Revolt on the Left report publication

Today we’ve published new research with Persuasion UK which looks at the growing “revolt on the left”. By this, we mean the voters Labour is losing to the Green Party, plus the Liberal Democrats and nationalist parties. This is published a week on from Labour’s loss of the Gorton and Denton by-election to the Greens. The aim of this piece of research, which was led by Persuasion’s Steve Akehurst and began last summer, was to understand who these ‘progressive defectors’ are, and what unites them with the rest of the electorate.

Joseph McNamara, a 77-year old man living in Gorton, told the Independent last week why he had switched from voting Labour to voting Green in the by-election. “Starmer is for the higher-ups rather than the lower-downs. He promises things and says, ‘Oh yes I’ll do this, do that’. At the end of the day nothing happens.” 

Labour has lost the support of swathes of voters who backed the party in 2024 as Keir Starmer swept to a historic landslide win. Much of the media commentary about this collapse in support has focused on those Labour voters who now say they’ll vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform party. This coverage has in turn resulted in the debate about what the Government can do to arrest this decline becoming dominated by the issue of immigration.

If the next general election were held tomorrow, it is highly likely that the government would be swept from office. But this new and important research highlights that for every two former Labour voters who have defected to a party of the right, there are three former Labour voters who have defected to another party of the left. These ‘left defectors’ are just as likely to be found in a battleground constituency where the next election will be decided as they are to be found in a safe Labour seat. They are most likely to be a younger, lower middle class professional, working as a teacher or IT support worker. This is not the cliched stereotype of a “woke lefty” in Islington or Hackney. 

Any party that seeks to keep rightwing populism out of office needs to find a unifying mission for all of these voters. What unites those voters that Labour has lost to its left, and to its right, is a feeling that the economy doesn’t work for working people. Political parties need to respond to what people care about, made clear in this research: people want higher pay, lower bills, affordable rents. Bread and butter issues, which will materially improve people’s lives – fought for and delivered in the face of a hostile media and other special interests who will scream about the so-called extremism or recklessness of these simple steps. 

Labour won’t win back votes with a crude ‘lesser of two evils’ message – what strategists call a “squeeze message”. Yes, showing voters where their ‘X’ is best placed to keep Reform out in a First Past The Post system matters. But it is the last mile of a journey predominantly trod with policies that improve people’s living standards, and a compelling story about bold changes made in the interests of working people, over those whose interest the economy is currently stacked in favour of. 

Any political party hoping to keep Reform at bay in the upcoming local elections – and the General Election further down the line – needs to make it clear whose side they’re on, and whose interests they will govern in. Crucially, they also need a policy platform that not only promises to improve people’s lives, but can actually deliver on that promise in government.