In Toxteth, a fast-gentrifying area of Liverpool that has for decades been the nucleus of the city’s 300-year-old black community, Saeed Olayiwola considered how the Labour government compared with the Conservatives. “I don’t see much that sets them apart at the moment,” Olayiwola said.
Since Keir Starmer’s government took power six months ago, voters in two urban constituencies, both represented by black Labour MPs – Liverpool Riverside and Tottenham in north London – have been weighing up the party’s decisions and talking to the Guardian.
Areas such as these, with historic and large black and minority ethnic communities, have long been loyal to the party.
The last election was no exception: Labour enjoyed a bigger lead among minority ethnic voters than it did among white voters. Support from black voters was strongest, at 68%, compared with 50% among mixed-race voters, 39% among Asian voters and 33% among white voters.
But research by the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe found that this support was an “ossified cultural and historical legacy” and that the party may not be able to rely on it in future.
There are early signs of this in Tottenham and Liverpool Riverside, where, in the July 2024 election, Labour’s vote share decreased by 20.3 points and 23.2 points respectively, denting the majorities of their MPs, David Lammy and Kim Johnson. Overall, the proportion of very safe seats across the UK fell and the number of marginal ones rose.
Six months on, black and minority ethnic voters in both constituencies are warning that they feel taken for granted by Starmer’s government.
“I can’t see a policy they have implemented so far that is any way left of centre,” said Laurence Westgaph, a historian and broadcaster from Toxteth, the historic neighbourhood at the heart of Liverpool Riverside. He defected to the Greens in July, having previously seen himself as a “loyal Labour voter”.
‘Labour has a long way to go’
Some are optimistic. Roxanne Crawford, 40, was among the voters who gathered at Toxteth’s John Archer Hall to debate the government’s progress in November.
Crawford said she had seen more job opportunities circulate since Labour came to power, compared with a Tory party defined in her earliest memories by “Thatcher the milk snatcher, Hillsborough and the miners”.
“(Labour) has a long way to go, but I think they’ve started on a positive note,” she said. “Out of all the governments we’ve ever had, Labour is the most non-racist.”
Others feel the party lacks moral clarity at a time when the “culture war has real consequences”, as Alan Kaishin Crawford, a psychotherapist who founded Ubuntu: Liverpool Black Wellbeing Collective, puts it.
MPs had not long been sworn in when far right-led riots erupted in towns and cities in August. Parts of Liverpool’s Spellow library were burned to the ground and, as Kaishin Crawford recalled, “our friends were spat at in the streets”.
For Michael Horsley, a co-founder of Toxteth’s Capoeira for All, at the centre of a thriving local scene of community interest companies and volunteer-led initiatives, Starmer and his government failed to set the course for the healing that the country so badly needed.
“(Starmer) clamped down in terms of punishment, (but) that was an opportunity to take on racism and xenophobia and he completely failed,” Horsley said.
‘I haven’t seen any change’
Even before the riots, the new government’s honeymoon period had been interrupted by its decision to cut the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.
The bitter fallout could be felt months later, on a cold morning when volunteers gathered to support the food bank Community Cook Up in Northumberland Park in Tottenham.
Among them was Angie, 64, who had been inspired by Starmer’s campaigning message of change.
“But the first thing he did was to stop our benefit for the old people’s heating,” she said. “I’m shocked that Labour cannot support the poor. That’s why we voted for them to support us, instead of the Conservatives that are for the rich. But I haven’t seen any change. I’m still waiting.”
Asked how she felt about Lammy, the local MP and Starmer’s foreign secretary, Angie laughed. “I don’t know what to say. Lammy is a rich man now … He doesn’t understand us any more.”
Among the volunteers at the food bank in November was a Palestinian man whose family were trapped in Gaza. He cried when asked how he was doing.
Lammy saw up close the frustration about the Middle East crisis in his constituency when he made an unexpected appearance at a private meeting about mental health and wellbeing services at Chestnuts community centre in Tottenham. In the room were members of Tottenham and Haringey Palestine Action, who, seizing the moment, asked: “What about the starving children in Gaza?”
In Toxteth, Jeannette Francis, a retired nurse, said she was concerned that Labour had become “removed from empathy”.
“But we still vote Labour, because a lot of us don’t like coming out of our comfort zone, whether it’s serving us or not,” she said.
Chiming with warnings that concern about Gaza is not limited to Muslims, voters interviewed by the Guardian were united in concern that Labour was not reflecting its values on the issue.
“Obscene”, was how Nusrat Caratella, a 41-year-old therapist, described Labour’s position. “Bernie Grant (Lammy’s predecessor as MP for Tottenham) would be turning in his grave,” said Patrick Graham.
In October, the Commonwealth heads of government meeting took place in Samoa, and Starmer’s apparent dismissal of calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism also raised questions about how well Labour understands its mandate from black voters.
