Analysis: Expect a Cameron-style victory in 2024, not a Blair one

His victory at the 1997 general election was one of the shining achievements in the party’s history, and, given Labour has now lost four elections on the bounce as it had before it last returned to government, it’s tempting to see its path to victory through that lens.

The similarities are there but one election victory is perhaps a more snug fit for the task awaiting Sir Keir Starmer this year - one led by an MP sat on the opposing benches - David Cameron.

The now-Foreign Secretary, and then-Tory leader in 2005, had a not-too-dissimilar task when coming into power when he put an end to the New Labour era.

His job, in a very rough summary, was to rehabilitate the Conservatives’ negative perception among the public and to make the most of an poor economic outlook which wasn’t entirely the government’s fault, but one that he could make stick.

This upset a lot of his party, with grandees such as Norman Tebbit and the traditional base of some of the grassroots.

But perhaps most importantly, he was riding in on a wave of public opinion. Not a 1997-style wave of change that Blair saw, but one rooted in something close to apathy in voters minds.

This idea of “let the other lot have a go” or “we might as well, things couldn’t get much worse” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, and not one that you will pick up too cleanly with opinion polls, but when it comes to election day it doesn’t really matter.

Come 2010, Cameron was prime minister. Not through the deep undying love of the masses, but through successfully navigating the mood for change, and appearing as a fairly palettable option to deliver it.

In 2015 the party then was able to capitalise by becoming a government in its own right, picking up votes from Lib Dems who couldn’t quite stomach joining the blue team last time around.

Sir Keir Starmer faces a similar challenge this year.

After taking on the left of his party and rehabilitating it somewhat from its Corbyn-based woes with the public, voters have been left overwhelmingly nonplussed but accepting of him as the voice of change.

The economy’s dire state, due to a noxious mix of a global pandemic, a European war, a disastrous Tory mini-budget, and decades-long problems that no Tory leader quite had the time or will to change, has been successfully exploited by Labour.

However, alongside the positive signs from the lands of elections past, here also be dragons.

The collective memory of the country is fairly strong. Just as the Conservatives in 2010 and 2015 were able to take a sledgehammer to Labour’s economic competence, Starmer should be wary of his party’s own recent past.

The Tory election machine is already gently reminding voters that Gordon Brown sold the gold, and Labour crashed the economy, and that they left a letter saying they’d spent all the money.

As it is with Corbyn, the physical manifestation of everyone’s fears of Labour profligacy, mixed in with some antisemitism and red scare for good measure.

Labour may have changed, but the country is well aware of what it was. It may take a term in office to fully rehabilitate the party as one that the country can fully trust.

For now, the public aren’t in love with Labour, but that won’t bother Sir Keir Starmer one bit come election day.