My blog

Tag: 2024 General Election

  • Successful Government Transition: What Happens When a New Government Takes Office?

    Understanding Government Transition, Stuart Thomson

     

    Government transition between one of the two main political parties have rarely happened in recent years. Since the time of Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s the baton has only been passed in 1997 and 2010 and now again in 2024. But what really happens when such shifts take place?

    After any General Election there are always a number of new Members of Parliament (MPs) that are elected. This time around the churn has been much higher. The example is often given that when everyone arrives in Westminster for the first time, it is like a fresher’s week. There are lots of new people making new friends, catching up with old ones, finding their way around, and not really knowing what they are doing!

    Then there are the logistics of being allocated an office, sorting IT, and for many, recruiting an office team as well. They are nowadays provided with some notes on what to expect and a ‘buddy’ system is in place but the government transition process can still be a daunting prospect.

    The results this time around, especially for some Labour MPs, mean that victory will have been unexpected. This means resigning from their existing jobs with immediate effect. There is also then the impact of a very different sort of working day and week. It is not 9-5 which may sound fine in theory but takes time to get used to not least for those around an MP. There can also be issues about where to live as well.

    For the Government itself the key challenge is in getting up and running as quickly as possible. Once the PM has been appointed by the monarch, there will be a speech to deliver on the steps of Downing Street. This sets the tone of everything that will then happen and many literally go down in history.

    Then there is the hard work of governing to get on with, Ministers to appoint, and briefings with civil servants as everyone gets up-to-speed in their new roles. A PM also needs to start ringing world leaders as well as engaging on national security measures.

    One of the over-riding thoughts especially for this Government transition will be the first 100 days. They will already have mapped much of that out so that they can demonstrate a clear plan, deliver some quick wins, and show that they are different from the party which has just been removed from office. There will also be a King’s Speech to finalize, setting out the new government’s legislative agenda, and I would assume a financial statement from Rachel Reeves opening up the books and explaining what a poor state Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have left them in.

    It might be thought that the size of the majority will make life easier for Starmer but trying to manage such a large number brings its own challenges. Even from the moment he appoints Ministers he has to consider party management and whether he is brewing up potential trouble in the future. Government transition, even in the event of such a successful election campaign can be wrought with dilemna.

    The Ministerial team will be appointing political and media (special) advisers, and Starmer too will be adding to the team already around him. There will be other appointments to be made as well potentially around engagement with business but we do not operate in a US-style system that sweeps out officials and replaces them with new political appointees. The British style of government is one of a smooth and seamless transition of power, rather than a sea change. The independent civil service means that a change from Conservative to Labour can happen, a new approach implemented, and new policies progressed almost as if nothing has really changed.

    Who said starting a new job was easy?

  • Opinion: Are General Elections in the UK still fit for purpose in 2024?

    Opinion: Are General Elections in the UK still fit for purpose?

    Finito World

     

    ‘Laugh about it/shout about it/when you’ve got to choose/anyway you look at this you lose.’ So sang Simon and Garfunkel in their song ‘Mrs Robinson’, and judging by the sheer number of people who voted for smaller parties and independents in the July 2024 general election, it would seem many feel the same.

    This isn’t about the result of the general election, which was the largest display of collective schadenfreude ever aimed at a UK government, but about process. When Sir Keir Starmer arrived on the steps of 10 Downing Street to announce that the country had voted for change, most people in the country inwardly assented. Indeed many Conservatives had been privately wanting their leadership to change tack for years.

    But then the question followed: what kind of change? Even when Starmer announced at the end of that first address to the nation as Prime Minister that he was heading indoors to get to work there was still a good deal of doubt as to what precise work he might be referring to.

    Would he empty the prisons as his new advisor James Timpson wanted him to? And how would his new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood feel about, having said rather different things? Would Starmer raise taxes? And if so, which ones? And to do what?

    Labour’s campaign had been a masterclass in campaigning according to Napoleon’s dictum of never interrupting your opponent while they’re making a mistake.

     

    The format of our general elections had meant that by and large he hadn’t had to elaborate on his plans. This isn’t good for the electorate – and it’s not ideal for the Labour Party itself which will eventually disappoint partly because people have been projecting their hopes at this vagueness. “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” as President Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope.

    At one point in his speech, Starmer said he would be ‘unburdened by doctrine’. This was good to hear, since we are crying out for sensible politics – but it’s difficult to think of a more ideological policy than the end to the VAT exemption for private schools.

    Starmer has said some promising things, but mainly people like the way he has said them, since that’s mostly what they have had to go on. At the tail end of 2024, positions will need to be carved out and crises will need to be responded to. Shakespeare’s Hamlet found out that there is nothing quite like events for forcing you into a display of your character which will smoke out your beliefs whether you like it or not.

    When it comes to employability, the subject of this magazine, the matter hardly came up throughout the six-week campaign – except tangentially in that there was talk of an increase in green jobs due to decarbonisation of the economy. Labour also stated that a ‘back to work plan’ would aim to increase the employment rate from 75 per cent to 80 per cent.

    The new Department for Work and Pensions secretary Liz Kendall spoke during her 2015 leadership campaign of her commitment to the living wage, and expressed support for worker representation on company boards – which Theresa May also at one time espoused. None of this is much to go on.

    In fact, the media must take a larger share of the blame for our lack of knowledge about the nature of the new government. The TV debates were once again ludicrous with the whole of the taxation or healthcare system having to be explained in 45 seconds. The manifesto coverage was slender, as were the manifestos themselves.

    The typical response from the media is that they must whittle the issues down in order to cater to voters’ dwindling attention spans. But what if there is a far greater hunger for detail than they think? One often hears its chief reporters speculating about how a certain matter is ‘only for people in the Westminster bubble’. The depth of emotion around politics at each election cycle makes on think that at 45 seconds into an explanation around tax, the people may not be tuning out – they may just be tuning in. To paraphrase Starmer, it’s time for a change.

