Winning back London’s commuter belt is key to restoring Labour’s fortunes in marginals throughout the country, argues Gareth Thomas
Labour needs a new focus on winning back the hearts, minds and ultimately the votes of those living in the London commuter belt. For the last 20 years winning the south has been a preoccupation for Labour leaders. Ed Miliband has made it his focus too. And in southern England the electoral battleground lies predominately in commuter belt seats: the Enfields, Gillinghams, Croydons and Crawleys.
But this is not just about the south. One of the fundamental insights of Giles Radice’s ‘southern discomfort’ work of the early 1990s was that what worked in southern marginals also worked in marginal seats elsewhere.
The policy review is rightly prioritising how to help the ‘squeezed middle’, rebuild strong communities and ensure that the ‘British promise’ – that the next generation will always do better than the current one – is not lost.
So, what are the attitudes of commuter belt voters? Collectively, they are less sympathetic to traditional Labour concerns about poverty, social security or raising the minimum wage compared to national opinion. Equally, they view trade unions in less positive terms and are even less enthusiastic than the rest of the country about higher taxes on the rich. Recognising and understanding the nuances in priorities between the commuter belt and the rest of the country will be fundamental to helping Labour reverse its loss of suburban voters which was decisive in helping Boris Johnson win the London mayoralty three years ago, but which also played a significant part in the Tory gains in 2005 and 2010 in commuter belt seats.
Forthcoming polling from YouGov demonstrates that we have further work to do to convince commuter belt voters, as well as the country at large, that the next Labour government will lead to higher living standards, more jobs and better public services and not more red tape, immigration and higher taxes. While expectations that a majority Conservative government would lead to fewer jobs and worse public services provide fertile territory for our growing critique of coalition economic, schools and NHS policy, it is clear this will not be enough. Less than 18 months after a major election defeat such scepticism is hardly surprising. But it should dispel any lingering notions in the wider party that opposing Tory cuts and waiting for yet more coalition mistakes will be enough to see us return to government.
The polling does, however, point to a series of further opportunities for Labour. More than a year into the coalition government, the strength of the anxiety across the country that those polled feel about their own and their families’ future is striking. Almost two-thirds of people say they are worried that they will find it harder to make ends meet and just over one-third are confident they will have opportunities to prosper in the near future. Our priority must be to continue to speak for the sense of anxiety and insecurity about personal and family futures that too many of our fellow citizens feel at the moment.
Concerns about getting a job, the challenge of finding an affordable home, the worry about rising prices and what can be afforded have all created an ‘age of anxiety’. This motivates some of the anger about the behaviour of bankers, politicians and benefit claimants and has fed, too, into the anger about tuition fee rises and immigration. For Labour the challenge is to think through how government could help create the conditions that put more money into people’s pockets, make it easier for people to get on the property ladder and create the environment for more good jobs. And some of this work has already been started through the policy review.
Equally challenging for Labour will be responding to the appetite for lower taxes, which almost half of those polled saw as the priority for making life better for them and their families and which, in turn, appears essential to helping further the process of rebuilding confidence across the electorate that Labour cares for people like them. Ed Balls’ campaign against George Osborne’s decision to increase VAT, putting at risk the economic growth that had begun to return in Labour’s last months in office, is therefore a particularly sensible move.
Recent focus group discussions also suggest that the cooperative model has recovered its appeal among Labour and potential Labour voters. After the 1980s and 1990s, when the co-op and mutual movement appeared to be on the wane and there was little interest in cooperative ideas, the appetite for such solutions, albeit with caveats, now appears striking.
In every part of the country there are new cooperatives forming while long-established ones, such as the Co-op Group and John Lewis, are thriving. More care cooperatives, credit unions, renewable energy cooperatives, even football supporters’ trusts, are all examples of the resurgence in the co-op idea. As well as the benefits individual cooperatives can bring, cooperatives and mutuals are increasingly demonstrating a successful and different way of doing things; that a ‘better capitalism’ is possible. Involving people in decision-making, greater transparency, clear ethical values and a genuine interest in sustainability are all associated with a cooperative and mutual approach. Outlining an intellectual narrative that offers not only individual communities but the Labour family too a clearer cooperative alternative to the ‘big society’ and which speaks to the ‘age of anxiety’ is more likely to resonate now than at any time in Labour’s recent past.
If Labour is to win next time it will need an organisational focus and political narrative that recognises the significance of the commuter belt for our prospects in marginal seats across the country. Less in tune with traditional left-of-centre interests, commuter belt voters are nevertheless like the rest of the country in being anxious about their own future and their children’s prospects. While the voters are sceptical about the prospects of a majority Conservative government and we can be pleased about Labour’s recent recovery, we still have more to do to prove our worth again.
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Gareth Thomas is MP for Harrow West and shadow minister for higher education and science
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Gareth, you are right that this area is crucial. However, politics in and around London will be dominated by the Mayoral elections for the next 12 months. We seem to have managed to select the candidate who will arguably appeal least to these voters. It’s not an inspiring start.
Yes, Gareth, that ticks the boxes.
The imperatives haven’t changed. Labour will not win by challenging a large segment of the electorate to change its mind about welfare, immigration and crime. Ignoring their concerns is suicide.
As far as the mayoral elections are concerned, it defies belief that a candidate with views considered so alien and regressive outside the inner city, could ever be favoured by a forward-looking party. If he wins in London, the party loses in the country.
I’m not sure if I agree with all of Gareth Thomas’s analysis, but I agree with Rob that the voters of the London commuter belt are cruicial.
If we are to look at the aspirations and views of the London “commuter belt” in its truest sense, we need to look beyond the area around the M25. Labour needs to consider “commuter belt” voters as far away from London as Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire.
Sorry, but I think this is fundamentally ill-conceived. If we try to win back marginals across the country on the basis of the needs of London and the South East, we are in for another hiding.