LABOUR have suffered the fastest fall in support for any newly-elected Westminster government because of their “lack of vision and positive direction” ahead of the 2024 election, John Curtice has said.
Reflecting on Keir Starmer’s first year in office, the top pollster said Labour’s problems in government have largely come from them failing to set out their stall and communicate their “story” before being handed the keys to Number 10.
After winning a huge majority last July, Labour’s first year in power ended in chaos this week as they were forced into several U-turns on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Bill – one of which was made during the parliamentary debate - with one Labour MP calling the episode “crazy” and “outrageous”.
Even with those concessions made, nearly 50 Labour MPs still voted against the government, with one backbencher having now put forward a fresh amendment to the legislation to prevent the cut to the health component of Universal Credit.
It was hardly Labour’s first rocky moment in the Commons, with unpopular policies such as the Winter Fuel Payment cut and the refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap causing them headaches over the course of the last 12 months.
Speaking exclusively to the Sunday National, Professor Curtice said Labour are now paying for the “lack of vision” they failed to present to the public in the run-up to the General Election.
“The complaint the public had before the election was ‘well, we don’t really know what they stand for, what is Starmer’s vision?’” said Curtice.
“Once you hit the problems of government, if you don’t have a story, it’s much easier for you to be seen to be buffeted by events.
“It’s very striking I think, if you listen or read any of the speeches ministers have made recently about ‘our successes’, and they come up with this enormously long list of things they’ve achieved. What they don’t come up with is a two- or three-point summary that says, ‘this is the big picture of what we have done’.”
Failure to do the groundwork
On Friday, Labour's problems mounted as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would be launching a new left-wing party which he described as a "real alternative", backed by former Labour MP Zarah Sultana.
Corbyn said the Labour Government had "refused to deliver the change people expected" adding that "poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable".
Reflecting on difficulties Labour faced in getting the welfare bill through Parliament – mainly because of unpopular proposals to change the eligibility criteria for PIP - Curtice said it was clear in the run-up to the General Election that Labour “campaigned to win” but “did not campaign for office” in their failure to prepare the public for their policy agenda.
“This is not the first Labour government to try to reduce the welfare bill,” Curtice went on.
“It was very much what New Labour were about. Now, they hit some parliamentary trouble, but the crucial difference was this – before 1997 Blair was attacking [Margaret] Thatcher for wasting money on unemployment benefit.
“Blair prepared the ground and although people didn’t necessarily entirely believe it beforehand, once they [Labour] did it, you saw voters falling behind the message.
He added: “A lot of this is the result of how Labour positioned themselves beforehand or the things they didn’t do beforehand, then those weaknesses then become evident as you have to make tough decisions in government.”
Curtice said despite the difficulties Starmer has faced, he has managed to carve an image of himself as “unflappable” when it comes to dealing with bad news, but that has also come with problems.
“Because he is in some senses so bland, Starmer still comes across as completely unflappable,” he said.
“The problem is what he doesn’t do is jump up and down and say ‘hooray, this is brilliant, this is what we’re trying to achieve’. It’s the lack of a positive direction [that’s the issue]. It’s that lack of a broad vision.”
Welfare cuts ‘an absolute travesty’
For Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick, a social security expert at Ulster University, Labour’s failure to communicate that broad vision has seen her feelings of “hope” last year turn to “despair”.
She said the policy-making process around the welfare bill had been “diabolical and shameful”, as she criticised how it was going to be “rammed through Parliament” next week with little scrutiny from experts or the disabled and sick people it is going to impact.
While the changes to PIP eligibility criteria have been parked for now pending a review, the health top-up of Universal Credit is still being cut for new claimants from £97 per week to £50 per week from April – a reduction to £217.26 per month.
Fitzpatrick said there was nothing in Labour’s manifesto to suggest “brutal” cuts would be made to social security benefits, as she criticised the party for “belittling” people it has “blindsided”.
“I think that is an absolute travesty that this hugely important legislation has not been given sufficient time for scrutiny, for expert input, for the input of those people who are going to be impacted,” she said.
“They are going to ram it through parliament next week and I just think that is immoral.
“It keeps me up at night. It’s beyond anything I thought was in the realms of possibility from a Labour government.”
MPs will continue to scrutinise the bill when it returns to the House of Commons on Wednesday.
Richard Burgon’s amendment would reverse the Universal Credit cut, keeping the health element at its current rate of £423.27.
Fitzpatrick went on: “I had hope when Labour were elected that we would see change. There was nothing in the manifesto to suggest they were going to make the most brutal cuts to social security since the coalition government in 2010.
“I think a lot of people who put their faith in Labour after 14 years over Conservative government have been blindsided and I think Labour themselves have completely overlooked that and belittled that. They are selling it to us as something they have to do, but we just know it isn’t.
“I was full of hope and now I’m full of despair and it’s hard to see any hope on the horizon in terms of the government’s really hard-line fiscal arrangements that they are not prepared to flex in order to [help] people who have had a really hard time for the last 14 years.
“I speak for a lot of people, I think, that feel an utter sense of betrayal that we have a Labour Party who are not proving they are the party of social justice and they are the party of working-class people.”
