THE BIG READ: Starmer is stymied. So what is going to happen next?

Here's how I expect our politics to develop over the next five years or so - and by all means throw it back at me if I turn out to be wrong

Photo by Ma Ti on Unsplash

THE OPINION polls are telling a disquieting story right now, reminiscent of one of those slow-burn horror films where nothing much happens for ages and yet a sense of foreboding just keeps on building.

Something doesn’t feel quite right. The electorate is in a sullen and surly mood. Labour won a landslide parliamentary majority just three and a half months ago and yet its honeymoon was the political equivalent of a wet weekend in Withernsea. It has already plunged from the shockingly low 33.7% vote share it got on July 4 to a polling average now standing at just 29% - and that’s before Rachel Reeves’ punishment beating of a Budget is delivered.

The gap between its standing in the Commons – where it has 63% of all MPs – and its standing in the country, where its ministers are increasingly resented, reviled and ridiculed, has become a gaping chasm.

The Conservatives are up one measly percentage point or so on their utterly catastrophic general election showing, now averaging about 25%.

Reform meanwhile have put on five points – now averaging 19% compared to the 14% vote share they won in July. That is a buoyant performance and yet they remain in third place even given the absence of a Tory leader doing anything other than serving out his notice.

The Lib Dems and the Greens have poll ratings which are basically flat while there is not much sign of an SNP rebound north of the border either. So nothing much is happening, right? Actually, I think that’s wrong.

I think I can already discern the way politics is likely to go over the next few years – and by the way, please throw this back in my face if I am proven incorrect. But I think the right is going to be in the ascendancy before long, leaving an overwhelmingly left-leaning set of MPs looking more and more out of touch.

Under its cold fish of a leader, Labour has misinterpreted its landslide as public consent for left-wing student politics: giving away the Chagos Islands, spaffing public money on big no-strings pay increases for members of favoured trade unions, making school standards reports less comprehensible or comparable, going even softer on illegal immigration, presiding over a two-tier justice system, guzzling freebies, shafting pensioners, running a Greta Thunberg energy policy, finding ways to increase national insurance (the employers’ rate) and income taxes (extending threshold freezes) in clear contravention of the impression it gave in its manifesto prospectus for power.

It has made a disastrous first impression on all but its most dedicated supporters and as such has already failed. To be polling below 30% when its traditional main opponent and usual nemesis is hors de combat is atrocious.

So when a new Tory leader is announced at the start of November – probably Kemi Badenoch but possibly Robert Jenrick – I would expect the Conservative poll rating to benefit significantly. By Christmas, I predict the Tories will be polling in the 30% range – perhaps a bit above.

But I doubt much of this extra support will come at the expense of Reform. In fact, I can see Farage’s anti-establishment outfit also continuing to rise given its obvious vitality and the despairing, anti-politics mood out there. Were the polling averages at the end of the year something like Conservative 30, Labour 25, Reform 23 then I would not be at all surprised.

And I expect Labour to be down in those doldrums throughout 2025 and beyond, perhaps dropping a few points lower still. The Labour polling score is going to drop down to its bedrock constituent parts: about 15% of the electorate who are unabashed middle class Woke leftists plus about five per cent constituted by an Islamic faith block and then a smattering of “force of habit” lifelong working-class Labourites on top. Even some of the Woke leftists may hop off to the Greens or Lib Dems if (when) things get really grim.

When the parliamentary by-elections start to come – typically they don’t get properly going until about halfway through an electoral cycle – the Conservatives or Reform will win nearly all of them.

A large majority of normal people will be raging about illegal migration, anti-white identity politics dominating official circles, excessive taxation, exorbitantly expensive energy, an underperforming NHS, a worsening law and order picture and increasingly grotty town centres and high streets. They are going to be looking at this Cabinet – memorably described by the Telegraph’s Madeline Grant as comprising a large number of “hatchet-faced scolds” – and finding it repellent.

The right will win big all the way through this parliament. Various Starmer