Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy is now being seen as a key ally for Labour MPs who want their party leadership to spend less time chasing Reform votes, PoliticsHome can reveal.
Lammy, who replaced Angela Rayner as Deputy Prime Minister in the September reshuffle, argued at the Parliamentary Labour Party meeting on Monday evening that the party could win again by uniting the left with the centre ground.
Addressing Labour MPs, he said Labour’s current position was not exceptional, comparing it to Canada, Australia and Norway, where progressive parties have bounced back after deep mid-term unpopularity to win.
He added that the key to this strategy would be to concentrate on the cost of living and security.
Attendees told PoliticsHome that Lammy also criticised Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s comments, in which she said it drove her “mad” when she saw adverts “full of Black people, full of Asian people”.
Lammy told MPs it was important for frontbenchers such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting – who sat next to new Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell at the meeting – to call out such remarks, sources said.
After winning the deputy leadership contest last week, Powell said Labour should stop trying to “out-Reform Reform” and instead build “a broad progressive consensus”.
Defence Secretary John Healey afterwards took a swipe at this idea, telling ITV’s Peston: “I live in Rotherham. I’ve served the people of Rotherham for 28 years. If I was down at the Masons pub talking about the ‘progressive consensus’, people would just look at me like I’m mad.”
Monday’s PLP meeting was the first since Labour slumped to third place in the Caerphilly by-election last week.
Plaid Cymru won the Senedd seat with 47 per cent of the vote, while Reform came second with 36 per cent. Labour got just 11 per cent, despite it being a historical stronghold for the governing party.
Many Labour MPs have been frustrated by what they describe as No 10 continually chasing after Reform voters, with government policies and communications having a clear focus on reducing migration. Downing Street has been warned that this approach risks bleeding left-wing support to rivals like the Lib Dems and the Greens.
PoliticsHome understands that Paula Barker, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, who is from the party’s left, told the PLP that Labour was giving too much airtime to Reform UK.
She highlighted that Green Party leader Zack Polanski had put out a video about the politics of hope, which she argued voters were crying out for.
“We need to focus on voters available to us,” a Labour MP told PoliticsHome after the meeting, adding that the voters Labour has lost to Reform “were never ours”.
Plaid Cymru are currently on track to win the most votes at the Senedd elections in May. Nationally, Labour has fallen to its lowest ever rating – 17 per cent – in a YouGov poll published on Tuesday, which showed the Greens trailing Starmer’s party by one point with the Lib Dems just two points behind.
