Keir Starmer (left), Mayor of the North East Kim McGuinness (centre) and chair of the Labour Party Anna Turley (right), September 2025 (PA Images / Alamy Live News)
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Exclusive: Labour chair Anna Turley has privately warned her party that it must tackle immigration – but only “in a way that stays true to our values”.
In the wake of a devastating by-election defeat in Gorton and Denton, where Labour was pushed into third place in a historically safe seat, Turley addressed a meeting of socialist society executives over Zoom on Wednesday evening.
The Labour Party chair and MP for Redcar told the private online meeting of party-affiliated groups that “we have a big fight on our hands” ahead of the May elections in England, Scotland and Wales.
As Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood implements major reforms to the UK asylum system, Turley appeared to warn that Labour should not shift too far to the right on immigration.
First, she advised Labour to “find the right language to drive a wedge between the extreme nature of the Greens while also bringing back progressive voters”.
She continued: “Just as on the right we have a responsibility to pull back constituents who have understandable concerns about boats and asylum hotels. We have to address that in a way that stays true to our values on immigration.
“We also have to drive a wedge between ordinary voters with understandable concerns and the extreme, racist, divisive rhetoric of Reform, and the threat they pose to our country and our communities.”
Turley also appeared to criticise Labour’s offer to small businesses. She pointed out that while the government has provided “some extra relief for pubs” – which are receiving a 15 per cent cut to new business rates bills from April – those businesses are still facing “huge challenges” due to National Insurance increases.
She continued: “Minimum wage rises are important, but I now have hairdressers and other small businesses saying to me: you’ve helped the pubs, what about us?”
On the call, the Labour chair urged members and MPs to “think self-critically” about the Manchester by-election result, which saw Labour fall behind both the Green Party and Reform UK.
She explained that, in the lead up to polling day on 26 February, Labour estimated it was “marginally ahead on postal votes” and the outcome would be “very close” – but in the final few days “things seemed to break away from us and we need to understand why”.
Turley told the meeting: “Interestingly, our promise rate was holding up and it felt that way on the doors. But we need to understand the quality of that data. Were people being too polite to us? Were we reaching everyone in a household we wanted to reach? Were we taking away what we wanted to hear from conversations?”
The Labour chair went on to argue that there are now “lots of questions and challenges” about the impact that polling and “so-called independent bodies telling people about tactical voting” had on the Gorton and Denton result.
Tactical voting websites StopReformUK.Vote and Tactical.Vote recommended to voters that the best way to stop Reform in the by-election was to vote for the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer. She went on to win the seat with a majority of just over 4,400.
Labour was itself accused by the Greens of “desperation” when it distributed a leaflet apparently featuring a “fictitious” tactical voting company, Tactical Choice, which recommended a vote for Labour.
A source at the meeting told PoliticsHome: “People listening to that call would’ve been stunned. The leadership seem completely detached from what actually happened in the by-election. They’re treating this like a messaging problem when it’s a political one. They deserve a kicking.”
Anna Turley was approached for comment.
