Cast your mind back 14 years, to the summer of 2010. A new prime minister has just taken office after successfully detoxifying his party’s brand. Economic difficulties mean the new government will not have an easy ride. As they get to work, the defeated party kicks off a prolonged bout of infighting and navel-gazing.
Sound familiar? It ought to. And the comparisons between that summer and the current situation don’t stop there. Immediately after forming the coalition government, David Cameron and George Osborne set to work on a strategy that would turn out to reward them handsomely: further trashing the record of their predecessors. For months, the Tories talked endlessly about “the mess we inherited”. At every opportunity they turned the conversation to Liam Byrne’s now infamous note about there being no money left. Labour had bankrupted the country, they told us. Even the global financial crisis was pinned on Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
The public quickly bought into the narrative of a profligate party that had, as Osborne cunningly put it, “maxed out the nation’s credit card” and a new government that had a “long-term economic plan” to put things right. That gave the Tories the cover to pursue a programme of deep and ideologically-driven cuts to public services and welfare spending, the consequences of which are still crippling Britain today. And then, come 2015, it allowed Cameron and Osborne to argue that they were in the process of putting things right but needed more time. It worked: despite taking the axe to public services, the Tories were rewarded with a majority.
The similarities between the aftermath of this election and that of 2010 throw up important lessons for both parties about the opportunities to seize and the pitfalls to avoid. The early evidence is that Labour has already learned them. I’m told that the party’s top strategists, including Keir Starmer’s main political guru, Morgan McSweeney, have studied the aftermath of the 2010 election closely and concluded that it was pivotal in guaranteeing their defeat at the next one, in 2015. They believe that the success the Tories had in swiftly rubbishing Labour’s record made it all but impossible that the party would be able to win back power in just one term, and helped keep them out of power for a generation.
That belief is now guiding Labour’s current strategy – a strategy that will see Starmer using the Tories’ own previous tactics against them. The plan appears to be straight out of the Cameron and Osborne playbook: talking up the scale of the challenge the new government faces and, at the same time, further condemning their predecessors’ legacy. In his very first speech upon entering the Department of Health, for example, Wes Streeting declared that the NHS was “broken” and later described the state of the health service as “even worse than we thought”.
His boss has adopted a similar tone about the justice system. Starmer told reporters last week that ”some of what we’ve found is shocking” and claimed the situation is “worse than I thought it was”. Hours later, his Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, went even further, accusing the Tories of “the most disgraceful dereliction of duty” over prisons policy. Expect to hear much more of this language in the coming days and weeks, as Labour tries to convince voters that, however bad they might have thought the Tories’ record was, the reality is even worse.
There are enormous benefits to Labour if they can cement the idea that the mess they inherited will take years to clean up. It will allow them to argue that the change they were elected on a promise to deliver might take even longer than anticipated. The electorate is impatient, and time is not a luxury the new government has on its side: one poll published this week revealed that voters expect to see real change within one or two years. For those who voted Labour, the expectation is higher: they want it within 12 months. Emphasising the scale of the challenge the Tories have left them will help Labour to manage those expectations.
Then, come the next election, they will be able to blame any unfinished work on the sheer amount that needed fixing. “We have achieved a lot, but thanks to the incompetence of the previous lot, there is a lot more to do, so give us more time” – that was the message that worked so well for the Tories in 2015. Labour strategists believe it could be equally effective for them.
And, just like Osborne in 2010, focusing relentlessly on the difficulties they inherited will give Labour cover to insist that difficult decisions are necessary. This time, that won’t be sweeping cuts to public services but, more likely, tax rises.
In the election campaign, Labour said it had no plans to raise taxes but stopped short of ruling out some hikes. Arguing that public finances and public services are in a worse state than they expected gives Starmer and Rachel Reeves a justification for having to change their plans and increase some taxes after all. Capital gains tax, inheritance tax and even council tax are all prime candidates.
All of this creates a big political headache for the Tories, who now need to answer a question of enormous strategic importance: do they respond directly to the Labour attacks and try to defend their record in government, or do they roll with the punches, accept their mistakes and promise they will do better next time around? Labour had a very similar debate during its 2010 leadership contest.
If the Tories have any political acumen left among the rump of MPs that remains in Westminster, they will avoid the temptation to try to rewrite history and shift perceptions of their record. Voters have made their minds up: on the whole, they see the last few Tory governments as corrupt, incompetent, or both. That’s why they were so brutally booted from power. Any attempt to try to argue that the public got it wrong will surely be given short shrift by scornful voters.
That ought to determine the type of leader the Tories elect to oversee their rebuilding project. Picking a candidate closely linked to what voters see as the failures, mistakes and scandals of the past would be a mistake. James Cleverly, for example, was a supporter of Boris Johnson, a key backer of Liz Truss and then a senior member of the government of Rishi Sunak. Suella Braverman, too, is intricately linked to the chaos and controversy that has gripped the Tories in recent years.
If they want to turn their fortunes around, the Conservatives need a candidate who won’t be so damaged by Labour’s attacks on the Tory legacy. And they need to choose one soon: part of the reason that Cameron and Osborne were so successful in defining Labour’s legacy on their own terms in 2010 was that their opponents were too distracted by fighting and bickering among themselves while choosing a new leader to be able to respond effectively.
It may have only just won power, but Labour is already thinking ahead to the next election campaign. It has studied and learned the lessons of 2010 and is now putting them into practice. So far, there is little evidence that the Tories have done the same.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is former Westminster editor