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Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Keir Starmer's fate lies with strivers and grafters
There are a few people here you really ought to meet. I know we said this about Stevenage Woman, Workington Man and the others — the guy from Basildon with the Ford Mondeo and that nice working mum from Worcester — but give them a chance. Once you've heard about them you might understand a little more of the government's thinking. You might even recognise yourself. The cabinet, special advisers and civil servants met them recently. If they are working the way Downing Street wants, they'll be thinking of these people constantly: two big groups amounting to about 20 per cent of the electorate. Say hello to the Grafting Realists and Striving Moderates: the two most important segments of the government's new polling model. Sir Keir Starmer won't think he is succeeding until they trust the state again. Both groups have had a hard time of late. Their living standards have been stagnant for so long that they've almost lost hope. The Grafting Realists, a little older and likely resident in what was once called the red wall, were impoverished by inflation. They are working class, mostly white, and have the traditional attitudes those words imply. For the Striving Moderates of Middle England's lower middle class, it was spiking interest rates that proved most painful. Theirs are the houses with mortgages a little too big for comfort and a financed car on the drive that's now a burden. (Starmer surely sees something of himself in both.) No wonder they can't quite trust the government. For five years, whoever happens to lead it has let them down. Covid, partygate, Liz Truss, runaway inflation, soaring immigration figures, a broken NHS: prime ministers either seemed indifferent, incapable, or downright dangerous. The government's data doesn't write them off as a lost cause – you might chalk up their trust in the state at anything between four and six out of ten — but those Grafting Realists and Striving Moderates are deeply dissatisfied people. I say 'the government' rather than 'Labour' because this is not a party political enterprise. This is polling of trust in government, not electoral preference. It's informing the choices the Cabinet Office's New Media Unit make as they communicate policy announcements — be that the immigration white paper or the spending review — to different demographics on social media. Of course, renewed trust in the government's ability to get things right is likely to pay dividends for its incumbent management. It's also true that the Grafting Realists and Striving Moderates are the people who make the difference in elections. That, however, is secondary to the point many people in Westminster are still missing. The Conservative Party in particular struggles on under the misapprehension that voters are preoccupied with gradations of left and right. We might say the same of grumblers who'd like the Labour Party to be loud and proud with its progressivism. Really what is at stake is far more profound than whether Robert Jenrick ends up sounding as tough on migration as Rupert Lowe or the tone Starmer takes when he talks about welfare reform. If the public cannot be convinced to trust mainstream governments to deliver, then the show is likely to be over for conventional politics. What one No 10 aide perhaps unfairly calls 'the politics of anger' will take its place. Starmer knows this. He knows, too, that Nigel Farage knows it — hence the prime minister's decision to treat him as the true leader of the opposition and elevate him to heights no leader of five MPs has ever known. Earlier this week I watched Angela Rayner fill in for Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions with Chris Ward, his parliamentary private secretary and longest serving aide, in the Times Radio studio. Ward, liberated in Starmer's absence from his weekly obligation to prep the PM, said something revealing. Parliamentary arithmetic has frozen in aspic a political reality that no longer exists. It makes little sense for Starmer to treat each Wednesday lunchtime as an exercise in beating Kemi Badenoch, or answering her questions at any length. Instead he hopes to 'speak over the chamber's heads, and directly to country'. The Grafting Realists and Striving Moderates will be in his mind's eye. Will they be listening? In No 10, aides are cautiously optimistic. But Farage is speaking to the same people too: simply, directly, and more and more substantially. On Monday, I'm told, he will vow to 'restore the social contract between the rich and poor' in his most expansive speech on economic and social policy yet. (One luxury of opposition is not having to supervise the slide into World War III.) 