In April 2020, Sir Keir Starmer was chosen with 56 per cent of the votes as the new leader of Labour preceding Jeremy Corbin.
The former Human rights lawyer and Shadow Secretary of Brexit rapidly rose through the ranks of elected politics.
Now Labour’s Shadow Brexit Minister is set to bring the party together after a four-year division inside Labour, but the working-class voters belong to the Tories now.
Although after Keir Starmer was chosen as the leader of Labour, support for Labour jumped but Starmer’s party could not win voters despite Johnson’s flawed response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unfortunate for its new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, just won over 4 per cent of votes over Johnson’s Tory in an internal Labour polling conducted in 2019.
Labour Plans to Focus on Patriotism to Win Back Voters Lost to Tory
Labour experienced its worst defeat since 1935 in 2019 and its nemesis Tory candidate Boris Johnson won the vote of the working-class.
The Labour leader is adapting a pro-family and patriotic ground to win back working-class voters and in the long run the seats that the Tories took from them at the latest election.
According to a leaked Labour internal strategy document reported by the Guardian, the party has to use the Union flag, praise veterans and dressing smartly.
The rebranding effort is aimed at winning back the trust of disillusioned voters as the document shows.
These votes are meant to bring back the newly branded “foundation seats” formerly known as the “red wall” seats that were taken away from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019.
The strategy seems to be controversial as the voters now are confused about what they stand for and what the purpose is, and also who they represent.
Some Labour officials who have reviewed the document suggest that the language is alarming, and they believe the leadership has not added up with the nationalistic sentiments it beseeches.
Labour head of research said: “I don’t know anything about the Labour Party at the moment, they have been way too quiet” and “he [Starmer] needs to stop sitting on the fence”.
Labour has long been on both sides of the two demographic groups the urban white-collar left-wingers and blue-collar workers in the northern industrial heartlands.
Johnson won the pro-Brexit working-class voters from Labour and Starmer is unlikely to be able to win them back.
Brexit Won Johnson the Low-Income Voters
A report found out that 45.4 percent of low-income voters supported the Tories in caparison to 30.6 percent backing Labour.
The study suggests that Johnson has gained over 15-point lead over Sir Keir Starmer among the voters on low incomes.
Boris Johnson’s election landslide in 2019 was because the low-income voters supported him.
The report stated that: “The Conservatives are no longer the party of the rich, while Labour is no longer the party of the poor.
“The Labour Party that Sir Keir Starmer recently became leader of is today just as popular among the wealthy as it is among those on low incomes. Both parties have inverted their traditional support base.”
Low-income voters are the most affected by the economic aftershock of the Covid-19 crisis and their votes remain as, if not more, crucial with the UK trying to move out of the coronavirus pandemic crisis.
Analyst Matthew Goodwin said: “Both parties need to work hard to appeal to this group, which is now badly affected by the coronavirus crisis.
“Low-income voters remain crucial and their votes are likely to remain volatile as the country moves out of the coronavirus crisis.”
The report also suggests that the Tories were more popular with the minimum wage voters, and they swiped poorer citizens from the Labour for the first time.
In May, seats will be up for election in more than 140 county councils, district councils and unitary authorities in the biggest election in years which was delayed for a year. Elections in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments are also set on May.
The whole election process is deeply affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as most expectations state that the May elections turn-out could be extremely low.
Labour Is Left Behind in Recent Polls Amid Vaccination Programmes
Labour officials now believe that the best result in May’s local elections for the party is to keep the status quo, gaining no seats and losing no seats, safe and secure.
Only 4 per cent of voters who have gone Conservative are moving to Labour and the party officials fear they could lose council seats to the Tories too.
A senior Labour source told the Guardian that “There are no sign in any of the polling we have seen that we are going to make any advances whatsoever,”
Labour wishes to avoid big losses in May but does not look forward to big gains.
Labour left-wingers criticize Starmer for not disapproving Johnson’s Government approach toward the Covid-19 crisis. A private research shows that the Tories could win 66 per cent of the first-round voting in May which marks a devastating result for Labour.
Labour was shortly ahead in polls last April, but the Conservatives regained the lead in the latest Opinion poll for the Observer after a week wherein over 100,000 coronavirus deaths were recorded in the UK.
The poll was conducted prior to the news of the vaccines export row with the EU was released.
Labour’s progress has declined under Keir Starmer, down three points on 38 per cent compared with Conservatives up four points on 41 per cent.
The UK is under its third lockdown and the Covid-19 cases and death are reaching the highest record, but the hopes of the Labour officials winning over voters from the Tories and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in a debacle.
Boris Johnson has the chance to regain the Britons’ trust with Covid-19 vaccines that could speed up Labour’s fall as the vaccination programmes are more clear now.
Brexit, Another Brick in The Wall that Labour Faces
According to a survey conducted by the YouGov about Labour’s defeat in the 2019 elections, the second most important issue for voters is said to be Brexit.
Among the 500 voters who voted Labour in 2017 but defected in 2019, 19 per cent said Brexit was their main reason for changing sides from Labour to Conservative.
Most of the minority voters who chose to leave the party believed Labour was not ‘Remain’ enough. And also because of the way the party viewed Brexit was not intertwined with the views of the former leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
The survey concludes that Corbyn’s uncertainty toward ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ was the main reason his party was won over by the Conservatives who had a clear stance toward Brexit. That is what 13 per cent of the voters said about Labour being too weak on Brexit.
Starmer is now expected to keep the seats currently holds without losing any more seats to the Tories. But everything depends on what the few months leading to the May’s elections bring for Labour or their rival Boris Johnson.
