‘To beat Reform, Labour must focus on places that are struggling most’

And just like that: Reform claims its first by-election scalp from Labour.

Not an enormous surprise, with some predicting the result and the Prime Minister avoiding the campaign in Runcorn.

But the party should not under-estimate the significance of this result, nor the ‘turquoise wave’ in town halls across the country.

If the Runcorn swing to Reform were replicated at a general election, 254 Labour MPs would lose their seats. This would wipe out ten cabinet members, including Reeves, Rayner, Reynolds and Nandy.

Progressive parties aren’t Labour’s main electoral opponents

To me, these results show an obvious need to take Reform seriously; that the party represents an existential threat.

But sadly, there appears a need to spell this out, with some arguing the Reform hype shouldn’t be believed. That Labour should ‘keep calm and carry on’.

Social Market Foundation director Theo Bertram has written in these pages that the government needs to respond “proportionately” and warns against “fixating on Reform’s agenda”.

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The journalist and former Labour spinner Tom Baldwin recently outlined a similar position before today’s results, arguing in The Times that “weekly surveys for YouGov consistently show Labour losing a chunk of its 2024 support to Reform, but a lot more of it is going to the Liberal Democrats and Greens.”

This analysis misses a fundamental point about how parliamentary elections work. What matters under First Past the Post is where votes are being won or lost. And progressive parties are not the primary opponent in most Labour seats.

Reform came second to Labour in 89 seats, with wafer thin majorities in many of them. This is more than double the number of the Liberal Democrats and Greens combined.

In politics, as in life in general, it is better to focus on the threat about to punch you in the face, rather than the threat around the corner.

Reform is taking votes from Labour, especially where it matters

But what about the claim that Reform is sucking votes from the Tories and not Labour? In the Blue Wall, it is true that Reform is costing the Tories more votes than Labour. This is unsurprising; it’s the Blue Wall!

But in the Red Wall, which looks set to remain England’s main election battleground, this is not remotely true.

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According to recent analysis conducted by Steve Akehurst of Persuasion UK, in Red Wall seats, Reform is gaining votes in equal proportion from the Tories and Labour.

And in seats where Reform came second to Labour in the 2024 general election, Reform is now drawing more of its support from 2024 Labour voters than 2024 Tory voters.

This appears to be playing out in the local elections, with Labour losing vote share to Reform, particularly in Red Wall areas.

This should put to bed the myth that Reform’s rise is only costing the Tories.

For whom?

Electioneering is important. Indeed, Labour’s first constitutional clause is to maintain the party in Parliament, which by definition requires winning elections.

But other things matter in politics too. This includes the million-dollar question which perennially hangs over Labour: ‘what is the party for?’.

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

To answer this, we must first answer, in my view, ‘who is the party for?’.

To me, Starmer’s Labour is for working people who have been battered by decades of de-industrialisation and a decade of austerity.

People have who have had their sense of security threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic, an insecure border and an energy crisis.

Improving these peoples’ lives was the platform on which Labour was elected last year.

Improving ex-industrial towns, coastal communities and city peripheries who had proud historic links to our national economy but have been shut out of late.

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Labour has always been an alliance between these places and the middle-class professionals of cities and university towns. But the first wing of that alliance is clearly under threat, perhaps like never before.

Just as New Labour transformed the rotting inner city, today it must be ruthlessly focused on ex-industrial towns, city peripheries and coastal communities; places that are objectively struggling the most.

Losing connection with these places would cut the umbilical cord with Labour’s past and heritage; to regions like the North East which are so deeply and proudly engrained in Labour’s DNA.

READ MORE: ‘If election results are grim, let’s not learn the wrong lessons again’

It would mean Labour has no ‘skin in the game’ where life is hardest.

Is it realistic that Labour can lose vast swathes of its voters who are in the most left behind places and still be the champion of those voters? Will its narrower, richer coalition be willing to put those people first?

An inconvenient truth

There are some that wish Labour to become the party of affluent, suburban, southern Britain alone, where the party has appears to have performed better today.

To those people I say: once an institution forgets where it came from and what it is for, it loses all sense of purpose. It would also clearly be an electoral disaster.

This might be an inconvenient truth for some, but the hard truths delivered at ballot boxes in Runcorn and across the country should not be ignored.