Labour’s voter coalition is barely worth its name. It is an unhappy union of voters grouped together by their contempt for the Conservatives. One former Tory aide told me recently that Boris Johnson struggled to govern because he achieved 66 per cent of his promises within a few months of the election: stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister and get Brexit done. What then? Johnson lounged around Chequers, basking in the glow of the office he had long coveted. Meanwhile, the public got impatient. The aide noted that a Labour government elected to eject the Tories faces a similar problem. Labour was voters’ weapon to punish the Conservatives. Job done. But that means its coalition is stuck together with a Pritt stick. Labour’s job over the coming years is to bind it together with something more durable, namely through delivery.
The fight over Labour’s victory – what it gives the party permission to do and, more importantly, what this election tells us about winning again – will rage every day between now and the next election. None of this is settled. The fact it won partly in the negative – which is not to say Labour has no policies; it does – creates space for the party, and at the same time the public, to stipulate what it ought to be doing in government.
New polling commissioned by Persuasion UK and IPPR, shared exclusively with the New Statesman, shows where this new coalition agrees – and where it splits. Take borrowing. The polling, undertaken by FocalData, shows that a majority in 99 per cent of Labour constituencies – and 98 per cent of seats that Labour gained – support more borrowing to invest. Likewise, every constituency in the UK has at least a plurality that supports strengthening workers’ rights. Ditto quicker action on climate change, except in Boston and Skegness and Clacton, both of which Reform won.
What’s interesting given the debate within the party over EU policy is that 76 per cent of new Labour constituencies support closer economic ties with the bloc, a trend in line with the rest of the country. There is space for an accelerated relationship with the EU. Veterinary agreements don’t trigger many emotions.
Things get trickier when it comes to immigration. Eighty per cent of seats have at least a plurality that thinks immigration has not enriched society. Seats with smaller Labour majorities – marginals, in other words – are less pro-immigration than seats with larger majorities.
There is space, therefore, to lean further to the left on the economy and further to the right on immigration. This should not be a surprise. It’s long been the winning formula in British politics. Labour’s chief strategist, Morgan McSweeney, vigorously believes success lies in relentlessly focusing on voters’ concerns. That Starmer claims he needs two terms to change the country should dispel any idea that Labour will be complacent in victory.
But as ever, there is a gap between the party’s leading lights and its voters over immigration. Many cabinet members support higher immigration on principle: they treasure diversity and tolerance over a more cohesive community. Others are more sceptical. It is this disjunct – within Labour itself and between the party and its voters – that could prove dangerous to its future prospects.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here.
[See also: What is in this week’s King’s Speech?]
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