Storm clouds are on the horizon for Labour and forgetting ‘Mondeo man’ could prove costly - Ismail Mulla
There’s a storm coming and unless the Government is careful it could well sink the Labour ship. With a captain who is clearly out of touch with not only his own crew but the public at large.
For all the predictions of a summer of discontent, the worst the Government has had to deal with is a few noisy flag wavers and roundabout painters. Middle aged blokes whipped up into a frenzy by US-based, South African billionaire Elon Musk, can’t exactly be classed as being representative of the nation’s mood.
However, when the elderly segment of the population starts shivering this winter because they don’t have enough money to turn the heating on, that’s when the Government will have problems on its hands. Big problems.
Fuel poverty is a real issue amongst pensioners and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
A report released earlier this week for energy firm Ovo by the Green Alliance think tank found a social tariff providing discounted energy bills for low-income households would lift more people out of fuel poverty than current support schemes.
Ovo said it supported targeting households with unavoidable higher-than-average energy demand, such as those who live with disabilities, are older or live in high occupancy homes.
It urged the Government and industry to work together to find a “better way” of identifying these customers in need, using data that existed across the public and private sector.
But what do you do when the number requiring support swells? More and more middle class families are now having to make a decision between heating and eating.
A lot of these households have already made sacrifices. Switching where and how they do their grocery shopping, taking measures to make their homes energy efficient, and those who could afford it even made the switch to electric vehicles in the hope of lower fuel costs.
The squeezed middle, as it is often labelled, has not much left to be squeezed out of it. In fact, the pips have stopped squeaking as well.
These are families that quietly go about their business. They weren’t the ones out busy painting roundabouts and they certainly won’t be on the stage at the Labour party’s conference, which starts this weekend.
The report for Ovo found that there are now nine million fuel-poor households in England, higher than at the height of the energy crisis. They needed an extra £407 a year to escape fuel poverty in 2024 – a 62 per cent jump since 2020.
This should be setting alarm bells ringing across Government and should be one of Sir Keir Starmer’s immediate concerns.
In advocating for a social tariff, David Buttress, chief executive of Ovo, said: “Families cannot keep living on a knife edge, worrying how they will afford their bills each winter.
“With gas prices still volatile, this crisis will not fix itself.”
While the middle classes in particular will keep on carrying on, the reality for Labour is that they will have a big say at the ballot box come the next General Election. That may be some distance away in the minds of Labour strategists but Sir Keir may not even make it that far.
Next year’s local elections may well see the PM booted out of Downing Street by his own party. And why wouldn’t they?
Starmer spent a lot of time forensically picking at Liz Truss and the legacy of turmoil she left behind. Signs are now beginning to point to Labour not doing much to improve people’s lot and if anything for many the situation has become worse.
Last week, I wrote how Starmer and his team needed to ditch the ghost of New Labour. But if there’s one lesson that they should be carrying forward, it is that of keeping those in the middle on side. Sir Tony Blair referred to them as ‘Mondeo man’. That may seem sexist in this day and age, and Ford may have consigned the Mondeo to history, but the sentiment still stands.
Aspirational middle classes are having to park their ambitions to one side. Quality of life for them has started to fall away. And now many of them are potentially facing the prospect of shivering in their own homes.
With the winter chill seemingly coming earlier this year. The warning signs could not be clearer to Labour.
The party’s conference will be full of empty rhetoric but that won’t pay people’s bills. As for the Tories, this should be home territory but the failure to sweep out those that made such a hash of it while in government means they’ve got little room to posture.