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It has never been worse for Labour, at least according to the polls. Some now place it as the fourth party of British politics. The impending local elections in May mean there’s more pain to come. But there is an international example that could provide some encouragement and hope for Keir Starmer and Labour.
Around this time last year, Australia’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was fighting a federal election campaign. He faced a deeply uncertain future. His first term in office was marked by exceeding caution and delivered few notable achievements. His signature reform, a referendum to introduce a “voice to parliament” for Indigenous Australians (an advisory body), was crushingly defeated. His government struggled to convince voters it was doing enough to ease cost of living pressures.
Many were anticipating if not a Labor defeat, then at best a Labor minority government. Yet the result was a stunning victory for Albanese. Labor secured a substantial swing and massive parliamentary majority. In the year since, Labor’s rival centre-right coalition has descended into chaos, with the leaders of both the Liberal and National parties replaced.
For Labour in the UK, the story might give some hope in what are desperate times. Starmer could be thinking that he, too, can do what Albanese has done and turn his fortunes around. If this sounds faintly ridiculous, such a prospect also seemed remote for Albanese.
For all his tactical skills, Albanese (or “Albo”) isn’t known for his charisma or eloquence. But the times have suited him. Following a tumultuous period of Australian politics – Australia had six prime ministers between 2007 and 2022 (Kevin Rudd served twice in that period) – voters yearned for some ordinary predictability. Albanese, as one commentator described him before his ascent to the Lodge in Canberra, is more a mechanic than a Messiah.
This workmanlike quality helped Albanese to claw his way back into contention leading into the 2025 election. For much of the year prior, the then opposition leader, Peter Dutton, a hardline conservative, had led in the polls. But the frantic first 100 days of the Trump administration invited unfavourable comparisons between Dutton and Maga. Much like the experience of Mark Carney in Canada, a Trump backlash – a flight to the safety of moderate centre-left sanity – secured Albanese and Labor’s comeback. Starmer can’t necessarily count on the same experience, but his rightwing rivals in Reform UK could end up hurt by their boosterish association with the US president.
Much of the template for Starmer’s approach to winning the general election of 2024 mirrored Albanese’s own 2022 experience of getting elected for the first time. Make yourself a small target. Promise renewal not revolution. Don’t distract from the unpopularity of a tired incumbent. This was undoubtedly the memo from the Australian Labor secretariat to Labour HQ.
Even Albanese, however, has belatedly recognised that tactics aren’t enough. To govern effectively you need something more – some conviction. In his election night speech in May 2025, Albanese declared an organising principle for his second term: “progressive patriotism”, a phrase Starmer and Labour have also used. This was an attempt to craft a nationbuilding agenda in the manner of reformist Labor governments led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. It also sought to reassure Australians about their national values and institutions, but without the nativism or nastiness of Trumpism.
It’s a challenge that has only grown more acute. Since last year’s election, One Nation, the populist rightwing party led by Pauline Hanson, has surged in popularity. It polled second in a recent state election in South Australia – and polls place it as the leading party in Hanson’s home state of Queensland.
Australia’s economic resilience has for many years guarded its polity from the kind of political anger that comes from people who feel ignored by elites. But the country is starting to show signs that it is no longer immune to the contagion of populism. Last week, Albanese recognised this in a speech: “If people feel like the country is not working for them, if they’re putting in the effort but not seeing the reward, if planning for the future feels like a luxury, then government cannot provide stability just by keeping things as they are. There is no security in maintaining a status quo that doesn’t work for people.”
This perhaps is the real lesson to be drawn from Australia. Of late, anguished Labouristas have been calling for Starmer and Labour to recalibrate. They say it’s misguided to focus on voters drawn to Reform, when the result is leaking voters to Greens on the left. Labour should shift leftwards and be more unapologetically progressive.
That gets it only half right. The task may be more fundamental than an exercise in tactical, electoral positioning. It’s not about shifting either left or right. Rather, it’s about connecting again with a public losing faith in democratic institutions. And that begins, as Albanese is now doing in Australia, with recognising that the system may no longer be working for people – and that it needs an urgent fix.
Does Labour understand this? What does it stand for? And for whom is it fighting? Unlike its insurgent competitors on left and right, Labour hasn’t been able to give voters clear enough answers. But without them, there is little prospect of recovery.
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