Hywel Lloyd, Co-founder

Over the past year we have highlighted that much of the elections in 2025 and 2026 amount to a Slo-Mo rural general election. Now we have the results from May 2025 there is, as ever, an opportunity for learning. With learning and improvement being key elements of a mission-based approach, we hope the government is busy digesting and refining what is needed through the rest of 2025.

LCC has always been about Labour Winning to deliver for the many. LCC exists because of the analysis that Labour’s significant electoral successes (’45, ‘97’ 2024) have only come with a meaningful number of coast and/or country constituencies voting in Labour MPs to represent them. While you can still change things with small majorities, witness the successes of Wilson, many argue significant majorities give a more robust platform for governing and ‘delivering a decade of renewal’.  

Look deeper and we find a majority of 326 could be reached if Labour won all the 333 ‘urban’ seats it fights (308 in England, 18 in Scotland, seven in Wales), yet even within the ‘urban’ classification we have seats such as Cannock Chase, Mid Sussex, as well as over 30 coastal seats – towns and cities such as such those of as Lowestoft, Plymouth, Bournemouth, & Blackpool.  

The results of May’25 are a challenge, and many commentators have highlighted different forces at play. Taking a wider perspective from our work we would highlight a long-term dynamic. In a number of elections over the past 80 years enough of these communities of coast and country have voted in great numbers against a complacent government in Westminster – in 1945, to vote Labour in, to do so again in 1997, then in 2016 to vote Leave, and now in 2024 to vote out the failed Tories and Labour into government.  

Communities of coast and/or country are often spoken of as peripheral, or perhaps less patronisingly as hinterland, yet are places of identity, emotional attachment, and ready to contribute. Their communities and the natural resources they steward provide much of the country with food and energy, with relaxation and escape, while also being places where many people actually live and work; yet what do they get in return?  Not much…. As one MP put it they’re too small to matter ….  Though we note the population of rural England is larger than that of Greater London.

Perhaps they don’t get much because the Conservatives have forever taken them for granted, and Labour has (yet) to seek to represent them as well as it does communities of cities. That clearly didn’t happen in 1950/1 and Labour lost its majority, yet in 2001 Labour only lost six seats; now in 2025 Labour (still) has an opportunity to emulate 2001, or go further, and do the ground work to be the ‘natural party of government’, one that seeks to represent and unite the majority of our coast, country and city communities as one nation.

Can Labour in government then tell a story that helps unite those communities, that reflects their concerns and needs – we would say yes, as the needs and concerns of communities of coast and of country are those that Labour often manages to address in cities; i.e. helping ensure these communities have decent access to services that work for them, that support their economies to grow and their communities to thrive.  

How those needs are met and benefits secured will be different, given the geography of villages, of market and coastal towns; Conservative disregard also means this will require a greater share of the pot, given how underfunded and under -invested they have historically been.  Yet how cost effective might that be set against the lost 4% of GDP per annum of Brexit; with the added benefit of reducing the grievances that fuel parties of the right.

Let’s target the filling of pot holes, some judicious dualling of A-Roads, the re-population of high street shops, the strengthening of Town Councils to drive local regeneration, decent access to dentistry & GPs (going with the grain of our primary care ambitions), and giving these communities a fairer return on their work and stewardship, be that in the price of food, or their share of the local deployment of renewables.  

This a whole government task – a priority in the CSR, and in the Industrial Strategy, recognising tory means won’t deliver Labour ends. 

Labour can help these hundreds of communities become net contributors to the decade of renewal, growing the economy to underpin Labour’s ambition for the UK.