“Starmer’s whole stance is just a continuation of Tory policies, the denial of reparations, the refusing to apologise,” Graham said. In Liverpool, where Graham has lived and served Toxteth all his life through campaigning, youth work and journalism, black voters are all too aware of where much of the city’s wealth came from.
No one is asking for handouts. For Michelle Peterkin-Walker, the founder of Akoma Arts, meaningful reparation would be the revival of the Merseyside Caribbean centre, closed since 2013. Liverpool council says “early discussions” with campaigners are under way, and £1.3m has been awarded to community groups in Toxteth’s L8 postcode over the next five years.
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What’s also needed, in the view of Akil Morgan, a co-founder of Capoeira for All alongside Horsley, is proper acknowledgment of how slavery and colonialism shaped the injustices of the present, at home and abroad, and contributed to the British economy, as well as recognition of its victims.
“Racism is in the bricks and mortar – we still live in the shadow of slavery,” Morgan said of Liverpool, a city that Johnson, before becoming its first black MP, described as having a “deep-seated issue of institutional racism” with black, Asian and minority ethnic residents paid less on average than white residents.
Morgan feels Johnson, the Riverside MP, is “working hard to change the system from within”.
Liverpool’s Labour-led council says it is “reflecting upon how it can improve racial equality”, developing an anti-racism strategy, centred around residents’ concerns, promising “actionable, measurable steps” to progress change. Meanwhile, the Labour government’s manifesto had promised a Race Equality Act before announcing the drafting of a rebranded equality (race and disability) bill, which campaigners fear indicates a change in focus.
‘That loss of hope’
Generational inequality is also a concern.
“It feels like the first generation where we’re doing worse than the generation above,” Kaishin Crawford said. “I was brought up on the lie that things improve – that’s absolute bullshit. It hasn’t been the experience of any of my friends – we’re doing the same or worse. Social mobility is lower, our mental health is worse: that loss of hope, that comes from the austerity.”
More social and affordable housing, it seems, would go some way to restoring hope in central government in Toxteth.
There are worries that the Liverpool 8 postcode – where it takes longtime local Anna Slater an hour to get down the street because of the number of people who stop to stay hello – won’t survive gentrification and the rising prices it brings. Slater called this “the tightest, most radical and unique community in the country” and argued it must be fought for, saying: “We can be the example to others.”
Juliana Pinheiro Landim has just moved to Wirral – “for the same rent as a flat in Toxteth, I can get a house with three bedrooms and a massive garden”.
Westgaph said the exodus was accelerated by black men leaving Liverpool. “Many of my peers have left already,” he said. “Gone down south or to other countries. We’re disappearing, the black people who have grown up in Liverpool, from that heritage going back 300 years, the old families – because the opportunities don’t exist.”
‘We need to feel society cares’
Amid disillusionment with government, in austerity’s long shadow, hope persists in community activism.
In Tottenham, Community Cook Up had to leave the community centre it had operated in after Haringey council said it was creating a health and safety risk.
“So we said: ‘we’ll do it outside,’” said Alison Davy, the volunteer at the heart of the operation. The council says it is continuing to give support.
Carmel Cadden, 73, who has lived in Tottenham since 1988, also volunteers. “I wish we didn’t need to have a food bank – but it’s great for people who actually like to talk. There’s a lot of problems that get addressed: loneliness, isolation … A lot of people come. It’s not just the food.”
Still, she said, “we need to feel that there’s a kind of human society around us that cares about each other … unfortunately, the government seems very distant from that.”
Another volunteer, Beryl, an 80-year-old British-Jamaican, has come to expect very little from politicians after 50 years in Tottenham. “It’s getting worse. The streets are so dirty,” she said.
In Toxteth, Maleka Egeonu-Roby also puts her faith outside the government – though not in the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, whom she sees as “so not wanting to be boxed in, (she’s) not seeing the damage (her) comments can have” – but in the “grassroots”.
It’s a view echoed by Barry Chang, a beekeeper, who said communities must “unify” to help themselves. The bee colonies he keeps in 10 hives overlooking Liverpool “work together and live life for the next generation”.
Back in Tottenham, Haringey council told the Guardian it urgently needed “a fairer funding system” after the previous government’s “14-year austerity agenda”.
Tanaka Sekitoleko Dumbwizi, a teaching assistant, identified social housing repairs, lack of public toilets and leisure centre fees as problems all waiting to be fixed in the constituency and the borough. She is hopeful.
Asked for parting words for the prime minister, she said: “I’ll just encourage him and say: keep up the good work. We’re looking forward to him progressing and changing the country.”
A spokesperson for the Office for Equality and Opportunity said: “This government is clear that people’s race or ethnicity should never be a barrier to opportunity.
“We will root out racial inequalities and address disparities, including through our draft equality (race and disability) bill, which will introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers and extend equal pay protections to ethnic minority and disabled people.”
The Labour party, Lammy and Johnson were approached for comment.