The polls are tightening but Labour remains the odds-on favourite to triumph in the next general election. Keir Starmer’s party enjoys a 15-point lead in the polls over the Tories. But those who think the election is in the bag for Labour, should take a visit to the Red Wall. Voters here are disappointed by the failed promises of the Tories. But they are equally scornful of a Labour party they think has much in common with those in power.
The jaded feelings about the Conservatives are easy to understand: the Tories look tired and have run out of ideas after 13 years in power. But the lack of enthusiasm about Labour is more complicated and perhaps harder for Starmer’s party to shake off. Voters in the Red Wall – in particular in the part of Nottinghamshire that I call home – have not forgotten, nor forgiven, the way Labour has treated them.
In his bid to woo back voters who turned to the Tories in 2019, Starmer appears to be reaching for the low hanging fruit of law and order, and clamping down on benefit cheats. Labour’s attack adverts against Rishi Sunak, in which the PM is accused of being soft on paedophiles, is part of this strategy. But can these messages persuade those in the Midlands and the north of England, who flipped their votes in 2019 on Boris Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit Done’ and ‘Levelling Up’ mantra, to return to Labour?
Labour’s big problem is that it has little to offer fed-up voters. In the Red Wall, it is seen predominately as a Westminster party. This is an image it has struggled to shake off. The 2019 election landslide to the Tories was not a turning on a sixpence political moment; it was the culmination of a slow burn of decades of working class people realising they weren’t welcome in post-industrial third way Blairism. It will take more than a few years – and Starmer’s uninspiring pitch – to win these people back.
Labour’s big problem is that it has little to offer fed-up voters
I spend a lot of time in the local community cafes around Nottinghamshire. In these old mining towns, the devastation wrought over four decades is plain to see. The elderly here hark back to times when these communities were busy, successful and flourishing – when decent, paid jobs were readily available. They worry about their children and grandchildren’s ability to survive; many talk about helping them out with their shopping bills and providing a bit of cash for days out.
The young mums I speak to are at their wits’ end over constant price hikes in basic essentials, like food. Trying to find work that will allow them to earn and care for their children is, all too often, an ongoing struggle for these women.
The saddest group of all are the teenagers. Schools here are failing these children; once their education is over, the warehouses provide the only visible employment. When I ask them about the Labour party, the answers have not changed in years: ‘They are not for us,’ is a typical response. Many don’t even know who Starmer is.
The feeling of ignorance is mutual: Starmer’s Labour party doesn’t appear to know who these people are either. Why else does the party have so little to say to fed-up voters, and those in the Red Wall, who are struggling to get by?
The saddest group of all are the teenagers
At the last election, in 2019, it was clear that Labour was no longer an option for many people while Jeremy Corbyn was leader. But the problem can not merely be blamed on Corbyn: Starmer’s leadership has done little to change the negative view of Labour; people in these Red Wall communities think Starmer, and Labour, hold them in contempt. There’s a simple reason why: voters don’t easily forget some of the things Starmer said during the Brexit debates, not least his refusal to rule out another referendum. It wasn’t Corbyn alone that put these voters off: Starmer and Emily Thornberry, who served as shadow foreign secretary under Corbyn, did plenty of damage with their refusal to respect these communities’ feelings when it came to leaving the EU. There was a fear that Labour would keep the UK in perpetual stasis until the middle class Londoners got their way – and then they would continue to be ignored. That loss of trust has still not been remedied by Starmer’s Brexit about turn, which only makes people more suspicious of the Labour leader and his trustworthiness.
Another issue for Labour – and indeed for the Tories under Rishi Sunak – is that there’s a great deal of confusion about the Red Wall. Ask someone in Westminster to describe a ‘typical’ Red Wall voter, and they may well conjure up an image of a hard-up, white working class person. Many people here, in Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, where I live, do indeed match that description; but the reality is more complicated, and this part of Britain is far from homogeneous.
The Red Wall is a diverse and complicated place that sits on the edge of many of Britain’s major cities, such as Nottingham, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. What these places have in common is that they are multicultural; in parts of the East Midlands, there are thousands of families from Eastern Europe who came to work in the warehouses. Their children are now a vital part of the community and its future. But, as with older voters here, the future doesn’t look rosy: depressingly, for many youngsters, they will follow in the footsteps of their parents to the warehouses. What does Labour have to offer such people? And what does Labour have to offer voters in these cities in the Midlands and the North, who see expensive student apartments, rather than affordable housing for working-class communities, pop up? Precious little seems to be the answer.
The people who live here are, all too often, struggling to pay for their shopping, going without treats that they might sometimes pop in the shopping basket. It’s true that politics is a talking point; sometimes people here talk about the ‘culture wars’ and express incredulity that those in Westminster, like Starmer, don’t appear to know the difference between a man and a woman. But in the struggle for keeping one’s head above the water, these things are a sideshow. People want what they have always wanted in modern Britain: an opportunity for a life with dignity, public services they can rely on, a decent affordable home, their children having the same access to an education that the politicians seem to get.
At the moment though, Labour has little to say to such people. Instead, its focus is to bash the Tories. Voters don’t need convincing that the Tories are failing: they know that already. But they need more than that message to persuade them to return to Labour. If Starmer wants to win in 2024, he needs to get his act together and realise this.
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