‘People assume we will win by an absolute mile’: Labour fears voter complacency

Tom Rutland is sitting in a cafe in Shoreham-by-Sea reflecting on what drives him to want to become a Labour MP. He was just 18 when the party lost power to the Tories under David Cameron in 2010.

“I have spent my whole adult life knowing nothing else but a Tory government,” he says. “During that entire time real wages have not risen at all. Things have to change.”

Now 32, Rutland, a union official, is the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham. With days to go until polling day, and after pounding pavements for weeks, he believes he has a real chance of winning what has always been a Conservative seat on the south coast of England.

“We have worked it really really hard,” he says. “I have had so many conversations with people, even in their 80s, who say they have never voted anything but Tory but are voting Labour this time. They say no one has taken the trouble to knock on their doors before.

“There is none of the door slamming in our faces any more. They know the hard work we have put in. It really does seem to be paying off.”

As we walk towards the sea front one man stops him and asks for a Labour poster to put in his window, while others just wish him luck as he passes. Something is changing here, politically, that is for sure. Many people have moved to Shoreham recently from Brighton because property prices are a bit lower (though still high), and others have come down from London.

“We are very green, and eco-friendly,” says Wendy Aldrich who describes her job as “upcycling” furniture. She has met Rutland before and renews her backing. Aldrich says she voted for the Tories in the 80s because Thatcher seemed OK then, but would not dream of doing so now. “He even wears a £300 backpack,” she says of Rishi Sunak. “He is so out of touch it is unbelievable.”

A Labour win here, everyone knows, would send shockwaves along the south coast. The Conservative Tim Loughton, who is stepping down, has held the seat since 1997. At the last election he had a majority of 7,474.

It is not just this stretch of the coast that looks promising for Keir Starmer. Labour is also hopeful of doing well in Worthing West, Hastings and Rye, Dover and Deal and East Thanet further round the Kent coast.

The fact that such constituencies are now in play for Labour is one reason that expectations are sky high about the party’s chances of winning a big majority on Thursday. But that optimism, buoyed also by endless polls suggesting a landslide, has in itself created issues inside Labour HQ as the party approaches the final run in.

How do strategists prevent over-confidence setting in, and maintain energy among activists when so many people think it’s job done?

Yesterday, at a rally in central London for party workers Starmer had to perform a difficult balancing act: conveying an upbeat mood while tempering it with warnings about the dangers of slacking off. To bring them to their senses he raised the prospect of waking up to another Tory government if they slowed the pace. “It could happen, if we take our foot off the gas, if people think it’s all in the bag,” the Labour leader said. “Undecided voters, and there are millions of them. It could happen.

“So how does that feel? How do you feel about the future of our country on a morning like that? To see them back in power, and not just back, entitled. Emboldened. Vindicated.

Believing they could get away with anything.”

He added: “Nothing is decided, not a single vote has been won or lost, and each and every vote is out there. But this is the final furlong. This is the last push. The last mile, the hardest mile. Don’t take the risk. If you want change you have to vote for it.”

Senior Labour figures were saying yesterday that the most challenging part of this campaign lay ahead.

One senior figure said: “We have all had people saying on the doorsteps, ‘Oh we have voted for Reform or we have voted Green … but we really hope Labour wins’. They assume we will win by an absolute mile.

“That is the problem. If we then get a majority of say 50, which would be a huge achievement, people will say ‘only 50? What? How did you only manage to get a majority of 50?’ ”

In the next four days Starmer will travel across England, Wales and Scotland trying to get out the vote for Labour and argue the case for change after 14 years of “chaotic” Tory rule. Today’s Opinium poll for the Observer puts Labour on 40%, 20 points ahead of the Tories, who are on 20%.

Starmer began the final weekend of campaigning in Aldershot yesterday, visiting military veterans in the town on Armed Forces Day. The Hampshire town was founded by Queen Victoria as the home of the British army, and Starmer’s visit was a mark of Labour’s ambitions. Aldershot has always returned a Tory MP and the incumbent, Leo Docherty, had a majority of more than 16,000 in 2019. Yet polls indicate that Labour’s Alex Baker may win, and voters gave Labour control of the local council in the May elections.

The Labour leader picked Aldershot FC as the venue – the fifth football club he has visited during the campaign – and spent about half an hour talking to the two dozen or so veterans, festooned with medals and ribbons, who meet every month, listening to their concerns about housing and the NHS.

Afterwards he answered questions about Ukraine, Nato, Jeremy Corbyn, gender issues and racism directed at Rishi Sunak as well as concerns from his predecessor, Neil Kinnock, that Labour was not taking on the Reform party’s nationalist, populist agenda.

“I am concerned about populism and nationalism,” Starmer said. “I think in a time where in our country and across the world there are increasing challenges of every variety … it’s very important we have a progressive answer to those challenges.”

He tried to strike an upbeat message when asked by the Observer whether Labour’s safety-first approach risked losing voters to Reform. He said: “We seem to be the only party left that’s making a positive case for change. Because the Tories are getting more and more desperate and negative in their campaigning, I’m really pleased that we’re campaigning with a smile on our face, a spring in our step, and a hopeful manifesto about the future of our country.”

Back in Shoreham, Rutland had got the “no complacency” message. “We won’t be assuming anything. We will be keeping at it until 10pm on Thursday, all the way.”

• This article was amended on 30 June 2024. An earlier version misnamed Shoreham-by-Sea as “Shoreham-on-Sea”.