20 August 2025

Why the student movement is abandoning Labour

Across university campuses, the left is gathering support from those dejected by Starmerism.

In student halls and campus cafés, the conversation about Labour is quieter than it was a year ago – and colder. To many young people, the party feels less a political home and more a remote, managerial institution, obsessed with electoral machinations at the expense of its values. The war in Gaza dominates these discussions, not as a niche single-issue debate but as a moral litmus test. As the party leadership’s political messaging fails to match the urgency on the ground, frustration is turning to detachment, and detachment into departure. In the heyday of Corbynism, and before that under Harold Wilson, students were at the vanguard of Labour’s national campaign. But across universities, Labour clubs are confronting the same question: what happens when the next generation of activists fails to turn up?

This trend is already visible on the ground. Warwick Labour Club disaffiliated at the beginning of August, and they have now been joined by the defecting Newcastle Labour Club (now known as Newcastle Socialist Society), following a statement emphasising a desire to “promote true socialism”. These moves indicate a growing willingness among university clubs to distance themselves from official Labour structures and assert their political priorities, with Warwick Labour Club openly backing Zarah Sultana as part of its realignment.

At a national level, the stakes for the party are high: Labour’s youth membership has already collapsed from 100,000 to 30,000 since Keir Starmer became leader. And, importantly, student voters are worth far more than their immediate share of the ballot box. Win their trust now, and you can anchor them in the party for decades. Lose them, and they may never return – just as they’ve abandoned the Tory party. This is why the question of who is winning over these young voters matters so much: alienating them is not just a short-term risk but an open invitation for rivals to shape the values and voting habits of an entire generation.

These rivals are already on manoeuvres. But while Starmer sees Reform UK as the “real opposition”, that’s not the case on campus. Among students, Reform barely registers. Students across multiple campuses say the real competition for Labour’s university base comes from the left: the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, and a growing ecosystem of emerging campaigns, including the Jeremy Corbyn-Zarah Sultana vehicle, “Your Party”. By framing the contest as Labour vs Reform, the leadership risks boxing with an opponent that barely exists in the student imagination, all while ignoring the rivals already making inroads from the left.

Polling suggests this is already playing out. YouGov data from early August ties the Greens and Labour at 26 per cent among 18- to 24-year-olds, Lib Dems at 13 per cent, while Reform sits at 21 per cent. But include support for “Your Party” (which many pollsters are not yet doing) and the picture shifts. Recent polling by Merlin Strategy found that four in ten young voters were open to voting for “Your Party”, and that Corbyn is the most popular politician for newly enfranchised 16- to 17-year-olds. Stuart Fox, a senior lecturer in politics at at the University of Exeter, highlights the same trend: nearly two thirds (61 per cent) of 18- to 30-year-olds said they would never vote Reform, with the party’s base concentrated in deprived areas rather than the urban hubs of most university campuses. These students represent the fluid “progressive swing” who are loyal, not to Labour, but to their political ideals. Speaking to the New Left Review, the “Your Party” associate James Schneider has already identified “downwardly mobile graduates” as a key party bloc.

As a result, even university Labour clubs that remain loyal to the party are publicly softening the link between themselves and the government. Committee members have decided not to push the party line at all, fearing it will alienate potential members. For some, survival depends on emphasising their distance from the government, replacing policy debates with low-stakes socials in the hope of keeping members engaged; stopping campaigning with their local party; and, in some cases, openly opposing government policy. The perception problem is made worse by how Labour’s national student structures are viewed. Many students see Labour Students – the party’s official student wing – as “careerist, cliquey and parrots for the government”. Young Labour, the party’s official youth wing for all members aged 14-26, fares little better, described by students as “cliquey” and “disapproving of dissent”. There is a sense that the official channels have no interest in hearing student voices.

It is not only Labour activists who see the problem. The National Union of Students’ vice-president of liberation and equality, Saranya Thambirajah, told me that “students in particular remain overwhelmingly progressive [and] their voices can’t be sidelined because of fear over a small minority drifting to the far right… if Labour is worried about losing young voters, and students in particular, it shouldn’t stray too far from its core values and principles… to trust Labour, they [students] need to see principles they recognise”. As one St Andrews student described, it was once far easier to persuade people Labour was “fighting on the right side”, but that moral confidence has eroded. If the party fails to address this, it risks more than losing votes in the next election.

None of this means young activists want Labour to fail. Many – myself included – are deeply invested in the party’s success and recognise the potential of aspects of Starmer’s agenda. But good policy on paper is not enough if the party appears unwilling to speak to the moral concerns animating students now. On campuses, the Greens and Lib Dems, as well as the emerging “Your Party”, are increasingly seen as offering spaces where progressive concerns are heard rather than managed, and where support for movements like Palestinian solidarity is not treated as a political liability. Fundamentally, Labour’s student societies cannot compete if their national counterpart treats these priorities as secondary to defending against a right-wing threat that most young people have already ruled out.

Young people are not demanding perfection from Labour, but they are demanding principles they can recognise, and a party that treats their priorities as part of its own. University Labour clubs are not just recruitment hubs for young Labour voters; they are training grounds for future campaign organisers, councillors, MPs and ministers. Lose them, and you lose one of the pillars upholding the modern Labour Party.