If the main job of an opposition leader is to the win the next election, then the new Labour leader’s first task should probably be to work out why they lost the last one. In late July, YouGov asked a representative sample of the general public whether they agreed with a series of criticisms of Labour in government and which ones they thought contributed the most to Labour’s defeat.
The most widely agreed with criticisms of Labour in government were that they were soft on immigration (76 per cent agreed); that they were too subservient to the USA over Iraq and Afghanistan (74 per cent); and that they had become out of touch with ordinary voters (68 per cent). However, asked what people thought were the main causes of their defeat, the answers were slightly different – people pointed once again to immigration (just over half thought this was one of the main causes), but also to the damage the recession did to Labour’s reputation for economic competence (48 per cent) and Gordon Brown’s own poor performance as prime minister (43 per cent).
If we compare this to how the Labour party’s own members feel about the former government, then, as we’d expect, far fewer agree personally about Labour’s shortcomings. The only criticisms that a majority of party members agree with are over Iraq and Afghanistan, becoming out of touch with ordinary people and not doing enough for ordinary working class voters. Asked why they think Labour lost, party members agree with the public that the effect of the recession was a major factor, but see the other main factors as becoming out of touch with ordinary voters (47 per cent) and failing to do enough to help its natural working-class supporters (44 per cent).
These findings don’t necessarily explain why Labour lost the election; people themselves are not always good at understanding the reasons for their own decisions. But they do point to some differences in attitudes between the public, who Labour’s new leader will need to appeal to, and the party membership, who the new leader will need to keep onside.
The public saw being soft on immigration as a major cause of Labour’s defeat, while relatively few party members either agreed with the criticism or saw it as a major cause. The public saw Gordon Brown as a poor prime minister who was a major cause of the party’s failure; again Labour members disagreed. Conversely, members were more likely to blame Labour not paying enough attention to its working-class supporters than were the wider public.
Do these differences matter? As Gordon Brown has already withdrawn from the political stage the different perceptions of his performance as prime minister are largely academic. While the difference in attitudes between party members and voters on immigration is real, becoming an anti-immigration party is probably not a realistic option for Labour anyway. However much it would appeal to some of their traditional working-class supporters it would also repel the educated middle classes who are also a keystone of Labour’s modern electoral alliance.
Looking at some of the other findings, though, reveals more significant differences. Comparatively few party members chose explanations that might force Labour to seriously reconsider its policies – for example, only five per cent of party members thought that wasteful public spending was a major factor in the party’s defeat, compared to 29 per cent of the wider public, with 59 per cent of voters looking on this as a legitimate criticism of the last government. In the fullness of time, differences like this that may cause real problems for Labour.
One of the first questions the new leader will need to answer is: what narrative do voters attach to the Blair-Brown era? In 1997, the Conservatives claimed they had left a ‘golden economic legacy’, but Labour painted a picture of an outgoing Conservative government that had starved public services of investment and presided over a ‘boom and bust’ economy. It was the latter narrative that convinced the public and did huge damage to the Conservatives’ electoral chances in the decade that followed.
Now it is the other way around: the coalition is placing the blame for cuts squarely on the last government and building up the narrative that the Labour government drove the country to the brink of bankruptcy. YouGov’s polling in early August showed that 45 per cent of people blamed public spending cuts on the last Labour government, with only 22 per cent blaming the coalition. If the government avoids economic disaster this will make up the battleground for the next election, and on public spending there is a wide gulf between how the public see Labour and how they see themselves.
At the same time, Labour shouldn’t spend too much time trying to draw parallels with the Conservatives in 1997. In many ways they are in a much better position. Labour may well be seen as tired, clapped out and out of touch after 13 years of power, but they don’t have the negative connotations that the Conservatives suffered. Whatever their failings, our regular polls show more people think Labour’s heart is in the right place, than they do of the Conservatives or the Lib Dems. Labour is also seen as more likely than the Conservatives to appeal to the whole country, not a narrow section of society.
Labour need to reconnect with the public, find some new narratives and policies to offer, and find a way to make themselves relevant after the spending cuts have been made. But they don’t need to detoxify themselves in the same way as the Conservatives did. They are not a new ‘nasty party’.
As to which leader will have the job addressing these questions, YouGov polled party members and members of affiliated trade unions at the end of July and found it was a close race between David and Ed Miliband. At the time David Miliband was narrowly ahead of his brother, with Labour members evenly divided between David and Ed, and trade unionists and MPs (thanks to data collected by Left Foot Forward) splitting in favour of David. Of course, the poll was conducted long before ballot papers are sent out, before many trade unions had encouraged their members to vote for Ed and relied upon a lot of guesswork when it came to MPs’ second preferences. The best we can conclude is that the next leader of the Labour party will be a Mr Miliband.
