Andy Burnham has managed to revive Labour’s poll rating and, after a successful Party Conference, Kemi Badenoch is doing something similar for the Conservatives. Reform has slipped from first to third, while the Greens and Lib Dems are both arguing about the continued survival of their current leaders. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon, but could we be heading back towards two-party politics?
It is true that the poll ratings of the two parties combined is not yet consistently above 50%, when they used never to fall below 80%. Indeed, to continue the Biblical analogy, this may only be a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, but something may be happening.
On the Left, Burnham is taking ground that the Greens are vacating as they become an increasingly sour and unpleasant party. Burnham’s conference speech placed him firmly on the Left, much further left than Starmer, Blair or Brown, with calls for a tax on property rights as well as outright nationalisation. His defence of social security against national security may seem a dereliction of duty to many, but it appeals to his wing of politics.
Starmer’s lack of leadership qualities had allowed the left wing vote to fragment, but this was exaggerated at the general election, when Starmer was still quite popular, by tactical voting to defeat the Conservatives. Many people who voted for the Lib Dems in the south of England did so in the successful hope of removing Tories and of electing a Labour government.
After Starmer won and began to govern so poorly, Labour’s rating declined, with many of his former voters defecting to the Greens, which they thought was a gentle, tree-hugging party run by sensible, matronly people such as Caroline Lucas. This turned out to be an error.
The Greens are not a woolly, unworldly party of cave dwellers anymore. Instead, it has become a collective of Palestine activists who are routinely anti-Semitic and wish to see the state of Israel removed from the map. This is alienating all but the most fanatical voters, other than those who have not yet noticed what has happened.
