Britain’s Labour Party has undoubtedly benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with a fractious Conservative Party that has spent 13 years in power. Yet that shouldn’t discount what Labour leader Keir Starmer has accomplished: Renewing trust in a party that not long ago looked unelectable.

A 20-point Labour lead in the polls, and now two further by-election victories in what have been solidly Tory seats, speak to the magnitude of the shift occurring in Britain’s political landscape. In the 2019 elections, Labour suffered its worst defeat since 1935. Large swaths of the north of England, once known as a “Red Wall” of reliable Labour support, turned Conservative for the first time. Soon after taking over as leader, Starmer vowed to “tear out this poison by its roots,” referring to the anti-Semitism that had become entrenched under his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer also sought to reverse Corbyn’s embrace of large-scale re-nationalizations, wealth taxes and heavy state spending.