This month’s election shows Labour making progress. But its support base remains too narrow
Before entering Downing Street, David Cameron was widely reported as having forecast that within a year he would be leading the most unpopular government in living memory. This month’s elections didn’t exactly bear out that prediction, at least as far as the senior partners in the coalition are concerned. But they do underline the scale of the task before Labour as it seeks to recover from last year’s devastating election defeat.
One effect of devolution should be a diminution of the extent to which politics is viewed simply through the prism of Westminster, so it is important not to over-emphasise the lessons of the elections in Wales and Scotland for UK politics as a whole. Nonetheless, victories for Labour in seats like Cardiff North, which was lost to the Tories in the general election last year, and Cardiff Central, which the Liberal Democrats seized in 2005, were highly encouraging. In Scotland, the dangers of what Douglas Alexander terms a ‘traditional Labour’ approach (see page 16) has been graphically demonstrated.
In England, the challenge for Labour was twofold: to reverse some of its disastrous performances in local government elections in recent years and to begin to re-establish itself as a truly national party.
Set against these tests, Labour made moderate but important progress. Its projected share of the vote at 37 per cent is not only eight per cent higher than at last year’s general election, but its best since 1999 for these particular seats. Labour’s 800-plus gains effectively reversed the losses sustained during Gordon Brown’s premiership, and were the most it has made in any set of local elections since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, save for 1981 and 1995, during the first year of Tony Blair’s leadership.
In the northern English cities, Labour’s victories against the Liberal Democrats in Sheffield, Hull and Newcastle undid humiliations suffered during its time in government, while its extraordinary performance in Manchester underlines what can be achieved by a popular, progressive, well-led local authority.
The party’s performance was more mixed in the critical industrial, new, and commuter towns in the south and Midlands, key indicators of progress towards a return to government. Yes, there were gains against the Tories in places as diverse as Gravesham (aided and abetted by teams of London activists, and one of the locations for Progress’ campaign days); North Warwickshire; Thanet; Telford and Wrekin; and Exeter.
But despite strong local campaigning, the picture elsewhere is more disappointing for Labour. In Medway, home to a clutch of Kent marginals, Labour made gains, but so too did the Tories who remained firmly in control. In the Essex new towns, Labour again made modest progress, but the Conservatives retained their hold on the likes of Basildon. Parliamentary marginals like Dover, Harlow and Reading West would all have remained in Tory hands.
The challenge for Progress’ Third Place First campaign in those seats which were held by Labour in government but where it is now in third place was also underlined by the results. In Castle Point, the party still has no councillors; in Dacorum, which contains the parliamentary seat of Hemel Hempstead, Labour lost one of its three seats; while the party made no gains in St Albans and only two in Liberal Democrat-controlled Watford. It is true that, as Lewis Baston notes on page 18, there were ‘red shoots’ in the likes of Aylesbury, Tunbridge Wells and Rother. But the danger of Labour appearing to be ‘the party of the north’, as Ivan Lewis puts it on page 18, remains very much the case. The Tory grip on ‘the solid south’ continues.
It was, therefore, not so much Labour’s small steps forward in England, or the widely predicted Liberal Democrat drubbing, which was the most significant element of the results, but the resilience of the Tory vote. This suggests two things. First, that those who approve of the government’s performance are rewarding the Tories, while those who disapprove are punishing the Liberal Democrats.
Second, it confirms our analysis over recent months that a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote is not unadulterated good news for Labour. In many places, it is the vulture-like Tories who are feasting on the carcass of Nick Clegg’s party. It is the Conservatives who remain the obstacle to the election of a Labour government, and it is Tory voters, not simply disenchanted Liberal Democrats, who Ed Miliband must win over. The notion that a ‘rainbow coalition’ of left-of-centre voters can put him in No10 is simply not the case. The coalition Labour assembled this month was too narrow to secure a general election victory.
Ten years ago, as Labour prepared to fight for a second term, a debate in the party raged about whether its pursuit of ‘middle England’ voters was fatally damaging its support in ‘heartland’ areas. The either/or nature of this debate was always a flawed one; the party needed a message and an appeal which could unite the two. Labour’s defeat in 2010 resulted from a collapse in support in both. Miliband has proved that he can rebuild Labour’s heartland base. His challenge now is to do the same in ‘middle England’.