Labour has well and truly given up on its own heartlands. As writer and polling expert Matt Goodwin lays out on his Substack this morning, Labour now seems more interested in sneering at voters than representing them.
Last weekend, Wes Streeting - former Health Secretary and one of the Labour figures gunning to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister - revealed that he intends to drag the UK back into the European Union.
Goodwin - who was also Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton & Denton by-election in March, where he came second and beat out Labour in one of its former safe seats - explains:
Last weekend, Wes Streeting - former Health Secretary and one of the Labour figures gunning to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister - revealed that he intends to drag the UK back into the European Union.
Goodwin - who was also Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton & Denton by-election in March, where he came second and beat out Labour in one of its former safe seats - explains:
“This policy was never in Labour’s manifesto. In fact, at the most recent general election Labour promised the very opposite. ‘With Labour’, the party proclaimed, ‘Britain will stay outside of the EU ... There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.’”
Fellow PM hopeful and candidate in the upcoming Makerfield by-election Andy Burnham agreed with Streeting. On Saturday, he admitted to believing that there was a “long-term case” for rejoining the EU, although he was “not advocating that in this by-election”.
This means, as Goodwin notes, that “the two leading contenders to replace Keir Starmer are fully committed to tearing up the country’s current constitutional settlement despite having absolutely no democratic mandate to do so, and doing the very opposite to what Labour’s own heartlands voted for.”
Let’s see how this goes down in the constituency of Makerfield, where around 65% of people voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Goodwin points out that this isn’t even the only display of Labour’s shocking disregard for voters recently: “Angela Rayner, another leadership hopeful, openly berates those in her party who call for immigration controls as ‘un-British’.” Meanwhile, Streeting has been “casually deriding Reform and its supporters as ‘racist’, ‘Islamophobic’, ‘an existential threat’, and ‘English nationalists’”.
Goodwin asks:
Instead, as Goodwin writes, we see “the same kind of sneering, moralising politics that drove millions of people in the Labour heartlands to abandon Labour in the first place. And Labour has learned absolutely nothing from it.”
You can subscribe to Matt Goodwin’s Substack here.
This means, as Goodwin notes, that “the two leading contenders to replace Keir Starmer are fully committed to tearing up the country’s current constitutional settlement despite having absolutely no democratic mandate to do so, and doing the very opposite to what Labour’s own heartlands voted for.”
Let’s see how this goes down in the constituency of Makerfield, where around 65% of people voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Goodwin points out that this isn’t even the only display of Labour’s shocking disregard for voters recently: “Angela Rayner, another leadership hopeful, openly berates those in her party who call for immigration controls as ‘un-British’.” Meanwhile, Streeting has been “casually deriding Reform and its supporters as ‘racist’, ‘Islamophobic’, ‘an existential threat’, and ‘English nationalists’”.
Goodwin asks:
“Is Wes Streeting really this tin-eared? Does he really think we are still living in the 1970s? Is he not aware, for example, that many politicians with diverse backgrounds now represent Reform? That one in three black and minority ethnic Brits also voted for Brexit? That close to the same share of minority Brits feel, like their white counterparts, they are becoming ‘a stranger in Britain because of immigration?’ Or that the Unite the Kingdom protest over the weekend was clearly attended by many Brits from minority backgrounds?”You might have thought that after witnessing the enormous success of Reform UK in the local elections earlier this month - and especially given that so many votes were a straight switch from Labour to Reform UK - the Labour Party would finally be forced to reckon with the fact that it is now hopelessly out of touch with the people whose votes it once counted on.
Instead, as Goodwin writes, we see “the same kind of sneering, moralising politics that drove millions of people in the Labour heartlands to abandon Labour in the first place. And Labour has learned absolutely nothing from it.”
You can subscribe to Matt Goodwin’s Substack here.
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