Focus on NHS and cost of living or lose former Tory voters, Labour told

September202024

Keir Starmer won the election because of a ruthless focus on winning over people who voted Conservative in 2019, but the party has been left with a “fragile coalition” of supporters who will abandon it if it fails to deal with the cost of living crisis and the NHS, a thinktank has said.In a report by Labour Together, an influential Starmerite thinktank, researchers concluded voters had “cautiously hired” the prime minister “on a trial basis”, and he was “liable to prompt dismissal” if his government deviated even slightly from focusing on voters’ priorities.The thinktank reported their findings to key No 10 figures, including Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, in a Cabinet Office meeting last week.The researchers, who are regarded as the government’s “critical friend”, said they were honest and direct about the challenges they believed lay ahead for Starmer’s top team.Officials were told that if the government did not deliver for voters, who have become more transactional than ever, they could easily face the same fate the Conservatives did after the 2019 election.

The report is based on a survey of 10,000 people across the country in polling and small focus groups, asking them why they voted the way they did.Labour Together had decided to launch this assessment of Labour’s performance once the general election was called in May, regardless of the result at the ballot box.“Middle Britain” voters decided the outcome of the 2024 general election, the analysts said.They summarised this group of voters as being in the ideological centre of the country, slightly to the left on economic issues and more “authoritarian” on cultural issues.The report notes it was Middle Britain’s “desire for change that mattered most” in the election, with Alex, a constituent from Leigh and Atherton, in north-west England, telling a focus group: “I’ve always voted Conservative, but it got to the point where I was thinking there’s got to be something better than this.

”However, Labour Together notes the party’s focus on demonstrating to people in “Middle Britain” that it shared their values was not without its cost, with Labour losing seats in Bristol West and Islington North to its left; Thangam Debbonaire and Praful Nargund lost to the Green party’s co-leader Carla Denyer and Jeremy Corbyn respectively,Jonathan Ashworth, the chief executive of the thinktank, also lost his Leicester South seat to the independent MP Shockat Adam,While the research does not include analysis of independent seats, which is expected to come at a later date, it does note that many traditional Labour voters in Muslim communities backed independent candidates because of Labour’s position on the war in Gaza,It highlights a strong correlation between a decline in Labour’s vote share and the proportion of Muslims in a constituency,“The depth of feeling about the situation in some, particularly Muslim, communities was profound,” the report states.

“Its impact on voting intention was understated ahead of the election, in part because high-quality polling of ethnic minorities is rare.”The issue cost Labour four seats, which went to independents.In the 17 seats where independent candidates finished second, Labour holds a lower average majority than it does where the Conservatives finished second.Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionHowever, the thinktank argues Labour’s biggest threat comes from the right, with the Tories being Labour’s biggest opponent, followed by Reform.Labour holds only an average majority of 14% over the Tories across all seats where they finished second.

With Reform, Labour’s majorities average about 25%,Morgan Wild, the chief policy adviser at Labour Together and co-author of the report, said: “Middle Britain needed to see that Labour had changed since 2019,It had,The 2019 Conservative voters it attracted were in the centre ground of British politics – without them, Labour simply could not have secured this decisive victory,“Elections are won in the centre ground – a basic electoral truth Labour has a habit of forgetting.

It mustn’t do so again: instead, the government must stay relentlessly focused on voters’ top priorities.”A government figure said: “The findings reinforce that if we take our eyes off why voters elected us, we won’t be here in five years.”

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Labour’s tax red lines have left Reeves with ‘one hand tied’ for budget, says IFS

Rachel Reeves has “one hand tied behind her back” as she considers how to balance the books next month in her first budget, a leading economic thinktank has said, after she ruled out increases to the four main taxes that account for 75% of all revenues.The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Labour had promised not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax before the budget, heightening speculation that Reeves will seek to increase revenues from rises in capital gains tax, inheritance tax and stamp duty on property sales.The IFS said there was a danger the chancellor would seek extra revenues from “economically damaging” tax rises that only bring short-term relief to the government’s spending deficit.The IFS said Labour entered office faced with “unenviable arithmetic” given that the previous government had pushed tax revenues to the highest level since the 1940s, while also imposing “big cuts to public investment and some public services”.“Merely avoiding spending cuts would – if debt is to fall – likely require raising tens of billions of additional revenue by 2028-29,” the report said

September202024

Rupert Murdoch’s REA group ups offer for Rightmove to £5.9bn

The Rupert Murdoch-controlled Australian property group REA has upped its proposed offer for Rightmove, the UK’s biggest online property portal, to £5.9bn.REA, in which Murdoch’s News Corporation has a 61% stake, has sweetened its initial proposal by about £300m after Rightmove’s board last week unanimously rejected the first offer as “fundamentally undervaluing” the company.The initial cash and stock offer, which valued the business at 705p a share – giving Rightmove shareholders 18.6% of the enlarged REA group post-deal, has now been upped to about 750p

September202024

Labelling Trump’s lies as ‘disputed’ on X makes supporters believe them more, study finds

Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study.The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published a peer-reviewed paper on their findings this month in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.“These ‘disputed’ tags are meant to alert a reader to false/misinformation, so it’s shocking to find that they may have the opposite effect,” Norris said.Participants were shown four tweets from Donald Trump that made false claims about election fraud and told to rank them from one to seven based on their truthfulness

September202024

Social media and online video firms are conducting ‘vast surveillance’ on users, FTC finds

Social media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms.The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states.The FTC’s findings validate years of reporting on the depth and breadth of these companies’ tracking practices and call out the tech firms for “vast surveillance of users”. The agency is recommending Congress pass federal privacy regulations based on what it has documented

September192024

Ben Spencer inspires Bath’s fast start to get revenge over champions Saints

Bath would have preferred to win last season’s Premiership final but maybe now this is destined to be their time. This bonus-point victory over the reigning champions, Northampton, gave an early glimpse of their capabilities and first-half tries from Joe Cokanasiga, Ted Hill and Ben Spencer paved the way for a strong performance that lays down a marker to all their rivals.If it helped that Bath kept 15 players on the field this time, unlike at Twickenham last June, they showed more than enough composure with and without the ball to suggest they will be a tough nut to crack this time around. A near faultless goalkicking display from Finn Russell, who supplied 13 points, was another plus and even an improved second half from Northampton failed to turn the tide.The duel of the two international fly-halves, Russell and Fin Smith, was another fascinating subplot on an opening night which, for the most part, made for an absorbing first-weekend aperitif

September202024

Charnley helps clinch playoff spot for Leigh with win against St Helens

Momentum heading into a Super League playoff campaign is certainly not the be all and end all: but the reactions of both these sides at the finish of a thrilling night in Leigh underlined how crucial it could be, as well as the different trajectories the Leopards and St Helens are on as the business end of the year begins.This was a night of huge significance for both. Leigh, who were ninth as recently as July, knew only victory here would ensure they guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. In the end, a 10th win from 12 games cemented fifth and a trip to Salford in the opening round next week.But that only tells half the story of a dramatic and compelling evening

September202024

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