Labour in peril - starting with its leadership candidates

'The truth is that Labour recovered (votes) amongst middle class voters but has suffered a cataclysmic decline among working class voters.'
'This pattern has continued over the last 10 years.'
All of the current Labour leadership candidates 'have argued that what lost the election was a failure to tap into the hopes of “aspirational” voters. There is not a shred of evidence for their argument.'
'Labour’s electoral base (on May 7) was by far the most middle class we have secured in our history.'

The comments in quotation marks come from an article written by Labour MP for Hemsworth, John Trickett (3% swing from the Tories to Labour) in the New Statesman (13 May.)

Trickett's article uses House of Commons Library figures to back his point.

Using the social / economic categories found in the Census, this is how Labour's votes read.
2005, the ABs voted 28% for Labour, the C1s 32%, the C2s 40% and the DEs 48%.
2010, the ABs voted 26% for Labour, the C1s 28%, the C2s 29% and the DEs 40%
2015, the ABs voted 27% for Labour, the C1s 30%, the C2s 30% and the DEs 37%.

3 million working class voters (not abstainers) lost to Labour over the three elections. (Blair started it. Miliband managed to push the ABs and the C1s up a bit from 2010.)

While the Labour Party has been chasing the 'aspirational' new man and woman, it has been losing its working class base. The SNP in Scotland and Ukip in the North of England have been winning a significant part of it over. And while the SNP has many faults, a right wing racist party that pulls upwards of 2 million of its nearly 4 million votes from England's white working class is a fearful prospect.

Ukip's 121 constituency second places were evenly spread between Tory and Labour seats. Ukip picked up the bulk of the decayed support for the Lib Dems in those seats. They have certainly taken over as spokespeople of the anti-Westminster revulsion as the Liberals crashed across large parts of England. Both the Labour Party and the Tories remain distrusted, even hated parts of the Westminster establishment - especially among traditionally Labour working class voters.

None of Labours' would be new leaders understand the complex class polarisation happening in front of their eyes but, in a period of growing inequality and economic decay, instead they hunt for the chimera of a vastly expanding new middle class to base the future fortunes of the Labour Party on. Labour already owns as much of the middle and upper classes as it will ever get. It should instead (but it won't) attend to its foundations.