Labour Party's Comeback: Focus on Home Front While Maintaining Foreign Policies

With a 21-point lead in opinion polls over Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party, Labour is all set for a sweeping victory in the British parliamentary elections on July 4. Labour will be back in power after fourteen years. The last Labour prime minister was Gordon Brown who succeeded Tony Blair and was in power up to 2010.

Keir Starmer slated to be the next prime minister (if opinion polls are correct) is from the Labour party’s centre-right and has successfully purged the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in 2020. Corbyn is much more a traditional Labour leader and his politics veered towards the Left-of-centre. The party had seen a resurgence after Corbyn took over the reins between 2015-2020 but was ousted by Starmer.

Others in the fray are the Greens, the Lib Dems as the Liberal Democrats are commonly called and the Scottish National Party (SNP). While these parties will win seats, they are not in a position to form a government. Nigel Farage’s Reform party the right-wing anti-immigrant outfit known for its racist views is unlikely to win more than a handful of seats. Recently a Reform party member used a racist slur against Prime Minister Sunak.

Starmer is in the mold of Tony Blair, though lacking the former prime minister’s charisma. Many commentators laud Starmer for winning the support of a wide section of the British public by taking a centrist position on issues. Others don’t buy this argument saying that people are so fed up with the 14-years of Conservative rule that they would prefer a change and vote Labour whether the party moderated its left-wing impulse or not. However, business leaders would not be comfortable with a Labour party that is decidedly Left oriented as it was under Corby.

Starmer will have to hit the ground running as Britain’s economy is in a mess, inflation high, jobs scarce, problems of housing and a creaking National Health Service, once the envy of other countries. Starmer has announced plans to reform the National Health Service, the energy sector, the housing infrastructure and other key industries. His party has also promised 7.4 billion pounds ($9.4bn) in tax rises to invest in these sectors.

There is also the hot button political issue of migrants. Rishi Sunak’s heartless plan of packing them out to Rwanda, will now be shelved. The first plane lead of migrants was to be flown to Rwanda by the summer and Sunak realizing that this move to waste millions of British pounds to transfer around 300 or so immigrants to a foreign land would make Conservatives even more unpopular. Some believe this is one reason why he decided to announce the elections. But it is also true that Sunak realized that as the summer unfolds the situation would further deteriorate so it was best to call for early elections. It is not clear exactly how Starmer plans to deal with immigration.

Much of Britain’s current financial problems are partly the result of Brexit. The Conservative party was responsible for getting Britain out of the European Union. Leaders like former prime minister Boris Johnson campaigned tirelessly during the BREXIT referendum of 2016. The Labour party was against leaving the European Union. However, Brexit is now a done deal and there is no going back or renegotiating new conditions for getting back into the European Union. Starmer has made it clear that there will be no calls for a fresh referendum.

A Labour government’s foreign policy would be much the same as that of the Conservatives. Starmer is in the same page as Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on support for the Ukraine war. The special relations with the US will remain firmly in place as it has done since 1946, when Winston Churchill coined the term to describe the close political, cultural and historical ties between the two. It has endured through change of governments at both ends.

It was the Republican government of George W.Bush that decided on a regime change in Iraq and went to war in 2003. The UK then under Labour prime minister Tony Blair, also had boots on the ground sending it as many as 46.000 British troops at the start of the war. The excuse was that Saddam Hussain had weapons of destruction. Both the CIA and M16 cooked up stories about sighting satellite images of these sites though the UN inspection team had declared it had found no such evidence. This is the kind of unstinted loyalty that Britain has for the US. Washington sets the agenda that British governments follow on foreign policy. Starmer would continue to follow Washington’s lead.

Support for Israel will also remain intact under Starmer. Unlike Corby who has been publicly supporting the pro-Palestine protests and calling for a ceasefire, Starmer has more or less followed the Conservative lead on both Israel and Ukraine. After October 7, Starmer had said Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza. He later backtracked and said he only meant to say that Israel has the right to defend itself after the Hamas attack. Now, the Labour Party has pledged to recognise a Palestinian state as part of a peace process “which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state”.

However, shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, said in an interview with CNNs Fareed Zakaria that if the International Court of Criminal Justice, gets down to finally issuing the pending warrant against Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for genocide and crimes against humanity, as a signatory to the Rome statute Britian will be forced to abide by it. The US as well as India are not signatories. Efforts are on by the US to stop the warrant of arrest. Lammy explained that the UK cannot bypass something it had signed on to. He also said that since the time of Churchill UK has believed in a ``rule based international order.’’ It would be interesting if Britain is forced to change its stand due to American pressure if the warrant is actually issued.

With New Delhi too the Labour government is expected to follow the Conservative line. The UK and India are working on a free trade agreement that will help both countries, but negotiations are still on, The next government will be keen to go through with it.

During Corby’s term as Labour leaderthere was a resolution passed by the party calling for international intervention on Kashmir. This cost Labour votes of many British Indians in the general elections in 2019. This time Starmer’s party has assured Indians in Britain thatall those within the rank and file of the Labour party who espoused extremist views, like support for Khalistan or third party involvement in Kashmir are no longer in the party. Labour leaders said they are keen to have close economic and strategic ties with India.

There are many Kashmiris as well as Pakistanis among Labour party supporters in Britian, so there will be ocassional statements. There are also large numbers of Sikh settlers in Britian and some of them may be supporters of Khalistan. So there will be demands by these sections for their MPs to speak out. Despite these minor ruffles, India-UK ties will remain on track with the new government.