Revealed: Why Keir Starmer’s strategy to tackle Reform UK could end up backfiring
Has Labour got the right strategy to tackle Reform UK?
Nigel Farage’s party cost the Tories dozens, maybe 100-plus seats at the general election. Now it looks like the party is hitting Labour too. But has Sir Keir Starmer got the right answers?
Last year, Labour won a landslide because the Tory vote collapsed, in part because Reform UK took chunks of their supporters in constituencies across the UK.
And here is the situation on 1 May this year – the national equivalent vote share at the council elections put Reform well ahead in first place. Success – this time at the expense of Labour too.
How big a threat is this to MPs? As a very crude experiment, Sky News has looked at what would happen if this result was replicated evenly across parliamentary constituencies.
Within the areas where there were county council elections are 77 complete Westminster seats with sitting Labour MPs.
This includes places like Wycombe, where Treasury minister Emma Reynolds holds. Or Lincoln, won by Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer.
Now if – for fun – we mapped the country council results from 1 May evenly across these general election constituencies, almost all those Labour seats are gone. All lost, apart from five. That’s 72 out of 77 Labour MPs losing their seats and mostly to Reform UK.
What if we took that swing an applied across the whole country, places where there weren’t local elections?
Angela Rayner in Greater Manchester and Jess Phillips in Birmingham would lose their seats.
Yes this is a crude measure – it assumes a uniform swing can be drawn from the 1 May polls – and local and national elections are very different.
But importantly, YouGov’s latest national opinion polls paint a similar picture to the council elections. Meanwhile, 89 out of 98 constituencies where Reform came second place have Labour in first. Labour MPs are feeling the heat from Farage.
The Reform threat is real. Sir Keir Starmer knows it – and this year has started chasing Reform votes. Slashing aid spending. Abandoning green promises. Hard talk about immigration and living on an “Island of Strangers”.
Sensible given the clear and evident Reform UK threat? Actually – maybe not. Look at the data in detail:
This block here is all the people who voted Labour in last year’s general election. Now thanks to YouGov polling, we know what people in this block would do with their vote now.
It shows Labour has lost more than half of last year’s voters. Just 46% still say they’d still vote for Sir Keir’s party. But – despite the PM’s strategy – they’re not actually going to Reform in large numbers.
Just 6% of Labour’s voters at last year’s general election – six out of every 100 – said they would vote Reform now. That’s all. So where have they gone?
Well, they’ve been lost much more to liberal and left-wing parties – 12% to the Lib Dems, 9% to the Greens.
So just pause there. That means the number of Labour voters who have switched to the Lib Dems and Greens, arguably on the left of the political spectrum, is three times the number going to Reform to the right.
Just 2% go to the Tories.
And much more seriously for Labour, 22% aren’t going to vote, don’t know or won’t say.
The bottom line is people who voted Reform have never backed Labour in large numbers.
This shows how Reform supporters last year voted in each election since 2005. You can see – Reform voters are former UKIP voters. They’re Boris Johnson’s Tories.
Let’s put it another way. While 11% of Labour voters may one day be open to voting Reform, 70% are at risk of going to the Lib Dems or Greens – seven times the threat from Reform.
And typically, these voters don’t like the hard line, Reform-leaning policies of Sir Keir Starmer recently.
The local elections show there is a threat to Labour from Reform. But our data suggests Keir Starmer trying to be Nigel Farage lite isn’t the answer.
Is Labour’s strategy really working?
Politics
Conservative Party pledges £1.6bn ICE-style ‘removals force’ to detain and deport illegal migrants
The Conservatives are pledging to create a new “removals force” to detain and remove 150,000 a year as part of a broad plan to tackle illegal immigration to the UK.
Modelled on the “successful approach” of the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, this new force would be given “sweeping new powers”, and over £1bn in new funding.
The pledge is part of the Conservative Party’s broad new plans to stop illegal migration to the UK, set to be unveiled by Kemi Badenoch on the first day of their annual conference on Sunday, where reducing immigration and creating “Strong Borders” will be one of the key themes.
The new “Removals Force” that she will unveil will replace the existing Home Office Immigration Enforcement (IE) and will be given broad new powers, including being able to use facial recognition without warning in order to spot illegal immigrants.
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Sam and Anne discuss how comments made by their leader will be received by Conservatives ahead of their conference.
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It will be given funding of £1.6bn a year, up from the existing £820 million a year, to increase the number of removals annually from 34,000 to 150,000 – which would represent “at least 750,000 removals” across a five-year parliament.
