Watch: Most state-educated cabinet in history – McFadden
The Labour Party has won back working class voters despite the challenge from Reform UK, according to Pat McFadden.
The MP for Wolverhampton South East said this was partly because Labour’s leading figures were from “ordinary” backgrounds – but also because of its centre-left policy platform.
Mr McFadden said voters in the Midlands had “deserted” Labour when it moved to the left under leaders like Jeremy Corbyn.
But speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, he said the party had won “a clutch” of them back under Sir Keir Starmer.
Mr McFadden, who has just been appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the new cabinet, has previous ministerial experience under former prime minister Sir Tony Blair.
In an article in The Times, Sir Tony warned Sir Keir Starmer he should be tough on immigration and avoid “woke-ism” or risk losing working class voters to Reform.
Mr McFadden, who was Labour’s national campaign coordinator during the election, said he had watched working class voters “desert” the party since he was first elected in 2005, when Labour held 12 of the 13 seats in the Black Country area.
“We were reduced to three [MPs] in 2019 – and that’s how low our working class vote had become,” he said.
“We won a whole clutch of those seats back the other night, so I think working class communities have found a Labour Party they can vote for this time in a way that wasn’t the case in recent elections.”
He acknowledged there would be challenges in “how to take this new opponent on” but said Reform’s biggest weaknesses were it’s “disparaging” of the NHS and “apologism for Putin”.
Looking around the cabinet table on Saturday morning, the day after the landslide election victory, Mr McFadden said he had been “struck” by the fact that “around that table are more people from ordinary backgrounds than has ever been in a Cabinet in British history”.
Sir Keir has appointed a cabinet broadly in line with the general population in terms of gender, ethnicity and class, with 92% of ministers educated at comprehensive schools.
Mr McFadden suggested that having people from working class backgrounds in power would help keep them grounded.
“It’s not a qualification for leadership itself… but I do think it’s notable, particularly in this country where so many of the leading jobs in the country, certainly in the professions, are not going to people like that,” he said.
“If you look around the country at who wields influence and who has got the key jobs in the UK you can’t deny this still matters.
“I think it’s at least notable, and I hope it will help guide the politicians around that table — remembering where they came from and trying to do things for people from similar backgrounds to their own.”
With two-thirds of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss’ cabinets being privately-educated, in comparison to 6% of the UK population, Mr Robinson pressed Mr McFadden on whether he felt “a governing class has been defeated”.
Mr McFadden responded there was “no harm in breaking things open a little bit” by getting away from “group-think” of “a pretty small number” of people who all attended the same elite private schools and universities.
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: The Pat McFadden In Power One will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 13 July at 17:30 here.
