The year of elections has provided grounds for optimism
While the end of year audit of the world's elections is mixed, it is just possible to detect an odour of stability.
The year 2024 was dubbed “Election Year” because more people around the world went to the polls than ever before. The end of year audit of all those elections is mixed.
If you are pumped by the return of Donald Trump, you are unlikely to be enthusiastic by the election of Sir Keir Starmer and vice versa. Assembly elections in France led to the shortest occupancy ever of the Matignon by prime minister Michel Barnier. In India, Narendra Modi remains in power but the wins of his BJP have been clipped.
Anyone picking through the detritus will struggle to find hidden gems anywhere on the tip. But, as the flies buzz around in the vapours rising from the garbage of 2024, it is just possible to detect a smell sweetening the general stench: the odour of stability.
The first quarter of this century has been battered by one epoch-defining shock after another: 9/11, Iraq, the banking crisis, the Arab Spring, Brexit, Black Lives Matter, Covid, Ukraine, 7 October, Gaza, Syria. Paired with contentious and divisive political leaders: Trump, Putin, Xi, Orban, Erdogan, Johnson, Truss, Netanyahu.
Most of those people are still in power and the reverberations are still playing out. After all the excitements of the past twenty five years, just maybe, the kaleidoscope will not be shaken so dramatically in 2025 and beyond.
The most important thing the UK’s new prime minister said in his victory speech may be the promise to “tread more lightly on your lives”.
In this country, the governed are in the mood for a rest from the histrionics of the governing. Some 65% may tell Ipsos that this has been a bad year for Britain, and Sir Keir’s approval ratings are bad, but the trend is still downwards from the 90% peak of discontent in 2020. The level of optimism has still not hit pre-pandemic levels but seven out of ten of us expect 2025 to be better than 2024.
The workings of the First Past the Post system have delivered a government with a large, almost unassailable, parliamentary majority even though the electorate was more fragmented than ever. And 33.8% of the vote gave Labour 63.7% of MPs. Subsequent defections and suspensions have barely dented Sir Keir’s working majority which stands now at 152.
Labour has ample political power to put its plans into place. This is a novelty after the past decade of Tory chaos and infighting. If this government’s ideas improve the state of the nation, its clumsy first few months may not matter so much in the long term. Nor might Sir Keir’s absence of charisma.
Starmer was both premature and over-reaching in the comparisons he has been drawing between himself and Churchill and Atlee. When I ventured to a senior Labour loyalist that the prime minister may be a “dud” in political terms, the reply was: “If he’s a John Major, I’ll take that.”
Almost a forgotten figure now, “grey”, “boring” Major gave the Conservatives seven more years in office. He put the nation more at ease with itself while bedding in Thatcherite reforms. After a severe shock on Black Wednesday, he stabilized the British economy.
Starmer is no Conservative and has a different programme. To last as long, or longer, than Major, he will need two election victories rather than one. He has never denied this and has always stressed that it will take a decade – that is at least two terms – to change Britain for the better.
There is every reason to expect the next election will take place in 2029, after Trump and his second term is done and dusted. Starmer is pacing himself for that second rendezvous with the electorate. In the meantime, he seems uninterested in the politicking required to get there.
The precedent of the last fifty years is that, once the British electorate makes a change, it is inclined to give the incoming party two or three terms. Those expectations may be less secure as traditional affiliations to mainstream parties fray. Sir Keir is acutely aware that only firm signs that things are getting better will prevent further gains by Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, the Greens and Scottish Nationalists.
Fragmentation on the Right helped Labour in 2024. Next time, it could usher in the populist right wing with hundreds of MPs – at least that is what Nigel Farage is predicting.
In the US, MAGA has already captured the Republican party, along with the presidency and both houses of the US Congress. If Trump delivers only a small part of his rhetoric, the American people are in for shock after shock.
To the surprise of many, the US is in an orderly transition to instal a democratically elected government on 20 January 2024. Trump’s victory has removed the threat of insurrection and civil war. “America First” will demand a selfish obsession with its own internal affairs and more transaction.
We may not like what we see happening across the Atlantic but at least we should know where we stand for the next four years. There is a possibility that some ideas that the Trumpists test to destruction at home may provide helpful lessons for us - either as awful warnings or perhaps actually helpful when applied in much more moderate doses here. Smaller government has its attractions but, I expect, that the US will show us by default what the benefits of a rational welfare state may be.
Everybody wants a ceasefire in Ukraine. So far our support against Russia has been too little and too late to beat Russia. In reality, we have not seen the conflict as existential for us. Even a bad “peace” on Putin’s terms would concentrate minds that Europe must find the resources to defend itself as a priority. There are reasons to hope that the settlement with Russia will be better than that though still requiring more from us. Syria has shown that Russia is not as mighty as had been feared. Perhaps President Xi will have pause to re-consider his adventurism towards Taiwan.
Similarly, however much the UN condemns Israel’s bloody and brutal response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas massacre, the establishment of a secure Jewish state and the consequent severe weakening of Iran and its Islamist proxies will be good for the stability of the Middle East and may ease the refugee crisis. The second Trump administration will be well placed to build on the Abraham Accords and bring Saudi Arabia and perhaps even a moderate Syria into constructive participation.
Sensible relations between the UK and the EU are stabilizing too with the new British government. Defence co-operation is improving. Governments across the continent are beginning to realise that the migrant problem is not just about border security. With the US likely to withdraw its verbal support for the Paris Accords, while moving ahead with green innovation, the UK and our European allies will have to assess honestly how realistic their climate rhetoric is.
Those who point to political instability in Germany and France may be too pessimistic. An optimist could argue democratic political systems are working towards a more stable settlements, albeit slightly more conservative ones. The limits of the far right and the far left are being tested. So far, the centre is still holding.
Macron’s election challenge to Marine Le Pen misfired – but he succeeded in that her party did not emerge pre-eminent from the polls. Her legal troubles cloud her next bid for the Presidency. Besides Macron will be president until 2027. A likely CDU-led government after next February’s elections in Germany would not be a novelty. It is too soon to panic.
I wish you a stable new year in these interesting times. In the UK you deserve it. It is what you voted for on 4 July.