The Tories ignored voters' feelings and handed Starmer the empathy vote

As I presented my LBC show last Saturday I had to mark the moment. It was only 3pm and the new Prime Minister had called a Cabinet meeting and held a press conference. He’d made no bones to his ministers about the standard of conduct expected of them, appointed the employer of ex-offenders James Timpson as prisons minister and announced an immediate tour of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The new broom was already sweeping. For seconds, there was nothing to quibble about. The usual litany of radio phone-in complaints had to be halted. This was a new dawn, a new day and a rare interval of anticipation before the inevitable anti-climax kicked in.

I wanted to relish the calm before the storm. Now the results had been digested, how were listeners feeling? One political pundit said he was “ecstatic” and calls flooded in from people expressing “guarded optimism”, “relief”, “hopefulness” and “happiness”.

I had to ask what it was about a Labour Government that sparked such emotions? The answer was simple: empathy. Many listeners believed Sir Keir and the Labour Party would be more understanding of their problems and concerns than the previous incumbents. His Cabinet members struck them as people who were not born into privilege but had overcome hardship and obstacles to reach their current exalted positions.

They were now represented by folk who had walked in their shoes and would be kinder as a result. Touchingly – and perhaps a tad romantically – callers expressed faith that the new government would appreciate their struggles, elevate their hopes and hold them at its heart.

The Tories, they said, had ridden roughshod over their concerns, chopped healthcare, cut benefits and restricted their potential. Labour, they hoped, would set solutions in motion.

Of course, I also heard from listeners livid at the thought of socialists at No.10, fearful of Labour’s rule and horrified by the landslide.

We know that every new government basks in a honeymoon period before disillusionment kicks in. Yet I couldn’t help wondering how different the result might have been had the Tories bothered to tap into many voters’ feelings of being sidelined, ignored, irrelevant and unimportant under their rule.

If instead of telling them their priorities, Rishi and his cohorts had simply listened, who knows what the outcome would have been.