Keir Starmer rode a red wave into Downing Street on the back of a furious desire for change. Poll after poll said that top of the list for change was the cost of living, followed by public services.
But just nine months from taking power, many voters seem to be already giving up on the government’s ability to bring about that change. The speed of that rejection has been extraordinary.
There is a barely concealed frustration among some Labour staffers about the intensity of the rejection. This is a government overseeing a huge boost to the minimum wage, protecting employees from tax rises, nationalising the railways and investing billions in the NHS.
But the tone was set by the early cut to winter fuel allowance, and exacerbated by upcoming welfare changes that will hit disabled people.
“It’s the cuts,” one MP said. “They might be going Green or going Reform but that’s what people are saying. They have had enough of it.”
No 10 now faces a challenging situation with its own backbenchers, especially before the welfare vote in June. MPs will use this moment to send a message if they do not believe Downing Street is listening.
A possible U-turn – at least partially – on winter fuel allowance for some of the worst-off might go a significant way towards calming nerves, though there is no escape from looking weak.
But nothing is imminent. In the short term, No 10 will tell its MPs not to panic and that last week’s results were far more of a blow for the Conservative party than for Labour. The proportion of Labour voters going to Reform – about 8% – is roughly unchanged since September.
But there is a deeper question about what will happen if the party is not seen to channel that angry desire for change. The Labour MP Jake Richard, in the Reform-facing seat of Rother Valley, tweeted on Sunday: “Labour must take on Reform because it’s the party’s moral purpose, not simply for electoral reasons (which makes it a necessity).”
He cited “extraordinary data from last week’s elections: 61% of the most deprived wards were previously held by Labour. Now roughly 85% are held by Reform.”
Economic insecurity has become somewhat of a political cliche when progressives attempt to explain concern about immigration. But new polling in the aftermath of the election paints a stark picture of those who are taking a gamble on Reform UK.
The polling by Merlin Strategy, on behalf of the campaign group Looking for Growth, found Reform UK voters feel their situation is significantly more precarious than voters as a whole and feel more pessimistic about their own future and the country.
A third of the party’s voters said they could “only just make my household finances work” or that “I can’t afford my costs”, compared with 19% of Labour voters.
Another poll went viral over the weekend, this time from YouGov: of all those voters who have said they will no longer vote Labour, the winter fuel allowance, cost of living and a lack of public service improvement are the top reasons. Immigration was chosen by just 18% of switchers.
Some on the Labour party’s right will demand radical action on immigration. The Pendle and Clitheroe MP, Jonathan Hinder, has called for the party to consider leaving the European convention on human rights and instituting a “one-in, one-out” policy for migration. To out-Farage on immigration would leave Reform with “nothing to talk about”, the MP contends.
Starmer is prepared to talk tough on migration – and on culture wars – to the understandable discomfort of progressives. There will be an immigration white paper that will propose cracking down hard on asylum policy and on international students, at a likely cost to universities.
But to lean in as hard as some of the party’s Blue Labour caucus would like could risk alienating even further the other half of Labour’s fragile coalition. The issue that unites them both is the economy.
