LONDON — Keir Starmer leads a Labour Party that appears too big to fail. But nine months after it stormed to victory with an overwhelming majority, dividing lines in his army are beginning to emerge.
First apparent was a clash between upstart new MPs and longer-serving stalwarts, both of whom thought they were entitled to a bigger stake in Starmer’s government.
Then his most loyal MPs, who are fully signed up to Labour decisions on cutting foreign aid and welfare payments, began coming up against the “soft left,” which had deep misgivings about the moves.
Now another layer of tension is emerging — this time between “town” and “city” MPs, according to some inside the party.
Labour MPs representing smaller towns, many of which switched back to Labour at the last election, are cheering Starmer’s moves to reduce immigration and boost defense. But they are increasingly finding themselves at odds with their colleagues for the urban seats that deliver Labour’s “core” vote, who worry the party is pushing away its most loyal constituency for uncertain gains.
“It’s just a fact that there are going to be disagreements between some of the northern town MPs and the city MPs,” said one MP for a Yorkshire seat, granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak candidly.
Starmer and his lieutenants are under no illusions about how delicate managing a monster coalition can be, knowing the Labour Party’s propensity for infighting and having seen the Tories implode after winning their own massive majority in 2019.
Yet the specter of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party targeting those same town voters, and a looming crunch vote on reforms to the benefits system, could serve to entrench existing fissures even further.
Courting the towns
The Labour Party is still marked by a high level of unity in public. Very few MPs beyond the “usual suspects” on its socialist left have been willing to criticize Starmer or his policies on the record. There is also a genuine camaraderie within the ranks — a sense of hope and confidence fostered by being part of the first Labour government in 14 years.
Chip away at the surface, however, and it is clear that not all MPs feel they have an equal voice in the sprawling new party. In particular, MPs who now find themselves to the left of Starmer on issues such as immigration, welfare spending and the environment complain they are being taken for granted.
One long-serving MP in an urban Labour safe seat said the welfare plan in particular had left them “incandescent,” complaining: “This was not what I expected. We can’t just be slightly better than the Tories.”
Another MP confided in a colleague that they felt they had been “treated with contempt” in a No. 10 briefing on benefit changes theoretically designed to bring them onside.
As these MPs fulminate, another group finds themselves in the ascendant: MPs representing towns across the country that changed hands at the last election, some of which were part of the deindustrialized “red wall” that fell to the Tories in 2019.
The in-crowd goes beyond the red wall, however, and to towns that include classic swing seats, which tend to change hands more often than urban or rural seats and where votes are highly sought after.
As leader, Starmer has crafted an agenda particularly suited to the preferences of voters in towns, often described as socially conservative and economically liberal.
A senior party strategist described them as “people who felt the party had abandoned them — often working-class, not very interested in politics, and they feel economically squeezed.”
Cutting foreign aid, boosting defense, tightening welfare payments, vowing to slash immigration, targeting low-level crime and cleaning up high streets could all be expected to play well with this audience.
The strategist confirmed this group’s priorities were continuing to influence Labour in government, arguing it was not because Starmer was “slavishly following a campaign plan” but because “he’s doing what he believes to be right.”
As the same Yorkshire MP quoted above put it: “I’m sure if you’re speaking to a London MP, they’re not going to be cheering on what’s just happened with defense spending and foreign aid, but in my constituency, it’s been very well received.”
Will Jennings, a political scientist who co-founded the Center for Towns along with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, agreed that “those socially conservative voters in left-behind towns do seem to be in the spotlight for Labour.”
Alienating core voters
These tensions only appear set to grow as Farage’s Reform Party continues to rival Labour in the polls and is expected to gain ground at May’s local elections. Labour now see the populist right as one of their biggest threats, and are planning accordingly.
However, going after votes on the right carries its own risks. Jane Green, a professor at Oxford University in charge of the British Election Study, questioned whether it made sense given that Reform had so far taken more votes from the Conservatives than from Labour.
“Can they even win over Reform?” she asked. “There is a danger they’re likely to misunderstand that voter anyway and fall into stereotypes, which happens an awful lot.”
At the same time, she said, there was a danger of “alienating other voters, as well as attracting people onto an issue where you can’t deliver.”
Some MPs warn that Labour’s reputation has already taken a knock in metropolitan areas and could fall further, with votes being diverted to independents and the Greens.
“Welfare and Gaza both come up as examples of the inhumanity of the government’s approach to things,” said one inner-city Labour MP. “It’s not just one thing — it’s the collection of things.”
This leaves Labour with “exactly the same challenge the Conservatives faced in the 2019 period,” says Jennings, “which is you have this very broad coalition in very different places, and you have to keep it together.”
For the Conservatives, it was a constant tug of war between the “red wall” and the “blue wall” of more traditional affluent Tory heartlands. For Labour, it is the red wall and the even redder wall.
Trying to get a grip
Despite the cross-currents in the party, the size of Starmer’s majority means he’s unlikely to face a rebellion on a scale which could knock him off course.
Green observed that differences within Labour could be overstated, and “people’s economic worries and their sense of worry about whether things are going to be OK crosses all of those boundaries — it speaks to their existing coalition and the voters who are most vulnerable to switching away.”
Yet Downing Street is mindful that a party this large requires constant tending to avoid the fate that befell the Conservatives, when their coalition fractured and party discipline broke down.
Labour MPs are being kept on a short leash through a combination of various carrots and sticks, with an expectation that they should win every vote by as close to their majority as possible.
“Beating the Tories handsomely on every vote is right to want to do,” as one experienced Labour MP put it, “but also it’s about avoiding complacency.”
A Labour aide concurred, pointing out that party management was now “more difficult because of the size of the party — it is hard for No. 10 to give MPs the attention they want because there are so many of them.”
Starmer, together with his whips and ministers, has made concerted efforts to hold MPs close by inviting groups to No. 10 and handing out an assortment of non-ministerial jobs, such as “regional leads” and “mission leads.”
On the enforcement side, Starmer put down an early marker that dissent would not be tolerated when he suspended seven MPs who rebelled in a vote on the two-child benefit cap. Four have been welcomed back since for good behavior, but three remain on the naughty step.
A second Labour aide warned it could ultimately be counterproductive to keep “putting the fear of god into MPs who want to occasionally rebel so that they keep their seats in the long run and, you know, maybe maintain a Labour government.”
When legislation to enact the welfare changes comes to a vote in late May, MPs expect any rebellion to go beyond the socialist left and encompass seasoned MPs from the soft left.
One loyal new MP pointed out that “all we’ve known is the missions and the Starmer project,” whereas “existing backbench MPs had got into the habit of opposing.”
Those Labour MPs in urban seats who oppose the welfare changes may find themselves drifting even further from favor if they do decide to step out of line, entrenching the current divisions even more.
The same experienced MP quoted above said that was only natural. “It’s pretty straightforward really. If you don’t vote with the government, you can’t expect it to be loyal to you.”
