Right Flank

On a rainy October afternoon, we had just posted a photo of our latest door knocking session in Shiregreen, north-east Sheffield. The first Facebook comment dropped in: “Big turn out for the rip-off Tory party that. Just imagine if a member of Reform was to turn up. Btw I voted for your granny killers, never again”.

The Reform threat to Labour in Yorkshire is well-known. Back in winter 2015, just months before the EU referendum, I warned in an article in the Fabian Review: “Labour will join the other parties in pushing ‘In’, leaving only UKIP arguing ‘Out’, and equating an ‘In’ vote with a thumbs-up to mass immigration”. This is exactly what happened. For many former Labour voters, UKIP became associated with standing up for Britain, leaving Labour as the party for people who are ‘not quite like you’. And in the years which followed, the threat shifted, but it did not go away. Like the Terminator hauling itself to its feet again and again, UKIP dissolved and the Brexit party grew; the Brexit party dissolved and Reform grew.

Now there are more Yorkshire seats which have a Labour MP where Reform sits in second place (14) than there are Tory or Liberal Democrat MPs in the whole county. There are also seats like Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough in which Reform did not get their act together to stand, but which are in the party’s sights. Turnout in the constituency in July’s general election was just 45 per cent and more than 500 voters simply wrote an angry capitalised ‘Reform‘ across their ballot paper. The threat is real.

Four out of five – what is the threat we face?

The Reform threat is about more than our seats – it is about our soul. Labour was founded as a collaboration between working-class trade unionists and middle-class socialists. Both wings of the movement are vital to our mission, but one in particular is threatened by Reform.

2024 was the first election in which working-class voters showed weaker support for Labour (33 per cent) than middle-class voters (36 per cent). At the same time, Reform gained one in five working-class votes, but only one in 10 middle-class votes. Those working-class Reform voters are profoundly pessimistic. The anti-extremist campaign group Hope Not Hate found that only 21 per cent of them are optimistic about the future, and 92 per cent felt that politicians “don’t listen to people like me”.

This must be a wake-up call: we have to start listening. Labour Together’s Christabel Cooper was right to argue in the last Fabian Review that “while a more successful Reform party could damage Labour, the threat [they pose] to the Conservatives could be existential”. But if Reform peel off one of our wings, they will do more than threaten our tenure in seats like Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough. They will change the very bargain on which our party was founded more than 120 years ago.

‘Mardy bums’ – who are we talking about?

We should focus our efforts on two groups of voters, which I have named the RRRs and the IIIs.

Riot sceptic – Redistributor – Reformers (RRRs)

Hope Not Hate found that 20 per cent of July’s Reform voters believe that the summer rioters bear no responsibility for their actions. These voters are out of our reach – and should stay there. Most of these voters came to Reform from the Tories, or via UKIP/Brexit party.

However, 53 per cent of Reformers believe that governments should do more to redistribute wealth. Many of these voters will have found their way to Reform from Labour via a belief in, and then a disillusionment with, Boris Johnson. It is these RRR voters whom we must attract back.

Impatient – Immigration-sceptic – Non-Identitarians (IIIs)

The ‘III’ voters are those who stuck with Labour in 2024 (or returned from a brief Boris detour), but who are Reform-curious. Two in five of July’s Labour voters feel that immigration numbers are currently too high. They fear for their public services and the nature of their communities, but white identity is not important to them – these views cut across class and ethnic lines.

But IIIs are impatient – very impatient. 50 per cent of Britons, but 73 per cent of Labour voters, believe Labour will make a noticeable difference to the cost of living in two years. On the NHS, it’s 46 per cent of all Britons and 65 per cent of Labour voters. Tangible change will have to be delivered in the first term of government if the Reform-curious aren’t to become Reform-converts.

Brick by brick – what is to be done?

Here are four suggestions for winning back the RRRs and keeping the IIIs.

1. Restore the link between hard work and a decent life. Stagnant wages and higher costs for food, energy and housing are the top concerns for RRRs and IIIs (and for many others). We should prioritise raising the pay of the lowest earners, including through rewarding work over wealth in the tax system. Raising the minimum wage in the Budget was a good start.
2. Create faith in the education system. The Tories have left us the worst of all worlds – fewer young people going to university, and reduced status and pay for non-graduate jobs. Alongside the review of the school curriculum, we need a new system of post-16 education which works for all young people. This covers the curriculum: why do we force young people to study plumbing or Shakespeare? Why not both? And also basic fairness: why are there are no schools with sixth forms in the poorer north of Sheffield but seven in the wealthier south-west?
3. Restore faith in the immigration system. People claiming asylum are not the same as economic migrants. We give asylum because we are civilised; we allow migration because our economy and public services need it. Both require a system which makes quick, fair and transparent decisions, and which enforces those decisions.
4. Symbols and style matter. If we are to attract support from Britons across Britain, we have to show that we actually like Britain (warts and all). So why were there no Union flags at the counter-protests organised by the left in response to the summer riots? If we cede patriotism to Reform, we will also cede RRRs and IIIs.

Voters in Brightside & Hillsborough and across Yorkshire want the same things as those in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan who rejected the Democrats in November. They want a decent life – economic growth is irrelevant if you can’t afford to buy a pack of butter. They see images of families in dinghies crossing the Channel, or wading across the Rio Grande, and conclude that the immigration system is broken. They see their taxes going up but still can’t get a doctor’s appointment. They are angry, and rightly so.

Fighting Reform is not an optional extra. Britons are looking for solutions and Farage and friends spin a beguiling web of fairy tales, blaming others for our national mess. This is a web we must break if we are to retain our seats as well as our soul.

Image credit: Owain.davies CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons