As Britain votes, change is in the air. Optimism, not so much.

Voters in Britain will go to the polls on Thursday in bad digestion, many frustrated with the Conservative government but also skeptical about whether a potential replacement can solve the country’s tangle of problems.

Analysts say their scepticism is justified. Even if the Labour Party wins a solid majority in parliament, as polls suggest, it will face a range of challenges, from a sluggish economy to a corroded National Health Service, without many tools to fix them.

Labour leader Keir Starmer would inherit a “legacy of ashes,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. And voters, who elected the Conservatives by a landslide less than five years ago, are unlikely to give Mr. Starmer much room to turn the tide.

“The message couldn’t be clearer: You have to make a change — or you’re toast,” Mr. Ford said. “People are not going to be patient.”

The election is shaping up to be a political turning point for the country. It is likely to represent the ousting of the Conservative Party after 14 years in power, and the elevation of the Labour Party, which less than five years ago suffered its own election defeat, the worst since 1935, at the hands of the Conservatives.

The dizzying turnaround in political fortunes is emblematic of the turmoil that has gripped Britain since the country voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Brexit has divided the Conservative Party and made its position increasingly volatile and extreme as it grapples with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis.

Now that Labour is in power, the country faces difficult decisions that reflect the consequences of those years: a country exhausted, worn out and desperate for change.

Rebuilding the economy

Labour’s central selling point is that it can boost the economy and generate enough extra tax revenue to avoid deep cuts to public services, tax rises or increased borrowing. But its options for doing so are limited, especially after its ambitious multi-billion pound plan to transform Britain into a “green economy” fell victim to the government’s weak financial position earlier this year.

Another option would be to ease restrictions on trade with the European Union, which have hobbled British exporters since Brexit. Yet Mr Starmer has ruled out rejoining the bloc’s vast single economic market, saying that would mean giving people from Europe the freedom to live and work in Britain or the customs union, which would mean accepting some of the bloc’s rules on tariffs and duties.

Analysts said a Labour government might be able to strike more limited deals, such as a new animal and plant trade pact that would help British food exporters, but this would only give the economy a small boost.

That leaves much to be desired by another key Labour goal: overhauling Britain’s planning system to build more homes and speed up the construction of public works. Labour is expected to review which parts of the countryside are still off-limits to developers and restore targets for housing in urban areas.

Economists say rewriting the planning rules could unleash a building boom but would upset voters who want to protect green spaces.

Budgetary pressures would also complicate Labour’s efforts to fix the NHS, where the government has failed to reduce waiting times that have stretched into months. Labour has pledged to schedule 40,000 extra appointments a week, which it claims it can do by persuading NHS workers to take more out-of-hours appointments.

Labour said it would also hire 8,500 health workers to treat patients with mental health problems, and double the number of CT scanners and MRI machines in hospitals. It would fund this by closing a loophole for people claiming to be non-domiciled in Britain, allowing them to avoid paying some tax.

But the immediate challenge would be to resolve a long-festering wage dispute with junior doctors. After the government rejected their demands for a 35 percent pay rise, doctors have repeatedly walked off the job, leading to a flood of canceled procedures and longer wait times.

Tackling immigration

Tackling immigration is another challenge for Labour, not least because of the shortage of workers in the NHS and across the economy. Controlling Britain’s borders was a key issue of the Brexit referendum, but net legal migration – the number of people arriving, minus those leaving – has roughly tripled since then, reaching almost 750,000 in 2022 before declining slightly.

Labour will benefit from changes introduced by the Conservative government, which restricted the right of students to bring family members to Britain, and from the reduction in the number of refugees from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Overall, net migration is now expected to fall.

But against that backdrop, Labour should work hard to deliver on its promise: training more people from Britain to fill vacancies and stopping employers from looking abroad for workers.

It would be even harder to stem the flow of asylum seekers landing on England’s shores in small boats. Starmer has vowed to scrap a costly policy that sent some asylum seekers on one-way trips to Rwanda. Labour would instead seek to crack down on people-smuggling rings while strengthening cooperation with authorities across continental Europe.

Yet Britain has already given tens of millions of pounds to the French to help them stop the small boats, with only partial success. It also remains unclear how much scope there will be for greater cooperation, with far-right, anti-immigration parties making significant gains in the elections underway in France.

At home, Britain is struggling with a backlog of asylum applications and the cost of housing some of those awaiting a decision, many in hotels, is about 8 million poundsor $10.2 million a day. Labour has promised to hire 1,000 new caseworkers to help remove those whose claims have been rejected. But many come from countries that do not have an agreement with Britain to accept failed asylum seekers.

Facing an Unsure Ally

Any British leader would face an increasingly murky political landscape in the United States. Questions about President Biden’s viability as a candidate in the coming election have raised the prospects of his Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, regaining the presidency.

Labour’s top foreign policy official, David Lammy, has tried to cultivate people in Trump’s inner circle, including Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio. But Lammy’s calling card in the United States is his close relationship with former President Barack Obama. The two men attended Harvard Law School, and Lammy campaigned for Obama during his first presidential campaign.

Mr Starmer’s ties to the United States do not run that deep. While he has no history of making critical comments about Mr Trump, there is little to suggest that a 61-year-old former chief prosecutor would develop a strong bond with a 78-year-old man who is a suspect in multiple criminal cases.

On Wednesday, however, Mr Starmer received support from another unlikely source: Rupert Murdoch. His influential London tabloid, The Sun, endorsed Labour for the first time in an election since 2005.

“Time for a new manager,” wrote the Sun on its front page, on the occasion of the European Football Championship, in which the England national team is struggling but is still in the race after reaching the quarter-finals.

“By dragging his party back to the centre of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in Number 10,” the paper said, “Sir Keir has won the right to lead.”