My focus groups this month took place in Sheffield with Labour voters interested in other parties of the left; Bradford, with Labour voters tempted by Reform; Peterborough, with former Tories who switched to Reform in 2024; and Northampton, with former Tories who switched to Labour.
Though it has preoccupied Westminster, few in our groups had any grasp of the details of the China spying controversy, and many had not noticed it at all. For those who had, the affair seemed to combine shady deals with the kind of legal shenanigans at which Keir Starmer specialises:
“It’s just another aspect of weakness. We don’t have strong leadership. The current government are very legalistic and concerned all the time about legal processes, which creeps into a lot of things;”
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