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Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

Labour to change strategy with two weeks to go

The Labour Party is to re-shape its general election campaign strategy - particularly in Leave-voting areas - to try to turn around a stubborn Conservative opinion poll lead.

Insiders told the BBC that in the first half of the election campaign, a key error was that the Liberal Democrat threat had been overestimated, while the willingness of Leave voters to switch from Labour to the Conservatives had been underestimated.

In the last two weeks of the campaign, this will change.

Labour's strategy so far has been - in part - to emphasise that the election is about more than Brexit and to get voters to focus on issues which would unite Labour voters in Leave and Remain areas.

Labour's own polling suggests this has been a partial success - but there is a crucial flaw.


Home territory?

In some Leave-supporting areas, the defining issues for voters have become the NHS and the cost of living, with Brexit further down the list of priorities.

That should be good news for Labour - safer, "home" territory.

But, despite this, the party is still seeing its vote drain away in the very places that it needs to retain to deprive Boris Johnson of an overall majority.

So a new plan has been hatched and is about to be put in to effect.

It is designed to appeal to those who voted for Brexit, and to those who have other concerns but just don't think Labour is on their side.

In the next two weeks, if you live in a Leave area, you are likely to see a very different style of campaign.


Activists on the move

Labour will give a higher profile to shadow cabinet members who back a Leave deal rather than Remain.

There will also be a tour of Leave areas by the party chairman Ian Lavery, who ideally would rather leave the EU with a deal than remain.

The "honest broker" himself - Jeremy Corbyn - will be touring some Leave seats very soon too.

And more activists are set to be moved to Leave areas.

The message will be that Labour's Leave deal would offer voters a genuine choice - and that a new referendum will not be an attempt to remain in the EU by the back door.

There will be an attempt to explain the deal Labour is seeking to negotiate - and that it would protect workers' rights.

In other words, the party leadership is not opposing Brexit by opposing Boris Johnson's deal - it simply wants to find what it regards as a better one.

That may be a tricky argument, compared with the simplicity of the Conservative message of getting Brexit "done".

But it is felt that reassurance for Leave voters is necessary.

There will also be an attempt to challenge the Conservative narrative that a trade deal with the EU can be done in a year.

And there will be new initiatives around US President Donald Trump's visit to the UK next week, designed to highlight concerns around any post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

Beyond Brexit, there will be a new emphasis on "bread-and-butter issues", which some strategists think have been underplayed to the party's political cost, from extending free bus fares to boosting police numbers.

Labour's nationalisation programme will be sold, in part, as taking back control of key businesses from foreign ownership.

And in both Leave and Remain areas, there will be a stronger push on the NHS and a new emphasis on how Labour would make most people better off.

The party's line that 95% of people will not pay more in tax is under pressure.


What do the polls say?

The new strategy has been prompted by Labour's own polling, and was devised before the release of a YouGov poll on Wednesday. This new poll suggested the Conservatives would get a 68-seat majority, if the election was held tomorrow.

The YouGov poll, based on the views of 100,000 voters, applies national trends to individual constituencies - and predicts the Tories will pick up 44 seats from Labour, including in its traditional strongholds in the Midlands and North of England.

But it comes with a big margin of error and does not reflect local issues that can have an impact on polling day.

Another poll, by Savanta ComRes for the Daily Telegraph, suggests Labour is narrowing the gap on the Conservatives, with the Tories on 41%, down one point from the weekend, and Labour up two points at 34%, at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, who are on 13%.

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