Is the party over for Labour?
A year on from that electoral landslide, Keir Starmer’s government is deeply unpopular. At the Battle of Ideas festival, we’ll discuss whether a revival is possible – for Labour or the Tories.
The Labour Party Conference starts in Liverpool on Sunday. The mood should be upbeat, given that we are now over a year into a Labour government with a huge majority in the Commons. Keir Starmer should be riding the crest of a wave, free to implement a radical programme of change.
But instead, in short order, he’s lost his deputy prime minister, his ambassador in Washington and his communications chief. Far from being untouchable, all the talk has been of a leadership challenge from someone who isn’t even an MP – the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. The economy is in the doldrums and the public finances are precarious, while migration continues to be a thorn in Starmer’s side. More broadly, it seems Labour no longer appeals to its traditional base of support: working-class voters.
What happens next? One path may be to adopt the outlook of Blue Labour, with its focus on more traditional values, in sharp contrast to the metropolitan, globalist and woke outlook that is the mainstay of the party leadership at the moment. But perhaps Reform UK represents a more credible alternative now. We’ll be discussing these issues in the session From Reform to Blue Labour: will the working class find a voice at last? at the Battle of Ideas festival on Sunday 19 October.
Perhaps the real question is whether both the main parties – who have, the 2010 coalition aside, monopolised government since the Second World War – are now doomed. We’ll be discussing that in the session Are the old political parties over? on Saturday 18 October. Full details of both sessions below.
Tickets for the festival, which takes place at Church House and The Abbey Centre on 18 & 19 October, are still available. You can find full details of the price options on our festival tickets page.
From Reform to Blue Labour: will the working class find a voice at last?
Sunday 19 October, 1.45pm - 3.15pm
Whichever way you look, the lanyard political classes are under siege. The spectacular rise of Reform UK in the polls – with soaring membership and increasing influence over policy discourse and media commentary – illustrates that nothing less than a political revolution is occurring. One shock to the system is that many believe that this insurgent party has replaced Labour as the party of the working class.
Some suggest this working-class characterisation is mythical. For example, one study by Queen Mary College found that Reform’s members are predominantly middle-aged, middle-class and aligned with values closer to the traditional Tory base than Labour’s working-class heartlands. But the truth is that Reform’s energy is derived from millions of ordinary voters – disillusioned with Conservative and Labour’s shift toward urban, lawyerly, technocratic governance, and furious their concerns have been contemptuously ignored or demonised. Reform’s anti-establishment, pro-sovereignty, anti ‘woke’ messages have cut through.
But is Reform the only game in town? Blue Labour, founded by Maurice Glasman in 2009, has emerged as a force. Lord Glasman has found himself somewhat a man of the moment after being the only Labour Party figure invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Moreover, JD Vance is rumoured to be a big fan, sending Glasman a copy of his Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 and personally issuing the invitation to the inauguration.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that No.10 is keen to bring Blue Labour ideas and philosophy on board – a move driven primarily by Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. Moreover, the Blue Labour parliamentary caucus now has a double-digit number of MPs and seems to be growing. Given the widespread disillusionment with the Labour Party, many are asking if this family, faith and flag version of Labour can fill the soulless Starmerite shoes.
There may be some crossover in the cultural values that Reform and Blue Labour appeal to: the rejection of progressive agendas that have eroded British cultural identity, national pride, sovereignty, social obligation and civic order. But Blue Labour and Reform are very different in many ways, too. For example, Blue Labour sometimes argues that Reform is, at heart, a libertarian, Thatcherite party – pushing tax cuts, deregulation and privatised public services – that’s simply benefitting from a more general working-class fury.
Is it helpful to use traditional categories such as left and right, when this is – as characterised by Lord Glasman – a new era of sovereigntists versus globalists? Is Reform just a wrecking ball fuelled by the grievances of post-industrial areas, more a protest vote than a genuine working-class movement that can address structural economic issues? Do we know what we mean by the working class anyway? Can Blue Labour challenge existing left orthodoxy and save the Labour Party? Or are voters now seeking totally new institutions and a complete break from the old mainstream parties? And if Reform actually breaks the mould, will there be space for other challenger parties to flourish and make their mark?
SPEAKERS
Jonny Ball
contributing editor, UnHerd
Frank Furedi
sociologist and social commentator; executive director, MCC Brussels
Jonathan Hinder MP
Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe
Scarlett Maguire
founder, Merlin Strategy
Gawain Towler
former head of press, Reform UK
CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!
Are the old political parties over?
Saturday 18 October, 2.45pm – 4.15pm
Are the mainstream parties facing extinction or can they bounce back by the time of the next General Election in 2029? Can the Tories recover from 14 years of misrule? Will the Labour Party survive from its current economic woes? Will the political vacuum be filled by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats or the ‘challenger’ parties like Reform or the Greens?
Take the Conservative Party: the oldest party in the world currently looks as if it is facing electoral wipeout. In a recent survey, 42 per cent of Conservative voters in the 2024 General Election said that even they wouldn’t vote for them. The party that squandered Brexit is desperately looking around for a purpose. Some Tories believe that Robert Jenrick poses a more credible alternative than the current leader, Kemi Badenoch.
But are they both fighting for a hopeless cause? Jenrick’s crime-fighting TikTok videos and Badenoch’s recent support of oil exploration got lots of media coverage, but Net Zero and the current failed model of policing were both introduced on their watch. Are they going back to their roots – if they can remember what those roots are – or are they simply mimicking Trump and Farage’s agendas from the sidelines?
Meanwhile, Labour seems to be imploding. A recent Ipsos poll ranked the current UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, as the most unpopular leader in modern times. In July 2024, his government won almost two-thirds of all seats, with a 174 majority in the Commons, yet a year later it is collapsing in the polls. The government has presided over cuts and tax rises, strikes and bailouts, two-tier justice and a zero-growth economy. The idea that if you pinned a red rosette on a donkey in Wales, it’d get elected no longer holds true.
Far from ‘smashing the gangs’, the immigration scandal that Labour inherited from the Tories means it is haemorrhaging support in Red Wall seats. Preferring Davos over Westminster, Starmer seems to prefer hob-nobbing with world leaders while taking British democracy for granted.
Yet the death of both Labour and the Conservatives has been declared numerous times before, only for them to revive. Is it too soon to count them out? Is Britain’s political map being redrawn, or torn up? Might proportional representation reinvigorate the mainstream parties? Must we wait for four more years? We’ll take a vote on it.
SPEAKERS
Rosie Duffield MP
member of parliament for Canterbury
Dr Richard Johnson
writer; senior lecturer in politics, Queen Mary University of London; co-author, Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922
Mark Littlewood
director, Popular Conservatism; broadcaster, columnist, the Telegraph and the Mail
Tim Montgomerie
conservative journalist; founder, ConservativeHome, UnHerd and Centre for Social Justice
Graham Stringer MP
member of parliament, Blackley and Middleton South
CHAIR
Bruno Waterfield
Brussels correspondent, The Times