Labour ignored progressive voters. Now they're paying the price

As predicted, billionaire-backed Reform UK made major gains, winning councils, seats and vote share across England – making inroads even in places where progressive parties held ground, including parts of Wales, London and Scotland.

The message from voters was clear: people facing insecure work, soaring living costs and collapsing public services are desperate for change. When mainstream parties fail to offer a meaningful solution to a broken status quo, polarisation follows.

In the days ahead, Westminster will offer countless competing interpretations of what these results mean. But one fact stands out. Labour did not simply lose ground to Reform - it also haemorrhaged support to progressives, particularly the Greens.

That matters because, for nearly two years, the Government’s political strategy has been based on a dangerous assumption: that progressive voters count for less.

Instead of confronting the economic insecurity hollowing out communities across the country, Labour has too often chosen to fight Reform on Reform’s terrain - cutting support for disabled people, restricting the right to protest, and escalating hostile rhetoric on immigration.

The growing crisis of confidence in Keir Starmer’s leadership is a direct result of this approach – one that has alienated voters on both sides of the political spectrum. The increasingly visible fractures within Labour’s own party have been sharpened by decisions to embrace policies and rhetoric once associated with the Conservative right.

Among the most divisive examples is the Government’s proposed “earned settlement” model, which would fundamentally reshape how belonging is defined in the UK. By making permanent status ever harder to secure, tying rights more tightly to income and contribution, and treating settlement as something to be continually “earned”, these proposals would entrench a two-tier society in which millions of people are treated as temporary.

Keir Starmer cannot claim a mandate for the biggest overhaul of the immigration system in a generation after an election that exposed deep public disillusionment with exactly this kind of politics. These results have revealed the political bankruptcy of Labour’s attempt to outflank Reform.

As Chief Executive of Praxis, a charity supporting migrants and refugees, I know what is at stake if this politics continues to escalate. Reform has openly promised mass deportations, attacks on human rights protections, and punitive measures against charities supporting migrants in crisis. These threats are not abstract. In councils now controlled by Reform-backed politicians, people with openly xenophobic views will have influence over services that vulnerable families rely on every day. The consequences for homelessness, poverty and social cohesion could be severe.

If Labour wants to recover, it must rebuild trust with the voters who believed it would offer meaningful change by recovering a sense of integrity, political courage and moral clarity. That starts with abandoning divisive policies like earned settlement now. Doubling down on policies that mimic the logic of the far right will not restore public confidence, rebuild communities or defeat Reform. It will only deepen division, normalise the idea that some people will never truly belong, and further erode Labour’s relationship with the voters who expected something better.

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Minnie Rahman is CEO of Praxis.

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