  • Labour Majority in 2024: Lady May Discusses the Uncertainties, “Politics has become much more volatile”

    Labour majority isn’t a foregone conclusion, Lady Theresa May

     

    I am stepping down at this election and so I now don’t have the letters MP after my name. I do still think there’s a path to victory for the Conservatives for a number of reasons.

    First of all, I was elected in 1997, and so I can say with certainty that Sir Keir Starmer is not Tony Blair: the impact on the doorsteps is simply not the same. That’s the impression I get in my Maidenhead constituency, and that’s what we’re seeing in what will probably be a marginal new constituency near me.

    It’s worth remembering that Labour still has a huge mountain to climb to take the seats they need to take to get a working majority. They have to secure the largest consistent swing across the country in order to get there. In addition to that, I think politics has become more volatile. You do not get consistent swings across the country any longer; you get much more variation between seats. You might get a seat which you think is in the bag, and another which isn’t – and you might lost the first and gain the second.

    The third reason why a Labour victory isn’t certain is that if you look at General Elections in recent years, they’ve tended to be unexpected results. 2010 was unexpected, so was 2015 – 2017 was definitely unexpected, to my own cost. Even in 2019, the size of the majority was unexpected. If you look closely at 2017, the Conservative Party was over 20 points ahead in the polls and look what happened: we didn’t secure our majority.

    It seems a long time ago now, but I would also point out that the local election results earlier in the year weren’t as good for the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats as they would have wanted them to be: examine closely the gains of the Labour Party in the local elections, and add up gains by the Greens and the independents, they almost equalled the progress made by the Labour Party.

    The social care policy was a factor in that 2017 election. This is a huge issue which the country has to address. I’ve been Conservative all my life. One of the things I’ve been brought up to believe is that when you’re able you should put something aside for a rainy day. The welfare state, when it was created, was there to support people who weren’t able to do that, and to help people at certain challenging points in their life.

    Somewhere along the line, we’ve got to the point of saying nobody should have to sell their house to pay for their care and that, whatever happens, the government will provide. But if someone is sitting on a significant asset why should the young couple down the road struggling on average earnings to keep their head above water pay for that person’s care? Politicians need to have an open and honest conversation with the public about this.

    We live in much more uncertain and unpredictable times. It’s certainly the case that security has gone up the agenda because of our continuing support for Ukraine, but the number one issue in any election is the economy. I think there’s the need in today’s world to think a little more creatively about defence. People think in terms of big bits of kit for the army; but in Ukraine we have seen that drones have been incredibly effective.

    It’s concerning that Labour has not matched the government’s defence spending plans. What happened in Afghanistan has not made life easier as it’s made that country return to its former state as a place where terrorists can be trained. What’s happening in Gaza is potentially another flash point for those who would do us harm.

    I will miss many of my colleagues – and I will remember the strange things. I remember the occasion when I was PM, when I was in Iraq. I was flying back to have dinner in Saudi Arabia and had to change before the dinner. I was being transported in an RAF Hercules, which is a troop carrier. There are no facilities on such aircraft, let alone for a woman. I said I had to change. The RAF put their heads together and took me up into the cockpit and they sat me down between the pilot and the co-pilot. They got a sheet and some gaffer tape and said: “Here you are, PM, you can change there.”

     

    The former prime minister was talking on 23rd May 2024, the day after the election was called, at a Finito event at the East India Club

  • Dinesh Dhamija: UK Indians Trending Conservative

    Dinesh Dhamija

    With a UK General Election less than a year away, political minds are focusing on Britain’s many floating voters.

    Will they stick with the Brexit-delivering Conservative Party, or move to the “Remain” Liberal Democrats or place their faith in a resurgent Labour Party led by Kier Starmer?

    While national polls show that Labour has a significant lead, British Indians are trending in the opposite direction. Since 2010, when almost two-thirds of UK Indians voted Labour, support has halved to around 30 per cent, according to a report in the Guardian.

    What accounts for this collapse in support? One factor is economic demography. As the Indian community has grown wealthier, it has become more inclined to move to the Right.

    A majority of Hindu voters in the UK – the wealthiest minority in the country – supported the Tories in the 2019 election.

    Then there are specific flashpoints. Under Jeremy Corbin’s leadership, Labour advocated an independent Kashmir, something that few British Indians would support. Rishi Sunak’s election as Conservative leader (and therefore Prime Minister) drew many British Indians to his party. It gave the community a sense of pride and belonging at the heart of British democracy. “It’s really good how he’s brought the Indian community into the traditions of 10 Downing Street,” said one British Indian recently.

    I felt the same way. As a British Hindu who has spent more than 50 years in this country, there is a palpable sense of political and social acceptance. Having a Hindu Prime Minister has been transformative – how could we face prejudice and discrimination if the man at the top is one of us?

    To see Diwali being celebrated in Downing Street, or hearing examples of Sunak’s religious beliefs helps to normalise British Indians’ own experiences.

    For Labour, these are concerning times. Indian voters are the UK’s largest minority ethnic group and could determine the fate of several parliamentary seats, especially in some ‘Red Wall’ areas of Northern England. The party is sending two senior shadow ministers – David Lammy and Jonathan Reynolds – to Delhi this weekend to rustle up some good press.

    This magnified role in British politics is just one aspect of the Indian diaspora that I explore in my new book The Indian Century. An excerpt looking at the diaspora and its extraordinary impact on global society, business and politics appears in the next edition of Finito World magazine and online. The book itself will be published in the next few weeks.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, is published in February.