'It's very Robin Hood,' says one adviser. The logic of that language suggests Reform's internal discussions on a wealth tax could be concluding in a surprising way. How would Labour oppose that? In the meantime, there will be concrete and costed proposals — detailed in a ten-page policy paper whose very existence reflects Farage's new awareness that his sums must add up — to 'put money straight into the pockets of the poorest workers in the society'. Note that language: workers. Farage told me in the weeks before the local elections that he believes his natural constituency is 'the respectable working class', synonyms for which obviously include 'grafters' and 'strivers'. He will lionise them as 'the people who set their alarm clocks in the morning'. On a recent trip to Budapest, Reform officials sought advice from aides to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, on welfare policy, and are enthused by one of their suggestions: lifting the two-child benefit cap only for working mothers. For Labour, pigeonholing this stuff is difficult. Many of its MPs struggle to resist the impulse to write it off as fantasy politics from the radical right. What is emerging from Reform is more omnivorous, syncretic and, for all Farage's stridency, full of confounding nuance. When Richard Tice, Reform's deputy leader, told me of his plans to dial back Bank of England independence last week, I saw shades of Peter Shore, the Labour maverick who said the same in the 1990s. A streak of statism coexists with the anti-bureaucratic nationalism of Pierre Poujade, the populist whose movement of overtaxed shopkeepers shook French politics before General de Gaulle returned to save the republic in 1958. Farage's strategists would prefer all this to be sold by outsiders — like Luke Campbell, the Olympic boxer turned Reform mayor of Hull – as their heroes in Italy's Five Star Movement did. It's easy for a government to say none of this would work, or dismiss it as 'nostalgic', as one cabinet minister did when we spoke about last week. But if Starmer's Grafting Realists and Striving Moderates can't believe him, he'll go the way of the other prime ministers who squandered their trust. As his gaze turns to the Middle East, he shouldn't forget the audience that matters most. Farage won't.
The Guardian
01-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Farage's 'leftwing' pose is flimsy – but so are Labour's own governing fantasies
In a much-publicised press conference last week in London, Nigel Farage invited Keir Starmer to a one-to-one debate at 'a working man's club' anywhere 'in the red wall'. The suggested location was more noteworthy than the debate-me machismo. Its message was clear: having trampled over the Tories in the recent local elections, Reform UK is coming for Labour and nowhere is safe. 'Let's go to one of the former mining communities, let's go somewhere that Labour has held the seat pretty much consistently since 1918,' Farage said, and then let's 'test' whether Labour or Reform is the real 'party of the workers'. If Starmer felt brave enough, they could even 'enjoy a few beers with the lads' – a nod to what has always been Farage's favourite interpretation of what 'standing with workers' entails. Farage's speech made waves for, among other things, calling for the two-child benefit cap to be overhauled and for Starmer's restrictions to the winter fuel allowance to be reversed. For the Thatcherite fanboy and former City trader, these were unusual positions, and the Westminster lobby lapped up the controversy – suggesting that, for parts of the Tory press, deviations from austerity will only be permissible when delivered with Farageist chutzpah. 'How Farage's fiery speech signals a seismic shift in UK politics – and the end for Starmer,' the Daily Express declared. 'Nigel leans left and hits the bullseye,' Tim Stanley cooed in the Daily Telegraph. The Sun wondered whether they should now call Farage 'Red Nigel'. But in reality, rather than represent an unprecedented reconfiguration of British politics, the speech was a typically opportunistic and cynical intervention from Farage: he noisily supported two policies that mounting reports suggested Labour were set to implement anyway, within a broader message that was far more George Osborne than Jeremy Corbyn. 'The great divide that is opening up in British society,' Farage claimed, was between those who wake up early and go to work and those who stay in bed and enjoy a similar quality of life. Workers and shirkers, in other words – same as it ever was. How worried should Labour be by Reform's overtures to the left? Farage's star is clearly rising and Reform has already surpassed Ukip's electoral achievements. After triumphing in the recent local elections, with more than 670 new council seats and a third of the vote, Reform now leads the pack in many national opinion polls. But Labour should first and foremost be worried by itself. Starmer's government appears to be in a permanently defensive state, commanding an enormous majority in parliament and yet rarely seeming to do more than react to events around it – sometimes left, often right. The prime minister's personal approval rating has suffered the consequences of this hapless strategy, reaching record lows with 38-point drop since last year's election. Meanwhile Red Nigel circles like a vulture. The two-child cap is illustrative. Since entering government with the promise of 'change', Labour maintained it would have to keep the policy – a transparently cruel inheritance from Osborne that made child poverty levels soar. Now the party appears increasingly likely to lift the cap, but what could have been a historic moment of rupture with Cruel Britannia – a move that will lift half a million children out of poverty, according to the Resolution Foundation – may easily be seen by the public as a reluctant concession to various Labour MPs