‘Labour lost votes to the left – copying Reform would only make things worse’

There’s no point running over how bad a day Thursday was for Labour. You really only have to look at the numbers for that one. Over 1000 councillors lost in a single swoop, some of whom are the most decent, hardworking people that our party still has in its ranks. It’s a shame to see them go.

What is clear, unfortunately, is that the reason most of them lost their seats isn’t due to their own faults but is down to national sentiment. Labour and this Labour government is struggling to make its voice heard and to cut through on the vision it wants to present to the country. But that pre-empts it being a vision worth defining.

Some at the top and on the party’s right – and especially those with definitely no ulterior motives in the media – are saying that the Government now must tack rightwards to combat Reform head on. That means tougher immigration policy, stricter public finances and more divisive rhetoric.

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But that fails to get to the root of the problem in Britain today – or what voters actually want.

You only have to look at what Professor Sir John Curtice said on Friday morning: up and down England, Labour is losing seats to Reform because it is losing votes to the Greens.

This shouldn’t have come as a shock to any of us. Extensive analysis has been done on this. Persuasion UK’s report, ‘Revolt on the left: Getting to know Labour’s progressive defectors’ shows that, for every 10 votes Labour loses to its Right, it loses 16 to progressive parties. It also shows that 55% of the Labour vote is open to switching left, as opposed to only 21% switching right.

This is backed up by the UCL Policy Lab’s recent report, ‘A polarising Britain?’, that highlights how only 1% of Reform voters say there is a ‘fair chance’ they could vote Labour, whereas up to 15% of progressive voters are still willing to give Labour a chance in comparison.

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What this all amounts to is a brutal truth for our party: that all voters are responding to a clear vision and strong values. We currently have neither.

To suggest that we should somehow steal Reform’s policies or ape their rhetoric to win back voters who don’t want to vote for us is at best misguided and, at worst, purposefully destructive.

We have a working majority of 165. We were put in to govern just under two years ago. What we weren’t put in to do was to steal right-wing policy and pass it off as our own. We should be making the positive case to the country of why Labour is the right choice for government – but that means stronger action on the cost-of-living crisis, a new economic settlement, action on climate change, action on clean energy, democratic reform and human rights-based action overseas.

We have the time and we have the resources to do it. But it will take the political will.

What we don’t have time to do is implement Nigel Farage’s policies for him.

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