Runcorn, just 15 miles from Liverpool where Labour is holding its annual conference, was lost by Labour to Reform UK in May’s by-election over two issues: migrants and its declining high street.
After a summer where the Government was on the back foot to Reform’s weekly hammering on migration; Labour is now in danger of overcorrecting. At the annual gathering, patriotism is in strong supply. There are more Union flags than a Golden Jubilee street party.
Every speech by a Cabinet minister contains an attack on Nigel Farage, as Labour presents the next election as a straight fight with Reform. Sir Keir Starmer has sharpened his attacks, describing Reform’s immigration policy as “racist” and “immoral,” arguing Labour is engaged in a battle for the “soul” of Britain.
Runcorn was also lost to Reform because a hotel that had once hosted local weddings had been given over to housing migrants. Last week, Farage took his party’s rhetoric up a notch, promising that not only would he deport illegal immigrants, he would also abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which gives people rights and access to benefits before they can apply for UK citizenship.
In that context Shabana Mahmood, appointed Home Secretary in the reshuffle, has been handed one of the hardest jobs in Government. In her address from the main stage, she announced migrants who want to remain in the UK on ILR will have to learn English to a high standard, have a clean criminal record and volunteer in their community.
Asylum seekers will also need to be working, paying national insurance and not be claiming benefits, she said. Mahmood, a Muslim child of Pakistani immigrants, is almost uniquely placed in the Cabinet to make Labour’s argument to voters.
“Patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller. Something more like ethno-nationalism, which struggles to accept that someone who looks like me, and has a faith like mine, can truly be English or British,” Mahmood argued.
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“There are some who we will never be able to persuade, but there are others, a growing number, who are on a path from patriotism towards ethno-nationalism, and this can be stopped,” she added.
Mahmood is going as far as Labour dares on ILR after Starmer insisted Reform’s decision to scrap it is “racist”.
Starmer has also been trying to make the distinction that supporters of Reform are not themselves racist, but it’s not entirely clear Reform’s potential supporters are open to the distinction. In Liverpool activists debated whether Starmer had got the balance right.
Some worried he had fallen into the Hillary Clinton trap by insulting potential voters. In 2016, Clinton called Donald Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables”, only to lose that election. Similarly, in 2013 an ally of former Conservative prime minister Lord Cameron described the party’s own grassroots as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”, which only went to demonstrate the chasm that had opened between the party’s leadership and activists.
But there is another front Labour is opening up to tackle the threat from Reform. That’s reclaiming dilapidated high streets from the curse of nail bars, vape stores and barber shops, or worse, being closed entirely.
New Communities Secretary Steve Reed is taking lessons from his own constituency in south London. In Norwood, an area which mirrors many towns with boarded up shop fronts, Reed looked at the root cause. Individual units are bought by investors, packaged up by banks and then sold as job lots to another investor, some of whom are abroad.
The i Paper understands Reed is planning on changing the law so that if an owner cannot be identified, the shops can be taken over and given to the local community to use. The units can then be used for business start-ups or other needs identified by residents.
In her keynote speech on Monday, Rachel Reeves said Farage is the “single greatest threat” to working people, as she issued a rallying call to her party to fight the populist right.
“This Labour Government is unequivocal: there must be a future, there will be a future, for steel forged here on British soil,” she said.
In Runcorn – some 209 miles from London – voters frequently mention GB News’s talking points even when they do not affect viewers outside the capital. Some in the Cheshire town even bemoan the Ulez low-pollution zone around the capital and talk of “Mayor Khan”, a Donald Trump phrase to pejoratively describe London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, whom the President has preposterously accused of overseeing sharia law.
There is an appetite for the sort of rhetoric Reform is currently using.
Immediately after Mahmood had finished, Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice called Labour’s approach a “weak, watered-down imitation”.
But it’s clear from Liverpool that Labour has shifted and is taking Reform seriously. From the Cabinet down to local councillors, the party has recognised their pitch to the country both isn’t good enough and isn’t getting through.
With the Tories effectively out of the ring, Labour and Reform are duking it out on migrants, steel and high streets.
This shift in the language and policies is ahead of Welsh, Scottish and local English elections next May as both parties battle for the GB News-consuming patriotic working class.
“We can reclaim the mantle that was once ours … we will be the party of the working class,” Mahmood has also told a fringe meeting, an acknowledgement that – right now at least – Labour is not.
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