and now Farage: not an empowered rebuttal of Tory austerity and the dawn of a new era, but yet more flip-flopping and an affirmation of Farage's influence. In his speech, Farage claimed that Reform represented the biggest revolution in British politics since Labour overtook the Liberal party in the 1920s – and there are some parallels. Back then, the Tories saw Labour as both an existential threat and an opportunity: Labour was a foreboding movement, but the Tories could take fleeting comfort in the knowledge that it was the Liberals who would suffer the severest blow. Labour now treats Reform with a similar ambivalence: worried yet reassured that the Tories will be the main victim. But an irreverent and vengeful Farage, powered by grievances and resentment from both deindustrialised Britain and the elite will have a far more corrosive effect on British politics and wider society than Labour ever threatened. For now, after the fallout of his 'island of strangers' speech, Starmer's strategy to deal with Reform will be to call out its economics as a fantasy. Farage's economic programme – binning net zero, waging war on asylum seekers and abolishing inheritance tax – is indeed reminiscent of Liz Truss. But it is not enough for Labour to play the role of the miserly Tories, saying to Reform what the Tories have historically said to them: we can't afford that, we must live within our means, and so on. Labour needs its own positive vision of the country. For now, the party indulges its own set of fantasies: that it can outflank the Tories and even Reform on the right without being outflanked on the left; that it is enough to be the least unpopular party, no matter how uninspiring one is; and that you can break with the harsh inequities of Tory Britain, as promised, without upsetting anyone important. Before Starmer's podiums were emblazoned with dispiriting slogans like 'fixing the foundations' and 'securing Britain's future' they carried various versions of a more optimistic one: 'it's time for change.' A major reason for its massive majority in 2024 was that, after 14 years of joyless Conservative misrule, Labour better embodied that spirit of feeling than any other party. But unless Labour can show they are that change from the Tories – and that will involve taking Britain beyond its overfed interests in tightening immigration controls and the welfare state – this spirit of feeling will only endure and deepen, and the answer to it will no longer be Labour. Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over
The Independent
30-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Government's multi-billion plan to take on Reform UK
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce changes to the government 's spending assessment process to favour the north and Midlands, potentially unlocking tens of billions of pounds for investment in these regions. The spending review aims to shift focus from the southeast to 'red wall' seats that Labour won in the last election but are now threatened by the Reform UK party. Reeves previously tweaked fiscal rules in last year's Budget, freeing up a £100 billion pot for infrastructure investment, with the changes designed to ensure the benefits of investment are considered alongside the costs. The government's Green Book, which assesses project costs and benefits, will be reviewed to prioritise public sector investment in areas with lower economic productivity. This red wall investment drive follows pressure from Labour MPs to allocate more funds to the north and Midlands, as the party seeks to counter the rising support for Nigel Farage 's Reform UK.
Times
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Meet the mother and daughter who ditched the Tories to join Reform
Emma Hunt's HGV driver father is old-school Labour, and her mother, Cathy, was once a longtime Tory supporter. Now the two women, born and bred in the red wall, have been voted in as Reform councillors in the same ward in County Durham. The story of how they became disillusioned with the two major parties is a cautionary tale for Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer. They are also part of a new cohort of councillors that Nigel Farage hopes will prevent his party being disparaged as a band of 'fruitcakes and loonies', as David Cameron referred to his Ukip contingent in 2006. 'My dad and his side are from Consett, my mum is from Sunderland, we were all massive Labour supporters,' Miss Hunt, 24,
Times
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Brexit voters can see the need for deals with the EU
The idea that closer relations with the European Union is impossible without alienating voters who supported Brexit is wrong. The political bubble always lags behind public opinion and often fights the last battle. The Brexit paradigm is history and the government must pursue a better, deeper relationship with our European partners to improve living standards, offer economic protection and ensure our country's security. In my red wall constituency, 66 per cent of voters supported Brexit. There is little desire to return as members of the EU and even less to embrace freedom of movement. These are off the table. But my constituents also recognise the rapidly changing world since Brexit: war in Europe, a new wave of mass migration from the Middle East and Africa,
