{"id":2730,"date":"2025-07-11T11:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T10:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=2730"},"modified":"2025-07-11T11:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T10:33:10","slug":"in-search-of-labours-working-people-the-paradox-at-the-heart-of-keir-starmers-first-year-in-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2025\/07\/11\/in-search-of-labours-working-people-the-paradox-at-the-heart-of-keir-starmers-first-year-in-power\/","title":{"rendered":"In search of Labour\u2019s \u2018working people\u2019 \u2013 the paradox at the heart of Keir Starmer\u2019s first year in power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

One year after Labour\u2019s landslide win, Keir Starmer\u2019s promise of \u201cchange\u201d through \u201csecuronomics\u201d is under scrutiny. While aimed at improving life for \u201cworking people,\u201d the policy reinforces old divisions and austerity logic. George Newth explores how Labour\u2019s rhetoric continues historic narratives rather than offering the bold shift many voters expected.<\/em><\/p>\n

George Newth<\/a> is a Lecturer in Politics and a member of Reactionary Politics Research Network, University of Bath<\/a>. This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s one year since Keir Starmer led the Labour party to a landslide victory. Starmer\u2019s manifesto, \u201cChange\u201d<\/a> had proposed \u201csecuronomics\u201d as a solution to the UK\u2019s many crises. This was sold as a way<\/a> of ensuring \u201csustained economic growth as the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people\u201d.<\/p>\n

The document mentioned \u201cworking people\u201d a total of 21 times<\/a>. It was clear this demographic had been identified as the key target beneficiary of \u201csecuronomics\u201d, otherwise referred to as \u201cthe plan for change\u201d.<\/p>\n

But there is a paradox at the heart of the proposal to deliver \u201cchange\u201d to \u201cworking people\u201d \u2013 one that helps explain the chaos of Labour\u2019s first year in government. By obsessively pitting this demographic against \u201cnon-working people\u201d, Labour is in fact not promising any real change at all.<\/p>\n

One of the key premises of Labour\u2019s securonomics is that growth must precede any significant investment<\/a>. \u201cWorking people\u2019s\u201d priorities are therefore presented as being in line with that of a fiscally responsible state.<\/p>\n

In the autumn budget, there was a pledge<\/a> to \u201cfix the foundations of the economy and deliver change by protecting working people\u201d. To do this, the chancellor needed to fix a \u201cblack hole\u201d of \u00a322 billion<\/a> in government finances.<\/p>\n

The refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap<\/a>, alongside \u201creforming the state to ensure [\u2026] welfare spending is targeted towards those that need it the most\u201d<\/a>, was framed as \u201cputting more money in working people\u2019s pockets\u201d. There has, meanwhile, been a continued emphasis on encouraging those on benefits back to work.<\/a><\/p>\n

Besides the clear deepening of inequality<\/a> wrought by similar reforms in the past, welfare cuts make no sense on an economic or societal level<\/a>. They undermine the economy, and the consequences put additional pressure on already underfunded social services.<\/p>\n

As highlighted by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR)<\/a>, such cuts fail to deliver the promised behavioural change to force people into work. People instead become more focused on day-to-day survival.<\/p>\n

Despite the government\u2019s last ditch climbdown<\/a> to save its flagship welfare reform policy its cuts are still forecast to push more than 150,000 people into poverty<\/a><\/p>\n

Such reforms carried out in the name of \u201cworking people\u201d perpetuate a pernicious myth of us v them<\/a>. Not only are people in work also affected by these cuts but people\u2019s lives \u2013 including their jobs, income, family situations, and health \u2013 shift regularly, making the \u201cstrivers v skivers\u201d divide both simplistic and inaccurate.<\/a><\/p>\n

Even \u201csecure borders\u201d<\/a> and \u201csmashing the criminal gangs\u201d were positioned as \u201cgrown up politics back in the service of working people\u201d<\/a>. This association of working people with anti-immigrant attitudes links to a broader homogenisation of \u201cworking people\u201d as both \u201cpatriotic\u201d and in search of \u201csecurity\u201d. \u201cFixing the foundations\u201d has been depicted in several social media posts as a patriotic act<\/a> via use of the Union Jack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, stage-managed photoshoots of Starmer<\/a> in factories with people wearing hard hats and hi-visibility jackets<\/a> give a clear impression of the types of manufacturing jobs the government believes \u201cworking people\u201d carry out. This gives an impressions that belies the reality of modern Britain \u2013 and an economy that is dominated by the service sector,<\/a>, not manufacturing or building.<\/p>\n

Old wine in new bottles<\/h2>\n

While Starmer framed his \u201cplan for change\u201d as a break with previous administrations, his \u201cworking people\u201d narrative betrays this claim as anything but.<\/p>\n

The idea that the deserving \u201cworking people\u201d are different and separate from people who don\u2019t (or can\u2019t) work has been deployed by government after government to justify austerity and cuts to services. It has always been useful to separate the \u201cscroungers from the strivers\u201d<\/a> and there is no sign of Labour changing course.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cworking people\u201d also builds on a previous trope of the \u201chard-working family\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

While initially coined by New Labour<\/a>, this term has roots in Margaret Thatcher\u2019s idea of the family, rather than the state, as the locus of welfare<\/a>. It was not for the state to take care of you but your own kin.<\/p>\n

Like \u201cworking people\u201d now, \u201chard-working families\u201d were those who played by the rules and knuckled down to earn a living. Previous Conservative administrations have depicted \u201chard-working families\u201d as burdened<\/a> by the unemployed, the poor, the sick and disabled and immigrants.<\/a><\/p>\n

Add to this, the signalling continues to imply that the \u201cauthentic\u201d working class<\/a> of Britain are solely white \u2013 sometimes also male \u2013 and typically older, manual labourers, who are assumed to hold socially conservative views. This is another divide-and-rule<\/a> trope which neglects the reality of the multiracial and multiethnic composition of the working classes.<\/p>\n

In light of all this, any real \u201cchange\u201d promised in Labour\u2019s manifesto has been betrayed by a continuity with tired and damaging tropes of deserving and undeserving people. This is contributing to the sense, a year in, that this Labour government is merely repeating past government failures rather than striking out in a new direction.\"The<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after Labour\u2019s landslide win, Keir Starmer\u2019s promise of \u201cchange\u201d through \u201csecuronomics\u201d is under scrutiny. While aimed at improving life for \u201cworking people,\u201d the policy reinforces old divisions and austerity logic. George Newth explores how Labour\u2019s rhetoric continues historic...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":2733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[108,110,116,122,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-policy","category-democracy-and-voter-preference","category-evidence-and-policymaking","category-political-history","category-uk-politics"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/115\/2025\/07\/Blog-Images.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}