Starmer must look North to rebuild Labour’s hopes
Labour’s drift into being a party that spoke more for left-leaning residents of London than for its traditional supporters in northern industrial seats is going to take some reversing.
EVERY SINGLE Labour activist I know has been left downhearted by last week’s report on the state of their party – even though they suspected what was coming before it was published.
These men and women, scattered across a dozen Yorkshire constituencies, are the heart and soul of Labour – passionate, sensible and in tune with the concerns and needs of the people where they live. Those qualities enabled them to see their party hurtling towards disaster at last year’s election, losing seats in oncetraditional heartlands and returning its worst performance since the mid-1930s.
So when Labour Together published its damning verdict on what went wrong, there were no surprises for these seasoned members who had seen it coming all too clearly on the doorsteps whilst out campaigning.
The voters who said they couldn’t countenance Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, those repelled by anti-Semitism in the party, the people frustrated at Labour’s ambivalence on Brexit and everybody who simply didn’t believe the manifesto was affordable all told the same story.
The report set out in painful detail for anyone concerned about Labour’s fortunes what went wrong in December – and there is little comfort to be drawn about what lies ahead.
The party is at risk of losing a further 58 seats it currently holds, and if it is to win the 124 additional seats it needs to form a government in 2024, Labour would have to increase the number of MPs it has by 60 per cent. No party has ever achieved that.
Whilst committed Conservatives might be rubbing their hands in glee at the plight of Labour, voters who favour the centre ground and have at various times swung between the two main parties have cause to be concerned. That’s because our region – and the wider country – needs Labour as a credible party of Government, which it simply wasn’t under Jeremy Corbyn, however adored he was by his fervent supporters.
It isn’t healthy for our politics to be dominated by one party, of either right or left. There needs to be debate and the exchange of ideas, especially in the circumstances we all now face, with the twin uncertainties of the pandemic’s economic consequences and of how life outside the EU will unfold.
Whilst not in office, Labour has to rediscover how to become an effective Opposition, holding the Government to account, scrutinising policy and advancing a coherent set of policies of its own.
Dispirited through they are, the activists I know have taken some heart from the start made by Sir Keir Starmer as leader, his reshaped shadow cabinet and firmness in wresting back control from the hard left. His forensic questioning of the Prime Minister has exposed the chinks in Boris Johnson’s armour – the tendency to obscure a poor command of detail with bluster and a lack of substance behind the slogans. But that’s only a start. Exposing the Prime Minister’s shortcomings in the Commons matters greatly, but by itself it won’t win back seats in Yorkshire such as Don Valley, Rother Valley, Wakefield or Keighley, which only a few years ago were unthinkable as Conservative.
There needs to be a major effort to reconnect with constituencies like these if Labour is to rebuild. Viewed from our region, Sir Keir still looks like the epitome of a London-centric politician, a wealthy senior barrister and knight of the realm who has little in common with the lives and concerns of people in Yorkshire towns and cities.
Labour’s drift into being a party that spoke more for left-leaning residents of the capital than for its traditional supporters in northern industrial seats worried about their jobs in an age of globalisation is going to take some reversing. But that needs to happen. Once the threat of Covid-19 recedes, Sir Keir is going to have to start visiting our region’s constituencies that turned from red to blue and embark on a comprehensive programme of learning about them.
He must talk to his party’s activists and take heed of what they tell him in order to shape Labour policy. They understand what makes the people where they live tick and share their concerns.
The voices of northern voters need to be heard. Mr Johnson convinced them that he was a man who listened and understood. It is the gravest indictment of Labour’s recent record that it failed to listen to traditional industrial communities with whom the party had historic links.
Whether those ties can be restored is far from certain. If the Conservatives deliver the change for the better and investment that our region, and the wider north, has been denied for too long, Labour faces an uphill struggle. But for the health of our politics, the party needs to climb back into serious contention. To do that, the best place for Labour to start rebuilding is right here in the seats where Yorkshire voters abandoned it.