The British Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer is almost certainly going to prevail in the UK general election on July 4.

Given the almost daily implosions of Rishi Sunak, who bizarrely has been running a presidential-style campaign even though he is extremely unpopular, Labour could obtain the largest majority in 100 years, when Stanley Baldwin’s Conservatives won a majority of over 200 seats, defeating Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party in October 1924, after the latter had served as Labour’s first prime minister for a short stint.

Soon, Irish eyes, north and south, will focus in on Starmer and the Labour Party to see if commitments made will be kept once assuming power, or abandoned – something that happened when MacDonald’s Labour Party formed a British government for the first time in February 1924.

Then, the Labour administration was a minority one that lasted for just 10 months. Before entering government, there were “red scare” fears, stoked by certain elements in the British press, that the government would essentially be a communist one.

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There were fears too from Ulster unionists that the British Labour Party’s policies on Ireland would reflect those it had in opposition by being an anti-partition, pro-united Ireland party.

As Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party was on the verge of forming a government in January 1924, the northern government’s chief whip, Herbert Dixon, claimed that if the fears they had were to transpire, and “the Labour government attempted to do something on the people of Ulster, then, not for the first time, they would show that Ulster could take care of........

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