Throughout its history, the Labour party has had rather more experience of opposition than of government. Thanks to New Labour, none of that experience is recent.

But if Labour is to make its stay on the opposition benches a short-lived one, it needs to relearn the successful arts of opposition rather more swiftly than the two decades it took on the last occasion a Labour prime minister was ejected from office just over 30 years ago.

At the outset, Labour needs to recognise just how bad its defeat was. This was not the wipeout, or dreaded third place, many feared but, as Jon Cruddas put it, dodging the bullet is not quite the same as winning the election. Labour’s share of the vote was barely above that of 1983, its number of seats floats roughly midway between those it won in 1987 and 1992.

A defeat of this magnitude requires a debate as widespread and an examination as searching as that which culminated in the formation of New Labour in the mid-1990s. But that debate needs to be grounded in a solid analysis of which voters the party lost and why.

Two features of the new electoral landscape should be causes for particular alarm and attention. First, the calamitous 18-point drop in the party’s support among skilled working-class C2 voters. Labour’s support among this group – the critical voters who swung to Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and back to Tony Blair in 1997 – was lower that among any other group and, according to polling by Ipsos Mori, behind that of the Liberal Democrats. Second, Labour is, once again, suffering from a severe case of southern discomfort. Outside of London, the party has less than a dozen seats south of a line from the Bristol Channel to the Wash.

Beyond this bleak context, two immediate challenges lay ahead.
First, over the coming weeks, the party needs to swiftly develop an intelligent defence of its record in government. When the Lib-Con government begins to wield the axe in its emergency budget, they will attempt to present this as the result of Labour’s ‘Greece-lite’ economic legacy. The party’s challenge is to turn this instead into a debate about the Tory and Liberals’ broken promises. In order to do so, however, Labour must provide an alternative, not just an opposition. A blind defence of the ‘public sector’ will see Labour in the same political cul-de-sac that its ‘cuts vs investment’ strategy drove it into last spring.

So Labour must neither be imprisoned by its record (as it was for far too long after going into opposition in 1951), but nor should it abandon it (as some sections of the party did so spectacularly in 1979). Instead, Labour should recognise its time in government for what it was: the party’s longest, most successful stretch in office in its history, but one in which, inevitably, mistakes were made and opportunities missed.

That goes for the ‘bread and butter’ issues that many activists will have encountered on the doorsteps: those C2 voters who defected from Labour did so as a result of a fall in their living standards – undetected and largely unaddressed by government – during the party’s third term, which fed into a toxic cocktail of issues such as immigration and welfare. Reconnecting with these voters must be the party’s top political priority.

But it also goes for the constitutional reform agenda. In this election, and in the wake of the expenses scandal, we saw that these issues are not simply the concern of the all-too-easily dismissed ‘chattering classes’ and political anoraks. On electoral reform, House of Lords reform, and fixed-term parliaments, the innate conservatism of some in Labour’s ranks too often won the day. The party’s commitment was too little, too late, and its too frequent defence of the old politics self-defeating. The politically base defence of first past the post – that it best served Labour’s self-interest – has been fatally undermined by modeling by the Electoral Reform Society showing that in an election fought under AV, Labour would have gained more seats and, together with the Liberal Democrats, would have had a small but comfortable majority in the Commons.

Second, as David Miliband argued in his statement declaring his intention to run for the leadership, the Liberal Democrats’ decision to ally themselves with the Tories presents Labour with a huge responsibility, and the ‘opportunity to represent all shades of progressive opinion’.

The political prize is clear. As an analysis by the Fabian Society’s Tim Horton indicates, with 43 per cent of Lib Dem voters describing themselves as on the left or centre-left, Labour could gain 15 seats from the Lib Dems if only one in five of the party’s voters defected over their coalition with the Tories, while a further 25 Tory seats could be won by Labour if 20 per cent of Lib Dem voters there switched to Labour.

But this progressive prize will have to be earned. Only a party which abandons the tribal ‘winner takes all’ politics of old, and shows itself to be truly open to new ideas and radical thinking will deserve it. Now Labour must go about the process of choosing a leader who understands this. It’s time to get real.

Photo: steve.grosbois 2009