Labour did not lose the election because it was considered 'Tory-lite'
1) Labour did not lose because it was considered ‘Tory-lite’
On austerity, Labour did not lose because it was ‘Tory-lite’, rather it lost because the voting public believed a Labour government would not live within the country’s means. This is invariably a hard pill to swallow, but there it is. As John Cruddas, chair of the report, writes on Labour List today: “58 per cent agree that, ‘we must live within our means so cutting the deficit is the top priority’. Just 16 per cent disagree. Almost all Tories and a majority of Lib Dems and Ukip voters agree.
“Amongst working class C2DE voters 54 per cent agree and 15 per cent disagree. Labour voters are evenly divided; 32 per cent agree compared to 34 per cent who disagree.”
The anti-austerity thesis is, I think, a persuasive one; the problem is that the Labour party lost that argument in the previous parliament. Simply shouting the same thing louder this time around will not, I suspect, produce a different result. Why would it?
2) The idea of a grand anti-austerity alliance with the Scottish National Party is a fantasy
As Cruddas puts it, “The idea of an anti-austerity alliance with the SNP is unacceptable to a majority of English and Welsh voters.” According to the research, a majority (60 per cent) agreed that they ‘would be very concerned if the SNP were ever in government’. This compared to 15 per cent who disagreed. A majority of Conservative, Lib Dem and Ukip voters agreed where almost half (40 per cent) of Labour voters also thought so.
And anyway, the argument that Scotland sits significantly to the left of England, Wales and Northern Ireland is not a convincing one. UKIP policies to cut overseas aid, reduce immigration and barrel down on benefits claimants are backed by a majority of Scots, according to a massive survey commissioned last year by Dundee University. Meanwhile according to the recent British Social Attitudes Survey, a third (36.4 percent) of voters in England and Wales wanted tax and spending to rise, compared with 43.8 per cent of Scots – a 7 percent difference, but hardly a yawning chasm.
3) There is still hope
Don’t despair, for there is a good deal of encouragement to take from the inquiry. There was strong majority support for the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor (43 per cent to 22 per cent), and a majority (60 per cent) agreed that ‘the economic system in this country unfairly favours powerful interests’. Among Labour voters this figure rose to 73 per cent and amongst UKIP voters to 78 per cent.
In sum, then, there is ample scope for radicalism from Labour; but only if the party first wins back trust on the economy. Voters are largely with the left in viewing the current state of Britain as unfair and unequal; however but in order to see inequities tackled they want to see some evidence that Labour can run a tight ship economically. That doesn’t sound like a particularly unreasonable demand.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
47 Responses to “3 things we learned from the inquiry into why Labour lost”
Michael Carey
Yep because if a Trotskyist points out obvious flaws in shitty research it makes them disappear, good call LFF, you’re totally winning at ‘evidence-based analysis’.
Matthew Blott
It chimes with my experience speaking to voters.
Paul Bunting
The idea that Labour was responsible for the deficit and therefore is not trusted by voters is a gross Tory lie. The Deficit was caused by the Banking crash and the necessary bailout of the Banks which was inescapable because letting the Banks go to the wall would have lost all their customers’ current and savings account monies and their access to their money at the ATM “holes in the wall”. The last Labour Prime Minister was widely praised throughout Europe for his handling of the Banking crash. There was cross party support for the recapitalization of the Banks and I have a letter from Philip Hammond from when the Tories were the opposition saying that the Conservatives had supported the recapitalization of the Banks. The deficit grew to more than twice the recapitalization cost because of the additional social security payments to the 3 million workers laid off as a result of their employers no longer being able to get credit from the banks. Up to the time of the crash, the Labour Government had in fact reduced the public deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product. So the idea that Labour cannot be trusted with the economy is ridiculous when Cameron and Osborne have achieved the largest ever negative Trade Deficit (-£97.9bn) because they thought all they had to do was to shrink the Public Sector when this has no effect at all on the Trade Deficit and when they ought to have concentrated on reindustrializing the Private Sector and got it exporting like mad. Even the Director General of the Confederation of British Industries has criticised this Trade Deficit and opined that the Government is travelling in the wrong direction. So it is not necessary to accept any Tory criticism of Labour when one can award the Conservatives 0/10 for economics.
Colin Lawson
You forgot to mention that during the General Election, and even now, during the party leadership campaign, little effort has been made by Labour party leaders to counter the barrage of lies and false statistics from the Tories and their friends in the media. In fact it appears that those on the right of the party actually believe that Labour caused the financial crisis and that austerity targeted at the poorest is the appropriate response. And then they wonder why the rank and file flock to Corbyn. I despair. http://www.reasonandreality.org/?p=4137
madasafish
Having read the comments, I am amazed by the depth of knowledge of the subjet most readers have, So deep and broad is their knowledge they can dismiss written research with their own views . Views which have neither been researched nor written down.
“One more heave” strategies tend not to work..Obviously many commentators here disagree.