Labour campaign data reveals ambition for record majority
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Labour’s deployment of activists suggests it believes Sir Keir Starmer could win a record-breaking parliamentary majority, including in places where the party finished more than 40 percentage points behind the Tories in 2019.
Analysis by the Financial Times suggests that there are 431 seats where Labour either already holds the constituency or is putting resources into fighting. If it were to secure all of them, it would have a 212-seat majority, well above Tony Blair’s 179-seat majority in 1997.
Labour strategy data — drawn from a website where party activists put in their postcode and are advised where to focus their efforts — gives a clear indication of the breadth of Starmer’s ambition as he enters the final week of campaigning ahead of polling day on July 4.
In one instance, door-knockers from London are being sent 130 miles to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk to help overturn a significant Conservative majority.
“While Labour’s campaign emails and message from leadership emphasise that the election is not a done deal, boots on the ground suggest a different story,” said Ben Ansell, a professor of politics at Oxford university.
The party is running “a campaign that will squeeze Tory and SNP seats down to the last drop and if successful push Labour far clear of 400 seats in Westminster”, he added.
During the five-week campaign, Labour has managed to hold on to its commanding 21-point lead over the Conservatives, putting it on track for a significant majority.
A former senior Labour official said that while the party “would not expect to win all [431 seats] . . . it shows huge confidence. We’re definitely in landslide territory.”
The data also provides one of the most comprehensive windows yet into exactly where Labour is funnelling its resources and the seats at the vanguard of the party’s ground offensive.
The party is sending people from across 13 separate seats to canvass in Plymouth Moorview in the south-west of England, including some from 83 miles away in Bridgwater.
Oxford’s Ansell said that given the difficult choices every party has to make as to where to send campaigners, “Labour is making sacrifices that suggest real confidence in an unprecedented majority”.
Labour is actively deploying activists in 265 seats: in 151 of these, the party is telling its supporters to stay and fight, while there are 114 seats where the party is bringing in muscle from further afield, sometimes calling in activists from miles away.
There are 166 Labour-held seats where activists are being asked to go elsewhere, suggesting it is confident of holding on there. Labour has been turning off activists’ access to its canvassing system in several of these seats in an effort to push them further afield into target areas.
The party is devoting troops to almost every single seat where it needs to overcome a Tory margin between one and 28 percentage points. In itself, this would suggest at least a 62-seat majority for the party.
Beyond that, the party has selected dozens of targets it believes it stands a good chance of winning in the range between 28 and 44 percentage point margins against the Tories.
The picture is harder to discern in Scotland, where the party is not asking activists to move — meaning it is notionally competing in every seat.
Some of the most ambitious targets include Great Yarmouth — where the Tories won with a 41 per cent margin in 2019 — Chester South and Eddisbury, Redditch, North Warwickshire and Bedworth, and Cannock Chase and Tamworth.
The party is, however, declining to fight in many seats where it would face a battle with the Liberal Democrats, meaning that both parties are focusing fire on the Conservatives.
The data also shows areas where Labour thinks the local support is below the national swing: it is sending activists from eight separate constituencies to Caerfyrddin in Wales where the Tories won by an 8 per cent margin in 2019.
It is also telling activists in nominally extremely safe Labour seats, including Birmingham Ladywood, Bethnal Green and Stepney in London, and Bradford West, to stay put and campaign there in a sign of concern about a loss of support in areas with large Muslim populations.
The party is also keeping resources back to fight a Green threat in Bristol Central.
A Labour party spokesperson said: “We are working hard to deliver as many Labour MPs as possible in the general election and our campaigners are bringing our message of change to people across the country.”
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