SARAH VINE: At his early hours victory rally, Starmer promised us 'the sunlight of hope'. Soon after it began to rain - and didn't stop. For once, it's nice for us Tories to have someone else to blame

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At a victory rally at the Tate Modern gallery early yesterday morning, Sir Keir Starmer waxed elegiac.

'We can look forward again, walk into the morning,' he mused.

'The sunlight of hope — pale at first but getting stronger through the day — shining once again on a country with the opportunity… to get its future back.'

Shortly afterwards, it began to rain — and carried on raining. The day dawned wet and muggy, hot one minute, chilly the next, the kind of weather that has you sweating and shivering and makes it impossible to know whether to leave the house in a summer dress or jumper.

A feeling, perhaps, shared by the 80 per cent of the country who did not vote for a socialist administration — but who through a series of extraordinary political events nevertheless now found themselves waking up to one.

Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria pose outside No 10 after the Labour leader was appointed Britain's 58th Prime Minister following a landslide General Election victory

The new PM delivers his first speech outside 10 Downing Street yesterday

He had earlier celebrated at victory rally in the early hours at Tate Modern with wife Victoria

What does a self-declared 'socialist' Prime Minister mean for Britain? It's been decades since we've had a proper one — Harold Wilson was arguably the last, not that anyone under the age of 65 can remember that far back. Certainly not Tony Blair or Gordon Brown — they were avowed centrists.

Of course, we know about things like VAT on school fees, cutting NHS waiting times by paying staff extra to work weekends and evenings and building more council houses. But when it comes to broader pledges, such as providing 'economic stability', the details are a little fuzzy.

Drill down into these results and that uncertainty is reflected. No party has ever won a landslide with such a low voter share — shy of 34 per cent, the lowest of any governing party since 1832. Truly, never have so many new MPs owed so much to so few.

Add to that the historically low turnout — below 60 per cent, by some counts — and the idea that this result represents a full-throated vote of confidence for Starmer and his policies is, to put it mildly, debatable.

As landslides go, it's a pretty loveless one, borne less out of any passion for Labour and more out of loathing for the Conservatives. Indeed, you could argue that this result is more down to a poorly matched forced marriage between the Lib Dems and Reform, and of a dispassionate strategy of tactical voting. 

Together, they trapped the Tories in an electoral pincer movement, splitting the Conservative vote across a North/South divide, with Labour taking the spoils.

The irony of disaffected voters to the Right of the political spectrum — tough on immigration, in favour of low taxation — inadvertently ushering in a socialist utopia of open borders and high taxation can hardly be overstated.

Starmer's tone as he prepared to cross the threshold of No 10 for the first time as PM was subdued and cautious

For now, Starmer has his majority and with it almost limitless power to do whatever he wants, writes Sarah Vine

To Starmer's credit, he and his team seem acutely aware of this. His tone as he prepared to cross the threshold of No 10 for the first time as PM was subdued and cautious — and he made a direct appeal to those accidental supporters of his.

'Whether you voted Labour or not — in fact, especially if you did not — I say to you: My Government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that.'

He may have won big in terms of seats — 412 at the time of writing, with just one left to call. But on fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 he knows he has to bring more than just the faithful with him. He has to convert non-believers, too.

And that means Reform voters, who are the ones who have inadvertently handed him this victory — just as they handed Boris Johnson his in 2019. These are broadly the same people who also voted Brexit in 2016. Because of them, Nigel Farage's party came second in almost 100 constituencies, in itself a remarkable achievement.

They may be feeling slightly bewildered at the realisation that despite taking 14 per cent of the vote share, their party garnered only 1 per cent of seats; meanwhile the Lib Dems, on 12 per cent of the vote share, have acquired 11 per cent of seats.

But that is the first-past-the-post system for you and it's not about to change any time soon, especially since it has served Labour (and the Lib Dems, long-time proponents of proportional representation but, strangely, no longer) so well.

For now, Starmer has his majority and with it almost limitless power to do whatever he wants. As for the Conservatives, their future remains uncertain.

Sure, they remain the main party of Opposition. But until and unless they can convince disillusioned voters that they not only understand their concerns, and are also prepared to address them, they will continue to haemorrhage support.

Truth is, many of them would not have pivoted to Reform had the Tories not been perceived as being so wet under Sunak — indeed, according to one poll, 36 per cent had the Conservatives as their second choice, with Labour only 16 per cent (again, the irony). But they did so out of a sense of frustration and anger at having their concerns marginalised, and because they felt they had nowhere else to go.

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For the Conservatives to win back support, they have only to do one thing: be Conservative, that is to say Right of centre, small-state, low-tax, willing to control immigration, business-friendly, socially moderate and pro-family.

It sounds simple, but for some unfathomable reason they've been unable to manage it.

Labour talk of the country needing a reset — but more than anything it's the Conservatives who need one. Namely, a long overdue period of self-examination and thoughtful introspection under the watchful eye of a caretaker leader, a James Cleverly perhaps, or even a greybeard like Sir David Davis.

The last thing they need is some hysterical and bloody leadership campaign which will only serve to remind the voters of the internal tensions within the party, not to mention provide endless entertainment for Labour. It will be at least a year to 18 months before Starmer's administration runs into any real trouble, so now is a good time to regroup and reflect.

Difficult times produce difficult politics and that is what we are seeing now. The intractable problems the Tories faced, and which ultimately did for them, were universal ones — and it's going to be no different for this shiny new Labour administration.

A highly volatile and polarising situation in the Middle East, the expansion of Islamism and the erosion of human rights across the Arab world, the war in Ukraine, the ambitions of Russia and China, the ineptitude of American leadership — all these factors are creating huge pressures that are beyond the control of any British Prime Minister.

The trickle-down effect on the lives of voters in the UK — from immigration to energy prices to the rising cost of avocados — is inevitable and fiendishly hard to mitigate.

The difference is, of course, that Labour is not weary and battle-scarred after 14 years in power, but fresh-faced and raring to go.

It's sad, of course, for many of my Tory friends, to see the end of an era. But — whisper it — it will be nice, for once, to have someone else to blame.