Keir Starmer and Labour’s massive victory

British pollsters, unlike their counterparts in many other countries, are known for their accuracy, especially when conducting exit polls. Once again they proved to be correct. The Labour Party defeated the Tories in a landslide, garnering 412 seats; the Conservative Party managed to hold only 121 seats in the 650-seat parliament.

It was the Conservatives’ worst showing since the Reform Act of 1832, which for the first time extended the franchise beyond the relatively small class of large property holders, usually aristocrats.

Labour’s supermajority reflects a major turnaround from the 2019 election, in which the Conservatives, led by Boris Johnson, made major inroads into traditional Labour strongholds to garner 365 seats and virtually wipe out Britain’s long-standing third party, the Liberal Democrats. But in that election, Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, and he was an electoral disaster.

Corbyn had long been the party’s ultra-leftist outlier. He was a throwback to the left-wing socialists who had been a major force in the Labour Party in the decades after World War II, and who sought to nationalize any industry they could get his hands on. Like those earlier left-wing Labour stalwarts, he was uneasy with Britain’s special relationship with the U.S. He also opposed Labour’s membership in NATO — indeed, he advocated disbanding the alliance — and was a proponent of unilateral nuclear disarmament and the termination of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. 

Corbyn also had a soft spot for terrorists. Only two weeks after the Irish Republican Army bombed a Brighton hotel, resulting in the death of five people, including the Conservative deputy chief whip, and nearly killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Corbyn invited two IRA leaders to Parliament. He also expressed support for his “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah. Indeed, Corbyn tolerated antisemitism within the party and was suspected to harbor antisemitic views himself. 

By the 2024 election, however, Sir Keir Starmer had replaced Corbyn. Starmer, a barrister who had served as director of Public Prosecutions, is a middle-of-the-road leader in the mold of Tony Blair, though without the latter’s charisma. Starmer expelled Corbyn from the party (Corbyn stood as an independent in this year’s election) and did his utmost to root out Labour’s antisemitic element.

Starmer committed very few gaffes during the current election campaign and, with him as leader, Labour was able to restore its losses, and then some. Starmer won back the “Blue Wall,” Labour’s historic stronghold in central England that it had lost to Johnson’s Tories. In Scotland, Labour recovered much of the ground that it had lost over the years to the Scottish Nationalists, having been reduced to but one seat in the 2019 election. The party also managed to do well in southern England, long a Tory stronghold. 

Finally, Starmer successfully straddled the Muslim-Jewish divide over Gaza. He advocated an immediate cease-fire to the war, though somewhat belatedly. At the same time, he let it be known that not only was his wife Jewish, and that his family usually celebrated Shabbat dinner together, but that his wife had relatives serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

With Muslims the nation’s largest minority, Labour are expected to prevail in majority or near-majority Muslim constituencies throughout the country. These include constituencies in Bradford, Yorkshire; Birmingham in the Midlands; Luton, north of London; Slough, west of London; and constituencies in the capital, including Brent in northwest London and Ilford in east London.

At the same time, Starmer captured much of the Jewish vote, which had defected from Labour due to Corbyn’s friendliness toward Hamas and Hezbollah. Starmer’s success in winning the majority of the Jewish community back from the Conservatives was exemplified by Labour’s strong showing in Golders Green and Finchley, successor to the constituency that Margaret Thatcher had served for many years, which has the highest concentration of Jews in the country.

The Labour there candidate was Sarah Sackman, a longtime Labour activist and barrister specializing in environmental matters with mainstream views and a proud Jewish identity. She had refused to support Corbyn in 2019. Sackman won, as did Labour’s David Pinto-Duschinsky, the son of a Holocaust survivor, in neighboring Hendon, which also is home to a significant Jewish population.

The election witnessed the return of Nigel Farage, godfather of Brexit. His Reform Party ate into Conservative votes, but only won four seats in the new Parliament. The election also marked the revival of the Liberal Democrats, although unlike in 2005 they will not join the government; Labour’s overwhelming majority renders a coalition unnecessary. 

Starmer, who will benefit from his party’s command of Parliament, will maintain his predecessors’ strong support for NATO. He will also continue to maintain British assistance to Ukraine. He is committed to Britain’s nuclear deterrent as well, despite the burden that the new Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarine will place on a defense budget that Labour insists will continue to exceed 2 percent of the nation’s GDP. 

Finally, Starmer can be expected to strive to maintain the special relationship with the U.S. that has marked the policies of his predecessors since Winston Churchill. Whether that relationship will remain strong may depend on who next sits in the White House. But as far as the new resident of Downing Street is concerned, the close ties that have long prevailed between London and Washington will remain a cornerstone of British national security policy.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.