Keir Starmer needs to ‘badly define’ what his government stands for if it wants to stop haemorrhaging votes to both the left and the right, polling guru Sir John Curtice has warned
Keir Starmer needs to “badly define” what his government stands for if it wants to stop haemorrhaging votes to both the left and the right, polling guru Sir John Curtice has warned.
The elections expert said Labour’s lack of a “narrative” or “story” about itself has meant decisions such as the winter fuel payment cuts are so unforgettable and unforgiveable among the public. He said the government has “never communicated what it’s about” and that pinning itself on a promise to turn around the economy quickly was an “accident waiting to happen”.
Sir John said the party was focusing too much on trying to work out how to defeat its opponents. And he said the PM needed to “find out the way forward” instead of going more to the right or left.
It comes as Mr Starmer is facing a backlash from those within his own party after suffering a mauling at the local elections last week. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK swept to victory in locals across England, including winning two mayoral contests. It also scraped through a win in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, overturning a huge Labour majority.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer rules out U-turn on winter fuel payment cut for millions of pensioners
Speaking at a UK in a changing Europe event, Sir John said Labour’s problem is that it’s “very much in the middle” so is losing votes to the Greens and Lib Dems on the left, and to the Tories and largely Reform UK on the right.
While Labour won a landslide victory at the general election, he said, it only received a 35% share of the vote. “It was a vote that did have very little in the way of enthusiasm behind it,” he said. ” It was perfectly clear that this was a government that was an accident waiting to happen, if they could not turn around the economy with the speed that they implied that they could.”
Sir John said: “Labour’s problem is that as a party that’s very much in the middle, it’s at risk of fraying in both directions, and that seems to be precisely what has happened. So you’ve got a lot of unhappy voters out there who are disappointed with the government, but the direction in which they decide to go seems then to depend on other aspects of their ideological predilection.
“I’ve never been asked recently, but what should Labour do in response – should they talk to the left or talk to the right, to which my answer is, is to find out the way forward. Because the fundamental problem this Labour Government has, it has no story about itself. It has no narrative. It has never communicated what it’s about.
“Therefore, that’s why, when the government makes unexpected decisions, e.g., and especially the Winter Fuel Allowance, it has resonance, because that’s the only thing that really strikes them about this government, is the fact there are one or two decisions it’s made… ‘I wasn’t quite sure what this Labour Party was about, but I really didn’t think they were going to do something like that.’
“That’s the only thing that sticks and until they create, in other words, Labour, I think, under Starmer’s leadership have essentially been trying to work out how to defeat their opponents, rather than trying to work out how to define themselves.
“The government needs badly to define what it’s about and to pursue that path. If it tries constantly to weave in one direction or another, it will demonstrate the lack of strategic direction, the lack of self-confidence that will make it very difficult to recover.”
Downing Street earlier ruled out a U-turn on means testing the winter fuel payment after mounting pressure. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The policy is set out, there will not be a change to the Government’s policy.”
He added that the decision “was one that we had to take to ensure economic stability and repair the public finances following the £22billion black hole left by the previous government”. He also pointed to an expected £1,900 increase in the state pension over the course of the Parliament and an extension to the household support fund as ways the Government was supporting pensioners.
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