Welcome to the Age of No. This post is about the outlook for British politics, but we fit a global pattern. Below I discuss new evidence that confirms this.
As we know, this is the year when incumbent governments have struggled to get re-elected. Less widely remarked is that oppositions have often struggled too, gaining ground by default rather than from enthusiasm. From India to South Africa, and Austria to Portugal, it has become clear what most voters don’t want, but not what they do want. Germany may be next.
The most telling current example of life in the Age of No is France, where the far left and far right combined last week to force Michel Barnier out as prime minister. They agree on nothing except their hostility to Emmanuel Macron.
And so to Britain. Five months ago, the electorate was determined to get rid of the Tories, but weren’t too keen on Labour. To bring the story up-to-date, YouGov now reports that Starmer’s favourability rating is a dire minus 33. By almost three-to-one, voters say the government is managing the economy badly.
We can go further. Figures buried away and, as far as I can tell, unnoticed, paint an even starker picture of the weaknesses of both Labour and the Conservatives. Labour Together, a pro-government thinktank, recently published a detailed report, How Labour Won, based on a survey of more than 10,000 voters. However, its most fascinating figures are not in the main body of the report. They can be found via the last section, under the less-than-enticing heading “methodology and footnotes”. Even then two further clicks are needed to reach the full results. To save readers’ time, you can find them here.
The survey asked this question: “If the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Reform UK had an equal chance of winning in your constituency, how would you have voted?” (The SNP was added in Scotland, and Plaid Cymru in Wales.)
That is a great question. I wish I had thought of it years ago. It strips away tactical voting and gets to the heart of voters’ true preferences. Unfortunately, as well as hiding the results away, the tables make it hard to provide a Britain-wide comparison with the actual election results. For a start, the tables on pages 10 and 11 separate out the figures from England, Wales and Scotland. As we shall see, this is useful in some ways, but it requires numbers to be fed through a spreadsheet to calculate the picture for Great Britain as a whole.
That is not all. We must then strip out the small number of “don’t knows” in the poll to compare its figures with the election results. When all this is done, we arrive at the following figures:
This is what these figures tell us.
Labour’s true level of support was just 29 per cent, six points down on its election result and only one point more than the party achieved in 1983 when it was crushed by Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory. However, the Conservatives’ true support, 22 per cent, was even worse, and two points down on its actual vote. Together, barely half (51 per cent) supported either main party. This was even lower than the dismal 59 per cent shown by the election results. Britain’s electorate has never been so fragmented.
Reform and the Greens were, respectively, four and five points more popular than their voting figures indicated. Whereas the Tories led Reform by nine points in vote share (24 to 15 per cent), their lead in true support was just three points (22 to 19 per cent). Those polls showing Reform and the Tories neck-and neck were not so loopy after all.
The SNP crashed to nine seats despite being Scotland’s most popular party. They were the victims of ferocious tactical voting, which added nine points to Labour’s true support. Outcome: Labour 37 seats with 26 per cent true support; SNP 9 seats with 30 per cent.
Labour also gained hugely from tactical voting in Wales. Plaid Cymru did well in its strongholds but shed support where it stood no chance of victory. Overall: Labour 27 seats, with 26 per cent true support; PC 4 seats, 22 per cent.
These findings bring us back to life in the Age of No. Fragmentation and tactical voting are two of its clearest expressions. Big majorities wanted to boot out the Tories in England and Wales and worked out how to do it. In Scotland, a big majority preferred one of the anti-independence parties, and managed to punish the SNP despite it enjoying more “true” support than Labour. These are clear examples of negative voting outflanking positive preferences.
Given all this, the latest polls showing the current mood need to be treated with care. As a guide to the future, they can be read in two completely different ways.
A Labour optimist can say: “We must give more voters a positive reason to vote Labour. This means having a story of success to tell in 2029. Given the mess we inherited—low growth, wretched financial deficit, crumbling public services—we know that the only route to success is to take tough decisions now.
“The polls tell us that voters don’t like the taste of our medicine, that’s all. Our job is to ensure that they feel better next time and recognise that the medicine is working. Much can be done to reach Keir Starmer’s milestones—not least by spending taxpayers’ money more efficiently and harnessing the huge potential of AI. The Age of No need be neither permanent nor inevitable. We can beat it and we shall.”
To which a Labour pessimist could retort: “We cannot wish away the Age of No. It is the result of deep forces around the world that will buffet us for years to come. They arise from big economic changes; the growing tensions between national politics and international trade and finance; unrealistic public demands for both lower taxes and better public services; the costs of supporting ageing societies; the pressures of immigration; the need for higher defence spending; and so on. Governments can no longer deliver what voters want. Traditional parties suffer from surges by populist parties and their impossible dreams.
“In Britain’s case, there are things that would help—most obviously restoring frictionless trade with the European Union. Despite Rachel Reeves telling EU finance ministers this week that she wants an “ambitious” partnership, she has ruled out rejoining the single market and customs union. Forget ‘yes we can’. Now it’s ‘no we can’t’.
“The latest polls tell us that that we are now being lumbered, just as the Tories were, with the negative image that governments are increasingly suffering round the world. That is unlikely to change. Our best hope at the next election is that voters will still hate the Tories even more than they hate us.”
Which of those views will prevail? Ask me again in five years and I’ll let you know.
