Steady as She Goes or Shake Things Up? These are the two camps, broadly, that voters have been coalescing around since the Financial Crisis, if not before. A desire for stability and security above all else is what sent so many mortgage-owners and those of middling affluence into Labour’s arms at the 2024 election. They are the Steady as She Goes voters – they want parties that preserve their position. It’s not that life is easy for them. It’s rather that what they’ve built they want to preserve.
But those with little built, those overwhelmingly irate with the system, more apathetic than enthused about detailed policy solutions, interested in dramatic rather than incremental change, did not show up for Labour. While initially seeming like they may fall in line behind Starmer, these voters grew less enthused the closer we got to polling day. They are a mix of young and old, poor and retired. The young drifted to the Greens (or strayed into the realm of indifference), and the old to Reform. Which, succinctly, explains in part Labour’s underperformance at the polls.
Shake Things Up represents a majority stake of the electorate. Not by much. But there are more people who do not feel like they are benefiting from the economy than those who do. Dramatic messaging appeals to these people.
Reform made large advances at the election – and not just across England and Wales as Ukip once did. In Scotland they did six-times better than Ukip in 2015. The primary driving factor was immigration anxiety transforming into votes at the polls. However this was not the exclusive pull factor. The cost of living mattered too – and it will continue to matter until voters feel a material relief in their outgoings and living standards.
Some Labour MPs claim in private that they’re not worried about Reform. They think that scandal, and traditional Farage-y infighting, will condemn Reform to the electoral shadows. But this misses the point: Reform is not a conventional political party like Labour and the Conservatives. The sentiment they represent cannot be greatly compromised by embarrassing candidates and scandal.
In the early 2010s, the economy almost entirely trumped immigration as a dominant issue (right up to the point that living standards improved after they plummeted with the financial crash). As consumer confidence rebounded, however, immigration returned to the table as an electoral issue and this transferred into the 2015 Ukip surge and, ultimately, the leave vote in 2016.
Immigration is an issue for the median Briton. It is precisely when voters have the time to breathe - when they have things to consider beyond their own immediate circumstances - that it comes into view. At this point the sensibilities of Shake Things Up emerge in the more materially-stable Steady As She Goes contingent. This is how boats and borders become a middle class concern.
When the cost of living crisis recedes, immigration replaces it as a voter-motivating issue. As the electorate looks beyond immediate circumstance it is freed up to begin considering the broader contours of the country. And we are still a country - by majority - that prefers tighter immigration controls than looser.
The stage is set for immigration to return as a key issue in British politics - and it won't just be the reserve of irate Conservatives and the Reform base. Labour need to be ready for it too. But Reform - or more specifically, the sentiment that breeds Reform-type parties - is not going anywhere.
[See also: Starmer’s people are returning class to the centre of politics]
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