‘To defeat Reform, Labour must re-root itself into its working class base’

Note: Between this article being produced and its publication, one of the co-authors, John Mills, sadly passed away. Labour Future will continue to operate. The LabourList team would like to send our condolences to his friends and family, and pay tribute to his support for Labour over a lifetime and more recent support for LabourList. An obituary will be published soon on the Labour Future website.

When Labour Future was established back in 2016 after the referendum, we had endured years in opposition, despairing about the damage Tories, with support from Liberal Democrats, had done to our communities and our country.

Labour Future came about because we believed our party was in real danger of losing touch with its natural working-class base after the referendum in communities across the whole of Britain.

We are now in a position where Reform are eating into our traditional Labour communities and we need to ensure we have the policies and methods to maintain our core support and Labour Future aims to facilitate that endeavour.

Voters want a growing and resilient economy

Everyone must put food on the table, a roof over their heads and needs care for the health of their friends and families. We believe voters want a share in the benefits of a prospering economy, access to a good education for their children and reliable road and rail connections that get them efficiently to and from work or meeting their extended families. They want a growing and resilient economy.

They want reliable energy supply at affordable prices. None of these ambitions are about the desires of elites, they are what ordinary, everyday people all need and want.

READ MORE: Labour candidate Karen Shore on Reform, the NHS, and closing asylum hotels

We were gladdened and inspired when the party began to adopt policies that would be attractive to the natural Labour voter by rewarding personal effort, inspiring community support and delivering improvements to the public services our supporters all depend on.

Little did we know that this welcome change of approach brought about by Keir Starmer would be accompanied by a catastrophic level of Tory incompetence and self-serving aggrandisement that would shock and disgust the nation and rightly consign them to their worst defeat ever.

Yes, we won the general election because we were the best alternative to the Tories. But also because our natural base was ready to trust us again, “not fearing we might end up focussing on issues of marginal interest to them rather than bread and butter labour and union causes that improve the lives of families, working people and communities.

There will be more difficult decisions to make

Now, after nearly nine months of Keir Starmer’s government, Labour Future is rededicating itself to our cause of re-rooting Labour into its working-class base, reflecting working class values, culture and patriotism. We want Labour to reshape Britain while delivering a more competitive economy with higher rates of growth that raise living standards and underwrite decent public services.

Yes there have been difficult political choices to be made – and let me say right away there will need to be more, for we do not change our country for the better without having to make tough decisions when the Tories have left the UK between a rock and a hard place – but so long as we stay in harmony with our working class base and explain ourselves honestly and sincerely we shall take our support with us.

Then, once the benefits have begun to show the sagacity of our decisions, we can go on to grow our support and surprise our critics and opponents who have the luxury of having no responsibility or accountability for turning Britain around.

At the forefront of our desire for real change for the better, not false reform or Tory fearmongering must be how we improve the performance of the NHS. By exploiting the power of AI, introducing new digital technology and trusting more in the decisions of clinical staff we can begin to show waiting lists and times can be reduced.

Abolish NHS England was a masterstroke

The inheritance of falling life expectancy in many areas under the Tories can be reversed, but we must focus on genuine priorities, not political grandstanding that has marginal or even negative impacts.

Keir Starmer’s announcement about the abolition of the Tory NHS England quango has been a masterstroke. Another difficult decision because it involves some job losses, but it wrong foots the Tories – who are seen to be the cause of duplication and bureaucracy – while exposing Reform for having nothing to say except how they do not trust each other, never mind investing in NHS workers.

Reform thrives on the “culture war” narrative, positioning itself as the defender of traditional values against so-called “woke” politics. Labour must not get dragged into these distractions by adopting Tory legislation or pandering to the noise they create.

Labour has a huge opportunity to expose Reform UK’s lack of a serious plan for the NHS. By making the NHS a central campaign issue, Labour can highlight Reform’s weaknesses, reassure voters, and secure a decisive victory. The NHS is always a top priority for the country and if we drive improvement we will win and win again.

Ultimately, Labour wins when it is seen as the party that improves public services. Reform wants to shift the debate onto immigration and culture wars, but Labour must stay focused on what really matters to voters: the economy, healthcare, the cost of living and delivering for people. By having the priorities of our natural supporters, we will have we will have a Labour Future not just for the next four years but beyond that and into the 2030s.

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