When politicians can’t admit they are losing, they say they are listening. Your anger has been heard, says the contrite minister after a byelection drubbing. We are addressing the concerns, says the government spokesperson on the eve of a backbench rebellion. Sometimes, it is even true. Usually, it is too late.
The optimal time for Downing Street to have started paying attention to Labour MPs’ complaints about disability benefit cuts was before the uprising threatened to torpedo a flagship government bill.
It was not, in the end, sunk, but it is listing low in the water. A humiliating Commons defeat was averted on Tuesday night by rolling concessions, diluting and deferring the policy with mounting, chaotic urgency as the vote drew near. 49 Labour MPs still voted to kill the bill anyway.
Serious engagement on the substance of the rebels’ complaints only began once it became clear they were legion and resistant to the conventional whips’ arsenal of threats, pleas and career-advancing inducements. By that stage, relations between No 10 and the backbenches were befogged with suspicion and resentment.
Withdrawing financial support from people with disabilities was always going to be a hard sell to Labour MPs. Blurring the line between reform and fiscal parsimony didn’t help. It is hard to persuade sceptics that the Department for Work and Pensions will prioritise compassion when cost-cutting under Treasury duress clearly dictates the pace and scope of policy. That mistrust aggravates misgiving about Keir Starmer’s strategy and the faultiness of his political antennae.
Internal anxiety about Labour’s purpose has grown as the party’s popularity has shrivelled. There are many reasons for the steep collapse in support since the election. Two of the most commonly cited are lack of rigorous policy preparation in opposition and Starmer’s struggle to inspire audiences with a clear sense of what he wants from power.
Those might be the same problem. Vagueness on substance, ruthless message discipline and a horror of loose leftish talk that might spook swing voters were vital components in a campaign for ousting the Tories.
Last year’s election-winning strategy neutralised potential concerns about the prospect of a Labour government, but without generating enthusiasm for the idea. Starmer was the instrument of a broad but incoherent anti-Conservative coalition that lost its galvanising energy as soon as the exit poll was published.
Arguably, the dissipation happened even earlier. The sense of an imminent Labour landslide, with weeks of headlines forecasting Tory annihilation, may have depressed turnout and encouraged left-leaning voters to prefer independents and Greens, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t wake up on 5 July to find Rishi Sunak still in charge.
To a new government with a majority of 174, that looked like negligible voter attrition at the margins. The scale of the victory seemed to promise at least two terms in power. The official opposition was still the Tories, although Reform UK were already making menacing noises in the wings.
Downing Street strategists were not worried about an exposed left flank. They could see frustration on that side of the spectrum where many had hoped Starmer’s pre-election insipidity was a feint, but the more pressing concern was an ongoing mission to persuade voters in Labour’s “red wall” heartlands that the party really was for them. That focus intensified once Reform started topping opinion polls.
But messages calibrated to Nigel Farage’s potential recruits – reluctance to speak ill of Brexit; a pugnacious tone on immigration – failed to seduce the target audience while driving defections to the Lib Dems and Greens. MPs started warning that this would cost Labour seats. Downing Street didn’t listen.
That may now be changing. The rebellion on benefit cuts, coinciding with the first anniversary of the election, demands some strategic introspection.
No one can pretend things are going well. Steps the government has taken that ought to be popular with the party’s base – big cash infusions for the NHS, transport, social housing; expanding provision of free school meals – haven’t registered amid the rage against cuts elsewhere.
Farage has seized the mantle of radical changemaker, at least in that corner of the political market where change implies tearing down institutions and breaking rules without much thought (or honesty from the leader) about what might replace them.
Starmer can’t compete in a game of system-smashing. He is a pragmatic fixer by nature and also prime minister – the apex of the system being targeted. While he also can’t ignore the concerns of Reform voters, polling evidence suggests they are a smaller, less biddable component of Labour’s potential electorate than the liberal-left defectors.
A recent poll commissioned by Stanley Greenberg, a veteran US Democratic party strategist with close ties to Labour, found that almost 15% of current Lib Dem voters and 10% of Greens say there is a fair chance they could back Starmer. The equivalent numbers for Tory and Reform are 3% and 1% respectively.
The same poll looks at issues that animate swing voters and the messages that might appeal to them. Unsurprisingly, the NHS and cost of living crisis are top of everyone’s list. Immigration is also crucial. There is no path to a second term that doesn’t include credible reassurance that the nation’s borders are securely managed.
But there are also fruitful areas where Starmer could lean more to the liberal-left in terms that retain mass appeal. One is urgency around the climate crisis (as long as it is made clear that consumers won’t be overburdened but will benefit from lower energy bills). Another is greater clarity about the destabilising effects of Donald Trump’s misrule in the US, and the necessary mitigation through closer strategic alignment with Europe. Trump is reviled by supporters of every UK party, including Reform. The only foreign leader who beats him at repelling British voters is Vladimir Putin. Farage has publicly admired them both.
Given Greenberg’s connections, it is safe to assume his polling and the strategic avenues they illuminate have been seen and taken seriously in Downing Street. The core observation will come as no surprise to Starmer’s team. Local elections earlier this year had already revealed the fractious condition of British politics. Also, amid the volatility, a pattern of coalescence into two blocs – a liberal-progressive constellation of Labour, Lib Dem and Greens facing a populist-nationalist insurgency motored by Reform, with the Tories in a sidecar.
Recognition of that dynamic explains Starmer’s tendency to name Farage as his main rival and treat Kemi Badenoch as an irrelevance. On one level, that is just a description of facts as they appear from current polling. But it also anticipates a general election campaign, where Labour maximises tactical support from Lib Dems and Greens. The assumption is that a litany of grudges against the prime minister will be set aside once the task in hand is blocking Farage’s entry into No 10.
It is a plausible bet but not a certain one. If Labour continues to aggravate its former supporters at the current rate there is a serious risk of them casting a protest ballot elsewhere or staying at home when the anti-Reform clarion summons them to action.
Four years remain before that call goes out. There is still time for Starmer to position himself as the candidate of a mainstream majority that doesn’t want Britain to follow the US down the path of bigoted venality, climate denialism and democratic decay. But if the prime minister really does envisage the next election as a head-to-head battle for the soul of British politics, he needs to get cannier at picking fights he can win, while also giving his longsuffering supporters something to cheer. His current method seems likely to do neither.
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Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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One year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more
On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Raf Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government, its current policies and plans for the next four years -
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