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In the aftermath of the Green Party’s triumph in the Gorton and Denton by-election, and with local elections in London councils and other major cities coming up, Labour is losing the left progressive voters it could once rely on having “nowhere else to go”.
Now, the biggest study ever of these voters – shared exclusively with the New Statesman – reveals the true risk to Labour’s future of leaving them behind. The number of 2024 Labour voters moving to the Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP and Lib Dems now outnumbers those abandoning Labour for Reform and the Conservatives in a majority of marginal seats that will decide the next election.
Charts and graphs recreated by Ben Walker, data from “Revolt on the Left” by Persuasion UK via NorStat for 38 Degrees
Nationally, for every ten voters the government is losing to Reform or the Conservatives, it is losing 16 to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, Plaid or SNP (and ten to 14 voters in the marginal constituencies Labour won off the Tories at the 2024 general election). Over half (55 per cent) of the remaining Labour vote is open to switching left, compared with 21 per cent to the right, reveals “Revolt on the Left”, a new report by Persuasion UK for the grassroots group 38 Degrees.
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These “progressive defectors” are just as likely to be found in a marginal constituency where the next election will be decided as they are to be found in a safe Labour seat. In fact, the report finds 138 battleground seats where progressive defectors are the most strategically valuable voter group for Labour – particularly prevalent in Wales and across “Blue Wall” commuter-belt seats on the edge of urban parts of England.
As Labour struggles to land a strategy that will keep its fractured electoral coalition together, these findings – based on a survey of 10,000 people and randomised control trial-style experimenting – bust a number of myths that the Labour right has been clinging to.
For example, the conventional wisdom has been that even though Labour is losing more voters to its left than its right, it’s more important electorally to win Reform-curious voters over, because progressive votes just pile up in a few safe seats, usually cities. But this latest research reveals that across all marginal seats won from the Conservatives at the last election – which made up most of Labour’s gains – defectors to the left are actually greater in number.
Voters looking to abandon Labour for left alternatives had also been misunderstood by strategists, who believed they had “nowhere else to go” come a general election, with no viable alternatives to keeping out a right-wing government. The Plaid Cymru win in the Caerphilly by-election to the Sennedd, and the Green win in Gorton and Denton, have undermined that calculation.
Such voters had also been dismissed by the Labour right as rabidly progressive, out-of-touch members of the “lanyard class” who essentially didn’t deserve the respect of strategists. This is clearly not the case from what the report has discovered about progressive defector demographics: these are cash-strapped people in lower-middle-class occupations. Primary school teachers, IT support workers, administrators, people struggling to keep up with their mortgages, graduates on high rents whose salaries don’t stretch far enough. They have more socially liberal values than the average, but they are not some distant elite peddling “luxury beliefs” as Blue Labour would have them.
Steve Akehurst, the head of the research organisation Persuasion UK who wrote the report, provided a demographic archetype: “Debbie the Defector”. She is female, aged 38, a social worker earning £40k a year before tax, white-British, a graduate, and first-time buyer on mortgage with a high interest rate, living in Altrincham and Sale West in Greater Manchester. She voted Labour last time and Lib Dem in 2010 and 2019, but now intends to vote Green – though she is worried about a Reform government, and open to returning to Labour.
Recently, Reform, the Conservatives and even Keir Starmer have accused the Greens of manipulating Muslim voters for support. But again, to see progressive defectors as simply an expression of multicultural Britain, or merely the result of a backlash against Starmer’s Gaza position, is a misread. In fact, almost the same proportion of 2024 Labour voters switching left are white-British as those switching right (86 per cent and 88 per cent, respectively).
However, those Labour MPs, party members and voters pushing the leadership to articulate a more explicitly progressive message – and policy platform – are not entirely vindicated. It’s still the case that voters abandoning Labour for the right “count twice” in most swing seats (because in most of these places, Labour’s closest competitor is Reform or the Conservatives, and therefore losing one of these voters adds one to their main opposition), and this gives them extra strategic importance. They cannot be taken for granted either.
When drilling down into the distribution of “winnable” defectors – those who have turned left or right but are willing to return to Labour – the winnable left defectors (10 per cent of the electorate) are strategically more important than the winnable right (4 per cent). Most of this winnable swing vote sits in the “left bloc” of British politics, including in marginal seats.
It’s clear that Labour must do more to keep progressive defectors onside if it has a hope of winning the next general election. A strategy that could appeal to this group while still tempting over those “winnable” Reform-minded switchers lies in economic justice. The two blocs align closest around the cost-of-living and “a feeling that the economy doesn’t work for working people, and that change isn’t happening,” according to Matthew McGregor, CEO of 38 Degrees, the grassroots network behind the report.
“A focus on bread-and-butter issues that drive up people’s living standards like higher pay, lower bills and affordable rents, alongside a compelling story about bold changes made in the interests of working people, could change this,” he said. “Progressive defectors could be the difference between who is and isn’t in 10 Downing Street after the next election, making dismissing or demeaning them a perilous political choice.”
[Further reading: Left populism is here to stay]
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