LABOUR’S “deeply unpopular” attacks on working-class communities are the reason the party is losing support to Reform UK, the leader of Britain’s largest union for civil servants said yesterday.

Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union general secretary Fran Heathcote also hit out at the government’s reliance on a “false divide” between front-line and ancillary staff to justify proposed job cuts.

She welcomed Labour’s engagement in an address to the union’s annual conference in Brighton, but added that “if the government continues to attack working-class communities, it will lose the support of working-class people, and it will deserve to.”

Ms Heathcote said: “Reform isn’t winning because its message is popular — it’s winning because too much of what Labour is doing is deeply unpopular. 

“When you attack pensioners, attack disabled people and attack workers’ jobs or pay, then don’t be surprised if they don’t then turn out to vote for you.

“The government must learn that lesson, scrap cuts to public services, scrap cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance and disability benefits, and invest properly in public sector jobs, pay and services.”

Despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer scrapping Tory plans to slash 66,000 Civil Service jobs, “there are still too many threats to jobs in many areas of government,” she said.

“We have to take on this false divide that has been brought up again recently — between the back office and the front line,” she added.

“Whether it’s in the NHS, the police, the courts or the core Civil Service, the front line cannot do its job without the back office.”