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Exclusive: A number of Labour MPs in the North and Midlands have formed a group called the ‘Red Wall Caucus’ to fight the rise of Reform UK in their constituencies.
PoliticsHome understands that the new group is led by Jo White, MP for Bassetlaw, and contains around a couple of dozen people within the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The Red Wall Caucus has formed a WhatsApp group chat and held several in-person meetings. Members plan to use these gatherings to bring in guest speakers, including Government ministers, and discuss the best way to drive down immigration.
The so-called Red Wall is a term used to describe constituencies in the North and Midlands that have traditionally voted Labour over the last century but were lost to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election.
Labour succeeded in winning Red Wall seats back from the Tories in the 2024 election – apart from Ashfield, which re-elected Lee Anderson, the former Conservative MP who defected to Reform UK.
Members of the Red Wall Caucus want Labour to be more vocal about immigration as a way of neutralising the threat of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The right-wing party won five seats on 4 July and there are some signs that its support is holding up well ahead of next year’s local elections.
While Reform’s success earlier this year came largely at the expense of Tory candidates, the party finished second behind Labour in dozens of constituencies — suggesting Farage could pose a greater threat to Keir Starmer in the future.
In one recent meeting, PoliticsHome understands that the group talked about how Labour should be more vocal about the Home Office overseeing mass deportations of migrants from the UK.
Prime Minister Starmer on Thursday held a press conference in Downing Street on the back of new immigration statistics that showed net migration hit 728,000 in the year ending in June 2024. The Office for National Statistics uprated its estimated figures to 906,000 for the year ending June 2023.
Starmer criticised the previous Conservative government for the level of net immigration it presided over, claiming that Tory predecessors had run an “open borders experiment”.
“A failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck, it isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball,” he said. “No, this is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident.”
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