How Labour can win again

Working-class voters did not abandon the party – we have forced them to leave

The English, Scottish and Welsh election results didn’t come from nowhere. They follow years of working people feeling like the system isn’t on their side – and they’re correct about that. We can talk about deindustrialisation, austerity, Brexit, Covid and all the problems that stem from them. All of this is valid. But the situation now is much simpler: too many people in this country work hard and still feel like they’re losing.

The first duty of any government is to provide security. Not just military security, but economic security, energy security, border security, community security and the basic security that if you work hard in the UK, your life shouldn’t constantly feel fragile.

Britons are resilient. We can handle turbulence and we can shake off hardships. But, over several decades, too many communities have been hollowed out by a constant barrage of economic insecurity.

I grew up in Aberdeen in a working-class family with a single mum. She worked hard – running a home and caring for her kids. I know what security means to my mum and I know what pressure does to families when money is tight and when the future feels uncertain. I saw it first hand.

I’ve also seen what happens to communities like mine in Birmingham when work, opportunities and purpose disappear and never return. When high streets are empty and people feel like Britain is broken.

That understanding shapes how I see politics and leadership. The insecurity facing working people today may look different from the factory-floor struggles of the past – but emotionally, it is rooted in the same experience. It stems from the feeling that ordinary people are carrying all the risk while having less and less control over their lives.

We often talk about defence, the economy, the NHS, education and energy as if they are separate conversations. They aren’t. You can spend billions on defence, but if families are struggling and the economy is under strain, you are kidding yourself about how strong this country really is. If families are one bill away from trouble, the country is not stable.

If the NHS is not working, people cannot work. If young people cannot see a future for themselves, we weaken over time. If energy insecurity abroad immediately destabilises life at home, then we are more fragile than we should ever have allowed ourselves to become.

The reality is that when people feel vulnerable and insecure for long enough, eventually somebody comes along offering easy answers. That is the space Nigel Farage operates in. He sees people’s desire for solutions to their everyday problems, and he offers them quick fixes – a magic wand for all your problems, a potion for your ailments.

Yet Farage told people that Brexit would solve immigration, increase prosperity, and restore stability. It did not. Now he offers the same politics again – but this time with more anger, more division and more slogans. He offers no serious plan for rebuilding the country and no coherent policy programme. And while insecurity grows, his brand of politics begins to permeate across the spectrum – until it feels performative rather than serious.

It captures the imagination of people who feel like politics hasn’t worked for them. A couple both work hard and do everything right. They pay their taxes, and they don’t ask for much in return. Then the washing machine breaks. It is not a catastrophe – it is just a washing machine, after all. But replacing it requires £400 they do not have, so it goes on the credit card. Then the car fails its MOT and the energy bill arrives. Then the school trip letter comes home. And suddenly a family that has done everything they were told would lead to stability is chasing its tail every single month.

They’re not lazy, and they’re not failing. They’re not asking the government for handouts or luxury. But they’re permanently on the edge of a crisis. That is where too many working people in the UK are now, and they are looking to politicians to offer a solution.

Unless Labour understands that insecurity on an emotional level as well as on an economic one, we will continue to lose voters who would naturally align with us. Working-class voters have not simply left Labour. Many feel Labour stopped understanding their lives, and so they looked elsewhere.

What is the point of Labour if it does not represent Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley, Swansea and Aberdeen? What is the point of the Labour Party if it cannot replace despair and frustration with hope, stability and purpose? The party was founded to give ordinary working people security, dignity and bargaining power over their lives.

That is exactly what I believe, and it must be our mission again. We do not need more slogans, strategies, press releases or commissions. We need action.

People in this country do not expect perfection. But they do expect seriousness. They expect stability and fairness. And they expect a government that is on their side. That is what Labour must be again. It is how Labour defeats Nigel Farage. And it is how Britain recovers.

[Further reading: Who could beat Keir Starmer in a leadership election?]

This is so light on anything of substance that it simply reinforces the critiques people have of the labour party (which he himself seems to identify!), that it doesn’t have the answers. This is just wishy washy rhetorical drivel about “understanding the lives of voters” with some buzzwords about values thrown in, no real ideological or personal or intellectual depth, nevermind anything on policy. He talks about action and solutions but volunteers no actions or solutions, neither what the government has done nor what he thinks it should do. Is this not precisely the sort of issue we’ve had with Starmer? Man of a certain vintage with impressive resume thinks swanning into power with no articulated plan but a well-trod backstory and some warm words about “stability and fairness” will sort everything out. We’ve seen how well that works… Thank god for our sakes that the only people entertaining a Carns leadership bid seem to be bored lobby journalists and terminally online bluesky types

Tom H’s criticism of Al Carn’s article is harshly-worded but ultimately fair. ‘We need action’, Carns writes – how many times have we heard that? How hard is it to set out a few policy priorities and commitments? Here’s one I can suggest, as someone living in a northern market town with several new ‘Turkish barbers’ – ousting well-documented organised crime from our high streets would help to make people feel that we are not living in a failed state. It would be a highly-visible start towards building a sense of security and stability. For those of you who think that’s racist, join the Green Party if you haven’t already.

This doesn’t mention, or address, the challenge posed by Greens. It’s therefore less than half the solution.

It’s implied: ‘[Farage’s] brand of politics begins to permeate across the spectrum.’

I grew up in the working class manufacturing town of Luton 1957-75 the son of Irish immigrants who came over for work in the 1950s. There was plenty of it. I had a Catholic upbringing and a Catholic education as the Irish had lots of kids and the British state funded religous schools in the state education system. That was my route out of Luton and the working class to university and beyond. By 1979 Thatcher had taught me you’re on your own and better be ready to pay for everything – no handouts! She then eviscerated UK manufacturing industry in the UK and we are where we are today as labour have been powerless to do anything about the relative decline of the UK. I have always voted Labour even though I have worked for some really hard nut US corporations in the UK, Belgium and the USA. The Labour Party needs to be the party of working class and now middle class aspiration – there are not enough well paid jobs for either as the rentier owner class takes complete control of the economy. England needs a complete change in attitude – in my day a free university education was on offer if you worked hard but it was mainly the immigrant children who took advantage and still do to this day even if they have to go into debt. The white working class and dependent population needs a wake up call.

If your parents came over from Ireland in the 1950s, we’re probably a similar age, as that’s when my father came over. There’s a lot of truth in what you said, but I don’t recognise the assertion that ‘it was mainly the immigrant children who took advantage [of free university education]’.

It’s easy to blame white working class people for their plight, as JD Vance did in Hillbilly Elegy. This misunderstands how culture is formed. Mistrust of education is a well-documented, multi-generational phenomenon that didn’t really matter when everyone was going to work in heavy industry anyway.

I’m lumping in the Irish with the South Asian and east Asian communities who did and do even better. The Catholic schools I went to from 1962-75 were similar to the other state schools in Luton and the starting material was roughly the same for all but we outperformed them – probably due to the good behaviour instilled in us relative to our secular peers. My Catholic education definitely kept me and others like me on track. Fast forward to today and some parents will do whatever is necessary to try and get their children into a local Catholic state school – remember the famous scene in Motherland?

Little to argue with here, because it’s little more than a short survey of the country’s economic and political history. Starmer is supposed to be the serious, forgivably boring politician to contrast with Farage’s populism, but that’s not working.

There’s just a lot of vacuous phrases, dashes, lists-as-depth, naming feelings and not evoking them. Generic platitudes, and a hollow anecdote about having a working class parent (ring a bell anyone?) It’s thin! And I think this sort of thing is important to critique when a prospective leadership contender is involved, never mind that it undermines the quality of writing the NS puts out. It’s not even really about whether he used AI to write this piece, but the fact that his work can even be perceived as such. It’s pretty unimaginative and shallow in its depth, style and ideas. We can and should expect better from prospective (even longshot) leadership material! Especially so when the repeated failures of the centre-left stem in no small part from a failure to create compelling narratives that have substance. I don’t think anyone would expect Carns to be a battle-ready ‘Cicero’, but he should certainly read better than Claude.

A thin piece for a muscle man

This article appears in the 13 May 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Never-Ending Chaos