As predictable headlines follow Ed Miliband committing to speak at the TUC rally on March 26th, Rob Marchant takes a more detached look at how the relationships between Party, movement and workplace demographics interact.
As predictable headlines follow Ed Miliband committing to speak at the TUC rally on March 26th, Rob Marchant takes a more detached look at how the relationships between Party, movement and workplace demographics interact
Let’s not be daft – no-one sensible is saying that Labour is “in the pocket of the unions”; however, it is not a particularly wild claim that Labour’s two historic constituencies among the employed have been public sector workers – largely unionised – and the unionised private sector. New Labour’s genius for electoral success was, of course, its ability to fashion a broader church than Labour had ever before managed. “Post-New” Labour, however, is a different animal.
While Labour has been busy getting back those it lost to the left during those years, such as leftist Liberals, it seems not to have spent so much effort in re-establishing contact with those it lost to the right. One school of thought, of course, says that these people are negligible in number. But that seems unconvincing: the centre ground in politics is perennially important.
In any event, my contention is that much of Labour’s lost vote was taken from that other large demographic, private-sector workers from non-unionised workplaces – who nevertheless believed in public services; and that, although they are people who Labour really needs to keep, the party is disengaging from them in important ways.
Firstly, in Labour’s public utterances of late it has been quick to emphasise the limitations of the free market. Reasonable, but some will hear this as “we don’t like business any more”. When a party spends most of its 100-year history at loggerheads with business, it’s easy to see New Labour’s warmth towards it as a mere 10-year aberration. Unfair too, as Ed Miliband is hardly anti-business but, in Opposition, it’s often the noises that count, rather than the policies.
A small retrenchment can be perceived as a large one.
Next and surely counter-intuitively, during the period of New Labour government, unions ended up with more clout in the party than at the beginning. For example, union funding went from a low of 33% in 2002 to 82% in Q3 2010. Now, although some Tory conspiracy theorists might be surprised to learn that unions do not go around buying policy positions, it would also be hopelessly naïve to suggest that unions, with a generation of leaders seemingly more punchy than their predecessors, might not have more influence on the tone of Labour politics – and we must bear in mind that people outside the unionised sector may not relate to that tone.
Finally, Labour appears slightly obsessive on the issue of high pay, when the aspiration to “do well” is one of the things which attract people to the private sector. Whilst legitimate concerns exist about excessive pay distorting good management practice, the focus on high pay comes across as a populist response to public anger about the City – a very specific case – with a wink to Labour’s traditional supporters. But the message to private sector workers, most of whom don’t work in the City, is that their reasonable aspirations to wealth are disdained by Labour.
That said, does this all matter? Are non-unionised, private sector workers really the key to electoral success? Well, think about the following: the public sector has kept steady at just under 30% of total employment for most of the last three decades – but the proportion of unionised workers has dropped by roughly half since its peak in the late 70s. It is acknowledged by the TUC that the bulk of these losses have taken place in the private sector, deindustrialisation being one obvious cause.
So, a big part of the unionised private sector has gone: also the increasing “grey vote” as a proportion of the electorate lessens the impact of all working people at the ballot box. So, in the old days, Labour could practically win an election simply with the support of its two traditional demographics; in 2015, simply, it cannot. This is not to undervalue them as the core of the party’s support, but they’re simply not enough.
In short, little by little Labour seems to be disengaging from those private sector workers that it won over, although perhaps unwittingly. This disengagement matters, because Labour’s old constituency is no longer enough and it has picked off those who will support the party to the left already.
A couple of good opinion polls do not a summer make; Labour cannot just leave those to the right for David Cameron.
Rob Marchant is a management and communications consultant, blogger and eco-entrepreneur; he previously worked as a Labour party senior manager through the 2001 and 2005 general elections. Rob blogs at The Centre Left and his twitter handle is @Rob_Marchant.
54 Responses to “Labour must speak not only for organised labour”
Rob Marchant
@Dave, well, no. The status quo on taxes is never the only realistic alternative, or you would then have no fiscal policy at all. However, what most parties have learned, including ours in the 80s and 90s, is that raising INCOME tax is an election-loser. You can mess with other taxes all you like.
