Hackney MP Meg Hillier has urged her party to promise more economic support to Britain’s “forgotten” voters and ward off the challenge of UKIP.
Mrs Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, said that the Labour party has failed to understand the challenges facing working class men and women.
“I think we didn’t do enough when we were in government,” the former Home Office minister said in an interview on Tuesday.
She added that men in their fifties and sixties had been “emasculated” by changes in their communities, such as the decline in manufacturing jobs. “We’ve got to get those people supported and skilled up to take on jobs.”
Labour’s Liz McInnes scraped to victory in a by-election in the formerly safe seat of Heywood and Middleton, after a UKIP surge cut her majority by a factor of ten to 600 votes.
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