Most likely at the end of this year, Britain goes to the polls and it’s likely to be a sea change election.
That’s when the tide and momentum for change is so seismic, that the new government is heralded by as much a sense of relief in bringing about the vast change, but also a sense of hope, of transformation.
We’re not a nation which marks the decades in terms of revolution, but these elections hallmark the closest thing we come to the wheel being turned upside down.
We saw that in 1989 with Margaret Thatcher and again in 1997 with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Keir Starmer's Labour Party has a large lead over the Tories in the polls
PA
It wasn’t so seismic in 2010 because the result did not deliver a great mandate for David Cameron (remember the Tory Lib coalition government from 2010 to 2015) and although Boris Johnson achieved a significant numerical result for the Tories in 2019, there was no sea change moment (albeit that Labour suffered its second biggest defeat in its entire history).
This year however we will likely have a sea change. In such an election, whilst the messaging is absolutely vital, it will be less about trying to craft an armada of individual constituency appeals but more a universal summons on the one hand to reject, and on the other to change.
It ensures voters combine both in booting out this broken Tory government, and so dismissing the current cast; but then ushering in the new team under Keir Starmer to herald and effect major change.
As such it’s not about crafting special messages for those red wall seats that Labour lost in 2019, but ensuring that every voter whether in a red wall or blue wall seat feels the same sense of opportunity to banish the incumbents and deliver a new broom to Downing Street.
Of course questions around Brexit matter. Part of the strength propelling the sea change is a wish to punish the Tories for the failures of Tory administrations to have completely failed to capitalise on the opportunities promised and imagined should the UK leave the EU.
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Shaun Woodward argued that Starmer has much to change
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Not surprisingly today’s poll numbers indicate that today only 32 per cent of the UK feel it was the right decision to leave the EU; 56 per cent think it was the wrong decision.
But these are the debates of yesterday. Starmer is not about to re-run the 2016 referendum. It’s off the table. His message for the red wall seats will also be messages for the whole country, not selected postcodes.
The NHS is broken. Our schools are hugely damaged through underfunding. Our economy is in recession. Our standing in the world is diminished. Tories have broken promise after promise.
The red wall seats know that. But so should every seat. And until the polls close on General Election Day, that message above all else must ring through again and again. Without pause, the question must be posed, "do you feel better off today than you did in 2010?"
To that drumbeat Starmer must also make his priorities clear for government. Make no mistake about elections: governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them. And this Tory Government has thrown it all away in a hurricane of failures.
Starmer will have much to do, much to repair and reform. Much to change. And not just during one term, but more.
Shaun Woodward laid out what Keir Starmer needs to do to win back the Brexit-voting red wall
PA
And to do that he must win the hearts and minds of Tories as well as Labour voters. For those Tories, of which I was once for two years a Conservative MP, he must show that he is committed and sincere.
The Starmer Labour tent is genuinely a place where if you share Labour’s values, then you are Labour. It’s not about class any more. It’s about values.
He won’t need Tory votes to kick Sunak out of Number 10; the present PM will and is doing that all by himself with the help of his tone deaf Cabinet.
But to make a real difference, to make the change count, Labour must win a second and preferably a third term, as Blair achieved in 2001 and 2005.
One term is not enough. And to that end Starmer must make converts of Tory supporters, not just in red wall seats but across the UK.
Keir Starmer must plant Labour's flag in the middle of the centre ground and claim the territory for Labour values.
Achieve that and we’ll see three terms of Labour. And achieve that and Starmer will join the list of the great Prime Ministers who not only win large mandates but achieved real change which ensures.
