Without wishing to reduce a well thought out post to a single line response, I think they’ve really misunderstood why they’ve lost voters to Reform.
It’s not because those voters wanted Labour to be more like Reform as much as it is that they wanted Labour to be more like Labour in my opinion.
Well said, although I would say to offer depth when it comes to voters, it’s not about purely right-wing per se. It’s more about trust. I don’t think most voters are purely ideological (Loyal, absolutely, which plays into the trust issue). They just have their problems or what they think are problems and want it solved.
Shifting to the right only works if people believe what you say. However modern establishment parties and politicians are very reactionary and it’s very easy to detect. As I’ve said with Starmer playing to the gallery it’s blatantly disingenuous. Did he really wake up 5th April 2025 and decided ‘globalisation’ ended?
If you are of more left persuasion you’ve witnessed a party leader betray or rather abandon his position you thought aligned with yours and if you’re more right wing you’ve seen a party leader who you were already put off by try and suck up to your beliefs which you could less about. You already have party leaders who you think are more genuine on these issues. For Starmer in particular this is why people still don’t know what he stands for. Which actually, just annoys people even more.
It’s too late for this type of strategy, I mean potentially in the future, we’re about to witnesses the UK abandon it’s two-party system to throw in a completely different party. They underestimate what the public really thinks and more importantly I don’t think they understand why they think that way.
They only got one choice as you say:
But lol even that’s going the wrong way. All they’re doing is making things tougher for everybody lol. Businesses don’t like the budget (Don’t if there’s any correlation but all I’ve seen are more boarded up shops), the poor and disabled are getting further shafted by heinous welfare cuts. Oh and our bills are still going up. Lovely.
In March 2022, when he was leader of the opposition, Sir Keir told the Times, external that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that transwomen are women, and that is not just my view - that is actually the law”.
Asked if Sir Keir still believed that a transgender woman was a woman, the PM’s official spokesman said: “No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman.”
Now regardless of your position on this stuff. I’d like to ask a different question. Does Starmer have any actual beliefs?
He’d be crucified no matter what he said, let’s be honest.
Are transwomen, women?
You lose either way. We also have to bear in mind, it’s been 3 years since that interview with the Times.
I think every PM in the last 20-30 years would’ve said the same thing, it’s a delicate topic that depending on how its answered, could put lives at risk.
I’ve already seen trans people being attacked and vilified since the supreme court ruling. It’s opened the floodgates for abuse.
I saw that Rowling is saying the government should apologise for ever having supported trans people, which is ridiculous. The supreme court didn’t rule that trans people don’t exist and don’t have protected characteristics. And the ruling was at pains to say it was not a victory for either side.
I also think it’s perfectly possible to acknowledge Starmer can’t win on this and also acknowledge that he just flaccidly flops in the direction of prevailing narrative on difficult issues.
None besides his obvious pro-eu tendencies like alot of soft left middle class london types. He’s a cold blooded pragmatist at the end of the day.
Purely interested in obtaining executive power and retaining it as a matter of credentialism.
Yikes. Reform tanks firmly planted Labour’s lawn.
Labour and the Tories are going to get absolutely destroyed if they don’t have a come to Jesus moment with themselves and realise what it is people really care about.
I’ll give everyone an (uncomfortable) hint for what that is: it’s more specific than just immigration.
Labour and Tories are finished in this country. The only thing that will save them is the current setup of our voting system.
Just to clarify I presume you mean Muslims?
It feels like we’re reliving the 80’s.
I hate to say it, but the uncomfortable truth that very few people want to confront is the fact that the majority of the UK doesn’t have a problem with immigration, it has a problem with Muslim immigration.
Labour and the Tories can stick their head in the sand all they want and pick fights about the “wokerati” and trans people as much as they want, but until they realise that it’s Muslim migration people are most worried about they will continue to lose huge amounts of votes to Reform.
Reform are completely unserious people, and would be the most disastrous government this country has ever seen because they are just entirely unequipped to lead the country but they’re the only party willing to say the real issue out loud.
The UK is where Denmark was 10 years ago. The cultural/political elite had ignored the Danish populations worries about immigration for decades until 2014/15 when it got unpalatable and the Danish version of Reform came from having very few votes to getting 20% of the vote in that election and becoming the second biggest party in the country.
Thankfully for Denmark, they committed the biggest own goal in the history of politics and refused to form a government because they felt like they had more power in opposition.
However this gave all the centrist and left leaning parties to consolidate and seriously tighten up their immigration politics and now that party struggles to get more than 3-4% of the vote.
The vast majority of people worried about immigration aren’t worried about Polish, Lithuanian, Thai, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Indian etc immigrants.
I imagine when those crime statistics come in later this year, they’ll be so jarring that Labour and the Tories will be forced to deal with it and there’ll be an inflection point in the discourse about immigration.
I don’t think they will show religion, just country of origin.
I’m sure they won’t
Well unless people volunteer that information, then it’s all guesswork.
Thanks for expanding mate. But I think there’s a couple of flaws.
I’ve seen this argument about it being Muslims. I’m not that persuaded about it. The reason the focus exists on Muslims is purely about the numbers. Almost everything about immigration is about the numbers.
I’ll defer to your expertise on Danish politics as a Dane yourself but I’m not sure it’s similar, firstly just looking at the census of Denmark Non-EU numbers are pretty small, don’t even scratch 5% combined (Which leads credence to you saying tightening controls worked). However in the UK you’re looking at millions of people. A lot of them born here.
We tighten controls, well there’s still an substantial amount of people here. To follow through with your idea there’s going to have to be deportations and getting people to leave. Which is where the political problems will begin. That will be too controversial for Labour and arguably even the Tories I think.
In regards to other immigrants you cited. You shouldn’t underestimate how numbers changes peoples perception. Certain immigrants are clearly more preferred than others but people will definitely complain about them all the same. I mean, we did go through Brexit and getting rid of Freedom of movement…
But in regards to these local elections, immigration played a part but I don’t think that’s the whole story. It seems aspects such as Winter fuel payment cuts definitely damaged Labour. Which I think makes sense (Especially up north), Labour have effectively made people endure more hardship. But there’s also the shock that Labour even found themselves associated with doing such a thing. They already weren’t that popular but managed to make themselves even more so.
And the welfare reforms.
I’m annoyed about winter fuel allowance being means tested and welfare reforms, therefore I’ll vote for Nigel Farage and Reform 
I’ve heard nothing but contempt and derision from alot of London based Labour commentariat about the type of ex labour voters who back him.
The good thing about this situation is that there’s plenty of time to turn things around. Alot of Reform is simply a protest vote but is highly viable.
