This last point underlines the threat facing Starmer’s party more widely. Its rhetoric and policies reflect the desire to win the support of ‘traditional’ Labour voters who defected to the Conservatives in the 2017 and 2019 general elections. Yet as Professor John Curtice underlined, drawing on data from the 2025 British Social Attitudes Survey: ‘London is now the most pro-Labour part of the country and actually the core Labour voter is a young, often first-generation, middle-class professional living in London’. As such, Ministers neglect the capital at their peril.
