‘Labour won’t win back left defectors with squeeze messaging alone’

Joseph McNamara, a 77-year old man living in Gorton, told the Independent last week why he had switched from voting Labour to voting Green in the by-election. “Starmer is for the higher-ups rather than the lower-downs. He promises things and says, ‘Oh yes I’ll do this, do that’. At the end of the day nothing happens.”

Much of the media commentary about collapse in support for Labour since 2024 has focused on those Labour voters who now say they’ll vote for Farage’s Reform party. But new published research from Persuasion UK and 38 Degrees looks at the growing ‘revolt on the left’ as Labour loses voters to the Greens, plus the Lib Dems and nationalist parties.

The results are stark. Labour has lost more voters to parties of the left than the right. And people who currently plan to vote Labour are much more likely to switch leftwards than to the right if they do defect. The people Labour has lost to the left are traditionally swing voters, not hardcore Labour voters. They are open to coming back to Labour (and more likely to do so than those Labour lost to the right). But, and as was underlined last week at the by-election, crude squeeze messaging isn’t nearly enough to win them back.

READ MORE: Ben Cooper column: ‘Labour needs to rediscover its own authentic populism’

Who are these ‘left defectors’? The Westminster vibe is that Labour is losing irreconcilable lefties in seats it will safely hold come what may.  It’s a comforting story for some but it is a myth.

In reality, the ‘left defectors’ live in safe seats and in battleground constituencies. They are most likely to be a younger, lower middle class professional, working as a teacher or IT support worker. They have voted for a range of different parties since turning 18. They are more likely to be swing voters than part of the solid Labour base. This is not the cliched stereotype of a ‘woke lefty’ in Islington or Hackney.

There is good news and bad news for Labour in this research. The good news is that 60 percent of voters Labour has lost to the left are open to coming back – compared to just 27 percent of the voters lost to their right. The bad news is that of the 2024 Labour vote they are holding onto, there is a significant group of voters who remain vulnerable to defecting leftwards. The polling shows that 18 percent of all Labour defectors to the left believe that Labour under Keir Starmer is too centrist and 35 percent too right wing, while only 21 percent believe the values are right, but that Labour is incompetent. This is driven by a sense that Labour has been too right wing or centrist.

Labour’s floor is lower than their current polling numbers, probably even more than YouGov polling this week putting them in third place behind Reform and the Green Party.

So what can Labour do, if it isn’t already too late?

First, the evidence suggests that swing voters on left and right can be brought together by a relentless focus on a cost of living populism, prioritised over a focus on cultural divides. Trying to out-Reform Reform on immigration will not win back Reform supporters, but it will alienate progressive voters. But progressive defectors can be appealed to through confident signalling on issues like climate and a closer relationship with the EU without any automatic trade-off elsewhere in the Labour coalition. People voted for big, bold change and they are angry that it isn’t showing up in their lives yet. In these circumstances, being cautious is the riskiest thing the government can do.

Second, Labour should be mindful of the adage that the voters are never wrong. The reaction to the Gorton and Denton by-election – to all-but berate Labour voters who switched to the Greens, labelling them “extreme” for backing Hannah Spence – is likely to be counter-productive. This is especially the case when contrasted with the “legitimate grievances” rhetoric deployed to Labour-to-Reform voters. An approach of harsh criticism is more likely to repel than re-engage the voters Labour is losing to its left.

Third, the gap between perception and reality of government action on some key issues is startling. For example, only 17 percent of these voters know the Government has increased public spending. Even when the Government is doing what voters want, they aren’t getting credit for it. Policies are important but only part of the picture. This is less about policy delivery than illuminating whose side the party is on, and whose side it is not on.

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Any party that seeks to keep rightwing populism out of office needs to find a unifying mission for all of these voters. What unites those voters that Labour has lost to its left, and to its right, is a feeling that the economy doesn’t work for working people. Political parties need to respond to what people care about, made clear in this research: People want higher pay, lower bills, affordable rents. Bread and butter issues, which will materially improve people’s lives – fought for and delivered in the face of a hostile media and other special interests who will scream about the so-called extremism or recklessness of these simple steps.

Labour won’t win back votes with a crude ‘lesser of two evils’ message – what strategists call a “squeeze message”. Showing voters where their ‘X’ is best placed to keep Reform out in a First Past The Post system matters. But it is the last piece of a jigsaw which is dominated by improving people’s living standards, and compelling stories about bold changes made in the interests of working people, over those whose interest the economy is currently stacked in favour of.

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