How Labour fights back now against Reform

After a devastating blow in Runcorn and Helsby, Starmer and his party should be confronting the threat posed by Nigel Farage head on, writes Donald Macintyre – rather than running scared

If nothing else, the results from Thursday’s five-party local elections should prompt a serious rethink of Labour’s approach to the electoral threat posed from its right by Reform and from what increasingly looks like its left, by the Liberal Democrats.

Since Keir Starmer took office 10 months ago, he has shown every sign of being much more preoccupied with the former – at least partly at the cost, it now seems, of losing votes to the latter.

It’s not just that these results – Reform’s Sarah Pochin seized control of Runcorn and Helsby by just six votes, overturning the Labour majority of nearly 15,000; and Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns won the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty – suggest that it has failed to stem the feared losses to Reform.

For, at the heart of its strategy for preventing such losses, there is a glaring paradox. Labour had attempted to appease those electors it perceives as vulnerable to Reform by adopting a raft of right-leaning policies and rhetoric.

If Labour thought that ending winter fuel allowance and cutting the personal independence payment for the disabled would appeal to supporters thinking of switching to Reform, it seems sadly mistaken. In Runcorn at least it may have pushed electors to vote for "anyone but Labour" – and Reform was at hand to exploit that discontent.

Yet, at the same time, it has stood firmly by the one plan which should transcend left-right polarisation and on which Farage may have identified a real weakness.

In the appeasement column, the most difficult item is immigration. No political party is going to get elected on a policy of uncontrolled immigration. Nor should anyone have a shred of sympathy for the trafficking gangs the government is trying to smash. And yes, Labour abandoned the deranged Tory plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. But beyond that, Labour’s stated goal is simply to speed up the asylum process: “stop the boats” and above all bring down immigration – legal and illegal – faster and more efficiently than their predecessors did.

How often have Labour politicians confronted Farage and his allies on the Tory right by pointing to the daunting labour shortages in sectors from agriculture and vital care work to a construction industry charged with fulfilling Labour’s housebuilding goals?

Yes, one future answer may lie in better training of British workers. But how, given present constraints, is that going to be achieved in the here and now? On this – as so often – Farage has been allowed to frame the argument and get away with it unchallenged. (The mean little promise to withhold future citizenship from successful asylum seekers who arrived illegally was certainly a sop to Reform; it will do nothing to deter would-be entrants.)

Another example is already half forgotten, despite it being the one policy to have prompted that rarity in modern politics: the resignation of a cabinet minister (Annaliese Dodds) on an issue of principle. Given that David Cameron managed to protect the aid budget (a modest 0.7 per cent of GDP) at a time of austerity, it is hard to see how this choice of cut to help pay for necessarily increased defence spending was anything other than a sop to supposedly Reform-minded voters. Again, supporters of the pseudo-patriotic Farage might have been reminded that aid is one of the few ways in which the UK can exercise global soft power.

Finally, there is the question of whether Britain’s destiny lies in Europe or in a long-obsolete “special relationship” with the US. Of course, the kowtowing to Trump in pursuit of what increasingly looks like the forlorn hope of a trade deal with Washington was not dictated by Reform (though in the nightmarish scenario of a Farage premiership, that’s what he would be doing). But it went hand in hand with a residual neurosis about making Brexit (which the polls suggest a majority of voters now think was a mistake) “work”.

There are signs, it’s true, of a new readiness to achieve, starting with this month’s UK-EU summit. It is the reset with its major trading partner that Starmer and Reeves must know is essential to the growth for which they yearn. But progress towards this has been painfully slow. Indeed, it may be that what persuaded Yvette Cooper to withdraw (albeit with severe caveats) her objections to the Youth Mobility Scheme was polling showing that the scheme – which would allow young people to travel to and from the EU for limited periods – is popular even in Reform strongholds.

These are all areas where Starmer’s team have been inhibited by the perceived threat from Reform, instead of confronting him head on. So, what is the one exception to this catalogue of appeasement?

Tony Blair provoked outrage by challenging current climate crisis policies on Wednesday. But whatever your overall view of his net zero analysis, he made one powerful – and electorally relevant – point: for many people, net zero means they fear they are being asked to make sacrifices to fulfil a future goal which, even if met, will have a “minimal” impact on global heating.

Jobs is a topical example. Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham is neither a fool nor (to put it mildly) a Blairite. But that didn’t stop her from tweeting on Thursday that both the end of oil refining at Grangemouth – also opposed by the local Labour MP – and Blair’s intervention, should act as a “wake-up call” to the government.

Like Blair, Graham is not minimising the threat from the climate crisis – or in her case at least, the desirability of a net zero target. But she is worried about the impact on employment now, a worry hardly offset in the minds of many voters by the prospect of “green jobs” in the future. That is also why the Livingstone Labour MP Gregor Poynton has (controversially) called for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oilfields to go ahead.

Whatever the validity of the unions’ proposal that with the right investment, Grangemouth could have been converted to making “green” aviation fuel, it isn’t unreasonable to fear that after the failure in the 1980s and 1990s to reinvigorate communities devastated by pit closures, a similar plight may await other areas of fossil fuel-related employment.

Ed Miliband is not necessarily to blame for all this, though that won’t stop Farage (and others) demonising him. It isn’t his fault that present constraints prohibit the investment to make green transition less painful. But it’s the one and only area of Farage’s self-serving armoury which may need a rethink in the local election aftermath.

The paradox, therefore, is that Labour is suffering electorally for not confronting and challenging more vigorously almost all his toxic policies, while standing rock solid on net zero and its consequences. Listening to the worries about the latter is fully compatible with being a liberal centre-left government. Reversing strategy on the former is an essential part of being one.