New intake Labour MPs: ‘Why we set up the Living Standards Coalition’

Everyone being able to live a decent life. This is the core of our Labour values.

But people in every corner of our country, no matter how hard they work, cannot afford a decent life. This is both an affront to our values and will damage our electoral prospects.

That is why we have launched the Living Standards Coalition of over 100 MPs to help support the government in making our constituents better off.

The Living Standards Coalition will help us keep the political focus on living standards while putting forward supportive ideas that will get bills down and incomes rising.

Getting living standards rising is how we build a country true to our Labour values and win re-election.

Affording a decent life is core to Labour values

Our party was founded to give everyone, not just some, the chance to live a decent life. Being able to afford a home, bring up a family, and pay the bills without having to worry about a perpetually overdrawn bank account. Being able to afford a decent life is core to our Labour values. 

The Living Standards Coalition will support the government in building that country. We come from every part of our party, as well as every region and nation. We are here to keep the political focus on living standards and help provide ideas to make sure everyone can afford a decent life.

Making sure everyone can afford a decent life is what sets us apart from our political opponents. Our political opponents want only some of us to be able to afford a decent life, and this makes us all poorer.  The Conservatives left over a third of households and workers unable to afford a decent life. Their cuts led to the worst fall in wages since the Napoleon, followed by the worst cost-of-living crisis of any high-income nation.

We had the highest energy bills and inflation because they failed to invest in cleaner, cheaper nuclear and renewable energy. We have some of the highest housing costs with soaring rents because they refused to build the affordable homes young people need. Childcare costs are crippling because they didn’t invest in the skilled nursery workers we needed. 

This government has already made a good start in fixing these problems to get incomes rising and getting bills down. We are proud of the Warm Homes Plan, proud of our historic investment in clean energy, proud of the planning reforms so we can build 1.5 million homes, as well as the expansion of breakfast clubs and Best Start Family Hubs. All of this is concrete action that will get bills down and make everyone better off.

We need to go further and faster now

But we need to go further and faster to make people better off now. Voters are tired of being unable to afford the basics and are turning away from us as a result. We need ideas that pay off in the next couple of years, so our voters see the benefits of a Labour government before the next election.

When incumbent governments make people better off, they win. When they don’t, they lose. The cost of living remains the most important issue by some way, and it is voters who were hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis that were the most likely to switch to us at the last election.

For us in government, making sure we make people better off is how we, as individual MPs and a government, win re-election. The voters that are finding it hardest to afford a decent life are the ones that are leaving us. Economically insecure voters are around 50% more likely to be leaving us for radical alternatives.

Lower-income non-graduates, who can’t find a good job and see little future for them in the places they live in are leaving us for Reform. Young renters, who see their rent go up and up with no prospect of owning their own home are leaving us for the Greens. We need to win them back.

But this is about more than elections. It is also about or values and the country we are trying to create. As people are finding it harder to afford a decent life. This is what Reform is banking on. Blaming some other group for families finding life unaffordable. They seek only to divide and tear things down.

Their plan to cut clean energy investment is one small example. And when their strategy of destruction doesn’t work, and it never does, it leads only to more fear and anger as their spiral of blame continues.

The task before us is make people better off before the next election. People need to feel the benefits of a Labour government in their pockets.

The Living Standards Coalition is about celebrating this government’s achievements on living standards, keeping the political focus on them, and providing ideas to help make voters better off. It is core to our Labour values and what voters will judge us against at the next election. 

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