"We've got four years to turn things around" says Labour peer David Blunkett after a wave of new MPs elected

Lord David Blunkett said voters will let the party know in an election if they have failed to deliver improvements after the landslide victory in July 2024.

He said: “We wanted to win. We hoped we would win. I think many of us were quite surprised we stood a chance of turning it round in one parliament because the Conservatives had beaten us hands down in 2019.”

The Labour peer told The Star’s Sheffield Scoop podcast the flip-flopping state of modern politics means Keir Starmer’s government will need to deliver in order to win another election and can’t bank on the huge majority he has to survive into another term.

“Having reached the point where we could win, we also were holding out breath about the size of the majority,” the 77-year-old said.

“Here’s one of the twists about the 2024 election, I was saying to people I think we’ll get a majority of around 20 to 50, on the grounds that we’d be very fortunate to get 10 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives, and actually that’s what we got.

“What I’d not predicted was firstly a big abstention by Conservatives which accounted for the turnout, and secondly the intervention of Reform. So the Reform party, under this showman, [Nigel] Farage, came second to Labour in 89 UK constituencies and it completely jiggered the Conservatives.”

The landslide victory brought a huge number of brand new MPs into parliament, many with Labour, who Lord Blunkett believes will need to given purpose during these years of a great majority.

He said: “[Labour has] two challenges. One is to use that enormous majority wisely. Secondly, to use the MPs that have been elected, and over half the House of Commons is now new, to ensure that they have got a role.

“Give them a chance, not just to represent their constituencies and be in their constituencies, taking up problems, listening, learning, reflecting that back, but also a role in the policymaking... and I’m hoping from this autumns conference we’ll be able to do that.

“If you don’t, then you get major disquiet on the backbenches and people get restless. What is their role and what are they doing there. If they’re just voting fodder then they’re going to get fed-up pretty quickly.”

There was plenty of praise in the interview, for how the new government have got started - but with a severe decline in popularity and approval since taking power, Lord Blunkett believes the clock is ticking to bring the change Starmer promised ahead of the election.

He said: “We’ve got four-and-a-half years, probably four years realistically, to turn things around and to have done enough to give people hope. If we don’t, the electorate are volatile. They’ll turn on us.

“Although we didn’t promise the earth, although we made it clear that there were no simple solutions... people do expect change and we did promise change and we’ve really got to deliver.”