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.
