“Labour cannot rebuild support through caution, managerialism or triangulation.”
By Andy McDonald MP
These election results are a dire warning to Labour, and they need to be treated with the seriousness they deserve. In different parts of the country there have been a variety of electoral outcomes. Plaid Cymru and the SNP have prevailed in Wales and Scotland respectively but throughout Great Britain Labour has been heavily punished. Across England, voters who like their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, craved change in 2024, after years of Conservative decline, are now shifting away from Labour towards other centre-left alternatives, some to Reform, or too many staying at home. We cannot dismiss that as a protest. Despite the many positive policy changes we can point to, these results reflect a growing belief that Labour is not delivering the scale of change people expected or needed.
The fragility of our 2024 loveless landslide has now been exposed. That victory concealed deeper weaknesses in Labour’s coalition and a continuing erosion of support from the levels achieved in 2017 and 2019. These local election results make clear that the problem is not simply where votes have ended up, but why many former Labour voters no longer feel the party speaks convincingly for them.
If disillusioned Labour voters moving towards the other centre-left alternatives has indirectly opened the door for gains by the right, the answer is not to attack those parties or the voters who left us. The answer is to understand why Labour has lost credibility amongst people who wanted a government prepared to materially improve living standards and reshape the economy in their interests.
The public have lived through more than a decade of falling living standards, insecure work, rising housing costs and collapsing confidence in essential services. They voted for change in 2024 because they wanted to see that decline reversed. Too many people now believe that change has either not arrived, or is not coming.
That is the central political fact Labour has to confront.
People will not return to Labour because ministers denounce rivals more aggressively. Voters are persuaded by tangible improvements in their lives and by a government that demonstrates it is prepared to use power on their behalf. Instead, positive expectations on pay have too often become disputes over pay. Anxiety over food and energy costs is rising again. Promises on housing affordability, social rent provision and action on private rents have not matched the scale of the crisis people experience every day.
Labour cannot rebuild support through caution, managerialism or triangulation. We will only recover if we offer a clear radical programme to improve living standards and visibly shift power and wealth back towards working people. That means a serious commitment to bringing failed services under democratic control, stronger public provision of essential services, major council housebuilding, action on insecure work and low pay, and decisive intervention to reduce the cost of living.
There is also, plainly, a wider political and moral disconnect between the leadership and large sections of the electorate — winter fuel support, disability benefits, women’s pensions, and on international issues such as Palestine. Positive policy on child poverty, employment rights, or renters rights, are welcome but need to go much further. Many voters increasingly believe the leadership neither understands nor reflects their concerns. If the response to these results is simply to double down on the current approach, the situation will deteriorate further.
It is right we now start planning for a change of leader for the next election. But any discussion about Labour’s future leadership therefore cannot be separated from the political direction of the party itself. A leadership contest that avoids the underlying argument about policy, economics and living standards would solve nothing. The question is not simply who leads Labour, but what Labour is for.
And we need not only a change in policy but also a change in process and how we do business as a party. We must part company with the highly-factionalised approach pursued by Labour Together.
Any candidate seeking to lead the party after these results must be prepared to argue for a decisive break from the failed assumptions that brought us here. They must demonstrate a commitment to rebuilding public provision, extending democratic control where necessary, and delivering visible improvements in living standards for the people Labour was created to represent. Without that change in direction, a change of leader alone will not be enough.
- Andy McDonald is the Labour MP for Middlesbrough & Thornaby East. You can follow him on Twitter/X, Facebook and Bluesky.
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