For most of the 20th century, the Labour party has spent too much time in opposition – because it was not better at being the opposition. Why should this be the case? And what are the lessons that Labour must learn from its history to use opposition as a springboard to become a renewed and rejuvenated Labour government at the next election?

First, there are the lessons in what not to do. Following the fall of almost every previous Labour government, Labour has allowed itself to indulge in an energetic bout of fratricide. This was the case following 1931, after 1951, after 1970 and 1979. The worse the infighting, the longer Labour remained out of power. The exception was after Labour’s brief minority government of 1924, where the party united in opposition and returned to government at the next election.

Any government makes mistakes. Some of commission, others of omission. It is always convenient to blame the unpopularity of a defeated government wholly on the personal failings of its leader. But politics is a team game and it would be foolish for Labour to repeat the mistakes of the early 1970s when Labour held Harold Wilson responsible for all its woes, or 1979-80 when defeated leftwing Labour MPs blamed leader Jim Callaghan. In fact, it was Callaghan’s personal popularity with voters that had done most to buoy the Labour vote – it was Tony Benn and his allies with whom most voters felt out of step.

Labour infighting is all too often rooted in competing analysis among party activists of the reasons for defeat. After 1979, for example, while moderates like Denis Healey, Merlyn Rees, John Smith and Roy Hattersley were clear in blaming the winter of discontent and Benn’s advocacy of more leftwing positions for undermining government credibility, those around Benn argued the opposite, insisting that the government had betrayed its supporters. Benn and his supporters foisted a more leftwing and statist manifesto on Labour for the following election and, in doing so, condemned Labour to its worst defeat since 1931.

The arguments over policy changed few minds. It was only the scale of the defeat that forced some hitherto Bennites to realise that, even if they supported his policies, the electorate would not. This realisation split the ‘left’ into ‘hard’ (those who remained true to Benn’s position) and ‘soft’ (those who supported Neil Kinnock in revising Labour’s policies to reach an accommodation with the electorate). The ‘hard left’ remain with Labour to this day in the form of the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, and their analysis of Labour’s position remains just as electorally incredible as it was in 1983.

Too often, Labour’s behaviour in opposition has been determined by the delusion of some activists that they can foist electorally unacceptable policies upon the Labour party without consequence. They assume that the prospective disillusion of the electorate with a Conservative government will simply swing the electoral pendulum and propel Labour back into government. This was the tragedy of those who placed their devotion to the cause of CND and unilateral nuclear disarmament above their commitment to the interests of those voters who depended on an electable Labour government.

Another mistake previous Labour oppositions have made is to behave like an ossified version of their previous incarnation in government. There is always the temptation for those who have held ministerial office to regard the future as a place in which they must defend their own political past. Labour should defend its achievements. But it would be wise not to become the prisoner of the decisions of ex-ministers. This is all the more important following the defeat of a government that has been in office for a long time. The longer governments remain in office, the more they come to rely on their civil servants for detailed policymaking. A couple of special advisers in a government department of thousands can do little to alter that fact. And too few thinktanks lack the primary research capacity, or indeed the access to confidential government statistics, to offer sufficient alternative.

Indeed, a risk for Labour in opposition will be a paucity of ideas for how a future Labour government can do a better job than the one that was defeated at this election. It is all very well to aspire to progressive goals, but targets in themselves are little use without an effective, workable strategy to achieve them. Every Labour government has aspired to persuade voters to trust it to help secure better public services. But while voters do not doubt the aspiration, Labour’s faith in opposition that the civil service will sort out the ‘delivery’ bit on ministers’ behalf has meant public perceptions of Labour’s effectiveness in government has been tarred by weaknesses in Whitehall.

It is insufficient for Labour ‘policy wonks’ to urge action on issues of public concern when the real question is not so much whether ‘something should be done’, but how?

In opposition, David Cameron was clever to pick out clear positions on what his strategists deemed ‘defining issues’ and explain how he would tackle them. His solutions were often ropey. Like his ‘marriage tax break’ answer to the question of how better to support families, they could fall apart under sustained media scrutiny. But they were conceptually coherent – in this example he did more than simply pledge a target to reduce family breakdown by 2050, for example.

There is also an issue of language. While it has often been the case that political parties campaign in poetry but govern in prose, some ministers in the 1997-2010 government can be criticised for failing to ensure that either the written communications from their departments or their own speeches were in plain English. Euphemistic jargon alienates voters. Neither Nye Bevan nor Clement Attlee needed it. Nor should Labour’s shadow ministerial team.

To make a success of opposition, Labour needs to come to terms with why too few voters backed it at the election. It is for this reason that crude ‘oppositionalism’ – simply pledging to reverse everything that a Cameron-led government does – would be foolish. It fails to recognise that many of the voters that Labour needs to win back who switched from Labour to Conservative or Lib Dem at the 2010 election will have been in favour of at least some of it, or at least the intention behind it. Labour will need to recognise what disillusioned former Labour voters want from a future Labour government. And it needs to work out how it can deliver it, more effectively than voters perceived the last Labour government to have done.

Given the fact that most voters clearly did not want a Cameron government, the opportunity is there for Labour to win the next election – as it was, initially, for Labour following its defeat in 1979. If Callaghan and Michael Foot were alive today, they would urge us to seize it.

Photo: russelldavies 2007