The UK’s leading polling expert has warned Labour not to make the same “mistake” as the Conservatives and focus too heavily on immigration.
Professor Sir John Curtice cautioned against focusing too much on an issue over which ministers did not have complete control until the world becomes a safer place.
It came as Rachel Reeves defended Sir Keir Starmer’s attack on Reform UK’s plans to remove indefinite leave to remain for non-EU migrants already living in Britain as “racist”.
Sir John told an event at the Labour conference that the party must not “repeat the Tories’ mistake, where you focus on an issue where you don’t have total control”, and that improving the economy and the NHS was more likely to return voters to the party.
And in a bleak message to the party faithful, he also warned there was not an “obvious” glimmer of hope for Labour to turn things around.
Focusing solely on Reform UK would also be a mistake for Labour as the party is losing “much more support” to the Liberal Democrats and Greens, he said.
Even in constituencies where Labour was fighting against Reform, he said that loss of support to the Lib Dems and the Greens could cost Labour MPs their seats, adding it was far from clear that even anti-Farage voters seeking to vote tactically would opt for Sir Keir.
He warned that it was mainly former Conservative voters who were “feeding the Reform juggernaut” and were more likely to switch back to the Tories than vote Labour.
However, he said Reform may have “overreached” with their indefinite leave to remain policy last week, threatening to deport people who have lived successfully in the UK for years.
In a bleak assessment of Labour’s situation a year in, Sir John said the party had suffered “the worst ever fall in support for a newly elected government”, having entered power on the lowest share of the vote for a winning party and facing a “deeply unhappy” electorate.
Asked whether there was any hope that Labour could turn it around, he replied: “The honest answer to that is no.”
He added that “clearly, if by 2029 the economy is turned around and if by 2029 the waiting lists are way, way back down”, Labour might be able to recover its position.
But he also cast doubt on whether Sir Keir would be able to capitalise on such a situation, saying he had cast himself as “the friendly local plumber” fixing issues with “policy pipes”, when voters really wanted their leaders to be “the architect of Valhalla”.
He added: “The mystery of Keir Stamer, who is he, what does he stand for, that mystery, we are maybe two-thirds of the way through the novel, but we are still not sure where the body lies.”
With mounting speculation about Andy Burnham’s leadership ambitions at this conference, Sir John also showed a chart indicating the Greater Manchester mayor was by far the most popular politician among 2024 Labour voters.
While the prime minister enjoyed a net favourability rating of plus 13 per cent, Mr Burnham’s stood at plus 37 per cent, with almost half of 2024 Labour voters saying they had a positive view of him.