Well when we spoke we were ignored, two of my local party meetings were called off because nobody could be bothered to turn up. It became a meeting place to have a few pints not a meeting place for politics, the pint became more important then the politics. Then next was welfare reforms Labour took on it’s own to listen to a rich Pratt Blair who’s outlook was how to make money from the job as he has proved. Then came a min wage set so low it was in fact JSA undisguised one could go on, how about the deal done to vote in a leader with brown, who believed he was the best but in fact took this party down a road to utter dejection, we are told he tried to take it to the left while spouting this is New Labour, I doubt he had any idea where the hell he was going. Now Blair tells us the Tories have got it right, and I’m slowly starting to believe him, Labour a piss poor copy of Thatcher so stay with the real thing
A very informative article. I wonder, though, how many reasons that people gave were proxies for a general feeling that 13 years was long enough and that it was ‘time for a change’. Also, we need to think about the mistakes that Labour made in government, particularly in the later years, and see what systemic faults were in play. In other words, how can we improve the way Britain is governed. And lastly the point you make about narratives is crucial. George Lakoff uses the word ‘frames’ where you talk about narratives. Anyone interested in how the left can win could do well to read his book “Don’t think of an elephant!”
As I read through your article, Anthony, I thought “why is he devoting so much of this article on the results of opinion polls?” when we all know that ‘opinion polls’ only reflect the opinions of the pollsters and bear little or no resemblance to public opinion. For example, the BBC commissioned a poll among Catholics about the Pope’s visit to the UK (an exercise [i.e. the poll] I believe to be totally unjustified – but that is a debate for another occasion). One of the findings of the poll was that ‘the majority of Catholics’s faith in the leadership had been devalued’. Other “findings” were critical of Church teaching and the Pope in particular, conclusions that accurately reflect the opinions of BBC reporters(!) What the BBC do not report is that this ‘poll’ was a cold-call telephone poll of 500! Do not be surprised, therefore, that these ‘poll results’ are more a reflection of an instant reaction to biased pollster pressure than a studied response based on reasoned arguments from both sides. Also, this YouGov poll was limited to eliciting “criticisms” of Labour government. How impartial is that? Did YouGov ask “the public” (what evidence do these pollsters publish to justify that the ‘1000 people sampled’ represent the full gamut of voter opinion? Have you ever been contacted by a polling organisation?) “how many of you decided to vote Labour because of their achievements?” Is it pure coincidence that YouGov’s poll results criticising Labour policies equate well with Tory pre-election attacks and media bias? Of course not. Ask ‘the average voter’ what he/she thinks about education, NHS, crime, immigration etc. and the responses, I suggest, will not only be varied but also dependent on the degree of accuracy of information they absorb and accept from the variety of sources they are exposed to. Unfortunately, the primary source of “information” on political events is the “media” (that is, in the main, the Press and TV). Since the “media” have been traditionally ‘anti-Labour’ and ‘pro-Tory’ since at least 1997 is it surprising that the easily-duped voter should accept the oft-repeated lies of the Tory media (of which I include the BBC – which begs the question of why Labour Ministers like Ben Bradshaw and Andy Burnham did nothing to democratise the BBC and eliminate its anti-Labour bias)? Even now that we are in opposition BBC interviewers persist in mounting critical and accusatorial interviews with Labour MPs yet at the same time conducting soft and supportive interviews with Coalition MPs. The point I am trying to make is that irrespective of the issues at hand (immigration, Iraq/USA, working class/middle class, Blair/Brown, out of touch etc) voters were swayed more by media pressure than by intellectual argument. Like Mandelson, you may think that Gordon Brown was responsible for our election defeat, but that is just saying that GB was less a PR figure than Cameron. If PR is the only pre-requisite for choosing a PM then “get me out of here”! Labour lost the election because Gordon was deserted by the very people who should have supported him – viz. the PLP. Perhaps, if the likes of Diane Abbott had supported the PM rather than criticise him on a weekly basis from the safety of Andrew Neil’s sofa, Labour would still be in power. Forget about ‘opinion polls’ – they are inaccurate, biased and irrelevent. For Labour to regain power they have to counteract the influence of the media and the only way to do that is by personal contact, communication and education of all voters. Labour’s message has been good since 1997 but its transmission has been less than effective. Defeat the bias of the media and Labour will become victorious.
Good stuff, MichaelM but who watches Andrew Neil at 23.35 on a Thursday night? Not many of us I would have thought and I’m not a regular. The meejer must take the blame. Lazy, Tory or status quo inclined they search for the simple answer and have no time for complications. What I fear is that the mess this “Government” is about to unleash on the Country will be quickly seen as the norm. As an example,remember Tebbitt’s criteria for the acceptance by the British public of the unemployment numbers? 3 million he thought was the level that was acceptable. He was right. The Tories won another term. Labour will win, firstly, if the economy fails to recover and, secondly, if it can demonstrate that the economy will never recover sufficiently with such a Draconian attack against the public sector. The public sector is not just about Housing Benefits etc but the state of our parks and open spaces, the cleanliness and state of our streets, the dumping of rubbish…I could cite so many examples where the meeja have no, or little comprehension. They think that it will not touch them. Wait and see!