The elections on 4 June were dreadful for Labour. Putting aside the wretched 15.3% of the vote we scored nationally in the European elections, we faced near wipe-out in the local elections. Labour now controls none of the 27 county councils and we have five seats or fewer in 20 of them. In Lancashire we fell from 43 to 14 seats and in Staffordshire from 32 to just 2. It made little difference whether a council was performing well or not, the voters came out and defeated Labour. This is disastrous not only because we expose people living in those areas to Tory or Lib Dem rule, but because our local government base will be an important part of our party’s fight back both before and after the general election due within a year.
And yet, on the same day, there were glimmers of hope. We made gains in Oxford and in a by-election in a marginal ward in my own borough, Lambeth where we held the seat with more votes than in 2006 when we took the seat off the Lib Dems for the first time in 16 years.
So what lessons can we learn from those areas where we did well? There is one lesson that is common across all the successful campaigns in recent years: high levels of voter contact and highly localised campaigning on the issues that matter most to local people.
Our supporters feel disillusioned because of the economic downturn and are genuinely angry about the MPs’ expenses scandal, a problem made worse because our leadership failed to put in place any early proposals for reform. Since the June elections the government has been rethinking some unpopular policy proposals including compulsory ID cards, the post office sell-off and Trident renewal. The new home secretary is right to point out that anti-social behaviour remains a top priority for the public and can’t yet be treated as ‘job-done’ by the government. With other recent initiatives addressing public concerns over jobs and housing it’s good to see the government trying to be relevant and seizing back a policy agenda that seemed to drift in recent months.
We need something to say nationally, but that national message must be translated into a meaningful local message. People want to know what’s being done to tackle crime on their street, how employment is being supported in their area, and how housing policy will help local people find a first mortgage, avoid repossession, or provide more affordable homes to rent. Elections must now be fought street by street and block by block and we must address issues at that level if we want voters to believe what we say to them. By showing what Labour’s done locally and pointing out what the opposition parties would do differently we create dividing lines that show people why it’s worth coming out to vote. If we let them think all parties are the same they won’t bother.
Organisationally we need to know where our voters are so that we can target the right messages at them. To do that requires excellent voter ID, and there’s no substitute for hard work on the doorsteps or on the telephones speaking to every voter. If you don’t know where your Labour voters are, you can’t go and remind them to vote on election day. And if you don’t know what issues concern them, you can’t be sure you’re talking about what matters to them. Every Labour area that’s done well in recent years including Liverpool, Slough, Oxford, Lambeth and Hackney says the same thing: voter ID is key. With our activist base depleted in much of the country a top priority has to be recruiting and remotivating an active membership, and the key to that is to get out and get campaigning.
Another feature of a successful campaign is large quantities of literature localised as much as possible. Leaflets set the tone, but it’s the direct mail letters that allow you to really personalise what you’re saying and target messages to address the concerns of individual voters. For this you need good local intelligence gathered on the doorsteps so you know what the local issues are, the ability to write a concise, friendly letter in language that ordinary people use, then a way to get the letters printed, stuffed and delivered as quickly as possible. We didn’t rely on national or regional leaflets in Lambeth, we wrote our own and got a good designer to lay them out. That’s the surest way to keep the message local.
Strong candidates matter too. Any candidate must have credibility with the voters, which means some way of showing they share the voters’ experience and priorities. They need to be active locally and have a strong track record in tackling the issues that concern local people.
People are more likely to believe we understand their concerns if they feel we share their experience. For that reason we need our candidates and campaign teams to be as diverse as the electorate we seek to represent. We had positive results getting women campaigners talking to women voters, African-heritage campaigners talking to African-heritage voters, and so on. That approach helps focus on those aspects of our record and future programme of most interest to any given group.
More than ever before it feels that all politics is local. By showing that Labour locally is relevant and active we can overcome much of the negativity that attaches to the party nationally and still win. By talking about the big issues like crime, housing and jobs nationally and then showing how we can deliver on them locally we give our supporters confidence we’re still in touch. Voters don’t vote on a party’s past record, they vote on what we’re offering to do about today’s concerns. It’s our job to prove we have the policies and commitment to give people a better future by making a difference in their pocket, in their household and in their community.