Labour will not defeat the populist right through mimicry – instead, let’s treat our working class with respect
Protest against the Winter Fuel Payment cut in October 2024 (Associated Press/Alamy)
4 min read
If we in the Labour Party want to defeat Reform UK, we must once again project ourselves as a unifying party of progress with roots in communities everywhere.
For decades, we won working-class and progressive voters, spoke for the English regions as well as Scotland and Wales, all while standing for solidarity and anti-racism. We can do so again – but how?
Let’s start with the grave errors that have been made. We lost Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in large measure because of our pusillanimous response to the war in the Middle East. We lost many of our links with people, especially in parts of the North and the Midlands that had been held back, when Keir Starmer abolished our community organising unit. We gave the impression that older voters could be taken for granted. And our economic policies prioritised the City of London while neglecting vast areas of industrial decline. We assumed that working-class voters would be forced to vote Labour as they had nowhere else to go.
There is a pervasive sense that we are a nation in decline, that there is little to be done and maybe that we are the victims of treacherous actions by the governing class. This sense of victimhood is fed by Nigel Farage and Reform who point the finger at easily identified scapegoats.
Our response must be an assertion that government will lead a process of national renewal on a scale equivalent to the immediate post-war period. For that, we will need to mobilise working communities everywhere.
Take older people. I was born in 1950 and saw the mighty efforts of the British working class to rebuild our industrial base in the North and elsewhere after the war. That generation also built the NHS as well as a whole new set of housing. These are the people who are now pensioners. We owe them for the work they did. It is not acceptable to take away their Winter Fuel Payment, nor to whisper that the triple lock is in question. Nor is it right that the women born in the 1950s should have been stripped of their pension entitlements. This hero generation can be mobilised again to help rebuild our country, together with their children’s and grandchildren’s generation. Instead, they have felt neglected and rejected and have turned in large numbers to Reform.
The same applies to working-class voters living in communities on low incomes, now threatened by growing unemployment. The British working class is composed of deeply patriotic people. They are not bigots. They need an opportunity to work hard, play by the rules and get on in life as part of a drive to re-establish a prosperous community that can punch its weight in the world. But they are held back.
Sometimes it seems that even the simplest tasks are beyond the ability of the government
When Labour said we would deliver ‘growth’ without specifying what it meant, it went over people’s heads. Growth in recent years has been restricted to more wealth at the top, higher rates of unemployment and even millions more in poverty. A generation and more of austerity, fragmentation and privatisation has left the British state itself severely weakened.
Sometimes it seems that even the simplest tasks are beyond the ability of the government – fixing potholes, restoring community policing, even collecting litter from the verges. Who would have thought that NHS doctors and even the consultants would be going on strike under a Labour government? And yet it is there for all to see.
If we seriously want to defeat the populist right, it won’t do to mimic some of their cultural values in the hope of attracting their voters. All that does is vindicate their policies, justify people voting for them and alienate more progressive voters.
There is a way forward. It involves not conceding the cause of working people to the right. It means being bold and principled. Treating our working class with respect. Understanding the sensibilities of voters on the left. Transforming our economic life by taking on extreme wealth and exploitative mega-corporations. And launching a process of rebuilding our industry, our public services and sense of pride in who we are as a people.
Jon Trickett is the Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth
