It's important to be brutally honest about Labour's lacklustre campaign
There’s little point in mincing words: yesterday’s result was a disaster for the Labour party. It’s more important than ever, then, to be brutally honest about Labour’s lacklustre campaign.
1) Labour still hasn’t regained public trust on the economy
This isn’t really about whether Labour actually did spend too much in government; the point is that it was perceived to have done so, and perception is largely what matters during an election campaign. Labour singularly failed to convince the country it could be trusted on the economy and in that respect it lost the election in the last six months of 2010 when it was embroiled in a leadership contest while the Conservatives were talking about spendthrift Labour.
So why, in this context, did Ed Miliband say during the leaders’ debates that he didn’t believe Labour did spend too much in government? True or not, that ship had sailed and the argument had already been lost. Public opinion on spendthrift Labour was obstinate and we ought to have moved on.
2) And yet, paradoxically, there is little evidence Labour lost as a result of a supposed shift to the left
If you spend any time listening to the echo chambers of the Daily Mail and the Sun, ‘Red Ed’ took the Labour party sharply to the left with promises of a mansion tax and an energy price freeze. In reality his manifesto was a fairly tepid brand of social democracy with a few very slight market interventions.
He certainly wasn’t advocating mass nationalisation and a supertax on the rich by any means. And let’s not forget: most of the policies damned as wildly left-wing by the tabloids were popular – remember how accusations of ‘Marxism’ over the energy price freeze backfired spectacularly for the Tories?
3) ….but Labour didn’t understand aspiration
This may seem like a contradiction after my previous point, but it shouldn’t. It should be possible on the one hand to talk to those on the periphery of society – the low paid on zero hours contracts etc – whilst simultaneously understanding that most people don’t want to be where they are now in five or 10 years’ time. They want to ‘get on’.
The writer John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took off in the United States because the poor saw themselves, not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. One needn’t take it to that extreme to see the point: a good number of people hope that, in the future, they too will be doing well. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. The Labour party should absolutely look out for those at the bottom of society; but it must also understand that social class isn’t something most people see as fixed.
4) In Scotland Labour collapsed partly as a result of sharing platforms with the Tories
Because Labour stood on the No platform with the Conservatives during the independence referendum campaign, the toxicity attached to the Tories in Scotland transferred to Labour. The other obvious point to make is that the Yes campaign solidified almost half of the electorate (and lots of people who had never previously voted) in the SNP camp.
This ought to have been foreseeable. That isn’t to say Labour should have campaigned for a Yes vote; merely that things might have turned out a little better had they not joined a cross-party campaign with the hated Conservatives.
5) Presentationally the campaign was a mess
It’s fashionable to say that personality doesn’t matter – policy is what’s important – but it clearly does. One can of course understand the logic: you can’t help who you are, so it seems callous to dismiss someone based on a lack of charisma or, in Ed Miliband’s case, ‘weirdness’. But to deploy a cliché, no one ever said that life was fair; people aren’t emotional robots and they do vote according to which politician they best connect with. What we’re talking about here is the x-factor, and because it’s so elusive – few people have it and fewer know how to get it – we think it superfluous to have grown up political discussions about it. Play the ball not the man, as commentators like to say.
This is not to pin it all on Ed. Labour’s messaging was woeful at times. There were lots of piecemeal policy offerings but little in the way of an overall vision. Labour was against things but for very little. This relates to a much bigger question of what social democracy actually wants to be in the twenty-first century. Blairism was a response to the collapse of post-war social democracy and the fall of the Berlin Wall; but how should Labour seek to reshape society in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash?
Labour should try to reshape society; it’s no use, as the Tories are doing, ignoring the lessons of the crash and storing up problems for the future. Labour really did ought to tackle rampant inequality and entrenched privilege. But beyond the failed statist approach of the previous century, we’re a long way off working out how to do it.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
Left Foot Forward doesn't have the backing of big business or billionaires. We rely on the kind and generous support of ordinary people like you.
You can support hard-hitting journalism that holds the right to account, provides a forum for debate among progressives, and covers the stories the rest of the media ignore. Donate today.
167 Responses to “Five ways Labour got it badly wrong”
DRbilderburg
No i like my MP Another Labour long standing MP who stood in the same city as me lost his seat Formerly a Labour stronghold, A decent honourable man who deserved better, in his seat the main issue was immigration
.Had i lived in his constituency i’d have voted for him, iv’e met him, he IMO was the real deal
He stood with us when we demonstrated against our Tory council ,who were trying to evict some old people from a sheltered housing complex He is a loss to politics
Leon Wolfeson
Well, frankly, I see the UK as the poster child for neoliberalism today, not America.
America introduced “Obamacare”, while the Tories claw away the NHS, etc.
But it does seem to be to be a clear choice, and one Labour made. You may disagree on that, but they clearly signed up to the idea that spending cuts were the key.
(And that cuts are promised, when we’re at 0% CPI…oh dear)
Leon Wolfeson
That’s your view, and you’re entitled to it. I’m just explaining mine –
I have some red lines for voting for parties, which are based on my principles, and there’s no way I could ordinarily vote for Labour. No matter how good he was in person.
Although I have, twice, overriden those red lines because of UTTERLY unacceptable comments by a local MP candidate in the run-up to the election, and this was one of those. I am looking to relocate, as he was re-elected.
(I literally don’t feel safe in this constituency because of those comments)
Anthony Miller
“That isn’t to say Labour should have campaigned for a Yes vote; merely
that things might have turned out a little better had they not joined a
cross-party campaign with the hated Conservatives.” Woolly thinking. The SNP hate you because you are English and there is nothing you can do about it. Labour failed to tackle the SNP’s main message. “Vote for us and we will hold the balance of power. They don’t. They are just a split in the left – if Nationalists actually are the left. And split oppositions don’t get anywhere under FPTP. Ms Sturgeon talks about holding Cameron to account but she wont have the MPs to … indeed after Cameron gets his new boundary changes in there will be even less Scots MPs than there are now as every Constituency will be exactly the same size
Mark Ralph-Bowman
As you rightly show, austerity is not contingent upon a neoliberal agenda. I’m saying that the austerity agenda is economically illterate [stupid I seem to recall Wren Lewis calling it] and Labour could have, should have countered it from day one in opposition. As I understand the economics, it doesn’t even make sense in the context of neoliberalism.