The Tories say this increase in funding would come from the closure of asylum hotels and “tackling the wider costs of our out-of-control asylum system”.
However, ICE in the US has been heavily criticised by politicians and the public in recent months, with the agency accused of arresting both legal migrants and US citizens and targeting people based on their race.
Expanding the use of live facial recognition technology is also likely to attract criticism from within the Tory party itself, on the grounds of it being a threat to individual freedom and privacy.
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Sky News’ Mark Stone speaks to an undocumented migrant living in fear of detention and deportation in the US.
Tories to withdraw from multiple conventions
In addition to confirming plans to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), announced on Saturday, Ms Badenoch will also vow to fully repeal the Human Rights Act, and leave the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings.
This, the Tories say, would “end the legal blocks that allow illegal immigrants, and in some cases foreign criminals, to stay in the UK based on flimsy claims”.
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The clamour from the right for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights has been growing – would it make a difference?
A radical overhaul of the asylum system would see refugee status granted only to those threatened by a foreign government, and those fleeing conflict or “less tolerant” laws on religion or sexuality would not be eligible, with the party saying “few people will qualify”.
The plan will also see the immigration tribunal abolished, with all decisions on migration taken by the Home Office with only limited rights of appeal in cases where officials have acted without statutory authority.
Immigration cases will be denied legal aid, with the Tories accusing solicitors of having “defrauded” the UK by “coaching” applicants and arguing there is “no need for lawyers” as people “should simply tell the truth about their circumstances”.
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Prime minister rules out leaving ECHR
‘Labour is fixing the Tories’ mess’
The plans come as Ms Badenoch faces continued pressure on her right flank from Reform UK, which has already pledged to leave the ECHR and deport up to 600,000 people over five years if it comes to power.
But the party leader said the plans put forward by Nigel Farage’s party are “nothing but announcements that fall apart on arrivals”.
She also said the Labour government offers “failed gimmicks”, adding: “Our Stronger Borders plan is serious and credible and backed by a comprehensive legal analysis. That is the difference the next Conservative government will deliver.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Conservatives’ message on immigration is: we got everything wrong, we won’t apologise, now trust us.
“It won’t wash – Kemi Badenoch’s party enabled record high net migration as removals plummeted, opened over 400 asylum hotels and wasted £700 million of taxpayers’ money to send just four volunteers to Rwanda.
“This Labour government is fixing the Tories’ mess by smashing the people-smuggling gangs running the vile small boats trade, closing asylum hotels, deporting foreign criminals and signing international returns deals to bring order to Britain’s borders.”
Hear more about the plans from shadow home secretary Chris Philp, live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am.
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The Conservative Party will leave a key human rights treaty if it wins the election, its leader Kemi Badenoch has said.
Ms Badenoch announced the policy to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ahead of the Conservative Party’s conference next week.
Despite many Tory MPs having expressed displeasure with the treaty, and the court that upholds treaty rights in recent years, it had not been party policy for the UK to exit it.
The move follows a review on the impact of the UK’s ECHR membership conducted by shadow attorney general Baron Wolfson.
Lord Wolfson’s nearly 200-page report said the ECHR had impacted government policy in numerous areas.
The report said this includes limiting government’s ability to address immigration issues, potentially hampering restrictions on climate change policy, and impacting government ability to prioritise British citizens for social housing and public services.
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But leaving the ECHR would “not be a panacea to all the issues that have arisen in recent years”, Lord Wolfson said.
It comes after the Reform Party in August said they would take the UK out of the ECHR if elected.
The Conservatives have increasingly come under threat from Reform and are being trailed in the polls by them.
What is the ECHR?
The ECHR was established in the 1950s, drafted in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, to protect people from serious human rights violations, with Sir Winston Churchill as a driving force.
It’s 18 sections guarantee rights such as the right to life, the prohibition of torture, the right to a fair trial, the right to private and family life and the right to freedom of expression.
It has been used to halt the deportation of migrants in 13 out of 29 UK cases since 1980.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Pic: PA
A political issue
Leaving the ECHR would breach the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the peace settlement deal between the British and Irish governments on how Northern Ireland should be governed.
Labour has in recent days said it was considering how Article 3, the prohibition on torture, and Article 8,
the right to respect for private and family life, are interpreted. The sections have been used to halt deportation attempts.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens are in favour of the ECHR.
A general election is not expected until 2029.
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