“London is a Labour city” was always something of an exaggeration but it’s even more misleading today than it has been for quite a while. Polling just released by the Mile End Institute (MEI) at Queen Mary University of London suggests that the capital’s falling out of love with Labour. We can guess why its former supporters have gone AWOL but whether they can be tempted back or replaced is another matter.
It's still the case that Labour is doing better among London’s voters than it is across the country as a whole. Labour support is averaging a paltry 23 per cent nationally compared to 32 per cent in the capital. Sadly, however, the 11-point drop in the party’s support since the general election is exactly the same in London as it is across Britain, suggesting that Labour is no more insulated against disillusion in the capital than anywhere else.
And the similarities don’t end there, although they aren’t exact: for instance, very nearly three-quarters of Londoners who voted Labour in 2024 are currently sticking with the party, meaning they are (at least according to the very latest polling) considerably more loyal than their counterparts across Britain as a whole, only just over half of whom are showing the same kind of loyalty.
On the other hand, the quarter of Labour voters who have deserted the party seem just as prone in London as they are elsewhere to plump for a panoply of other parties.
What does seem clear from MEI’s polling is that it’s what’s happening – or maybe not happening – in Westminster and Whitehall, as opposed to City Hall, that’s the biggest problem for London’s voters: indeed the 39 per cent saying that the UK government is doing a good job delivering on its general election promises only just outweigh the 37 per cent who say the opposite.
Londoners weren’t asked directly about Keir Starmer but it’s doubtful that they feel more positively about him than voters in the rest of the country, who currently give him a net negative rating of -54. Against that, the -10 rating Londoners give Sadiq Kahn seems positively glowing, and suggests that the mayor may be helping Labour to keep more of its voters in the capital than the country as a whole.
All this raises three questions
All this raises three key questions. What is it that Labour has done to disappoint so many of its former supporters? Can it win them over again? And, if it can’t, is there any chance that it might be able instead to persuade those who didn’t vote Labour in 2024 to give the party a try in 2029?
The strategy pursued by Starmer and Reeves – symbolised by their commitment to welfare reform and constraining the spending of supposedly non-essential government departments – is built around the idea of demonstrating to a doubtful public that Labour are the proverbial “grown-ups in the room”. “Fantasy economics”, be it associated with Nigel Farage’s bonkers Britannia Card for non-doms or predictable protests against benefit cuts by the party’s own MPs, is rejected in favour of fiscal orthodoxy, even if that means making life harder for some of those for whom life is already a struggle.
At the same time, Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper are clearly desperate to show Labour’s no soft touch when it comes to immigration. Add to that a relatively generous settlement for Wes Streeting at Health, and, the argument goes, you have a recipe for re-election.
The problem is that, apart from the latter, none of that is what many of those who elected Labour in 2024 expected or wanted from a government promising “Change”.
Instead, they feel they’re just getting more of the same, along with a side order of “island of strangers”. As a result, unless there’s both a policy- and a vibe-shift sometime soon, then they may well be gone for good. And no amount of half-strength populism and “Iron Chancellor” chat will see former Reform and Tory voters flocking to replace them.
Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and the co-author of The British General Election of 2024, to be published this autumn.
