Talk of electoral pacts between the Conservatives and Reform UK for the right-of-centre vote has been widely reported. Your editorial (24 April) notes that as the policies of these parties move further right, some traditional Conservative voters will shift their allegiance away. Yet these voters are not going to the Labour party, as its leadership follows rightwards. A litany of government policies must seem as abhorrent to “old school” Conservatives as they do to traditional Labour values.
Instead, there is steady growth in support for parties that are broadly in the soft left, socially and environmentally aware space: Liberal Democrats, Greens, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru. These four parties, albeit each with their own distinctive policy stance or geographic focus, now have a combined voting-preference share larger than that of Labour, the Conservatives or Reform. This can be seen in the three most recent nationwide opinion polls – More in Common: 26%; YouGov: 30%; Find Out Now: 30%.
This trend, little reported on – an exception being Gaby Hinsliff (We obsess over the angry young men going Reform. But what of the anxious young women going Green?, 25 April) – of younger, more educated women’s despairing shift to the Green party can surely only broaden and deepen. For society is fragmenting as living standards fall, not least in response to climate breakdown, even while governments worldwide ignore this along with their electorates’ own views on global heating.
It should not only be the right-of-centre parties talking of electoral pacts to gain power and make a difference to our lives, but also parties to the left of this government. Otherwise, a future Nigel Farage-led government, incorporating the remains of the Conservative party, seems only too likely.
Neil Brown
Oban, Argyll and Bute
• Your editorial assesses the threat posed by Reform to the Conservatives in the local elections. Equally concerning is the threat Reform also poses to Labour in the forthcoming Runcorn byelection.
Labour’s first few months in government have done little to stem the flow of disillusioned voters turning to Reform, with its seductive and simplistic solutions to complex problems. Keir Starmer knows that the self-imposed fiscal constraints belong to another economic era that has been swept away by Donald Trump’s unravelling of global market orthodoxies.
If people are to see real change in public services and their economic wellbeing, the fiscal shackles must come off. With the Tory party failing to offer an effective alternative, creating real change in voters’ lives is the only solution to stop Nigel Farage emerging as the victor in future elections.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• I am 67 and after a lifetime of voting Labour, I voted Green in the last election. I don’t know who to vote for now that Labour has ceased to be a party of the left. I believe in social justice and I get the impression that many in this country would like the same. I don’t agree with the current appetite for pitching groups of people against each other to stoke culture wars.
If young men feel angry with their situation, perhaps we should be seeing what injustices they face before insulting them. And if young women are turning to the Green party, maybe Labour needs to remind itself of the principles on which it was founded.
Janice Hill
Taverham, Norfolk
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