If Labour try to act like a slightly nicer version of Reform, it’s not going to win over the 90% of Reform’s voters who would vote Reform anyway

Salman Shaheen is Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure & Public Spaces on Hounslow Council, a journalist who has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and Times of India, and the author of sci-fi mystery thriller novel Freebourne

I’m going to put it down to shock. Yesterday, the Yorkshire and Humber Labour Party launched an advert that reads: “Breaking news: Labour hits five year high in migrant removals.”

If it didn’t have the word Labour on it, you wouldn’t be able to tell they’d paid for it. No red. No rose. In fact, the advert is flying Reform colours to promote a message that, presumably, they hope will appeal to Reform voters. It won’t.

Now, on the face of it, strategists might be looking with growing unease at the alarming polls showing Reform has for the first time overtaken Labour and concluded, not unreasonably, that Labour must be losing significant numbers of voters to Reform and the only way to get them back is to chase Reform to the right.

This is a doomed strategy for a number of reasons. 

Behind the numbers

First, let’s break down the data. YouGov polling puts Reform on 25% ahead of Labour on 24% and the Conservatives on 21%. There’s no beating around the bush, you can apply any obligatory caveats about polling, those are scary numbers for Labour and indeed any progressive with a healthy interest in the future of this country. But drilling into the data tells a slightly more nuanced story than the one Labour fears most.

Another YouGov poll published last week looked into precisely who is considering voting Reform. And that matters.

Among people who voted Reform in 2024, 90% are considering voting Reform in the future, so no surprises there. Meanwhile, among Conservative voters in 2024, 33% are considering Reform in the future. Only 9% of 2024 Labour voters are considering Reform.

That 9% cannot, and should not, be discounted. But it’s clear that Reform continues to take most of its votes from the Conservatives. The Tories know it, which is why you see them coming out with barrel-scraping policies such as barring migrants on work visas who claim benefits from gaining indefinite leave to remain and making them wait 10 years. Labour must absolutely resist the temptation to chase the Tories and Reform to the right on the incorrect assumption they will be able to gain voters that way.

If Labour try to act like a slightly nicer version of Reform, it’s not going to win over the 90% of Reform’s voters who would vote Reform anyway, or the 33% of former Tory voters for whom the most right-wing Conservative party in living memory was somehow too cuddly. Why have Diet Coke when you can get the real deal?

How Labour can win back lost support

That doesn’t change the fact, of course, that support for Labour has plummeted since last year’s General Election landslide.

People voted Labour primarily because 14 years of Conservative government had destroyed the economy and living standards and they wanted change. They still do. And they won’t cheer for Labour until it gives it to them. Until they feel their quality of life has improved. Until there’s more money in their pockets. Until NHS waiting times are down. Until everyone can afford to live in a decent home. Until foodbanks are a distant nightmare never again contemplated in one of the richest nations on Earth. Until Labour delivers on economic and social justice.

All of that is in Labour’s DNA and its manifesto. Labour has to hold firm to those principles and policies, transform the economy, tackle poverty and inequality head-on, provide opportunity again in a system rigged and broken by a rich elite, and build a Britain in which people dare to hope again.

Don’t be afraid to bang on about Europe

None of that is easy, but the right answers rarely are. Certainly, it’s a lot harder than championing a hard line on immigration. But doing so won’t woo Reform voters to Labour and, worse, in an act of reverse-triangulation it will probably push liberal Labour voters to the rising Greens and Lib Dems.

Here, again, we must look at the polling.

55% of British people now say it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU, versus only 30% who say it was right. This rises to 80% of 2024 Labour voters and 80% of 2024 Lib Dem voters. If Labour start chasing Reform on immigration, or shy away from closer ties with the EU for fear of losing voters to Reform even though it’s the elephant in the room on growth and better living standards, what happens to that 80%?

Social liberalism and economic redistribution

Labour’s old electoral coalition may have fragmented. Economic decline and the era of weaponised right-wing misinformation present deep challenges. But despite it all, the old calculus remains. Labour can win if it remains true to its core values. If it is socially liberal, but economically redistributive. That is the way to solidify its support in the face of challenges from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Stray away from either, by trying to outmanoeuvre Reform and the Tories in a battle for small c conservative values Labour can never win, or fail to meaningfully make people’s quality of life better through attempts as fiscal conservatism that do not provide the promised growth, and Labour will lose on all fronts.  

As Keir Starmer has always said, it’s a long game. It could take a decade to turn around a country ravaged by Conservative misrule. But if in the next four years the party can show people the difference a Labour government has made to their lives and genuinely make the everyday existences of the poorest and most vulnerable people better, if it keeps true to its values and resists the temptation to panic and follow Reform to the right, then Labour will be given the time and mandate it, and the country, badly needs.

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