“Which lot are you from then? It’s a good job you’re from the Greens or I would have given you a right mouthful. I would have said that you’ve stuffed the pensioners and now we’re going to stuff you.” Said on the doorstep during the Farnley and Wortley by-election, Leeds, October 2024 – won by the Green Party from Labour.
A short and tumultuous honeymoon
After Labour’s historic general election victory on 4 July 2024, most commentators seemed to anticipate the normal honeymoon of a new government in which the rosy glow of success would dominate the harsh and unavoidable reality. Some gave it six months to a year. However, by Rachel Reeves announcing in July the end of the winter fuel allowance to most pensioners, followed by stories starting on 15September about Keir Starmer’s acceptance of thousands of pounds of gifts from a millionaire friend of Labour, it seemed the honeymoon had ended more abruptly than expected.
By 21September an Opinium research poll found that Starmer’s net approval rating had fallen to -26%, a drop of 45 percentage points since the overwhelming election success on 4 July. The successes of the new Labour administration – dealing effectively with the right-wing riots in the summer, an impressive King’s Speech of intended legislation, and a very busy foreign affairs programme – were dwarfed by the media coverage of cruelty to pensioners juxtaposed by images of the Starmers living in luxury, courtesy of their rich friends.
This image was not helped by stories of friction within the inner circles of government, allegedly centred on Starmer’s chief-of-staff Sue Gray, which eventually resulted in her leaving her post on 6 October.
Labour has argued that all the above is part of a right-wing media campaign which was bound to occur, that Starmer has done nothing illegal, that gifts to politicians have occurred for hundreds of years and that what matters is transparency, not the gifts themselves. Additionally, say the apologists, the media had a personal vendetta against Gray as she was the civil servant whose Partygate Report of May 2022 was the instigator of Boris Johnson’s humiliation and fall from grace.
Political ineptitude
Labour’s protests have some credibility. Nobody has suggested that anything illegal took place, and there’s no doubt that politicians of all parties have historically accepted gifts – usually without any suggestion of corruption or compromise of policies. Senior ministers attending great sporting or arts events are probably in many ways a healthy way of signalling an understanding of, and a connection to, the cultural life of the country.
However, the gift of thousands of pounds worth of clothes to a prime minister and his wife who are already wealthy compared to most people seems an avoidable own goal in the court of public opinion. Especially when enemies in the media can contrast it with the cuts in winter fuel allowance. The fine detail about the protection of those claiming pension credit or similar benefits was lost in the accusations of hypocrisy.
Worse than that, it felt that Labour was ‘no better than the other lot’ – to repeat a phrase often heard on the doorstep, along with ‘You’re all the same – in it for yourselves’. The public seemed to feel that the relief they’d experienced in getting rid of the Tories after 14 years of incompetence, corruption, greed, neglect, austerity and aloofness had been misguided. Here we go again with the same sort of people. They just wear a different rosette.
The question was would Labour pay for their political ineptitude? The fact that Labour didn’t foresee this suggests that they’re not listening to the right people.
Local election losses
The Labour loss to the Green Party in Leeds on 10 October was not isolated. Labour had already lost a seat the week before to the Greens in Lancaster, and before that, in a by-election in Hackney, it had lost another seat to them on 12 September.
Labour might argue that passing local council by-election defeats to the Green Party was unfortunate but hardly important. They are playing the long game and what matters is public opinion at the next general election in 2028 or 2029.
Although possible, with each loss local Labour confidence is dented and local and national Green Party confidence is bolstered. Each win also helps the Green Party counter its main problem in the first-past-the-post voting system – Greens have good policies, but they aren’t electable. The public is beginning to feel that voting Green is not a ‘wasted vote’, and that they can win elections.
So, why have Labour been getting it so wrong?
It seemed inexplicable. The Labour Party, which had been so carefully and tightly managed in opposition as it sought to turn around the seismic loss in 2019, was making huge mistakes in government which were just as easy to avoid. Starmer is not an idiot, whatever you might think of him, and he’s surrounded by intelligent, professional advisers and fellow politicians. How could they have got it so wrong?
They should have looked no further than Rishi Sunak’s mistake when he left a second world war commemoration earlier than anyone else on 6 June. He’s not stupid. He’s surrounded by highly paid advisers. How could he have made such a basic error, for which he was very heavily criticised and for which he ended up apologising? Labour, then in opposition, said it was because he was out of touch; he didn’t know what ordinary people thought. How ironic.
The Labour candidate in the Farnley and Wortley by-election was a microcosm of Labour’s problems. Living in south Leeds, she had been a Labour councillor in North-West Leeds before losing her seat to a locally based Green in May 2024. She didn’t know the Farnley and Wortley ward in West Leeds, but she was intelligent, articulate, experienced and pleasant. An obvious fit, thought Labour.
There was a good precedent for this in West Leeds. Rachel Reeves, the current chancellor of the Exchequer, was chosen to contest the safe West Leeds seat in 2010 despite being London-based (although she had worked in Leeds previously). The fact that the Green Party candidate in Farnley and Wortley had lived in West Leeds all his life and in the ward for over 40 years (and been a councillor for 20 of them) was not considered.
Out of touch candidates?
This is the kernel of Labour’s problem. Too many of their elected representatives are not representative of the area. They are political careerists. It’s also a problem for other parties but it seems to affect Labour more, because they purport to be the party for ordinary people.
The typical Labour careerist might do a degree in politics or an allied discipline, in tandem with being active in their university’s party society, followed by an internship or an advisory/research role with an MP. They might get to fight an unwinnable seat, just for the experience, and eventually – given the roll of the psephological dice and maybe an impressive, election-winning CV – they get the chance of contesting a winnable seat.
A high-profile case in point is Torsten Bell, MP for Swansea West since the July general election. An Oxford graduate from London, ex-director of policy under Ed Miliband, an ex-special adviser to Alistair Darling and a high-profile leader of the Resolution Foundation think tank, he had no connection with Swansea. He will probably be an excellent junior minister, and possibly a future member of the cabinet. What he won’t be is representative of Swansea.
The budget and farmers
The October budget is another case in point. Whatever the accuracy of the Treasury or the National Farmers’ Union about how many farms will be affected by the new inheritance tax laws on land, Labour has certainly lost the PR battle which again, was needless. Following the massive election victory in July, Labour had found itself with 50 MPs representing largely rural constituencies. A closer examination of the voting figures would have revealed that this was due not so much to an increase in support for Labour, but mainly caused by a desertion of the Conservative vote to Reform UK Ltd, the Liberal Democrats and even the Green Party.
Do these 50 Labour MPs really represent their new constituencies? No doubt they can point to public meetings, surgeries, social media communications, newspaper columns and email trails.
The point is not how hard-working they are, but do they really understand their area? If they do, they would have known that the most sacred of sacred cows (no pun intended) to a farmer is the ability to pass the farm on to their children. If Labour’s intention was to go after the mega-rich who were using lax land inheritance laws to avoid tax, then they could have easily followed the route of many other countries which exempt the working farmers who are passing their farm to their children. This is not the case however – because many of the 50 MPs didn’t understand the areas they purport to represent and therefore were unable to head off the political own goal.
It’s a crisis for our democracy
The situation is more important than Labour’s electoral woes. Across the West, there is a feeling that representative democracy is no longer working in the way it used to. The rise in populism in the Americas, Europe and Asia has many causes – but one of them is certainly that parliamentary systems are not delivering.
Part of the answer is probably proportional representation but, ironically and even conversely, it’s ensuring that elected representatives really do understand those they represent. The alternative is uncertain; but likely involves the decline in the authority of elected governments and the growth of direct action and street politics.
