Keir Starmer’s focus on winning over voters from the centre-right has delivered Labour a large but fundamentally shallow electoral win and a weak mandate to deliver real change, a report from a Labour-linked thinktank has warned.
The report by Compass, titled Thin Ice, argues that Labour should be less worried about losing 2024 voters to Reform UK and the Conservatives than to the Liberal Democrats and Greens, arguing this is the greater electoral risk.
Polling carried out for the report said of those who voted Labour in July, more than twice as many would consider moving to a party on the left as to one on the right, and that four in 10 2024 Labour voters do not especially identify as supporters.
The election brought Labour a huge Commons majority of 174, with 411 MPs to the Conservatives’ 121. However, this was done by winning just over a third of all votes, due to the distorting effect of the first-past-the-post electoral system.
The Compass report sets out what it says are the fragile foundations of this victory, noting that Labour won 131 seats with majorities below 5,000, and that its total of votes won in the 31 “red wall” seats taken back from the Conservatives was actually slightly lower than in 2019.
“They won [in those seats] because they were not the Tories, because Tory voters stayed at home and because Reform split the regressive vote,” it concludes.
“The 2024 general election was a one-off event in which unprecedented Tory ineptitude met almost unparalleled Labour discipline, but without any deep expression of what, if any, change Labour was offering.”
Labour’s election strategy was hugely effective in securing seats, it says. “However, the timidity of this strategy, resting on ‘not being the Tories’, is a timebomb.”
The report acknowledges the threat from rightwing parties, saying that in 202 seats won in July by Labour or other progressive parties, the combined vote for the Conservatives and Reform UK was greater than that for the winner. Of the 98 constituencies where Reform came second, 89 are Labour-held.
However, it also sets out a threat to Labour from the left, noting that the Greens came second in 39 seats, the bulk of them Labour strongholds, while Labour’s vote dropped in a number of big cities, and particularly so in many university constituencies. A further loss of votes in this way could leave many seats vulnerable to the Conservatives, the report predicts.
The polling carried out for the report suggests Labour’s vote is more vulnerable to loss to the left, with 48% of those who supported Starmer’s party in July saying they were more likely to shift to the Greens or Lib Dems, against 23% who were more tempted by the Tories or Reform. Labour should, it recommends, “be wary of any panicked swerves to the right to stop people jumping ship”.
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Compass has long argued for Labour to embrace proportional representation, and the report says a PR system would allow the party to be bolder, noting that in every election since 1979, apart from 2015, the total vote share for Labour, the Lib Dems, Greens, and Plaid Cymru was greater than that for parties on the right.
“By backing first-past-the-post, Labour narrows its path to power to only those moments it can win over default Tory voters,” the report says. “These voters only back the Labour party when the Conservative party has proved itself unfit to govern (like 1997 and 2024) and Labour positions itself as a ‘safe bet’ promising not to change anything very much.
“Labour does not have to wait in the wings for the right to lose; it can win on its own progressive terms.”
Neal Lawson, Compass’s director, said: “Voters now are less party-aligned and more volatile than they have ever been. If Labour fails to deliver in government, its huge but fragile majority will crumble, sending us on a bullet train to the populist right.
“But this isn’t inevitable. Labour can begin to assemble a coalition based on the UK’s progressive majority that will deliver lasting change and then allow it to win again.”
