‘We can’t just target Reform or Green voters. Here’s how we target both’

The clear message from last week’s elections was this: our voters’ lives are unaffordable, and they want change.

The voters we are losing are those who cannot afford a good life and see no prospect of being able to do so. That is why they are leaving us to vote for radical outsiders in the form of both Reform and the Greens. Non-graduates who can’t get good jobs with good wages are going to Reform while young graduate renters who can’t afford a home are going to the Greens.

If we want to win the next election, we need to make life affordable for our voters. Investing to get energy and housing costs down while creating good non-graduate jobs for Reform-curious voters will put more money in these voters’ pockets. If we get cash in peoples’ pockets, we win the next election. If we don’t, we lose.

What went wrong

We lost across the country on Thursday because our 2024 voters are leaving us, and they are leaving us because they cannot afford a decent life. Of our 2024 voters, almost half of those that are economically insecure have stopped supporting us, compared to less than a third of the economically secure. Some don’t know who else to vote for (yet). The ones who do are voting for Reform and the Greens. Specifically, our economically insecure non-graduate voters are going to Reform while our hard-up young graduate renters are going to the Greens.

Both these groups share the same fundamental problem: they can’t afford a decent life and see no prospect of being able to do so. That is why they want a radical solution and are willing to support radical outsiders to get there. Our political battle is no longer Left vs. Right but Mainstream Sensibles vs. Radical Outsiders (in the form of Reform and the Greens).

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

Two council seats, 230 miles apart, show us the new political battle we face. Let’s start wth Horden and Dene House in County Durham. Around 85% of people in Horden didn’t go to university, and they are leaving us in droves. Horden hasn’t recovered from deindustrialisation. It is one of the most deprived areas in the country, with earnings here almost £100 a week lower than the national average.

People cannot earn enough because there aren’t enough good non-graduate jobs that pay enough to live on since the Horden pit closed in the 1980s. To afford the basics, a two-earner family with two kids needs to earn around £35,000 each. The average non-graduate earns just £29,500. These voters want radical change to be able to afford a decent life and so are opting for Reform.

Now, let’s travel south 230 miles to Herne Hill in South London. Two-thirds here can’t afford to own their own home. They are paying ever-increasing rents that are growing at 8% and spend 40% of incomes on housing costs. The average house price in Herne Hill is £565,000, twelve times average earnings in the area.

The only way these voters can get onto the housing ladder is via the Bank of Mum and Dad. For young renting graduates, how well they do is not about how hard they work, but how rich their parents are. That is why these voters also want radical change and are opting to vote Green.

We lost Herne Hill to the Greens and we lost Horden to Reform. Different areas that voted against us, different groups that left us, but a common problem. Mainstream politics is not working for the voters who left us in both areas, it is not offering them a decent life, and they are looking for radical outsiders who might be able to.

How we win

To win the next election, we need to be able to hold the voters that are leaving us in Horden and Herne Hill. Reform may be directly threatening our seats, but losing votes to the Greens can lose us seats even when the Greens don’t win.

Think about the result in Runcorn this way – if only seven Green voters decided to vote Labour, we would have won. As pollster Steve Akehurst has found, if all of our Green-curious voters leave us, we lose 250 seats compared to 123 if we lose all the Reform-curious ones.

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We also should not assume that our current core vote of younger city graduates will stay with us no matter what. As we saw at the last election, core voter groups can leave political parties suddenly if they don’t feel we are serving them.

Winning the next election runs through making sure that non-graduates and graduates can afford a decent life under a Labour government. This is the issue that unites our diverse voter coalition together – action on the cost of living is what they care about most, even when they disagree on social issues. If we want to win, we need to make sure people can afford a decent life.

There are two routes to creating that affordable life for these voters: lowering costs and creating good non-graduate jobs.

Firstly, we can directly lower costs for all voters through investment. As energy and housing costs are fixed costs, which are higher as a proportion of poorer households’ incomes, this is a progressive policy measure that helps the hard-up the most.
 
Clean energy is 50 to 75% cheaper than natural gas. So, to get energy costs down, we need more clean energy (and less natural gas).

Investing in home insulation also gets costs down, so each unit of power goes further. We should also think about energy tariffs that provide a lower unit price for low energy usage. This would get the costs down everyone, and especially households that are struggling with their bills.

To get both rents and house prices down, we need to build more (affordable) homes. The way we help many low-income groups with housing costs is through council tax reductions, which get costs down for 3.6 million people. When it comes to buying a home, we can help young people get on the housing ladder through mortgage reforms that makes it easier to approve loans when the mortgage payments are less than the current rents they are paying. These measures are particularly helpful for young (graduate) renters tempted to go Green.

Secondly, we need to actively create good non-graduate jobs, with a focus on post-industrial areas. Mass-employment manufacturing is not coming back, so we need to make active investments that create good jobs. Investment in childcare, social care, home retrofitting, and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure create lots of good non-graduate jobs (avoiding the Biden trap of investing in things rather than people).

They have the bonus of connecting deprived areas that are voting Reform because they lack transport infrastructure. All four Reform MPs are missing a major road in their constituency. These areas are more left out than left behind. Creating good non-graduate jobs in these areas is what these people and places need. 

Our coalition in 2024 delivered us an historic victory. But parts of our voter coalition simply cannot afford a decent life today, and they are leaving us for radical outsider parties as a result. Non-graduates can’t find good jobs and young renters are finding housing unaffordable.

To win the next election, we need to make sure they can afford a decent life, by investing to get their costs down and creating good non-graduate jobs. If we do that, we win the next election. If we don’t, we lose.

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