The 4th of July saw the end of 14 years of increasingly chaotic Conservative Party rule in Britain. The Tories presided over an unprecedented rise in inequality and poverty, with an estimated 4 million children going to school hungry, growing numbers of households dependent on foodbanks to survive, and the return of malnutrition-related diseases in one of the richest countries in the world, where the spoils of colonialism continue to be augmented by ongoing imperialism. The horrors of Tory incompetence, callousness, lies and blatant corruption during the Covid-19 pandemic were still fresh in voters’ minds and the cost of living crisis showed no sign of abating. But the clearly-signposted victory of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has been nothing to celebrate.

Labour’s campaign was mainly about two things – proving to those still in doubt that, from Gaza policy to workers’ rights, Starmer is indeed the polar opposite of his progressive predecessor as Party leader, the veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn, and showing that the Party is now as happy as the Tories to openly embrace dog-whistle racist and Islamophobic politics in its corporate-backed quest for power. Yet all these efforts actually won Labour a smaller number of votes than Corbyn-led Labour had won in 2017 or even in the ‘disastrous’ 2019 elections held in the wake of the massive smear campaign which branded Corbyn antisemitic for his steadfast support for Palestine.

In an election with the second-lowest turnout since 1918 and the smallest combined vote share for the two main parties since 1945, the real shift which delivered Labour its majority of 411 out of 650 seats in 2024 was the splitting of the right-wing vote.  A substantial chunk of disillusioned Conservative voters turned to the far-right Reform party - the latest project of Nigel Farage who first rose to notoriety with his anti-migrant venom during the Brexit campaign - a development which mirrors the rise of the far-right across Europe, although an alarming vote share of nearly 15% resulted in only five MPs for Farage’s party.

Keir Starmer’s repeated assertions that there ‘is no money’ (for public spending) and the relieved exclamation by some mainstream media commentators that ‘the adults are back in charge’ reflect the reality that the new government is very much a regime of what Tariq Ali called the ‘extreme centre’. It will bring a veneer of efficiency and order to the ongoing facilitation of the ruthless pursuit of profits by corporate capital, including the stripping and sale of what remains of the public sector and the flagship National Health Service in particular, and further attacks on working class livelihoods in the name of ‘sensible’ fiscal policy. Close alliance with Israel and the US, an unshakeable commitment to NATO imperialism, and plans to further reinforce the border apparatus against refugees and migrants are some of the hallmarks of the new government.

Days after assuming office Starmer has already announced plans to increase defence spending to meet the threat posed by a “deadly quartet” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. None of this is surprising when Keir Starmer himself has been a  member, alongside two former heads of the CIA,  of the Trilateral Commission, an organization linked to US intelligence and dedicated to promoting corporate power, and Starmer and no less than 12 out of his 24 cabinet members have taken donations from pro-Israel lobbyists.

A glimmer of hope however comes from the victories of independent candidates, Greens and other progressives, who along with a handful of Labour left MPs who have survived Starmer’s purges, can potentially form a counterweight to the inexorable rightward pull in Parliament. Jeremy Corbyn finally stood as an Independent, after he was blocked from standing for Labour, and won a sweeping victory in Islington North from the people he has represented since 1983, with 24,120 votes to 16,873 for Labour’s candidate, the private health care entrepreneur Praful Nargund. The leading role played by Corbyn, a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian people, in the movement against Israel’s war on Gaza has further increased his popularity, but the genocide and the huge and broad-based grassroots movement against it also threw up several new independent candidates who drew support from voters appalled by Labour’s loyalty to Israel.

Starmer initially insisted that cutting off water and electricity to Gaza was consistent with ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ and later refused to engage with the ICJ ruling on genocide, and calculatedly sabotaged a Parliamentary motion calling for a ceasefire. Pro-Palestinian independent candidates succeeded in defeating sitting Labour MPs in Leicester South, Blackburn, Birmingham Perry Bar, and Dewsbury and Batley, all of which are constituencies with significant Muslim communities. Starmer himself put the nail in the coffin of the Labour candidates with an overtly racist speech on the eve of the election in which he specifically targeted people from Bangladesh as ‘illegal’ migrants who would be ‘sent back’ by his government, while Jon Ashworth, MP for Leicester South went a step further, referring to ‘people from the Indian sub-continent’ as targets for deportation. Ashworth, a shadow cabinet minister, was roundly defeated by Shockat Adam, an independent candidate of Indian origin, who along with other Independent MPs is already challenging the new government not only on Palestine but also on domestic issues such as the new government’s refusal to scrap the cap on welfare benefits for families with more than two children, a major driver of child poverty.

Elsewhere, Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting, a notorious advocate for privatization in the NHS as well as a committed Zionist, found his majority slashed to a mere 500 by a 23-year old Palestinian candidate, Leanne Mohamed, and even Keir Starmer’s own constituency witnessed an 18% swing away from the PM-in-waiting to left-wing, pro-Palestinian independent candidate Andrew Feinstein, a South African who served in Mandela’s cabinet and is the son of a Holocaust survivor.

While Starmer arrogantly dismissed the significance of the loss of votes in Muslim communities which have traditionally voted Labour – pointedly ignoring journalists’ questions about it, he has now tried to exert damage control by backing a ceasefire while refusing to do the one thing which would make this meaningful – stop Britain arming Israel - or even to recognize the Palestinian state. His pointed silence on Israel’s bombings of five separate schools and multiple massacres in Gaza in the days following the election,  even as he condemned Russia’s attack on a children’s hospital in Ukraine underlines that there will be no change in the starkly unequal valuation of racialized lives under a new government. Instead, in time-honoured fashion, he is busy setting up alternative Muslim bodies which will toe the Party line.

Meanwhile there is no sign that the Gujarati Hindu communities which are the main base for Hindutva in the UK are shifting back to Labour en masse, despite Keir Starmer’s overtures to Hindutva organisations and Hindutva-affiliated temples and the Labour Party’s abandonment of a mildly critical stance on Kashmir and ditching of its commitment to anti-caste discrimination legislation. Hindutva organisations like Insight UK are still mourning the loss of their darling Rishi and eulogizing his ‘graceful’ demeanour on the Opposition benches. But they are also clearly gearing up to get the fabricated notion of ‘Hinduphobia’ more extensively recognized under the new government, with pro-Hindutva Labour figures like MPs Barry Gardiner (the recipient of a Padma Shri in 2020 along with rabidly rightwing Tory MP Bob Blackman) and Navendu Mishra, as well as Manoj Ladwa who served in Modi’s PR team in 2014,  at their service. Ever alive to the links between Zionism and Hindutva, they no doubt see the Starmer government’s committed pro-Israel stance as an encouraging sign in this regard.

Despite the change of guard in the UK, as the genocidal war on the Palestinian people continues unabated, there is no let-up in the massive solidarity movement for a Free Palestine which has gripped Britain, from student encampments to small-town rallies, direct action at arms factories supplying Israel to Jewish anti-Zionist-led occupations of railway stations, and of course ongoing national demonstrations of hundreds of thousands surrounding Parliament. This movement not only continues to hold the powerful to account, it has also, perhaps for the first time, made it inescapable that you cannot be on the left in Britain without being a committed anti-imperialist. The multiple connections which are being made in the context of this new kind of politics are, one can hope, pointing to the possibility of genuine transformative change.