Historians of the Labour party put Britain’s new government into context

The coming of a new Labour government is a moment to take stock. Are there things that the new administration can learn from previous Labour governments? Is it true, as David Cameron claimed in 2009, that Labour governments always run out of money?

The way we think about Labour’s previous periods in office matters because its successes and failures shape how people talk about the party today. Historians spend a lot of time setting the record straight.

The Labour history research unit at Anglia Ruskin University conducted a survey of 34 Labour party historians in the run up to the 2024 election, asking them to put the party led by Keir Starmer in historical context. Historians emphatically do not believe that the past teaches simple lessons but there is a value in including history in your thinking.

A majority of the historians we contacted said that of all previous Labour administrations, Starmer’s was most likely to resemble the governments of Harold Wilson.

We know that Starmer has professed admiration for Wilson, who fought five elections and won four. Like Wilson in 1964, Starmer is taking over after a long period of Conservative rule. Both had been associated with the left (although there is room for doubt in each case). Both promised to restructure the economy to promote growth. Both sought new forms of partnership between business and working people. Both championed education and reinvigoration of public services.

The two governments led by Wilson between 1964 and 1970 enjoy a better reputation today than they did at the time. Wilson struggled to implement economic modernisation and was distrusted even by many of his colleagues. Relations within Labour governments historically have often been fractious because cabinet ministers view themselves as embodying different principles and wings of the party. While he is all powerful for the moment, Starmer may well have to consider how his policies go down with different parts of his party and appoint ministers from different factions, as Wilson did.

We asked the historians if Labour governments had ever been able to control the economy. Popular memory recalls the financial crises of 1931, 1976 and 2008 (among others), which have harmed the party’s reputation and explain why Starmer is so cautious on economic matters.

Despite these events, a narrow majority believed that Labour has a positive record on the economy, with growth rates after 1945 that were as good as (and often better than) the Conservatives.

Indeed, rather than being a party addicted to tax and spend, Labour has often been fiscally prudent. Tony Blair, for example, stuck to Conservative spending plans for the first two years of his administration after coming to power in 1997. Even respondents who were more critical of Labour’s economic record made the point that it is wrong to think that any government is truly able to control the economy.

We asked whether the 2024 Labour manifesto was too bold, too timid or about right. There was a strong consensus that it was too timid. While 13 of the 34 respondents thought it about right, no one found it too bold.

Starmer has shown relatively little interest in Labour’s history but his party seems to have learned from the past that it is better to under-promise and over-deliver. Grandiloquent talk of socialism has been replaced by settling for smaller victories. Pippa Catterall, professor of history and policy at the University of Westminster, argues: “I fear it’s too much designed to win the 2019 election rather than address the challenges likely to confront the government over the next five years.”

Do Labour governments deliver equality?

We also asked about Labour’s effectiveness in promoting equality. The responses suggested that Labour governments had been strong on attacking poverty but less effective at countering wider economic equality, which is a difficult task (if only because the rich often keep getting richer). Nevertheless, the party can claim to have introduced major measures that shifted Britain in an egalitarian direction including the minimum wage in 1998 and greater gender equality through the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

Starmer’s government, similarly, has poverty in its sights with its new deal to make work pay and enhance employment rights as well as strengthen the rights of people paying rent. While resisting (for now) the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, Starmer has established a child poverty task force. We will see how these turn out but they bear comparison with earlier Labour attempts to target poverty and produce more egalitarian solutions.

Labour remains shaped by the myths it has lived by, and crucial to its identity is that it represents the working class. But historians argue this has never been totally true. A myth that speaks to this is that the 1945 government of Clement Attlee represented a decisive break with the past. We now see it built on what previous Conservative and Liberal administrations had accomplished from 1906 onwards. While we remember Attlee for having built the welfare state, selective memory is at play here. This was not the uppermost priority of his government, which was more concerned with reconstructing the economy.

Starmer aims to produce growth through financial stability and an industrial strategy (another point of comparison with Wilson) but what shapes an administration will often be external events that cannot be predicted. Blair’s administration is still viewed through the shadow of Iraq. Even the much-loved 1945 government fell in part because of divisions over paying for Britain’s contribution to the Korean war.

Labour governments have always had to deal with global economic shocks that undermine its plans. Yet the party can claim to have always been propelled by a social and moral purpose. Starmer talks about how he has changed his party but may find he has a lot in common with the six men who have previously served as Labour prime minister.

Rohan McWilliam is affiliated with the Labour Party.