As local elections approach, losing younger parents could be a nail in the coffin of this struggling Labour government.
Banseka Kayembe
Who votes Labour anymore? If you were to take a look at the polls increasingly it looks like…no one. However, opinion polls also consistently show that one group has stayed loyal to the party: younger parents. They are one of Labour’s last remaining loyal voter blocs, a crucial stabilising force in their fracturing voter coalition. But as we head into local elections next week the party is predicted to endure a lot of losses- particularly in urban areas like Birmingham and London, and almost disappearing in their Welsh heartlands. The last bastion of Labour Party voters may be part of that crumble.
Becoming a parent involves many things (I imagine) and in today’s world particularly, it is likely to be a politicising experience. The need for affordable childcare costs, housing security, healthcare, the ability to get a decent amount of parental leave, good education, and child safety are likely to come into sharper focus once you have a little one in your life. Some historic Labour policies explain why younger parents have tended to stick with the party: the introduction of child tax credits, increased maternity and paternity rights, child benefits available for all parents regardless of income, are just a few examples.
However, the recent Manchester by-election in Gorton and Denton suggests change may be coming. In the more progressive, younger parts of the constituency like Levenshulm younger parents had a more disgruntled, frustrated attitude to Labour; the party ultimately came third with just 25% of the vote. Younger, urban, progressive voters in particular are likely drifting away. So do younger parents still support Labour? And if not what does that mean for the near future of this government?
One parent I spoke to was George, aged 33. He lives in the West Midlands and has an 11 month old boy. “Since having a child, everything feels a lot more consequential. Having someone depend on you can make you so terrified for a future that you can't do much about changing. I can see how someone's outlook could become more individualistic when they have a family, but I have moved further to the left in the last couple of years. This might be because of the baby or may be a coincidence.” George is a long time Labour supporter and voter; he’s anti-austerity but also thinks the most “important thing to do is avoid a Reform-led government” a particular danger made more likely in his view, under our first past the post voting system.
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Bradley who is aged 41, has a four year old and a six month old and is based in South London grew up in a Labour and trade union family. “I voted Labour from the moment I was able to. I always voted Labour, sometimes enthusiastically under the Corbyn years when the policies overlapped more broadly with my own personal politics, and sometimes more reluctantly…until the last election when I didn’t.”
For many of these younger parents who tend to skew progressive, they are the millennial Corbyn generation, likely buoyed into an enthusiasm for party politics following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party Leader in 2015. His politics was characterised by being clearly anti-austerity and anti-war. Since then, the party is in a very different place; Starmer told Party members in 2023 that Labour had changed saying "if you don't like the changes that we've made, I say the door is open, and you can leave". The party is now plummeting in the polls, so I guess a fair amount of their voter base took his advice.
Laura is a mother of two girls, living in Essex and in her late thirties. “I usually vote Labour and actually had a full on dialogue with myself in the car on the way to work this morning about it…” She’s particularly worried about policies that impact all children, including child benefit (which was briefly capped by the government in 2024 but Starmer eventually u-turned and removed the cap last autumn) schooling, maternity and paternity pay, the climate and social media.
Despite feeling optimistic while Labour were in opposition and the early days of the government, George now feels let down about what they have so far done in power. “Starmer talked about human rights in the years preceding the election, which seemed to just dissolve as they chased the Reform vote.” Whilst they seemed “very competent in opposition and in the first few weeks after the election” and he definitely approves of some policies such as “the increased protection to employees and renters” which has resulted in scrapping no fault evictions and more paternity rights in the Workers Rights Bill, he also feels that “pretty much everything that happened in 2025 left me wondering what the hell they were doing.”
Bradley is even more dejected. “Labour have done literally nothing to help families like ours, arguably they’ve made things worse. There are some remnants of bits in the workers bill, around sick pay and stuff like that, that might make it through [to becoming legislation] after they’ve been diluted by capital, but other than that there’s genuinely nothing.” His disaffection with the party now runs so deep that winning voters like him back will require more than a few better policies. “If the pillars of neoliberal economic destruction and colonial warmongering” remain then “I won’t vote for [the party] in the near or medium term…I wouldn’t need just a policy u-turn or change of leadership but a full truth and reconciliation process, about what that institution has been holding up and implementing”. He thinks this is unlikely to happen.
Interestingly, despite feeling like they have had more opportunities and a higher income than their parents both Bradley and Laura feel like attaining what their parents had materially is actually much harder. “Both me and my husband came from households where our parents had separated and my husbands' family have been in social housing for a couple generations, so we are doing better in some respects than our parents' generation were at this point in life” Laura told me.
“I am fully aware my family is in a privileged position: we are home owners, car drivers, both work fulltime and we are in a position to be able to support the activities that the kids want to do. We are by no means high earners (we are both in the 20% tax bracket) but we are in a position where universal credit and other benefit changes (apart from child benefit) do not currently impact us. However my parents were mortgage free by their early forties, something we certainly won't be.” She feels that they work extremely hard with little respite on the horizon, “trying to balance jobs, volunteering, childcare and all the other things. It is never ending. I expected by now there would be some breathing space to enjoy life but with the rising pension age we face working for the next thirty years.”
Bradley similarly says “my cultural status and income is far above my parents who basically worked minimum wage jobs or didn’t work, but what that actually results in, in terms of day to day living isn’t actually that different? So it's almost like you have to hugely increase your income, double it or triple it relative to the generation previously in order to match the kind of basic things they had in life”.
It’s also clear that it’s not just what’s happening at home that matters to these younger parents - foreign policy may be a significant factor in how younger parents are deciding to vote. George was “pleased that we did not enter into a war with Iran - I was actually impressed with how [Keir] Starmer dealt with it.” However he adds that “the continued support of Israel's actions are big problems though.” Bradley says the “open handed and full throated support of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people” from the Labour Party has been particularly difficult to comprehend or accept. Starmer has likely never shaken off the image of a war crime cheerleader, uttering infamously on LBC in 2023 that Israel had the right to cut off water, food and electricity to Gaza following the October 7th attack in Israel. Under Labour the UK has only reduced its supply of arms to Israel by around 9% and according to Oxfam it provides approximately 15% of the components in the F-35 fighter jets which are used in airstrikes across the occupied Palestinian territory.
A number of the parents I spoke to are considering, or are likely to vote Green in upcoming elections, feeling abandoned by what they would have regarded as their natural home- but not all I spoke to are necessarily doing so entirely enthusiastically. “I previously voted for The Green party and probably will again- not with huge glee as there’s not a perfect fit between them and my politics but there is some kind of fit or overlap” Bradley tells me. “They don’t seem to consider- under the current leadership at least- the type of views I hold on a range of subjects to be abhorrent…which is basically the way I’ve been treated by the Labour party”. He confirms the Greens “have my vote”. George “may vote green in the local elections. I like their broad message and transition to more assertive campaigning.” However he adds “now that defence is a larger issue, this is where I would worry about a Green led government. It is the area where I definitely would trust Labour over any other parties.”
Tactical voting appears to be something that is on some progressive parent’s minds, with the goal of keeping out Reform UK. Laura tells me “[I] confess I tactically vote so the party changes depending on where I have been living at the time and who has the best chance to beat The Conservatives and this time Reform. County Council wise this has meant voting for Labour and generally for general elections and locals this now means voting for the Lib Dems in the area I live in.” She’s currently undecided about how she’ll vote at the local elections but says the “Lib Dems are pushing that they are the only party that can keep out Reform and The Conservatives, and they won the local government elections last time, so that is likely the case.” Having to vote tactically means Laura is “not voting for the party I would like to (The Greens)... my main focus is keeping others out.”
As the local elections approach, younger parents feel to me like a slice of a demographic at the sharp end of some of the hardest economic pressures in the UK. Those with young children are amongst those particularly reliant on the NHS, on the need for good schools, and a suitable roof over their head for their family. They have a huge stake in a well functioning state, something which most Labour voters are expecting a Labour government to deliver. Labour have made some welcome changes in the last autumn budget like a council tax surcharge on properties worth £2m or more or introducing hikes in gambling duties, but it strikes me as all quite piecemeal. It's a sprinkling here and there of a few more Labour voter friendly policies, perhaps the minimal amount they feel like they can get away with.
On the bigger more existential questions Labour seems lost. Tech firms like Palantir continue to have a large stake in our public infrastructure (it already holds a £330m NHS Federated Data Platform contract) at a time when many parents are deeply worried about the impact of social media on their children’s wellbeing, and maybe wondering if - given AI automation - their children will even have jobs by the time they are old enough to enter the job market.
Apart from a brief trip to China this year, Starmer seems unable yet to create a vision for the UK that unhooks us from a US that is not even hiding anymore how little its government’s interests converge with ours. It’s not just about childcare and schools, younger parents are asking what kind of world their children are being raised into. Losing younger parents may well be another nail in the coffin of this struggling government.
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