October 18, 2025 - 3:00pm
Both Labour and the Conservative Party “have no real organic connection to the electorate”, according to Labour MP Graham Stringer. Speaking at the Battle of Ideas festival in Westminster this afternoon, Stringer highlighted “a complete failure by the political elite, cultural elite, and to a large extent the financial elite” in dealing with Britain’s problems, and argued that the establishment parties are ill-equipped to win back voters’ trust.
Appearing on a panel titled “Who’s afraid of the populist revolt?”, the Blackley and Middleton South MP claimed that the country’s traditional two main parties consist of people who have “come through universities, they’ve done PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford], they’ve been bag-carriers for MPs, and they work for charities or think tanks, and then go into politics”. He added: “On an individual basis, they don’t have a personal connection with the electorate.”
Discussing the two parties’ response to the 2016 vote to leave the European Union, Stringer said that “the establishment thought they only voted that way [for Brexit] because they didn’t understand, they were thick, and they were ‘deplorables’ as well.” The latter term refers to the phrase “basket of deplorables” which Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used to describe supporters of Donald Trump that same year. Her choice of words, as well as her claim that Republican voters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”, was widely judged to have been a contributing factor in her eventual defeat. “It’s not surprising that that upset a decent percentage of voters,” Stringer said today.
The Labour MP claimed that the term “populism” is “a polite word” for the impulse Clinton described. He stated that “there are always extreme, charismatic politicians who do well when the establishment is failing — and they’re failing at the moment.” Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is consistently at least 10 points clear of Labour in national opinion polling, while Keir Starmer’s party has seen its support collapse in previously safe seats.
Stringer drew attention to Government failures on the grooming gangs scandal and mass immigration, saying: “Our children are being abused on an industrial scale for 25 years, no one really knows how long. The political parties have made major commitments at the general election to bring down migration.” He added that “it’s not surprising that at a time when living standards are not improving for most, some people are going to the party reacting against it,” in reference to Reform.
This is only the latest instance of Stringer challenging the line of the Labour Party leadership. Earlier this week he criticised the Prime Minister’s plans to introduce digital ID and suggested that the policy “won’t be implemented”. In August he became the first Government MP to call for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. Last year in the House of Commons, Stringer praised Sweden’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and suggested that the UK should have followed the more lenient model adopted by the Nordic country. In his most explicit condemnation of the Labour leadership, last month the MP said that Starmer “makes too many mistakes” and “needs to improve dramatically”.
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