Ahead of local elections this week where Reform UK is set to win big, the Labour Party is panicking. But a new survey suggests the ruling party should be worrying a lot more about losing voters to the Green Party than to Reform.
Labour’s biggest problem is its abandonment of left-wing economics
Reform helped to take out the Conservatives in 2024, allowing Labour to win with the lowest single-party-government vote share since the Second World War and the second-smallest voter turnout since 1885. But people are now turning away from both the Tories and Labour in large numbers. The vacuous uselessness of Keir Starmer’s government has not only seen Reform lead polls on numerous occasions in recent months, but has even seen Labour place third. The right is dominant, despite being divided. Yet Labour has only pushed left-wingers further away with continued pandering to corporate donors and attacks on people’s wellbeing.
The new survey suggests that’s the wrong approach. Because researchers at Persuasion UK commissioned analysis on “Reform curious Labour voters” and found that it would be a lot riskier to lose left-leaning voters than right-leaning ones. However, it claimed Labour could keep both groups if it changed its strategy.
The vast majority of Reform voters in 2024 had not voted Labour in any recent elections. For those that had, Labour’s disastrous second-referendum position in 2019 clearly made a difference. Overall, though, Labour is much more at risk of losing 2024 voters to the Liberal Democrats and Greens than to Reform, except in Scotland.
It may well be true in some places that right-wing-curious Labour voters are more willing to vote with their feet than left-wing-curious voters. But hypothetically, Persuasion UK points out, “if Labour lost every ‘Reform curious Labour voter’, they would lose 123 seats” while “if Labour lost every ‘Green curious Labour voter’, they would lose 250 seats”.
Labour’s leadership could keep both sets of voters. But that would mean growing a soul, a brain, and a backbone.
Persuasion UK insists that, while Reform-curious Labour voters may be socially conservative – especially on the issue of immigration, “they generally have left-leaning populist views on economics” and are less anti-climate than actual Reform voters. This means that Labour could theoretically “unite its coalition with relatively moderate stance[s] on cultural issues while leaning into progressive positions on economics”. Because of a massive cultural divide between Green-curious and Reform-curious Labour voters, then, the unifying factor is economics.
Reform-curious Labour voters have pretty unfavourable views of big business interests, and want Labour to take action on unscrupulous profiteering as a matter of urgency. They also perceive (correctly) that Labour’s current leadership views working-class and poor people with disdain. Competent policies on immigration matter to them, but so do the winter fuel allowance, cost of living, fair taxation, public services, and wealth inequality. And they view both Starmer and Trump-Musk billionaires unfavourably.
Understanding Reform-curious Labour voters better, Persuasion UK says, shows that Labour could keep both them and Green-curious voters happy if it can “maintain moderate – even if boring – positions on divisive cultural topics like asylum and migration” while shifting “the site of conflict in politics away from cultural issues” and on to “more populist conflict on economic left-right issues”. It should “actively seek and welcome fights on these issues”, the researchers say. A couple of examples they stress are “tax and spend – eg consider proposing a tax on the richest to fund the NHS or schools” and “pick fights with CEOs of unpopular businesses”.
A blueprint for a mass-appeal left-wing movement
It currently seems fair to assume that Labour’s right-wing leadership has no desire to pick a fight with big-business interests. After all, its unprecedented mission from 2015 to 2019 was to destroy the hope surrounding Jeremy Corbyn at all costs. And in that context, the same coalition-building challenge falls on the independent British left, which may soon emerge. This may look like a new party, or may be a coalition of independents, Greens, and other smaller parties coordinating depending on who has the best chance to win in specific constituencies.
There certainly seems to be the will to unite on the left around key policies (wages, climate, housing, wealth tax, public services, and peace) in order to enter the space Labour has abandoned. There also seems to be an awareness on the need to centre the class war, which billionaires are currently winning, in order to challenge Reform and become a true anti-establishment force. And trade unions, of course, must finally dump Labour as well.
But there’s one key lesson for the left from this new survey. While there are big cultural (and regional) differences in the UK, people largely agree on economic issues like public-service funding, wealth inequalities, welfare, and even climate action. So for a movement for national change, we need to understand our differences, meet people where they are, and focus on the areas we can all agree on. That is the only way to create a movement that can defeat the Tory-Labour-Reform axis of corporate plunder and hate.
Featured image via the Canary
