Missing
the gap

The Labour Party obtained an overwhelming majority in the UK 2024 general election, winning 411 of the 650 seats available, but this victory reflects the widespread rejection of the Conservative Government and the idiosyncrasies of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, rather than a massive increase in support for Labour. In fact, only 60% of those eligible to vote did so, and of these 35% voted for Labour, which is the lowest share of any postwar single party government and less than the 40% they secured in 2019, when the much-derided left-wing Jeremy Corbyn led the party.

The Conservatives had been in power since 2010, but became deeply unpopular from 2019 during the Boris Johnson administration – which was associated with incompetence and a variety of political scandals, including holding parties during Covid lockdowns in Downing Street (the Prime minister’s residence) and handing out contracts for Personal protective equipment (PPE) to friends which were found to be inadequate. Subsequently, there was a succession of prime ministers including Liz Truss who lasted only 49 days, and whose unfunded tax cuts traumatised the markets and led to a large rise in interest and mortgage rates. More widely, there was dissatisfaction owing to 14 years of austerity, declining living standards – the first recorded in recent decades –, deteriorating public services, especially health and education, and because they broke their promise to reduce immigration.

As a consequence, the Conservative share of the vote fell by 20%, with those unhappy about the failure to stop immigration voting for the recently established right wing Reform UK Party, and those worried about incompetence and the decline of public services voting for the Liberal Democrats and to a lesser extent for Labour.

The first-past-the-post electoral system means that a candidate can win a seat in Parliament even if they have a majority of one vote, which encourages tactical canvassing by political parties and tactical voting by the electorate. So, opposition parties focussed their efforts on seats with small Conservative majorities and voters voted for the Party that had the best chance of defeating the Conservative leading to an overall Labour victory.

The overwhelming difference in voting patterns was age, with young voters supporting Labour, while older people were more likely to vote Conservative. Only 8% of those under 30 voted for the Conservatives while nearly half (46%) of those over 70 did so. Women and men voted in similar ways, with slightly more women – 26%, compared to 23% of men – voting for the Conservatives. However, young women (those aged between 18 and 24) were more likely to vote for the more progressive parties, with almost twice as many young women voting for the Green Party (23%, compared to 12% of men), while young men were more likely to vote Conservative (10% to 6%), and also more likely to vote for the very right wing Reform UK party (12% to 6%), and this party generally attracted more votes from men than women across the age range.

Labour’s victory was therefore largely by default rather than overwhelming enthusiasm for their policies. Instead of presenting a positive vision of a fairer society based on their traditional values of creating a good standard of living for everyone – freeing society from poverty, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, namely the five giant evils addressed by the postwar welfare state – they emphasised Change and an end to the Chaos. Change referred both to difference from the incompetence of the Conservatives but also to the Labour party itself, emphasising how it had moved to the right under the leadership of Kier Starmer, now the prime minister. Many left leaning MPs were ousted from the Party, including Jeremy Corbyn, or deselected from their constituencies prior to the 2024 election and replaced by more centre-right candidates. The leadership attempted but failed – to deselect the leftwing Diane Abbott, the first Black woman to represent Labour and who had been an MP for 37 years.

Labour’s Manifesto did represent some progressive changes, including a large increase in public sector investment to boost to Green Policies in relation to energy and the environment and referred to several policies designed to ensure better gender equality. These included reducing the gender pay gap via increasing opportunities for women, making work pay, addressing discrimination at work by amending equalities legislation and increasing the number of nurseries. It also addressed gender equality in life, especially with respect to ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) and reforming the gender recognition policies to promote trans-inclusive practices, while still protecting single sex exceptions in some circumstances and ensuring more positive health outcomes, especially with respect to maternity care and childbirth. They also expressed a desire to reduce poverty, especially child poverty.

The main emphasis, however, was on kick starting economic growth via promoting investment via a National Investment Bank and improving physical infrastructure, especially roads, but mainly by ensuring economic stability and especially financial responsibility by adhering to the same fiscal rules as the Conservatives in order to ensure market confidence. The fiscal rules state that the current budget must move into balance, so government annual revenues must meet day to day public spending and over time, so that by the fifth year; overall, public debt must be falling as a share of GDP (that is the size of the economy).

