Labor has “put away the political megaphone” and must give a better account of its “purpose, values and record”, deputy leader Lucy Powell concluded in her Gorton and Denton by-election post.
Powell held a post-mortem call to Labor members and campaigners last week to thank them for their efforts in the seat of Greater Manchester, in which Labor fell to third place behind the Greens and UK Reform, and to update them on the findings of the party’s post-election analysis. She painted a bleak picture of a party “suffering from a huge backlash with voters telling us to do better, to be stronger about our purpose and our values, and to deliver the change we promised faster and more clearly”, but with a silver lining: those voters are open to being won back.
Protest voters have told Labor in their follow-up research that they are still open to voting for the party, but wanted to express their frustration and disappointment with the government. Labour’s data and post-result analysis also showed that large numbers of voters lost their minds in the final days and hours of the campaign.
The two biggest reasons for not voting Labor were the belief that the Greens were in a better place to keep out Reform and the protest vote to send a message to Labour. Powell said this was clear across the constituency, noting that the Greens outperformed Labor among white working-class voters, not just “urban, liberal” voters.
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Labour’s analysis suggests that opinion polls later in the campaign and high visibility campaigning convinced residents that the Greens were the tactical choice to keep Reform out.
Powell has previously said Shabana Mahmood’s controversial immigration policies were “a real concern for our ethnic minority communities” and “came out heavily” on the doorstep during the general election campaign. In the post-mortem call, Powell said a number of other issues were raised on the doorstep, but it was not yet clear from Labor’s research whether these individually were decisive factors in the result.
The Labor deputy leader – who won election to the post late last year after the resignation of Angela Rayner’s cabinet – is an increasingly influential figure in the party despite having no formal role in government. She is seen as a member of the “soft left”, pushing the party to take a more progressive stance and not forget the voters it is bleeding to the left.
“I’ve heard a lot of heated comments about what happened in the by-elections, from many who weren’t even there,” Powell told activists on the call. “The clear lesson for us is that we need to give people a reason to vote Labor and give a better account of our purpose, values and record. We have given up the political megaphone and our job now is to show that we are the only force in British politics able and willing to deliver the progressive change – in the interests of the many, not the few – that most people want to see, and that we unfairly challenge the politics of the opposite, the Conservatives who would turn the country back.”
(Further reading: The rise of the undecided voter)
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