‘We know people want change. Labour needs to make it’

People want change. That’s what they voted for last summer when they voted Labour. The manifesto on which Labour won the general election (it had just one word, “Change”, on the cover) offers a starting point for significant transformation of the country. Labour needs to start acting like they are the ones delivering it, because almost a year down the line, people in Britain still want change. That’s what they voted for this week when they voted Reform.

READ MORE: Council by council Labour gains and losses – and its position in each mayor race

“Broad but shallow” is the term most often used about Labour’s 2024 majority. Luckily for the party, being elected is zero sum. How shallowly you win – as Runcorn’s new MP Sarah Pochin and her six vote majority will tell you – doesn’t equate to a shallower set of powers. With its very healthy parliamentary majority, Labour has what John Smith famously spoke of: an opportunity to serve.

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It needs to use it. As Nadia Whittome MP wrote for LabourList yesterday, we can’t (and shouldn’t) attempt to out-Farage Farage on immigration, but we must acknowledge how unpopular PIP and other cuts have been. And as Ben Glover wrote for LabourList yesterday, we also can’t pretend that staunching losses to the Lib Dems and Greens (while to my view something we very much need to do) will solve all our problems. If we give up on “places that are objectively struggling the most” – places very possibly minded to vote Reform – Glover argues, “it would mean Labour has no ‘skin in the game’ where life is hardest”.

READ MORE: Runcorn blame game begins – why did Labour lose?

To my view, Glover and Whittome’s arguments needn’t point in different directions. We know that Reform-curious Labour voters want left wing economic populism: much of what Labour has done or plans to do can be understood in these terms anyway, from rail nationalisation to VAT on private schools. There are some policies I believe Labour should adopt – an aggressively messaged wealth tax – and some existing policies party is not talking about as forthrightly or coherently as it should be (why did we hear so little about public sector pay deals?).

READ MORE: ‘Results so far say one thing: voters think change isn’t coming fast enough’

Overall, however the questions facing Labour now should primarily be ones of delivery and governance. The party needs to take its own commitments seriously and not get spooked into a panic response (given the briefing against Ed Miliband has already started, avoiding this totally seems unlikely). Those commitments are substantial: bringing about a revolution in council housing; bolstering rights at work through the employment rights bill; fixing the glaring gaps in the provision of public services.

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As I drafted this and watched the postmortems roll in for this set of local elections, on the other side of the world a different set of election results were coming in. In Australia, Labor has been comfortably re-elected. It won on a record of student debt forgiveness, fighting climate change, cost of living relief and progressive labour market reform.

Despite much post-Biden soul searching about the value of deliverism, that is what Labour in the UK should aim for. Making the country better on the terms it set out less than a year ago is what Labour needs to concentrate on. It has something none of the other parties, however well they might poll, will have for some years: the capacity to make national level change.

Read more on the 2025 local elections:

Results on the day

Analysis of the 2025 election results

• Starmer: ‘Labour must go further and faster to deliver after Runcorn defeat’
• Runcorn blame game begins – why did Labour lose?
• ‘Labour has lost in Runcorn – here are the eight things the party should do now‘
• MPs who could lose their seat on Runcorn by-election swing to Reform
• ‘Results so far say one thing: voters think change isn’t coming fast enough’
• Three ways to measure Labour’s success tonight
• ‘Uxbridgitis: If election results are grim, let’s not learn the wrong lessons again’
• Where’s Keir? PM barely features in Labour party election broadcasts for the locals
• The meme elections: Labour’s social media pivot to take fight to Farage

LabourList’s on-the-ground reports from the campaign

• Hull and East Yorkshire: Labour candidate spars with Reform’s boxing star in UK’s most disillusioned city
• Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Nik Johnson on why he’s standing down and Anna Smith on knife-edge Labour-Tory fight to replace him
• West of England: Tory and Green threats, Dan Norris and low voter awareness
• Lancashire: Long shadow of Gaza looms over key battleground

Inside the Runcorn campaign

• Mood on the doorstep: Labour’s last push for Tory voters to keep out Reform
• At least 150 Labour MPs visit – but Keir Starmer ain’t one
• Karen Shore interview: Labour candidate on Reform, the NHS and closing asylum hotels
• Runcorn poll: One in ten Labour voters expected to back Reform

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