In February 1900, representatives from the trade unions, the Independent Labour Party, and the Fabian Society gathered in London and agreed to form the Labour Representation Committee. Their goal was to ensure that the interests of organised labour were represented in Parliament. In 1906 the LRC was renamed, simply, the Labour Party.

Fast-forward 120 years and new polling from JL Partners shows that trade union members are as likely to support Reform UK as they are to support Labour. Incredibly, Reform leads among the memberships of some of the country’s largest trade unions. In Unite, 36% support Reform compared to 30% who back Labour. In the GMB, 31% favour Reform versus 22% for Labour.

Labour’s founding story shows that it has always been more than a purely working-class movement. But this movement is now out of balance, and the party needs to pay attention. The 2015 wipeout of Labour in Scotland, the Brexit referendum, the 2019 Red Wall collapse, and now the 2026 local and devolved elections: how many more times does the working class need to show its displeasure with our direction before we listen?

Keir Starmer’s 2024 victory was largely the result of a deep anger at successive Tory failures, not to mention the emergence of Reform. It also gave us a chance to show that we can lead in a direction that is meaningful for the working class. Yet the drift continues. There are two problems that Labour must therefore address: its platform, and its people.

We need a platform that holds together that “broad movement” envisaged by the historian G.D.H. Cole. Until now, Labour has tried to do this by being a “progressive” party — whatever that means. Instead, the party should aim for a bold platform built around fairness.

Working-class people look at illegal immigration and think it’s unfair that someone can pitch up on Britain’s shores as an economic migrant and seemingly jump to the front of the queue, ahead of them as well as genuine asylum seekers. They work hard, sometimes taking on multiple jobs, but can’t seem to get on in life. They see some people gaming the welfare system and wonder why that system doesn’t seem to be there for them when they need it. They are proud of where they are from, but perceive Labour politicians as looking down on them and their values. We can’t afford to ignore this growing discontent.

Then, there’s the problem of our people. Labour politicians and members used to be just like the party’s voters. They used to work in the same workplaces, drink in the same pubs, and follow the same football teams. But too often politicians (like me) have become the group that went to university, assimilated into the professional class, perhaps lived or worked overseas for a time. This couldn’t be more different from the Amazon warehouses and retail parks staffed by today’s working class. Meanwhile, many of Labour’s policies focused on ivory-tower issues such as Net Zero, or such common-sense propositions as the idea that a man can become a woman if he believes it hard enough.

Because of our life experiences, Labour MPs have tended to believe that all we can do is manage the economic status quo. The people in white vans and Amazon warehouses want a genuine stake in the economy, not redistributed crumbs from the table of regions and sectors that have benefitted from globalisation.

The tragedy is that Reform does not have the interests of workers at heart. In the balance of power between capital and labour, Nigel Farage would ultimately cave to capital and balance the books on the backs of those least able to pay. The Government must stop talking dismissively about “Reform voters” and reconnect with the people who in the past would have naturally leaned towards Labour.

All this matters for the remainder of this parliament. Could Labour cobble together a “progressive alliance” of the metropolitan middle class with an anti-Reform vote that could win the next general election? Possibly. But if we do, we will lose the working class forever. Then, Labour will have failed in its founding task.

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David Smith is Labour MP for North Northumberland.

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