On the first anniversary of Keir Starmer’s general election win, there will no doubt be much comment about what his government has achieved in its first year – and, more likely, where it has fallen short of expectations.
The general feeling appears to be one of disappointment, with Starmer’s net approval rating at a record low, after the first double-digit decline in public support since a general election since John Major’s Conservative administration in the 1990s.
Starmer’s first year as prime minister has been characterised by a series of U-turns, following rebellion within his own ranks.
But it is the following day, Saturday 5 July, that will mark a far more consequential anniversary: the general election of 1945, which – after a count lasting several weeks – made Clement Attlee the first Labour prime minister with a majority government.
Eighty years on, it seems fitting to revisit that government – its style and achievements, as well as the qualities of Attlee – who was to lead the nation in succession to the great war leader, Winston Churchill. What, if anything, can Starmer and his team learn from that post-war administration?
Although many people were surprised by Labour’s success in July 1945, the writing had already been on the wall for Churchill’s Tories. The monthly Gallup opinion poll which, while not scrutinised in the forensic way that polls are today, had consistently pointed to a strong Labour showing throughout the war years. And ideas of how to build a better post-war nation in areas such as health, welfare and education, dominated thinking and debate – not least among servicemen and women overseas.
Attlee’s Labour campaign offered a clear blueprint based on their manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, and the people voted for it. By contrast, in 2024, while nearly everyone expected Starmer’s Labour Party to win last year, it was far less clear what Labour might be offering in government, except the rather nebulous concept of “change”.
Even before the election, Starmer had been criticised for abandoning many of the planks of the platform on which he won the party leadership. His government has, so far at least, struggled to articulate a clear vision and sense of direction.
At times, Starmer, unlike Attlee, has even appeared to be blaming the system for the government’s shortcomings, and using the allegation (also made by Tony Blair) that the supposed levers of power do not seem to be connected to anything. This is a poor substitute for looking to his ministers to roll up their sleeves, address the issues and deliver.
The second factor in the success of the 1945 government was the quality of the team assembled and led by Attlee. The government front bench included many experienced political heavyweights with substantial ministerial experience gained during the wartime coalition – people like Ernest Bevin, the former trade union leader and wartime minister of Labour, who led the Foreign Office, and Herbert Morrison, who had been home secretary during the war. Attlee himself had been deputy prime minister to Churchill, with a wide-ranging brief.
By contrast, Starmer, like Blair in 1997, arrived in No 10 with no ministerial experience whatsoever. And, of his cabinet, only three members – Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband – have ever been full cabinet ministers before.
But the most striking factor of the Attlee government was its output. From day one, the government was relentlessly focused on the demobilisation of over 3 million returning servicemen and women, and their reintegration into post-war life in Britain. The economy became far more centralised, with the nationalisation of the Bank of England only seven months after the election, and later of the “commanding heights of the economy”.
There were also big changes through expanding the social role of government, by implementing the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge report and, most notably, through the creation of the NHS by the health secretary, Aneurin Bevan, three years after the election.
Add to that the Festival of Britain – Morrison’s brainchild – which brought a sense of energy and enthusiasm to the country after the dark days of the war. The government even finally achieved universal suffrage, with the abolition of the university vote, which had given some people at certain universities two votes rather than one. All in all, it was quite a record of domestic policy which, so far at least, does not look like being matched by the current government.
Internationally, Attlee’s administration helped shape the post-war world, too. From the Potsdam Conference to the new economic framework based on the Bretton Woods agreement, to the oversight of the transition to independence for India in 1947, his government was at the forefront. And, in 1949, Nato was founded with Bevin heading UK negotiations. This, coupled with Attlee’s determination to procure a UK nuclear capability, designed the nation’s post-war defence framework, which is now under such strains.
Starmer so far seems much more comfortable operating on the international front, where his legalistic approach and attention to detail have worked in his favour. But it is on the domestic front where he needs to up his game.
None of the achievements of the 1945 government would have been possible without Attlee’s leadership: quiet, undemonstrative, yet ruthlessly efficient and intolerant of poor performance. The phrase about not suffering fools gladly could have been made for him.
He was determined to raise living standards and respond to the aspirations of everyone. He was committed to abolishing the poverty that he had witnessed in east London some 30 years previously. He strove to build a new world order so that, never again, would young men have to fight – as he had done in the First World War – or to defeat Nazism as the nation had just done in the Second World War. Attlee was the leader who made this happen.
Why, then, with such a body of achievement delivered in only six years, was Attlee defeated in 1951?
On one level, his government simply “ran out of steam”. There was no new programme of work designed for the 1950s. Most of his ministers were exhausted – some were ill or dying. Ellen Wilkinson, his education minister, and Bevin, both died in office.
Nevertheless, in the 1951 election, Labour achieved the highest percentage vote of any party in post-war history, with 48.8 per cent.
However, the Conservatives, with a smaller 48 per cent of the vote, won more seats in the House of Commons and Churchill returned as prime minister. By way of contrast, last year Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won only 33.7 per cent of the vote.
Had someone asked Attlee in 1946 what had been his successes and failures of his first year – a question that Starmer has faced – the election winner of 1945 might have struggled to choose from his many achievements during his first 12 months in office. He would certainly have been very unlikely to have said that his greatest failure had been “not telling our story as well as we should”.
Alun Evans CBE is chair trustee of the Attlee Foundation. He is also a historian, political consultant and former civil servant
