Keir Starmer plans to play the class card, just as Wilson did 60 years ago

We are about to enter a general election year, and although it is conceivable that Rishi Sunak will wait until Jan 28, 2025, the very end of the term allowed, he would be mad to do so. Prime Ministers behind in the polls always hope that by waiting almost until the last possible moment – John Major in 1997, Gordon Brown in 2010 – something might turn up to change their fortunes. They are usually wrong.

James Callaghan should have gone to the country in the autumn of 1978 but dithered and was poleaxed by the winter of discontent, culminating in a lost confidence vote in parliament and an election defeat the following spring.

In 1992, Major called the election on March 11, the day after the Budget and three months earlier than he needed to. He won a majority a few weeks later, confounding expectations of a Labour victory.

For Mr Sunak to go the full distance would mean campaigning over the Christmas period, which would not go down well with voters. With no fixed-term (as opposed to maximum term) parliament any more, October/November are the most likely dates.

But will Sunak be Major 1992 or Major 1997 – an against-the-odds victor or a lamb to the slaughter, with Labour winning a landslide?

Or might this election be more like 1964? This also took place at the very end of the maximum five-year period. The Tories had won a resounding victory in 1959 under Harold “you’ve never had it so good” Macmillan, only to be rocked by a succession of scandals like the Profumo affair and the Vassall spy scandal.

Macmillan resigned in 1963 and was succeeded by Alec Douglas-Home, an hereditary peer who had to renounce his title in order to contest a seat and join the Commons as prime minister.

Labour also had a new leader in the shape of Harold Wilson who had taken over the party following the untimely death of Hugh Gaitskell.

Then, as now, the Tories had been in office for 13 years and looked clapped out and bereft of ideas. Yet they lost only narrowly, with Wilson securing a majority of just four. Wiser heads in the party today see 1964 as a more realistic parallel for the coming election than 1997 because they will start the campaign so far back.

Labour has to win an additional 123 seats just to have a majority of one in the House of Commons, the legacy of Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s Leftward lurch. In 2019, they won just 202 seats which is 70 fewer than the base on which Tony Blair launched his campaign in 1997.

Clearly, the meltdown of the SNP will help if Labour can win back 30 or 40 seats in Scotland; but an overall majority is still a tall order and talk of a landslide seems well wide of the mark. Even if Sir Keir does as well as Blair in 1997 he will only have a slender majority.

What will happen to the Tories? Even in defeat in 1964 they still won more than 300 seats with the Liberals the only other party, chipping in with nine. This time, however, the Conservatives risk losing scores of seats to the Lib Dems and the impact of a re-Faraged Reform Party is yet fully to be felt, though the signs are ominous.

Two recent by-elections saw Reform take enough votes to deprive the Tories of a majority. If that is widely replicated in a general election then the Conservatives are in serious trouble and getting 200 seats will be a struggle.

Another parallel with 1964 is also taking shape, that of class. Does the background of a party leader matter any more? Sixty years ago it was a key feature of the campaign as Labour mercilessly lampooned their opponent’s aristocratic connections. 
Like his predecessor, Douglas-Home was an Old Etonian whom Wilson referred to as the 14th Earl Home. The latter’s riposte was “I suppose, when you come to think of it, he is the 14th Mr Wilson.”

It was an exchange that exemplified a changing world. The Sixties were not only in full swing, ushering in the most profound social upheavals for a century, but meritocracy rather than hereditary entitlement was considered the only legitimate route to advancement. Wilson was a ferociously bright grammar school boy facing a toff seen as out of touch, the representative of a class that had had its day.

Labour’s subsequent destruction of the grammar system (pioneered, of course, by the product of an independent school, Anthony Crosland) means we are back where we started. The top three posts in government today are held by alumni of Winchester, Charterhouse and Eton.

Labour is preparing to make much of this next year. Mr Sunak’s wealth, and that of his wife, seems certain to feature prominently in their campaign, both overtly and subliminally. The charge that, like Douglas-Home, he is out of touch with the British people will be hammered home mercilessly.

Like Wilson, Starmer attended a grammar school, though it became independent while he was there and he remained on a bursary. Also like Wilson, whose father was a chemist and plant manager, he is from what we would today call the “squeezed middle”. But because he is a Surrey-born, north London KC with a knighthood and will appear posh to many voters, he is anxious to burnish his alleged proletarian credentials.

“I grew up working class,” he has said (many times). “My dad was a toolmaker, my mum was a nurse.....we had our fair share of cost–of-living crises.”

In fact, his father was apparently self-employed and owned their house, according to a recent biography, so the description of working class in the conventionally understood sense would be pushing it a bit.

Moreover, in an era where authenticity is valued, this prolier-than-thou appeal no longer works. Whereas in 1964, the class divide was still a potent political issue, today’s party leaders are more likely to be judged on what they have done and what they have to offer rather than whether they owned a Scottish estate or their father worked down a mine.

That is why we are entitled to look at Sir Keir’s record as a human rights lawyer and subsequently as Director of Public Prosecutions when assessing his fitness for the highest office. By next Christmas, we should know whether he has achieved it.

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