These rules which are self-imposed and for which there is little evidence, limit public spending and in practice have unequal social content and unequal social impact which are gendered. They reflect a particular kind of masculinised free market thinking that prioritises the health of the economy – low debt, low inflation and a stable currency over social wellbeing. Limiting and reducing public spending is gendered because it creates a triple jeopardy for women.

Women, who are more likely to work in the public sector tend to lose more jobs, so lose more income and in the future have lower pensions. They are more likely than men to be the direct users of public services and have to fill the gaps when public services fail. In addition, they are more likely to be in receipt of social protection owing to the stereotypical and indeed real differences in the roles that women and men play in the economy and in the home despite years of equal opportunities policies and some limited change.

When Labour came into office, they found that the Conservatives had left a £22 billion gap (approximately 26.3 billion Euro) in public finances owing to unfunded tax cuts and this limited what they could do, especially since they had committed themselves to no tax increases for working people. Even so, in their initial budget, the first ever by a woman, they increased public spending and investment, made possible by slightly changing the fiscal rules and by increasing some taxes on the more affluent.[1] This allowed real increases in spending on health and education. The minimum wage was also increased and this benefits women disproportionately as they are overrepresented among the low paid.

Overall, much more could have been done. Even a small wealth tax which would have affected a tiny amount of people could have raised far more than the proposed tax increases. With respect to child poverty, which had increased dramatically under the Conservatives and especially prevalent among lone parent families (90% of whom are mothers), Labour have proposed to establish breakfast clubs. Yet, a far more effective policy would have been to raise the limit which restricts welfare payments to the first two children in a family. This would have lifted 250,000 children out of poverty and removed a further 850,000 from near poverty. Doing so would cost approximately 1.5 billion Euro, yet not doing so has been estimated at nearly 47 billion Euro in costs to other public services to address the health, education and housing problems relating to children and their parents of growing up in poverty.

In addition, welfare payments to those in need, again disproportionately women, could have been raised to meet cost of living increases and the amount given to local authorities who manage social care for the elderly, and support programmes to address VAWG could have been increased and been cost effective. In relation to VAWG, the costs of dealing with the consequences of violence has been estimated at nearly 79 Billion Euro a year, far more than providing more support for those needing help.

This failure to look at the economy from a feminist perspective is also evident in Labour’s investment plans. While recognising that public spending can boost the economy is important and represents a radical change of perspective by Labour, their emphasis has been entirely on physical infrastructure. Yet, as feminist economists point out, expenditure on social infrastructure, such as social care, education and health can lead to larger increases in employment and economic growth than a comparable amount spent on physical infrastructure.

The government has promised new investment for the health and education, but this is largely for new buildings and repairs rather than for the people who run the services despite large labour shortfalls and serious problems of retaining existing staff. There is some very limited funding for new teachers, but with respect to the health service, the promised reductions in waiting lists are to be secured largely through increasing the number of appointments by expanding the opening hours, which means increasing the intensity of work from existing employees.

So overall, the Labour government represents important change, but it could and undoubtedly should have done more to ensure increases in wellbeing, especially for those with lower incomes for unless there are some improvements in their standards of living there is a risk that the UK will turn to the right following other countries in Europe and the United States.   

Notes

[1] They kept the day-to-day spending rule but allowed annual imbalances for investment so as to promote economic growth while ensuring that debt falls in the medium term. 

References

Child Poverty Action Group, The Costs of Child Poverty, 2023. 

J. De Henau, S. Himmelweit, Z. Łapniewska, and D. Perrons, Investing in the Care Economy: A Gender Analysis of Employment Stimulus in Seven OECD Countries. ITUC, 2016.

O. Rhys, A. Barnaby, S. Roe, and M. Wlasny, The Economic and Social Costs of Domestic Abuse. Home Office Research Report 107, 2019.