Party conferences will set the agenda for the politics of this parliament

The autumn party conferences will hear many first attempts to map the new unchartered terrain of British politics after Labour’s complex landslide

• Sunder Katwala
• 02 September, 2024

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By: Sunder Katwala

Serving over 50 days in office this summer means Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership is already longer than that of former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss. None of his four immediate prime ministerial predecessors managed four years in office, with Boris Johnson imploding even after a clear general election victory.

Both circumstance and character make it more likely that Starmer will be the first occupant of Downing Street to serve a full term since the Brexit referendum brought David Cameron down.

But to what end? The autumn party conferences will hear many first attempts to map the new unchartered terrain of British politics after Labour’s complex landslide, gaining overwhelming parliamentary dominance on a narrow winning vote share. Johnson’s election victory in 2019 was widely, but prematurely, hailed as a “realignment” of British politics. The caution in interpreting the meaning of the 2024 general election is a sensible corrective, since its longer-term legacy will largely depend on what happens next.

Yet the contrast also reflects different levels of confidence about power on the centre-left and the right. One of Starner’s tests this autumn is to show whether his government can now begin to set the political agenda, rather than primarily reacting to events, as they had to in opposition. The government’s first few weeks have seen a sustained effort to communicate the bleakness of its inheritance, from prisons to public finances. After the challenge of responding to rioting, the government will need to set out how its understanding of the causes of disorder reflect its agenda for change too.

The Conservative opposition is focused on who should lead it next. Six leadership candidates will become five on Wednesday (4), before MPs vote again to identify the quartet who will make their leadership pitch at the party’s Birmingham conference. MPs will then select two candidates for party members to choose between.

Mel Stride is thought most likely to be eliminated first. Priti Patel has the highest public profile among the six candidates, but that could prove a disadvantage when a core task of the next leader will be to remake the party’s battered public reputation. The crowded field on the right of the party make it challenging for Patel to navigate a route to the ballot paper.

Kemi Badenoch ran an impressive outsider campaign in 2022, boosting her profile in the party considerably. She faces a more challenging task this time of being the frontrunner. A slimmed down Robert Jenrick has made most early impact in seeking to set the ideological agenda for the contest. The overall balance of the Conservative parliamentary group means it would be surprising for both Badenoch and Jenrick to make the final two, so they may be competing for one slot on the ballot.

Tom Tugendhat performs well in national opinion polls, but is keen not to be pigeonholed as the candidate of the party moderates. So his first move in the contest was to declare that it need not disrupt an alleged party consensus on contested issues, including the ECHR, taxation and net zero, largely accepting the terms set by the right of the party on those issues. Shadow home secretary James Cleverly is similarly keen not to be branded as a centrist candidate.

One key contest between the Cleverly and Tugendhat campaigns may be to persuade MPs they would have a real chance of winning the party member ballot too, where there is more of a right-leaning skew than at Westminster. So the tactics of trying to win an unpredictable and closely fought leadership election may tend to crowd out a substantive inquest about the party’s defeat until after the contest is over.

The major party conferences open with the Liberal Democrats, the below-the-radar success story of the general election. The party’s 65 gains make them the largest third force in the Commons for a century, though they have generated less media interest than Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. The Lib Dem gains could turn out to be a formidable new ‘yellow wall’ across the south of England, with the potential to shift the centre in a liberal direction, including by challenging the next Conservative leader to not simply focus on the Farage threat.

The 2024 party conference season will illuminate how parties and political leaders adapt to the unfamiliar role reversal of being in government and opposition. It may prove something of a sparring match in the run-up to chancellor Rachel Reeves’ October budget. The result of America’s presidential election in November will make a dramatic difference to the international context too. If the major political questions of the parliament are unlikely to be settled over the next month, they are an opportunity to set the agenda for the big arguments to come.

(The author is the director of British Future)