8% of the votes compared to the 48% secured by the Tories.

This is contrary to the general perception propagated by the media that the Labour government had suffered a loss in credibility due to austerity and rationing measures in addition to the deflation crisis of 1947. The only caveat to this was that Conservatives clawed back lost support such that they were neck-to-neck in the opinion polls leading upto the general election. In the 1950 general election, the Labour party lost over 70 seats to the Conservatives, despite its vote share just suffering a marginal decline from 47 to 46%. It was that the vote share of the Tories ballooned up from 39 to 43% as well as the delimitation of the constituencies favouring the Tories, long considered to be the 'natural party of government'.

The villain was the flawed first-past-the-post system, which ousted a revolutionary government and brought back a leader who was past his prime as Prime Minister. Churchill was eventually forced to retire in 1955 on grounds of poor health. The Tories would preside over a era of mismanagement and laspses in matters of national security, diplomacy and governance; including serious crises in the form of the Suez Canal as well as the Profumo affair under the Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan administrations respecitviely. By 1963, the Tories had reached such a level of disgrace that they were compelled to air drop a peer, Sir Alec Douglas Home from the House of the Lords to the Commons to regain credibility and respect.

Labour would stay in the opposition for 13 years and lost two more general elections convincingly before winning a narrow majority in 1964 under the leadership of Harold Wilson. By then the country had significantly changed, with Wilson being handed over an economy that would soon fall off balance.

The popular vote secured by Labour in 1951 would be the highest attained by the party in its history, exceeding that of what it had obtained in the 1945 and 1997 landslides. It would also be the highest number of votes secured by any party until the Conservatives led by John Major broke that record 4 decades later.

When looked from today, it is remarkable to note the electoral success of the Labour party notched under the leadership of Attlee. In 1945, Attlee ensured that Labour crossed the majority mark in the House of Commons for the first time. It was also the first time since 1906 that Tories lost the popular vote and a non-Conservative majority government was formed. Even in 1955 (the last election fought under Attlee’s stewardship), when the Tories convincingly fought off Labour, Labour secured 46% of the votes. Ever since then, only once has Labour crossed the 45% threshold- in 1966, when Harold Wilson obtained a 100 seat majority with 48% of the vote. Even during Tony Blair’s heydays, the party never crossed 44% vote share, thus adding credence to the theory that Labour has never won in elections with high turnouts since the days of Attlee. It is another fact that since Attlee, only Wilson and Blair have led Labour to general election victories.

As Keir Starmer approaches the general election expected to be held in the second half of this year, he must remember that the election will be fought on extremely low turnouts with Labour not enjoying the kind of support it had sustained in 1945-51, 1964-70, 1997-2005. Rather, it is reminiscent of Labour’s pyrrhic victory in 1974 where the government stuttered for 5 years and eventually landed in opposition for nearly two decades. While Labour is expected to win a similar proportion of seats as in 1997/2001, the challenges resemble those faced by Labour in 1945 and 1974. Whether Starmer chooses the 1945 or 1974 path is left to be seen.