In the same way New Labour was both a reasonable reaction to what had gone before and a revolution in its own right, the 5 Million Votes analysis must now be just as well informed by our past, as responsive to our present and as mindful of our future.
It must not be a way of fighting stupid, pointless and ridiculously bitter internal Labour Party battles, but of researching ways in which the party can return to power while offering the country the radical changes we believe are needed to our failing systems and institutions.
This isn’t about “getting our party back” but about getting our party back into government, then getting our country back on track.
Labour need to analyse properly what we do and do not know about the voters we have lost and the potential voters we have gained and stand to gain. I’d like to know what there is to know. What can be tested and what can be better understood.
Here are some things I think we know already:
Some of the voters we have lost have found new places to give their votes.
If we assume that the rise of votes for the other parties indicates that these votes have transferred directly, we can make a very broad assumption that one-fifth of them have gone to the Tories and one-third to the Liberal Democrats.
Some have gone to smaller parties. But it also looks like nearly half of Labour’s lost voters may no longer vote at all.
We have no idea what they want; how to bring them back to the conversation; how to get them to vote Labour once more.
Can Labour make an offer big enough to bring them back?
It’s morally right that we try to expand take up of democracy as much as possible, and while it will be a difficult course of action, I think it could also hold significant benefits for us.
After all, there’s a reason the Tories are bringing in so many measures to make it considerably harder to vote and considerably more likely that voters will become disenfranchised, and believe me, it’s not because they’re worried about voter fraud!
5 Million Votes can’t simply be a reaction to Blairism. But I do want to talk for a moment about what moving on from New Labour really means to me; to show why it isn’t as scary as it sounds to some and to sound a warning about chucking the baby out with the bathwater.
I fear that everyone with an opinion about New Labour for good or for ill have allowed certain myths to concrete themselves into our dialogue and our understanding of where Labour has gone right and wrong over the last 20 years.
Some - for example, Mehdi Hasan of the Huffington Post - refuse to credit New Labour and the changes to our party with delivering any part of our landslide win in 1997, citing polls taken under John Smith in 1994 with the final tally of votes in 1997. To me that’s unsound.
We know that mid-term polls can be misleading. That’s why no one is taking our current poll lead as anything other than an encouraging sign. And that may be putting it too strongly.
We know to our bitter cost that polling in 1992 was wrong. With the greatest respect in the world to the memory of John Smith, to downplay Tony Blair’s part in building the coalition of voters that we are now looking at rebuilding does not seem to be based on the evidence of the effect of Blair and Labour’s actions then, but on the emotional reaction to disappointment following mistakes that were made later on.
On the other hand, there are those who deny that the formula that had worked so well from 1994 had run its course by 2005. The basic response of “but he won three elections” denies the electoral reality.
We won the third election because the landslide (which we owe to Blair) and the continued success that followed our first term gave us enough buffer zone to suffer a loss of votes and seats that would cripple a Party under normal circumstance. We suffered terribly in 2005, losing 47 seats and winning with just over 35% of the vote. Like the Tories in 2010, We didn’t win that election, so much as not lose it.
The final myth that needs busting is the idea that New Labour was a philosophy aimed persistently and almost solely at the aspirant middle classes. It’s certainly true that New Labour repositioned the Party to be more appealing to these voters and very successfully too as we won leafy suburban seats in Herfordshire and Essex.
But the 1997 manifesto had a commitment to a minimum wage; something which spoke directly to the pockets of D and E class voters. Something about which a huge fuss was made from the usual suspects in the business community to whom New Labour is frequently accused of being too close.
The 2001 manifesto and campaign centred on a promise to raise National Insurance to pay for public services. Neither those who continue to carry the New Labour torch, nor those who seek to move on from it should forget that New Labour’s big tent started with a big promise to the core vote. One which we proudly delivered.
By 2005, we had turned stale, we had become managers rather than leaders and we had got some key things disastrously wrong. We had started to believe our own hype and that of our critics that we won by focusing on the centre ground and forgot that that was never strictly true.
A mobilisation strategy is hard. Above all it requires a sense of optimism. A belief that under the Labour Party things will and can get better. We need to inspire the British version of Obama’s HOPE narrative. We do indeed – as Anthony Painter put it on LabourList – need a grand design.
But it must be foundations that shore us up with every part of our coalition of voters. Like the minimum wage balanced the spending freeze in 1997, so must we have an answer to what will balance the necessary spending restraints forced upon us in 2015. Perhaps flesh on the bones of Ed’s pledge that no one will be in work and in poverty could be that balance.
I don’t believe a mobilisation strategy is the only way to Labour victory in 2015. There are other routes and it would be false of me to claim this as the one true way. But I do believe it could hold the potential to a sustainable victory and a successful left-of-centre Government. Something I believe all parts of the Labour family should consider worthy of investigation.