I agree that it is a question of what balance to strike on tax (isn’t it always). But I question why increasing taxes on the better-off is the solution to (a) adequate tax revenue for investment and (b) keeping people out of poverty. In short: if we have high income inequality because people live in poverty, that’s unacceptable. If a few people make more money than some others would like and therefore increase overall income inequality, I fail to see why this is a problem. It is not a zero-sum game: you being better-off does not make me poorer. Would be interested to see your examples of research and other economies – not all are easily comparable.
@oranjd: hey, if the outcome of the Low Pay Commission is linking it to performance, I for one will be the first to laud it (I will also be rather surprised). The pay-performance link is exactly what many on the left think is a dreadful capitalist plot. It is not, it is common sense. I am the first to say bankers should not get bonuses if the banks don’t make any money. But some proportion of performance-related pay needs to be a principle across the board, including organised labour (an idea which tends to be fought tooth and nail, especially in the public sector).
I agree with you that right now stagflation is a real risk (thanks to our friend Osborne). But what you also can’t do is go round raising wages in the middle of an economic downturn.
Re concrete policies, we could certainly start by taking away our assertion that the 50p tax rate needs to stay the whole parliament. Not only does it not make much economic sense and puts off people who pay higher-rate tax, the Tories will kill us with it as a political dividing line come the next election. Labour’s Tax Bombshell, 1992 – “one of the most successful [political ad campaigns] of modern times” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIBZ1QXi610
By the way, re proposals in this area, all my instincts tell me that it is NOT the time in the electoral cycle to talk about fiscal policy. Once you have all your policy defined, you cost it and work out how you’re going to pay for it. It’s the last thing you do before the next general election.
Dave Citizen
Rob – perhaps the most obvious area where you are wrong to say “It is not a zero-sum game: you being better-off does not make me poorer” is that of access to land and property. Extraordinary though it might seem in the 21st century, 0.6 per cent of the British people own 69 per cent of the land – and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 19th century (Independent Newspaper 2005). The Duke of Buccleach owns 270,000 acres and the Duke of Westminster has 140,000 acres (400,000 abroad) including 300 acres of central London. In the 1870s his predecessor the Marquess of Westminster, who was one of the wealthiest people in England, held only 20,000 acres. Clearly, my ability to buy or afford to rent land or property is dependent on how much other individuals can afford or are willing to sell. A property tax such as is used in Scandanavia could make a big difference in making property more affordable, which in turn would bring down land and labour costs to business – making our real economy more competitive. However, such a move would obviously upset the very wealthy with influence over the media etc. If Labour goes back to lecturing its core voters on how they must leave their comfort zone but fails to leave the New Labour comfort zone of keeping Britain’s extreme inequality intact, it will not only let itself down, but also the vast majority of the british people.
james doran
Rob, arguably raising income taxes on the wealthier was an election loser in a specific period – one in which there was an offensive against labour by capital to retrench the social-democratic postwar settlement of a mixed-managed economy aimed at full employment. So, we shouldn’t assume that because something’s been a loser in the past, it’ll be a loser in future. At present, the 50p rate isn’t unpopular – but as Balls has said, the aim should be progressive taxation and that means not being fixated on percentages, etc.
Rob Marchant
@Dave: you seem to imply that property is fundamentally an inefficient market, which I really would like to see some evidence of. I think most people would agree it is the opposite – a highly efficient market. By the way, you have moved the argument away from personal taxation and onto a different area, but I still don’t see how you get to the zero-sum game.
@oranjd: At present, the 50p tax rate isn’t unpopular, but I’m afraid I can guarantee you it will be a vote-loser in the future. It will clearly be a dividing line at the next election. The fact that it has persisted at all is down to the anomaly of a Tory-Liberal coalition. Balls’ comments to Progress were rather ill thought-out and will very likely come back to bite us (see my forthcoming post on Monday at Uncut).
james doran
Rob, you say “At present, the 50p tax rate isn’t unpopular, but I’m afraid I can guarantee you it will be a vote-loser in the future.” – what do you expect to change in the next few years?