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The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum.[15][16][7] The party has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists.[17] It is one of the two dominant political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. The Labour Party has been led by Keir Starmer since 2020; Starmer became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the 2024 general election. To date, there have been 12 Labour governments and seven different Labour Prime Ministers – MacDonald, Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair, Brown and Starmer.
The Labour Party was founded in 1900, having emerged from the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It was electorally weak before the First World War, but in the early 1920s overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party, and briefly formed a minority government under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. In 1929, Labour for the first time became the largest party in the House of Commons with 287 seats, but fell short of a majority, forming another minority government. In 1931, in response to the Great Depression, MacDonald formed a new government with Conservative and Liberal support, which led to his expulsion from the party. Labour was soundly defeated by his coalition in the 1931 election, winning only 52 seats, but began to recover in 1935, with 154 seats.
During the Second World War, Labour served in the wartime coalition, after which it won a majority in the 1945 election. Clement Attlee's government enacted extensive nationalisation and established the modern welfare state and National Health Service before losing power in 1951. Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Labour again governed from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1979. The party then entered a period of intense internal division which ended in the defeat of its left wing by the mid-1980s. After electoral defeats to the Conservatives in 1987 and 1992, Tony Blair took the party to the political centre as part of his New Labour project, which governed under Blair and then Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010. After further electoral defeats in the 2010s, Keir Starmer again moved Labour to the political centre from 2020 and has governed since 2024.
Labour is the largest party in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), being the only party in the current Welsh government. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and the Progressive Alliance, and holds observer status in the Socialist International. The party includes semi-autonomous London, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish branches; it supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland, while still organising there. As of February 2025[update], Labour has 309,000 members.
- ^ Brivati & Heffernan 2000: "On 27 February 1900, the Labour Representation Committee was formed to campaign for the election of working class representatives to parliament."
- ^ Thorpe 2008, p. 8.
- ^ "Labour". The Labour Party. Archived from the original on 26 April 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2024.
- ^ "Contact". Labour Party. Archived from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
- ^ "Nigel Farage claims Reform UK has 200,000 members and has warning for Labour". Sky News. 9 February 2025. Retrieved 9 February 2025.
- ^ McGee, Luke (5 July 2024). "As Europe turns right, why has a center-left party won by a landslide in the UK?". CNN. Archived from the original on 5 July 2024. Retrieved 8 July 2024.
- ^ a b Clarkson, Alexander (20 September 2023). "Europe's Center-Left Can Learn a Lot From Scholz, Sanchez and Starmer". World Politics Review. Archived from the original on 8 July 2024. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
auto4was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
auto3was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Budge 2008, pp. 26–27.
- ^ [6][7][8][9][10]
- ^ The Telegraph. "'Change begins now', says Sir Keir Starmer in first speech after winning general election". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 October 2024. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
- ^ Sparrow, Andrew (17 September 2024). "Labour unveils 'Change Begins' as conference slogan". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
- ^ "Open Council Data UK – compositions councillors parties wards elections". opencouncildata.co.uk. Retrieved 17 January 2025.
- ^ Abou-Chadi, Tarik; Gingrich, Jane (9 May 2021). "It's not just in Britain – across Europe, social democracy is losing its way". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Archived from the original on 13 September 2024. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
- ^ "Britain's Labour Party embraces supply-side social democracy". The Economist. 11 October 2023. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 18 July 2024. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
- ^ Matthew Worley (2009). The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900–39. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-7546-6731-5.
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