đź—“ Date: Sunday, 25 September 2022
⏳ Time: 17:00
đź“ŤLocation: Lower Galleria Room 1, ACC Liverpool, Kings Dock Street, Liverpool, England, L3 4FP
SME4Labour & Community Union Fringe: 4 Million Votes on the Line: How Labour Can Win over the Self-Employed
Event summary:
We were joined for this discussion by Maya Ilani & Kate Dearden from Community Union, Christian Wakeford MP, Chris Curtis from Opinium and Helena Dollimore the PPC for Hastings & Rye.
The discussion covered exclusive opinion polling that was conducted by SME4Labour, Community Union & Opinium about the views of self-employed people.
Community Union have deliberately and consciously made an attempt to unionise self-employed workers, as well as others who are not traditionally unionised. The polling discovered that self employed people are backing Labour 31% – 25% whilst in 2019 it was 36%-25% in favour of the Tories.
Furthermore the findings uncovered that Labour was most trusted to protect the rights of the self employed and are seen as the party that will be best for the self-employed.
Helena noted that there were 11’000 self employed people in Hastings, making it vital for our chances of winning the constituency that we reach out to self-employed people. This is a pattern repeated across the country, although Hastings is where it is most acute. Helena added that most self-employed people face the same issues those regularly employed do of crumbling public services, and that Labour can continue to win them over with a strong message in general.
Chris praised the work Community have done to unionise the self-employed. He argued that this has helped open the door to self-employed voting Labour on mass. The economic insecurity felt by many self-employed voters has drawn many to voting Labour rather than Tory as traditional. For Labour to win these voters permanently we need to make sure that we can offer security.
Christian followed on from Chris’s point that we must remember the humans behind the data, and that different people in different sectors will require different types of help. Christian continued that the Conservative Party has continually failed to support the self-employed, particularly those excluded from support during the pandemic, and that Labour is the only party offering support to do so.
The findings showed that Labour is in a strong position to win self-employed voters in the next general election but we must continue to offer policies that are relevant to the self-employed if we are to convert this in to votes on election day.
Speakers:
