Labour is about to lose one of its most dependable demographics. In 2024, nearly a quarter of women under 25 spurned the party to vote Green; recent surveys from More in Common suggest that this group intends to abandon Labour in even greater numbers in the future. Thirty-three per cent say they plan to vote Green at the next general election – a share that dwarfs Green support in any other demographic. This shift from left to far left has largely been overlooked, eclipsed by fascination with young men, whose penchant for Reform has attracted disproportionate media attention. “Young women are moving to the populist left…” said pollster Scarlett Maguire in the New Statesman last week. “The consequences of an increasingly radical generation of young women could be dramatic and long-lasting.”
But young women have not left Labour – Labour has left them. The party is drifting away from its youth voter base, whose pro-LGBT, antiracist and decolonial mores crystallised on Tumblr about a decade ago and have remained remarkably stable ever since. Tumblr’s period of influence slightly predated Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and ended well before the Covid era, when the killing of George Floyd triggered a sudden global mainstreaming of far-left politics on the then-ascendant TikTok. Little separates the original Corbynistas from today’s young left – which remains – most significantly – pro-trans, pro-Palestine and pro-wealth transfer.
Starmer’s Labour is wavering on Palestine, an issue that continues to dominate university campuses. Starmer’s party banned military exports to Israel in 2024, but the measure didn’t stop trades taking place anyway; the Labour government controversially proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and has ignored the demands of hunger strikers calling for a divestment from Israel. Green policies align more closely with those of Corbyn’s Labour.
While Corbyn spoke in favour of transgender self-ID as Labour leader, Starmer’s party has mostly dropped the issue. A 2025 Supreme Court ruling went against a decade of left activism when it clarified that gender self-identification should not override biological sex, thus barring transgender people from using the changing facilities and joining the single-sex groups of their choice. Starmer and members of his cabinet reacted in approval.
The case was brought by For Women Scotland, a pressure group originally formed on the parenting forum Mumsnet. Mostly middle-aged campaigners have moved the political needle, but there is nothing to suggest they’ve had much effect on youth culture. When a group of Cambridge undergraduates set up a gender-critical university society in October, classmates protested in the comments of their social media posts. Is it any wonder this demographic has dropped Labour for the Green Party, whose spokespeople almost immediately protested the ruling?
The Greens are also boosted by the breakdown of the UK’s two-party system. We might once have expected the rise of Reform UK to prompt more tactical voting. While voter intention polls sometimes fail to foresee these strategic decisions, the current Green surge tells us a vote for a third party might no longer be a wasted effort.
Several independent candidates became MPs in 2024 off the back of a pro-Palestine platform. Leftists once coalesced around Labour in a tactical effort to keep the Tories out – now it seems ludicrous to suggest they might come back in. When Reform eclipsed the Conservatives in 2024, the party had only existed for a little over the length of one parliamentary term. What is stopping the new-and-improved Greens from eclipsing Labour?
The polls are no proof of an ideological shift – instead, they show a group of young women left behind by changing political tides. These women once stuck with Labour because they felt it was their best bet – now they feel able to move away from a party that no longer aligns with their values. Labour must reckon with the fact that in appeasing one group, they lose another – they’ve made their calculation, and it might not be worth it.
[Further reading: The fight for control of Your Party has begun]
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