Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer last week announced a significant U-turn to Labour’s environmental policy, cutting planned investments in green industry from £28 billion a year to just £4.7 billion, should the party win the next general election. It is just one of many recent policy reversals from Starmer in recent months, who is widely seen as moving Labour closer to the political centre, in a very obvious departure from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, it’s even a departure from the earlier rhetoric of Starmer himself. In his leadership campaign in 2020, he ran on a largely idealistic platform, self-describing himself as a socialist and pledging to nationalise key industries like energy and mail.

Since then, policies under the Starmer Labour Party have changed drastically. In July 2022, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the party had scrapped the nationalisation of any public services. During the public sector strikes last summer, Starmer instructed his shadow cabinet not to protest on picket lines, and even sacked leftist MP Sam Tarry for disobeying this order. Perhaps most depressingly, Starmer even dropped his pledge to abolish tuition fees last May, framing the damage the ruling Conservatives have done to the economy as a scapegoat.

Clearly, as Starmer flirts with the prospect of power, he is simultaneously cosying himself up to the corporate class. Once the party of the working class, most Labour policies in 2024 are largely interchangeable with those from the Conservatives.

From the perspective of a student, the selection of insipid policies offered by Starmer inspires little confidence. Throughout my time at university, I always justified the expense of ludicrous tuition fees with the comfortingly naive thought that someday in the future, the Tories will be voted out of Downing Street, and a progressive and innovative government would sweep to power and cancel student loan payments to everyone’s relief. But as I enter further into my 20s, the idealism of youth is gradually swallowed by the disquieting realism of adult life. It is increasingly apparent that there is no prospect of a white knight to make living any easier, and the government that replaces our current one will be fundamentally similar and corporate in most tangible respects. And so will the next one after that, ad infinitum.

Somewhat wistfully, the optimistic campaigns of both Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in the U.S. are being left further and further behind, associated in my mind with the idyllic and carefree days of pre-drinks in student halls or my sixth-form holiday. Fast forward a few years, I am now facing the end of my university career in an economic climate which has rendered my humanities degree comically unemployable. And so grows the nascent dread— very soon, I am leaving the comforting security of student life and entering into an increasingly bleak job market, with the certainty of being burdened with an onslaught of bills for decades with which previous generations have not been encumbered.

From an older viewpoint, my dread probably reads as entitled whinging. There is nothing more unbearably student than denouncing ‘the illusion of choice under capitalism’. Moreover, to those with established careers and settled lives in their 30s and 40s, the concept of post-graduate anxiety is not a new one— in a way it’s comforting to know that my current apprehensions are universal and transient. But this does not make our qualms any less valid, particularly as the realisation sets in that under the inspiring Starmer, things are unlikely to change any time soon.

Given the abysmal current polling of the Conservatives, compounded with two heavy by-election defeats this month, Labour’s victory in the next election is all but assured. Starmer has effectively been handed a blank cheque to govern with whichever exciting and outlandish ideas one could conceive of. As the state of the country deteriorates, is it too much to ask for something a little different?

It’s safe to say that the 2023 Conservative Party conference has certainly been eventful. Among many developments, perhaps the most striking was Rishi Sunak’s remarks weighing in on the trans rights debate which has increasingly dominated political discussion. In the most unequivocal disavowal of LGBT rights of a Conservative Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher, Sunak asserted it is “common sense” that a “man is a man and a woman is a woman”, and that Britons are being “bullied” into believing that “people can be any sex they want to be”. Clearly, the conference has marked a significant shift to the social right for the party— a development watched with trepidation by Conservatives who belong to the LGBT+ community, who have found themselves with a choice between party loyalty and commitment to their identity.

It should of course be mentioned that many LGBT+ individuals, both within the party and outside, have gladly accepted this policy, throwing support towards organisations such as the LGB Alliance, which deliberately excludes the trans community in its advocacy. Conversely however, many LGBT+ Conservatives object to the change in rhetoric, and are facing significant self-reflection. Among them is openly gay Tory member Andrew Boff, who was escorted out of the conference by security guards during Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s speech for heckling, in a calm tone of voice: “There’s no such thing as gender ideology”. Later on X, he commented that he believed the Home Secretary’s comments were “bullying trans people and the LGBT community”. Boff won support from other queer Tories, including openly gay Conservative MP Elliot Colburn, who urged the Prime Minister to stop “demonising” trans people if they hoped to win the forthcoming general election. He also asserted that the average voter is more concerned about affording heating their home during a cost of living crisis, rather than whether trans children should be able to play sports.

Evidently, the conference heralds a tricky future within the party for many LGBT+ Conservatives. On one hand, it’s difficult to sympathise with those who have chosen to align themselves with a party that has not always been entirely sensitive to LGBT+ rights— indeed, it is not a choice to be born gay, but joining the Conservative Party very much is one. Undoubtedly, many LGBT+ Conservatives have opted for political ambition and the pursuit of influence, which is more accessible to them in the Tory Party than in any other more gay-friendly parties— Labour, for instance, haven’t won an election in 18 years.

However, this dichotomy of being queer in a largely unsupportive political organisation has been easier to ignore in the past than in the current ‘gender-critical’ political climate. Indeed, one can argue the Party has always been somewhat liberal on social issues. In August of this year, the LGBT+ Conservatives Group hosted a drinks reception celebrating ten years since Prime Minister David Cameron’s Tory government legalised same-sex marriage— a reminder of the party’s more tolerant past.

But the problem for this minority seems increasingly worrisome, as many queer conservatives find themselves ostracised by other members of the LGBT+ community. For instance, during the conference, a group of LGBT+ Conservatives were thrown out of The New Union bar in Manchester’s Canal Street gay village— a potential wake-up call that their conflict of interest is becoming increasingly untenable. Similarly, when the official LGBT+ Conservatives X account tweeted a photo of drag queen Kate Butch comparing their appearance to Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, they replied calling the group “ladder-pulling, community-disgracing bunch of ghouls”. 

Therefore, figures like Boff and Colburn find themselves stuck in a party veering further to the right, and meeting the demands of a progressively antagonistic public discourse led by ‘gender-critical’ figures such as Laurence Fox and JK Rowling. Polls show that the Conservatives will likely be trounced in the next general election, which could be perceived as a repudiation of the Party’s adoption of gender ideology. However, it is difficult to predict how much further the rhetoric from Conservative politicians will go, which begs the question for this afflicted minority— when’s the right time to get off?