When Britain’s Labour Party gathers for its annual conference in Liverpool next month, its main task may be tamping down overconfidence about next year’s national election. Almost everyone expects Labour to oust the ruling Conservatives after 13 turbulent years in power. If so, it would cap a remarkable reversal in Labour’s fortunes engineered by party leader Keir Starmer, who would become Prime Minister. 

Starmer, who was featured in a May conference co-sponsored by Progressive Britain and my organization, the Progressive Policy Institute, grasps something that eludes many U.S. Democrats: It will take more than a new economic offer to bring working class voters back to Labour. Restoring hope for working people, he argues, also requires building prosperity on a strong social foundation of “stability, order and security.”