Labour: How to Win (the Argument), Even After You’ve Lost the Election

Labour: How to Win (the Argument), Even After You’ve Lost the Election

Paul Thompson: The Labour Argument, After the Election

When you lose an election, you need to understand why. Polls commissioned by Left Foot Forward and the think-tank Demos don?t, on the surface, make comforting reading for Labour supporters. A key theme of one poll is a disconnect between the perceptions of party members and public. The latter were much more likely to blame Gordon Brown, for being soft on immigration and for “wasted” public spending, than the former. That is hardly surprising, but what is striking is the extent of agreement. 62 percent of members and 63 percent of the public agree that “Labour failed to do enough to help its natural working class supporters,” while the split on “Labour was far too subservient to the United States over Iraq and Afghanistan” was 71/75.

Initial reports of the Demos poll focused on voters who deserted Labour at the last election. This group has apparently come to believe that “Government spending had reached or even breached acceptable limits and no longer viewed the state as a force for good.” More generally, Labour is seen as “weak, divided, out of touch and representing the past.” Again, this is hardly surprising. After three terms in office New Labour was tired and lacking direction. If it had been strong, in touch, and with a forward looking project, it wouldn?t have lost!

Demos uses these figures to assert that Labour?s next leader needs to support public sector cuts and embrace Cameron?s “Big Society” agenda if he or she is to be heard by the public. The party listened far too much to Demos when it first came into government. Desperately chasing every perceived social trend, this group helped propel New Labour into some of its most stupid directions, not least the embarrassing Cool Britannia debacle. More importantly, this reading of the poll is based on a temporal confusion. During the election, the Tories did not win the argument about the extent and timing of cuts in spending and state action. Indeed, their new partners–the Liberal Democrats–shared Labour?s (and many prominent economists’) view that cutting too soon would risk choking off the recovery.

They did, however, win the election, and the dominant right-wing faction of the Liberal Democrats quickly changed their economic tune once they could smell a share of power. The coalition has cleverly and relentlessly pushed the message that Labour in office were “profligate spenders who wasted money and drove the country into unmanageable debt,” while using the fiscal crisis and budget deficit to engineer their favored neoliberal smaller state strategy. To an extent they have succeeded, and this has bled into public perceptions of how and why Labour lost. The key Coalition political project is to reframe the crisis as one of (excessive) public spending and a dysfunctional state, rather than the reality of an unstable financialized capitalism rescued by state action.

Arguments against this emergent orthodoxy are being heard, but Labour is finding it hard to articulate them in a coherent and forceful way. Wounded by defeat, in the middle of a leadership campaign and having to adjust its “we?ll do cuts, but slower than you” election line, the message is inevitably fragmented and weaker than it could be. All, however, is not lost. As is widely recognized, the current period is a “phony war” before the precise targets of cuts is identified and initiated through the Spending Review in late October. By that time Labour?s new leadership team will be in place. There is every sign that whoever wins (and it?s likely to be one of the Miliband brothers) will take a stronger line based on a different ratio between tax rises and spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit, a longer deficit reduction timetable, and targeted measures to boost growth.

If the new Labour leadership can challenge the current government, it will not only be good for the present, but be positive for the battle to (re)claim the past. Politics teaches us that how the public remembers the previous government is vital to its future prospects. Demos claims that the Labour brand is now “toxic.” It is certainly true that New Labour?s time has come and gone. This much is recognized by all but Blairite diehards. But unlike the Tories after the 1997 landslide, Labour doesn?t have to start from scratch. Honesty with the electorate about past mistakes–including Iraq and failing to regulate the financial sector–allied with a new generation of post-Blair/Brown leaders with a fresh approach to policy and organization–will be enough to put the party back in what promises to be a volatile and unpredictable game.