Comments
Rosemary / July 17 2012 8:14pm
How can you do analysis such as this and not mention the impact of the war in Iraq? I think you might find that is where a lot of voters went in 2005. Tony Blair certainly did attract a lot of voters but his actions on Iraq lost a lot of voters too, perhaps not the same ones. I couldn't vote Labour in 2005 and I know a lot of people who felt the same. Some went back in 2010 but the mistake of Iraq and the knowledge that so many senior Labour politicians went along with it, will be a running soar for many for years to come.
Louie / July 17 2012 10:35pm
Excellent piece- but I have to agree with Rosemary that New Labour became synonymous with war, popularism, and 'sofa government' to such an extent that even people with the barest knowledge of politics ended up believing Blair and the party were no less sleazy and dishonest as Major's Tories.
When it comes to a 'grand design', the fact that so many of the Shadow Cabinet remain tarred with the New Labour brush may prevent the party from seeming sufficiently changed to win back votes. In the US, each Presidential election comes with new personnel. This doesn't happen over here. Will those who abandoned New Labour vote for Ed's party when many of the old guard are still present in its ranks?
C Richardson / July 17 2012 10:58pm
Via numerous emails I have outlined to my MP, Tony Cunningham, how Labour lost its sick voters, its disabled voters, the numerous carers - mainly female, and the families of these voters.
I have suggested time and again that Labour is not winning votes back, or enticing people back to the voting system, by their lacklustre policies, by the lack of passion, by the absence, bar a few fabulous Members, of any real opposition to the Welfare Reform Bill.
Labour is seen to have begun many of the more vicous and destructive policies of the current Government. Fear of ridicule seems to be the only reason that Labour cannot stand up and say "We were wrong".
Or maybe the Labour Party does not think that these policies are destructive?
These policies would have failed whatever party inherited them, but now is the time to say that these acorns planted by Labour have not flourished into magnificent oaks, but grown as malignant triffids.
The current Government is demonising the sick, the disabled, the poor, the unemployed, and instead of reaching out to these people, people who are historically core voters for Labour, Labour instead sagely nods its head in agreement.
A vulgar and base self-serving group of people, who are more concerned about losing face than opposing the brutality being handed out, will never again have my vote until a real opposition is mounted, and the core voters are listened to.
Caroline Richardson
Ex-shop steward, ethical Socialist, ex core voter.
Ruth / July 18 2012 7:48am
I agree with others that the war in Iraq was a critical issue. I also think that the running down of the values of public services lost us votes.
There was good investment in infrastructure but much of it was done via eg PFI initiatives which people are rightly concerned about.
Services were tendered out, leading to low pay and also to a lack of accountability and a sense that politicians could not achieve real change.
Finally, the loss of council housing has been a huge factor in people's kids not being able to live locally, working people needing to rely on housing benefit and public money going to private landlords.
Emma Burnell / July 18 2012 3:15pm
As you can see from the variety of issues raised in all the other comments there are many particular policies that have put people off Labour. The war was - of course - a huge factor, and as someone who opposed it myself, it was a very difficult time to be a Labour Party member.
I suppose it is difficult when you blog to find a balance between repeating yourself too much, and assuming too much prior knowledge of your audience. I didn't talk about individual policy issues here because I wanted to approach the 5MV analysis at a more strategic level. That isn't to say that looking at issues won't be essential.
The problem lies in finding a way to move on from the issues. Ed has apologised (quite rightly) over Iraq, but much as we would like to, we can't undo it. We can't not be the Party that went to war in Iraq any more than we can not be the Party that brought in the NHS, the Minimum wage and the welfare state. All we can do now, is offer a forward vision that learns the lessons of our past for good and for ill.
C Richardson / July 18 2012 11:37pm
"We can't not be the Party that went to war in Iraq any more than we can not be the Party that brought in the NHS, the Minimum wage and the welfare state. All we can do now, is offer a forward vision that learns the lessons of our past for good and for ill."
No, you cant change the fact that Labour is the party that went to war with Iraq.
But you can be the party that brought in the NHS, the Minimum wage and the welfare state - just return to your core values.
SD Dobson / July 20 2012 10:49pm
I am a Conservative supporter. However it seems that Labout has a good prospect of victory at the next election. This is because the Liberal Democrats have lost all their Left Wing support to Labour; and the Conservatives are losing support to UKIP.
In short there is a united Left Wing and a fragmented Centre-Right in UK politics. Unless UKIP. the Conservatives and the LibDems can arrange a seats pact, Labour is likely to win the 2015 election.
Ian Butler / July 28 2012 11:43pm
This article raises important questions but ignores the primary one about what does the left want with office without power? The 2008 crash has made me realise that the Labour Party, the great reforming party who created the NHS and the welfare state, became a tool of Murdoch and a bailer out of banks. No control over the economy no idea but power. The idea that you can serve the City and serve the people is bogus and if Labour wants to reconnect it should start by reading some Keynes first and rediscover the concept of Full Employment.