Progress and change? A provisional assessment of Keir Starmer's Labour government

International conference organized by LERMA and the CRECIB

19-20 March 2026

Campus Schuman, Aix-en-Provence

The British General Election of July 4, 2024 delivered a victory for Labour against a deeply divided and power-weary Conservative party whose reputation for reliability and competence had been substantially damaged. Labour’s return to office after fourteen years in opposition is a sufficiently rare occurrence in British electoral history to warrant the use of the adjective historic in relation to the party’s victory. The coincidence of the formation of the Starmer government with the centenary of the election of the first Labour government ever, albeit a minority and short-lived one, is an invitation to look back on the history of Labour in office and implicitly raises the question of its place in the Labour tradition and of its political inheritance.