Brexit will dominate the UK election. Not this one, but the next

There is no democracy in the world where the transfer of power is more brutally abrupt than in Britain. In America, a new president does not take office for nearly three months. In Australia, a new government is usually sworn in during the week after polling day. But when there is a change of government in the UK, except on those rare occasions when a close result means a short period of political limbo, the transition is immediate.

The removal vans arrive at the back entrance to 10 Downing Street early the next morning. The outgoing prime minister emerges and makes some dignified farewell remarks, before being driven away for the last time.

Brexit is likely to remain a major political issue for Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer.Credit: Getty Images

Shortly afterwards, the new prime minister arrives in triumph. After some words appropriate to the significance of the occasion, he then walks through the famous black door.

It’s all very informal, in a typically understated British kind of way. No inauguration. No brass bands. No parades. (The Brits leave the pomp and circumstance for the monarchy.) Just a private audience with the King, a short speech, a brief pose for the cameras, and the nation’s new leader disappears behind the door. That’s it. Even in Australia, with a televised swearing-in ceremony followed by champagne on the lawns of Yarralumla, we make a bigger fuss.

So it will be on the morning of Friday, July 5, when Sir Keir Starmer, having stepped inside No.10 for the first time as prime minister, is received by cabinet secretary Simon Case and a small number of other senior officials, and then welcomed by the household staff. If you’ve seen the movie Love Actually (who hasn’t?), you get the picture (though it’s safe to assume that, unlike Hugh Grant’s character, Sir Keir won’t suddenly be smitten by lust for the tea lady).

If you think it premature to call the election now, appreciate that there is not a single serious commentator in the UK who expects that, with little more than a fortnight to go, the Tories – still 20 points behind, and blighted by a campaign that has been a cavalcade of blunders since the day it began – can turn this around.

With the result so predictable, the election itself has become boring. The more interesting question is what happens next.

We can expect to see the most dirigiste British government since the 1970s. Starmer, an unapologetically self-described socialist, is committed to renationalising significant sectors of the economy, establishing new state-owned enterprises such as “GB Energy”, and significantly expanding the welfare state.

Old-fashioned class-based politics have been a heavy undertone of Labour’s campaign. While Labour has parried Conservative attempts to make taxation the big issue by promising not to raise taxes, that commitment is carefully qualified by the rider “on working people”. There will be new or higher taxes on businesses and on capital. New taxes will hit the middle class. For instance, Labour’s manifesto commits to impose VAT (Britain’s GST) on private school fees – which will not affect those wealthy enough to send their children to Eton or Winchester, but will force many struggling middle-income families into the state system. “Aspiration” isn’t a word you hear often on the lips of Labour frontbenchers.

Labour is committed to abandoning Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “Rwanda solution” – the British attempt to copy Australia’s successful offshore processing policy. It hasn’t offered any alternative beyond rhetorical pieties about better co-operation with European partners. The problem of illegal migration will get sharply worse, with the threat to social cohesion that entails.

On the question of Europe itself, the election of a Labour government will revive discussion about reversing Brexit. Starmer shrewdly ruled that out as a manifesto pledge to avoid having his campaign diverted into the political quicksand. Yet Labour remains institutionally hostile to Brexit. Almost all the members of the shadow cabinet, including Starmer, voted against it. The huge Labour backbench that polls are predicting will contain very few who would not like to see the decision reversed. As do the Liberal Democrats, the regional Celtic parties (the Scottish Nationalists and Wales’ Plaid Cymru), the Greens, and a good many of whoever is left on the Conservative benches.

The only elements of the new House of Commons who will remain enthusiastic about Brexit are the right-wing Tories and however many MPs Nigel Farage’s party (formerly the UK Independence Party – UKIP – now rebranded Reform) manages to elect. If the Tory numbers fall below 100, the proportion of anti-Brexit MPs will approach 90 per cent.

How long will Labour’s manifesto pledge withstand a political consensus so overwhelming? Particularly when Brexit is also seen by an increasing majority of the public to have been a mistake. Don’t be surprised if Starmer uses his first term to lay the groundwork for a further referendum, perhaps at the next election.

While Brexit unites Labour, it will continue to divide the Conservatives. Meanwhile, Farage has already wreaked unparalleled destruction on the Tories. Last Thursday, for the first time, a major opinion poll had Farage’s party overtaking the Conservatives (19 per cent to 18 per cent). That won’t translate into seats, but the votes Reform is bleeding from the Tories have been devastating, reducing them to a race for second place against the Lib-Dems.

Changes of government usually signal a period of renewal and stability. But over the next five years, as Starmer tries to manage a dangerously large backbench while he seeks to return Britain to the 1970s, and the right descends even deeper into civil war, political stability is the last thing Britain is likely to see.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is now a professor at ANU.

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