As Labour chases Reform, they're bleeding votes on the left
Just two weeks after Reform UK's local election triumph, the government announced a major crackdown on immigration. But while Labour scrambles to neutralise the threat from the right, it risks losing another, just as substantial, cohort to its left, argues Fonie Mitsopoulou.
The electorate doesn't love Labour at the moment.
Recent polls indicate that of those that voted Labour in the 2024 election, only 46 per cent would do so again were an election to happen tomorrow.
In Labour's leftist flanks, there is a persistent feeling that Starmer has deserted his traditional base by shifting to the right by an unwelcome degree, cutting down on welfare and legal migration.
43 per cent of Labour voters feel that their party is trying to appeal to Reform UK voters.
The party's manifesto vowed to lower net migration, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer's speech announcing plans to curb the influx went further than anything the party promised in the run up to the election.
It wasn't lost on many that Starmer gave that speech just two weeks after Labour was doled a net loss of 187 councillors at the May local election.
Right across, Reform's numbers swelled. The party netted 677 seats, from a standing start.
But while the Starmer administration try to stop a bleed from the right, there is also a vacuum for disenchanted Labour voters who remain impervious to Reform's temptations.
In fact, the largest portion of Labour's supporters are now undecided voters – up for grabs.
In focus groups, More in Common pollster Ed Hodgson found an unprecedented number of people citing that the government is deaf to their concerns.
'Whereas, if you look at it objectively, the government now probably has more access to opinion data than they've ever had, and they probably are listening even more than any other government,' Hodgson said.
While the government recently reversed the wildly unpopular winter fuel payment cuts, they incurred opprobrium for delaying it by ten months from when the policy change was announced.
According to Hodgson, 'if people listen badly, it's almost worse than not listening at all.'
Interpreting focus groups 'in bad faith' to 'basically justify what you want to do anyway,' or seeming like Number 10 is making decisions just because they poll well, then politicians lose 'a lot of their credibility and authenticity,' Hodgson added.
Another explanation is that 2024 Labour voters aren't 'real', card-carrying Labour voters.
For Steve Akehurst, pollster and director of Persuasion UK, Labour benefited as anti-Conservative voters rallied behind what seemed like the Tories' strongest opponent at the time.
Where do disillusioned, leftist, ex-Labour supporters go?
It depends on their age.
'The younger ones are pretty clearly going to the Green Party and … the older groups are pretty clearly going to the Liberal Democrats,' said Hosgson.
Younger generations don't have as much of an entrenched party identity.
'In the past, you would have a much bigger flank of people who saw themselves as a Labour voter or see themselves as a Conservative person,' said Hodgson, noting that 'particularly with young people, those tethers are sort of disconnected.'
While the dangers of Reform are making the political weather, it is Lib Dems that have taken the biggest bite out of Labour's voter share.
As much as 12 per cent of them have defected to the Lib Dems. For Akehurst, this is 'just a bit nuts.'
The Lib Dems gained 163 local councillors in the recent elections, bringing them up to 370.
A Liberal Democrat source told City AM that at the 2026 local elections, it will become apparent in 'key areas in London' that the Lib Dems 'are the real challengers to Labour.'
The Lib Dem conception of their charm is their ability to occupy an unreserved space as an unobjectionable alternative when the other parties disappoint.
The source said that as 'both Labour and the Conservatives desert Middle England, we are proving to be able to fill that gap with our community politics at local level and refusal to kowtow to Donald Trump on the national stage.'
Steff Acquarone, Lib Dem MP, summarised the party's brand – which is not always apparent – to City AM.
'We believe in business and free enterprise. We also believe in individual liberty,' he said.
'I don't really see the left-right spectrum as massively indicative anymore. I think we describe ourselves as progressive,' Aquarone said.
However, Aquarone denies that they are 'One Nation' Tories – who perch on the socially liberal end of the Conservative Party – 'in a different colour.' What distinguishes the Lib Dems is, for Aquarone, their 'internationalist' stance.
'You can see Tory members shimmering in frustration with some of the frankly unhinged things that their party is saying at the moment, but I don't think we're One Nation Conservatives wearing a different colour.'
The Greens are often discounted, but they snagged nine per cent of Labour's 2024 voters according to Akehurst, and they're hoping to convert even more.
In fact, the party won a record high number of seats in the recent local elections, adding a net 43 to their ranks – 859 seats on 181 councils.
But the Greens have a PR problem: the majority of people don't know how they feel about the co-leaders. 82 per cent don't hold an opinion on Adrian Ramsay; it's 75 per cent for Carla Denyer.
The party is in the process of refreshing its brand and changing its leadership.
Denyer is stepping down, and Green rules state that puts both leadership seats up for grabs.
Zach Polanski, deputy leader, is challenging Ramsay in the running for Green leader (Green rules also dictate co-leaders must represent both genders).
Polanski told City AM Starmer's stumbles explain the migration of voters. 'The Labour Party are absolutely letting people down from a range of policies, from the winter fuel payments, to the two child benefit cap,' to their 'appalling' record of 'standing up for refugees' and to the government's mutable stance on the 'genocide in Gaza, which they seem to be changing their rhetoric on.'
'There's this vacuum in politics, and we've seen Reform and Nigel Farage trying to step into it on the right,' he said.
But Polanski has a plan to win over the voters on the left; 'there's a huge space for the Green Party to be bolder and really speak to people who used to vote Labour and say; 'you're not leaving the Labour Party, the Labour Party has left you'.'
Polanksi doesn't identify his party with partisan politics, either.
'I don't see it as kind of the old spectrum of politics,' Polanski said. 'Actually, when you look at where we've won seats at council level from other parties, it's often equal between the Labour Party and Conservative Party,' he added.
'I think it's about being really clear about what we stand for and being really clear about what we stand against,' he said.
'Whether you're a young renter who is living in the city that wants rent controls, or you're a farmer who is being screwed over by aggregate corporate capital, or the supermarkets aren't paying you what you deserve for the food,' for Polanski, the Greens' appeal is cross-cutting.
The fact that voters are more amenable to non-mainstream parties might indicate a trend towards issue voting.
However, tracking parties' views without the left-right heuristic can become disorienting.
Recent Reform voters disproportionately turned to Nigel Farage out of a desire for change, seeking a divergence from the same two parties that have alternated control of the government for decades.
It seems that the Lib Dems and Greens are benefiting from the same inclination to vote in protest, enabling them to break out – at least for now – from their status as niche, non-establishment parties.
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