Defeat in Runcorn was entirely avoidable – the Labour leadership must now change course
Keir Starmer visits a defence contractor as local and mayoral election results come in, Friday 2 May (PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)
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Labour’s defeat in Runcorn was entirely avoidable – and is the direct result of the party leadership’s political choices.
By pushing policies like cuts to disability benefits and scrapping the winter fuel allowance for millions, the leadership is driving away our own voters – and letting Reform squeeze through.
The Labour leadership must urgently change course and deliver the real change people are crying out for. If it fails to do so, things could get far worse, with Reform waiting in the wings.
Chasing Reform voters is a strategic dead end
Of course, Labour won a landslide majority just nine months ago. So, some in the party may believe we can simply ride out the defeat in Runcorn (and the close races elsewhere) and wait for the tide to turn. That would be a dangerously complacent reading of events.
Labour’s general election majority was won on the lowest-ever vote share for a winning party and on a near-record low turnout. Just one in five eligible voters backed Labour. As pollsters warned at the time, this majority should never have been seen as a skyscraper but a sandcastle – one that could wash away just as the Tories’ 2019 landslide did.
To hold and then build from that fragile position, Labour has needed a strategy to expand its coalition – by showing it is on the side of the vast majority of people. Instead, sitting in the House of Commons listening to the leadership, at times it has felt like it is doing the exact opposite.
Much attention will now turn to how to fight Reform UK, especially as they are in second place in dozens of Labour seats. Labour cannot afford to misread this moment. Chasing Reform voters is a strategic dead end. The collapse of Labour’s progressive coalition is what’s allowing Reform to win. Policies that rebuild that coalition are the only way to stop them.
Polling shows Labour is bleeding at least as much support to its left as to its right. A YouGov poll earlier this year found Labour had lost seven per cent of its 2024 voters to the Liberal Democrats and six per cent to the Greens. That’s more than the five per cent lost to Reform UK and four per cent to the Conservatives.
New research this week from Persuasion UK underlines that message. Only 11 per cent of Labour’s 2024 voters are “Reform-curious”. For every one of those, there are three or four Labour voters open to voting for the Greens or Lib Dems.
Moreover, three-quarters of Reform’s support comes from voters who haven’t backed Labour in a general election in 20 years. They are historically anti-Labour voters who have overwhelmingly voted for various parties on the right including the Conservatives and UKIP and to a lesser extent not voted at all.
Likewise, Reform’s gains since the general election are thanks to disillusioned ex-Tories and non-voters – and not in any significant way from Labour’s own voter base.
Trying to win over these Reform voters with rightward lurches risks doing more harm than good by alienating core Labour supporters and making vote-splitting amongst progressive voters even more likely. The result will be more far-right MPs and more working-class communities left without a real champion.
Much better would be to start embracing real Labour values like taxing the wealthiest and delivering massive investment in public services. These are the policies the polling says would best allow Labour to hold both Reform and Green defectors.
After more than a decade of Conservative cruelty, the public wanted a break from austerity and real change. Labour has presented itself as the party of change — but voters clearly don’t like what is now being offered.
Next May sees elections for the Scottish and Welsh governments and in hundreds of council seats in Labour heartlands across England. It could be the true moment of reckoning for the government.
It is not too late for the Labour leadership to signal a new direction. It must bring people together around a bold, progressive agenda.
If it doesn’t, then Reform will hope that these elections are just a stepping stone to copying Trump and forming the next government on the back of a wave of popular anger. The consequences of that would be horrific for those the Labour Party exists to represent.
Richard Burgon is the Labour MP for Leeds East
