Boris Johnson made history in 2019 by winning a majority of working-class vots for the Conservatives for the first time. But on current predictions, Keir Starmer will reverse Labour’s decline among Britain’s working class at the next election. This matters not just because Labour was formed by and for Britain’s workers, but because there is no route to a parliamentary majority without their support.
There are signs of a centre-left revival in several developed democracies, after the torrid times many such parties faced after the 2008 financial crisis. And new research by Prof Oliver Heath for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) shows that they aren’t just relying on middle- to higher-level earners: working-class votes remain central to the electoral coalitions of winning centre-left parties.
It is remarkable how fast support has ebbed away from the Conservatives, given how big a deal it was for many people to vote for them in the first place. Working-class voters began pulling away from Labour more than 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until the combination of Brexit, Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn that it became enough for the Tories to win a majority of working-class voters for the first time. Now, a YouGov poll for the centre-left thinktank PPI shows that only 44% of working-class voters who voted Conservative in 2019 plan to vote for them again. The Conservatives have blown a historic opportunity to realign the British electorate, and with it, their chances of retaining the electoral coalition that gave them such a sizable majority.
But working-class voters are not rushing to Labour – not yet, anyway. Labour’s lead is narrower with this group, and many are yet to make up their minds. This lack of faith in politicians is not surprising, given the broken promises and disrespect shown to them by the Conservatives. But behind the falling support for the Tories among working-class voters is the belief that there is a lack of basic fairness for them – and they don’t trust any political parties to deliver it.
Working-class voters said they felt they got less in return for working hard than they did a decade ago, and young people today would be worse off than their parents’ generation. They cited rising costs, from energy to food to housing, along with a lack of good job opportunities. A handful mentioned immigration, but the vast majority spelled out wages and higher costs – in particular, housing relative to wages – as the reasons why they felt prospects for the future were worse.
Economic insecurity has been driving these Tory losses, but it goes deeper than the current cost of living crisis. There’s a belief that virtually everything is going to get worse, including those issues on which the prime minister has made pledges: the rate of inflation, the cost of living, NHS waiting lists, climate change, their personal financial situation, the number of people arriving in small boats, the level of national debt, and the country’s financial situation. This sense of insecurity, of not knowing what the future holds, pervades people’s economic, cultural and social lives.
Those intending to vote Labour feel more pessimistic about the future than those likely to vote Conservative. While there are fewer people who feel more optimistic and drawn to vote Tory, it presents a real challenge for Starmer’s Labour to translate pessimism about the future into the hope that things can and will be better with a change of government.
Bringing back such hope is the central project for today’s centre-left. We have to spearhead a new political programme to remake the deal with voters: that if you work hard, you can get on in life. We know it won’t happen by accident but by design, with fundamental reforms to wire the economy and society to operate in the interests of working people.
This must start with a relentless focus on raising wages for those on low to middle incomes. Our programme should address people’s security first, as the foundation of better prospects for tomorrow. That includes stabilising costs and supplies of essential goods, but it also means tackling crime, restoring order to the national borders and ensuring that there is an end to the “one rule for them” that so offended people’s sense of fairness during the Covid lockdowns. Opening up housing investment to the next generation, and reforming school education so that it can become the driver of progress, would mean we could start to feel more hopeful about the opportunities ahead.
There is more work to do to convince Britain’s working-class voters to get behind Labour next time. After the bluster and bull of the Tories, who can blame them? But if they do, they deserve a serious-minded reforming government determined to put their interests first, and in so doing, transform the UK for the better.
Claire Ainsley is director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s centre-left renewal project and was Labour’s executive director of policy from 2020 to 2022
