The Labour Party is averaging poll leads of close to 20 per cent, and the headline data appears consistent and solid – even if Rishi Sunak has revived the Tory position modestly after the depths of Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership.
Scratch beneath the surface though, and there are doubts. Speak to senior Labour figures and the mood is neither one of complacency or even assuredness. The lead is “strong but soft” says one, “I can still see us not winning”, says another.
Despite the large gaps between their parties, Keir Starmer and Sunak remain relatively neck-and-neck when voters are asked who they would prefer as prime minister.
In recent weeks too, splits have emerged in Labour’s Shadow Cabinet and among senior staff. The controversial attack ads were the spark that ignited the fire, but the tensions have been smouldering for a lot longer.
Yvette Cooper, a figure many assumed to be widely respected among her fellow Labour MPs, was the target of particularly vicious briefing from sources inside the Shadow Cabinet over her failure to support one of the adverts and briefings continue against Shadow Cabinet figures perceived to be on the soft left with threats of a reshuffle.
David Evans, the party’s general secretary, has sent a memo to staff warning them against “unsolicited briefings”. Political advisers – the policy and communications staff who work for the Shadow Cabinet – have been told by party management that such briefings are “juvenile”.
So why are these tensions and fears arising now – with Labour enjoying comfortable poll leads – and why are they being aired so publicly?
The delayed arrival of Sue Gray as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff has, it seems, left a vacuum which is being filled by competing egos, and toes are being trodden on through lack of co-ordination and personal rivalry. Gray will have her work cut out, and her arrival cannot come soon enough for many, who are frustrated by what they see as competing strategies being pushed by senior staff around Starmer – which is hampering the task of sharpening Labour’s communications.
Labour frontbenchers worry about the lack of clear and consistent messaging, the yawning chasm where a positive vision should be, and the glaring gaps in policy. There are concerns too about the emphasis on “attack” on the Tories, when voters are yet to be convinced of any positive alternative Labour is offering.
Feedback from the doorstep in key local election battlegrounds shows the ads are coming up, and not in the manner the Machiavellians in Westminster think. “People hate them, they are a disaster” one experienced campaigner in a key Labour marginal tells me.
That said, the local elections should provide some respite for an unnecessarily fractious Labour Party. The national poll leads far exceed the slim margins that existed when many of these seats were last contested in 2019 – as voters drifted from both Conservatives and Labour at the apex of Brexit stalemate.
But barriers do exist for Labour advance. The cohort of voters going to the polls in May is older and less diverse – meaning the demographics favour the Tories.
Analysis by professor Paula Surridge shows that voters in local elections – where turnouts are generally significantly lower than in a general – are also likely to be older, own their own home and have strong party loyalty, meaning they are less likely to be the swing voters that are key to a general election victory.
For the first time in British electoral history, voters going to the polls in May will require ID in order to vote. The scale of the impact will only be clear afterwards but the measures are straight out of the US Republicans’ voter suppression playbook.
Labour, therefore, has some headwinds against its national polling picture, but should still expect to pick up several hundreds of councillors and perhaps a dozen more councils.
Key places to keep an eye on include those that cover parliamentary seats won by the party under Blair but lost under Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn – places like Milton Keynes, parts of Kent like Medway and Gravesham, and East Staffordshire. Canvassers are increasingly confident in “Red Wall” areas like Middlesbrough – where local issues are helping to bolster Labour too.
If Labour does well, it should settle a nervy couple of months. It would also give an opportunity for Starmer to set out the positive case for a Labour government – providing more detail. But there is a counter-tendency. If results are good for Labour, some fear it may embolden some around the leadership to double down on the policy-lite rhetoric of recent weeks.
Over the Easter period, Labour criticised benefit overpayments, emphasised a “tough on crime” approach (without much sign of being “tough on the causes of crime”), has been sharply critical of junior doctors’ and nurses’ strikes and their pay demands, and further toughened its rhetoric on asylum.
Some Labour frontbenchers have bought into this approach, arguing the public already believes Labour is more kind and caring, but they need to believe they can be tough too.
This echoes Peter Mandelson’s old dictum that Labour’s support base has “nowhere else to go”; which leads to the logic of moving right to chase Tory voters.
This strategy has two flaws. Firstly, as Labour’s collapse in Scotland and “Red Wall” areas over the last 15 years shows, voters do have somewhere else to go: for some that will be to perceived progressive alternatives like the Greens (and SNP in Scotland); but mostly it risks a portion of Labour’s core vote just not turning out to vote. The Greens will be keen to show they can capitalise on people “not inspired by Labour” in seats like Gateshead, Darlington and North Tyneside in the North East; and Lancaster in the North West. The latter may see Labour pick up votes from the Tories, but also lose further to the Greens.
As professor Rob Ford has shown, “Labour’s core vote is more socially liberal and has weaker partisan attachments than ever before”. The tribal loyalty that Mandelson referred to a quarter of century ago has withered. Votes have to be earned. Moreover, if Labour makes issues like crime and immigration more central, and fails to inspire its own base, it risks shifting the electoral terrain onto territory where a revived Tory party has deep-seated advantages in voters’ minds.
Labour’s right-wing faction dominates the party now; internal opposition has been marginalised from Labour’s structures, so these disputes are personal and tactical.
However the May elections go for Labour, the trajectory seems likely to continue: if the party underperforms the argument will be made that the party needs to move to the right to win Tory voters; if it does well, it will be concluded that the rightwards shift is working and must continue.
Andrew Fisher is the former director of policy at the Labour Party
