In the past few minutes, the result from the by-election in Norwich North has been announced. The Conservatives have gained the seat for the first time since 1992, with a majority of 7,348.
The results are:
Conservative 13,591
Labour 6,243
Lib Dems 4,803
UKIP 4,068
Greens 3,350
The turnout was 45.88%.
This represents a 16.49% swing from Labour to the Tories.
What are the lessons from Labour’s defeat?
Lesson one: let’s stop shooting ourselves in both feet. This was an entirely unnecessary by-election, created by a series of muddle-headed and inconsistent decisions which have spectacularly rebounded on Labour. It would seem that local electors have punished us for our party hierarchy’s unfair treatment of their hard-working MP, who they consider to have committed only a minor misdemeanour compared to others.
The perception in Norwich is that Ian Gibson’s ‘crime’ was that he sold a flat at below market value to help his daughter. So if he had sold it at a profit and pocketed the cash, like so many other Labour MPs, would he still be the MP for Norwich North? Labour’s leadership needs to learn that talk of ‘star chambers’ and summary justice meted out against MPs by anonymous NEC members in an incoherent fashion does not make them look ‘tough’ or ‘decisive’. It makes the whole party look authoritarian and worst of all unfair. That’s what sticks in the craw of decent Labour-minded people.
Lesson two: every Labour seat matters. The strategy seems to have been to chalk this one up as a defeat, and move on quickly. Crazy. Labour can’t afford to write off by-elections before they’ve even started. Labour’s ‘get out the vote’ teams on polling day were probably not encouraged by the story in the Times yesterday morning that ‘Gordon Brown has indicated that he does not believe that Labour will win today’s by-election in Norwich North.’ Some Ministers and MPs made the one hour fifty minute journey from London to Norwich to campaign; most did not. On the morning of the by-election, the Cabinet was meeting inCardiff, a mere 272 miles away. There are cities in the UK further away from Norwich, but not many. If Labour’s leadership thinks seats with a 5,000 Labour majority are expendable, even in a by-election, what does it say to Labour MPs with a similar-sized majority, such as Liam Byrne, Margaret Beckett, Shahid Malik, Ian Austin, Parmjit Dhanda, Gillian Merron, or Sadiq Khan? We have to fight every Labour-held seat like we mean it.
Lesson three: it wasn’t all about the expenses scandal. It would be convenient to dismiss our defeat in Norwich North as the electorate taking their revenge for the expenses scandal. But that doesn’t stack up. If the voters were motivated by revenge, why have they elected a Tory MP? Why reject a Labour candidate who isn’t implicated in the expenses row because he isn’t an MP? Why did so many tell pollsters that they would have voted for Ian Gibson if he’d stood as an independent? Why haven’t the independent candidates such as Craig Murray broken through? The harsh truth for Labour is that a previously safe Labour seat has become a Tory seat in this by-election because people have switched their support from Labour to Tory, as they did in Crewe & Nantwich, well before the expenses scandal. That means a more sober analysis is needed of Labour’s message, policies, and popular appeal. Instead of defenestrating Labour MPs, perhaps the NEC could lead such an analysis in time for conference?
Lesson four: Norwich North is a heartland seat, not a ‘New Labour’ seat. There may be an attempt to dismiss the result as the loss of a seat won in the 1997 landslide, but was really Tory all along. This is simply not true. Norwich North is not a ‘weathervane’ seat which switches between Labour and Tories depending on who has formed a government at Westminster. It is a seat which has remained stubbornly Labour, apart from the years of Labour’s electoral collapse in the 1980s. It may not be an inner-city seat or a former industrial seat, but nonetheless Norwich North is Labour’s heartland.
In 1970, when Labour lost nationally, Norwich North returned a Labour MP with a majority of 6,696. In 1979, with Callaghan losing to Thatcher, Norwich North re-elected the ex-Labour cabinet minister David Ennals with 50 per cent of the vote, and a majority of 5,592. In the general elections during the 1960s and 1970s, Labour’s majority never fell below 6,000. In 1966, Labour won 66 per cent of the vote. Ian Gibson, like so many Labour candidates, came tantalisingly close in 1992, but the Tories sneaked back with a majority of just 266. Following the election of Tony Blair as the leader of New Labour, that Tory majority of 266 was turned into a Labour majority of nearly 10,000 in 1997.
A proper understanding of the nature of the seat means we have to assess why we lost it. It seems like the ‘Building Britain’s Future’ document was not a vote-winner on the doorsteps of Mousehold or Sprowston; nor did the ‘investment versus cuts’ line play strongly for us. The hardest question to ask is why people in these areas north of Norwich who voted Labour in 2005, 2001, 1997, and even in 1992 did not vote Labour on 23rd July 2009.
Lesson five: we are not characters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When King Arthur encounters the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they engage in mortal combat. Arthur lops off the Black Knight’s arm, but the wounded knight says ‘Tis but a scratch; I’ve had worse’. When his other arm is severed he cries ‘it’s just a flesh wound.’ He ends the scene hopping on one leg, but refusing to give up, shouting ‘I’m invincible’. Arthur’s reply: ‘you’re a loony’.
When Labour lost in Crewe in May last year, with a 7,000 Labour majority turning into a 6,000 Tory majority, we shouted ‘’tis but a scratch.’ When we lost Glasgow East in July last year with a drop of 19 percentage points, we said it was just a flesh wound. But Labour can’t keep on hopping on one leg after the loss of Norwich North. It might be that Labour voters in Scotland, the north of England, and now East Anglia, who deserted us in their thousands when given the opportunity in a real election, are trying to tell us something.
Ministers will take to the TV studios today and talk about listening to the voters and learning the lessons. The challenge to the Labour Party over the summer is whether we really are listening, and whether we have the confidence to start to look like winners again. The test will come quickly. This autumn, on the estates of Possil Park, Balomock, Milton and Robroyston, some of the poorest people in Europe will be asked to vote Labour in the Glasgow North East by-election. Labour’s campaigners will need compelling arguments and attractive policies to get them to the ballot box, and we only have a few weeks to fashion them.