If you care enough about what’s happening in the world to get upset about it, find yourself shouting at the Today programme or discussing politics in your local pub/cafe/gym/mosque (delete to reflect your lifestyle), then the odds are you know a NEVLA or two: you may even be considering becoming one. And you wouldn’t be alone, according to IPSOS, more than 1 in 5 people who voted Labour at the 2024 general election say they won’t even consider doing it again: they are the NEVLAs.
NEVLAs are folks who always made a point of voting Labour in the past. Some were supporters of the party, some paid their subs and some even wore oversized rosettes while standing on a stage next to a guy dressed as a bin. Others were less enthusiastic, voting in hope rather than expectation, or to rid their constituency of some hated Tory grandee, or even just because they reckoned Labour was the least-worst thing on the ballot.
But now thousands of the previously committed and not-so-committed are declaring that they are ‘Never Voting Labour Again’.
It isn’t and never was the allure of Nigel
A NEVLA would never consider switching to Reform UK Ltd. However, editorials suggesting disaffected Labour voters are queuing up to join the cult of Farage, appear to have persuaded the cabinet that they need to appeal to the lowest inclinations of his followers. In truth, the evidence suggests this approach is as much of a vote winner as pinching grandad’s winter fuel allowance was.
Research from YouGov and Persuasion UK tells us that today’s Reform supporters have always hated Labour, historically cycling “between voting Conservative, UKIP, non-voting and even Liberal Democrat”. Most Reform voters “are simply not, and seemingly never have been, in the Labour electoral universe”.
Nigel Farage’s fans aren’t ex-socialists who woke up one morning and thought: ‘Stuff equality, fairness and worker’s rights, what was I thinking!? All I really want is a privatised NHS with no foreigners in it!’
They haven’t drifted in from the left, disillusioned by a government they’d had such high hopes for; they’ve crawled in from the right having abandoned the wreckage of the Tory party for the lies and scapegoating of a career grifter.
Election results tell a different story
Even where they’ve had most success, such as the Durham council elections, Reform’s winning candidates were often backed by less than 15% of the electorate. Given that only a tiny proportion of those people say they voted Labour in the past, watching Keir Starmer resurrect the spirit of Enoch Powell is a high price to pay to win them back. When it comes to NEVLAs, the problem for Sir Keir is not that they’ve started voting Reform, it’s that they’ve stopped voting Labour.
The straw that broke the camel’s back
As far as NEVLAs are concerned, the camel’s back has finally snapped under the weight of one more last straw – but which one did the damage? After all, recently, there’s been enough to critically injure an entire herd of dromedaries.
Not all NEVLAs share the same breaking points but, if you continue your chat down the pub/cafe/gym/mosque, you’ll hear any number of reasons why folks who would like to vote Labour can’t bring themselves to any more.
The more ideologically pure among them will suggest that Labour has a long tradition of ignoring its principles when a Sun editorial or an American president suggests they should. They will boast of shunning Tony Blair when he invented New Labour, along with those weapons of mass destruction. However, for brevity’s sake, let’s stick to what NEVLAs insist are more recent betrayals such as:
- Ostracising the most radical and popular leader the party has had this century.
- Labelling anyone who supported that leader a racist.
- Blocking benefits for families with more than two children.
- Suspending MPs who dared to say that was a bad idea.
- Stripping aid from the world’s poorest to give the money to missile manufacturers.
- Allowing those missiles to be dropped on tents and hospitals.
- Choosing benefit cuts over a wealth tax.
- Choosing banker’s bonuses over winter fuel payments.
- Locking up climate activists.
- Watching 54,000 people be killed in Gaza before condemning the slaughter.
- Prioritising nuclear power over safer, greener alternatives.
- Allowing something called Blue Labour and someone called Morgan McSweeny to decide party policy.
- Treating trans people as second-class citizens.
- Cutting environmental standards for farming and housing.
- Rewarding Trump’s deportation schemes, tariff madness and Putin appeasement with an invitation to tea at Balmoral Castle.
- Refusing to reconsider Brexit.
- Labelling anti-war protesters terrorists.
- Backing yet another US military campaign based on the threat of non-existent weapons.
I could go on but of course that, our NEVLA friends would say, is exactly the point.
Labour doesn’t look like Labour
For many in the movement, Labour appears to be deaf to the concerns of the people who elected them.
Watching their support melt away at the disastrous local elections, the Red Wall Group of Labour MPs angrily informed party leaders: “our voters told us loudly and clearly that we have not met their expectations.” The leadership’s tin-eared response was to instruct their foot-soldiers to march “further and faster” down a path they’d just been told was leading nowhere.
After all, it’s not rocket science, it’s not even Year Six physics: traditional Labour voters want traditional Labour policies. The clue is in the name.
But instead, they feel the government is making a virtue of not sounding, looking or acting like a Labour one. They see Wes Streeting happy to boast about enacting policies the Tories could never get away with and so, while Labour plans cuts to disability benefits that even George Osbourne decided went too far, the ranks of the NEVLAs will keep growing.
Splitting the opposition and other high-risk tactics
Some commentators on the left, like Owen Jones, believe the team around Starmer is happy to see this exodus. Obsessed with cleansing the party of the last of the Corbyn-era activists, they won’t be satisfied until there’s no one left to hand out leaflets at the next election.
Others say they are getting all the austerity style cuts out of the way early, or that the rise of Reform is seen as a good thing, splitting the opposition while forcing malcontent lefties to coalesce around a watered-down Labour Party to block the far right.
Both tactics are risky, relying on short memories and weak convictions. As Kamala Harris discovered, many usually Democrat voters were so unhappy with the legacy of “Genocide Joe” that they refused to back his late replacement, despite the grizzly, orange alternative.
Staying at home, or finding a new one
So, if NEVLAs are really prepared to stick to their guns, what alternatives do they have on election night other than congratulating themselves on their impeccable left-wing credentials?
As Labour’s support plunges to record lows in elections and opinion polls, perhaps the Greens can offer NEVLAs a new home. We know that over a third of Labour voters are considering going Green, and at the May elections the Green Party won 5% of the seats they stood for, just short of Labour’s 6%. Indeed, Green Party leadership contender, Zack Polanski, has stated that his party’s biggest job is to make Starmer more scared of losing votes to the Greens than to Reform.
Then there’s the possibility of a new left-facing party, an idea frequently rolled out since Corbyn’s eviction, but one that hasn’t gained any real traction.
However, in one way such a party already exists. Add the MPs who defeated Labour candidates on a left-wing/pro-Gaza platform to those who remain suspended for daring to vote against benefit cuts, include an alliance with the Greens, along with the venerable JC himself, and you have a parliamentary bloc over twice the size of Reform’s.
If the government insists on taking the cash for its spending review from the pockets of folks who rely on their personal independence payments (PIP), the rebellion that follows might swell the ranks of the principled independents even further. Then, perhaps a party led by the Zarah Sultanas of this world might entice the NEVLAs back to the voting booth.
