Every election campaign is a learning process. Some lessons are enjoyable and some are hard to take. Labour’s result in Glasgow, and indeed across Scotland, on 3 May is firmly in the enjoyable category as we began to put into action some of the lessons we learned from our painful defeat of 2011.
As a newly elected Glasgow councillor I take particular pride in our local victory which was so important for the party across the UK. Our opponents are now saying that the result was inevitable. How quickly the SNP have changed their tune and how disappointed many media figures were at having to tear up their copy decrying Labour’s failure to win in vital city heartlands such as Glasgow.
So our biggest lesson learned? Listen to the people, not the media or our opponents. What voters were telling us in 2011 is the same as they told us this May: they want Labour to be better.
Glasgow Labour took the really tough decision to start afresh and select a new cohort of candidates who were committed to work harder and longer, to listen and to take action, to put the needs of Glaswegians first. Being a Labour councillor in a Labour ‘heartland’ council is not a job for life, it is a civic responsibility. You must earn that honour every day.
We also learned that the great myth of the SNP’s electoral machine is just that. When we get the politics right we can still out-organise the nationalists across Scotland.
Localised campaign capacity is becoming ever more crucial as the electorate is sophisticated, drawing their influences from a multitude of different sources and able to distinguish what it regards is in their interest at a local, devolved, UK and European context.
Making your case is vital and your messages must be nuanced and specific to the fight you are in, but it must be communicated in the media, on the door and through the oldest of campaigning tools: leaflets.
We didn’t win in Glasgow because it was inevitable we would win; we won because we knew it wasn’t inevitable.
Our campaigning capacity needs to be increased across Scotland and it needs to be led locally and supported nationally, not the other way around. Glasgow Labour’s new levy on councillor allowances is a starting point to build a resource base that can ensure Labour can get its message out in Glasgow.
Those who believe in the United Kingdom, the solidarity we owe each other and the promise of a better future we can build together breathed a small sigh of relief at the Scottish results on 4 May. The seemingly relentless march of nationalism has been checked and the separation talked of by the SNP as inevitability is a straight choice once again.
But it is no better than that. Only by continuing to learn and change for the better can we win this vital debate. That will take voices from across the broad spectrum of our proud movement working and campaigning together. Either we learn the lessons together or our communities will suffer the consequences of our failure.
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James Adams is a Labour councillor for Glasgow Govan, and is standing alongside Pam Duncan, Ian Miller and Katrina Murray for the NPF as part of the ‘Scotland First’ team.
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Did the party / the candidates experience any kind of backlash from some voters over the fact that Labour had deselected a large number of candidates, often in quite acrimonious circumstances? From my past experiences this kind of thing has the possibility of having a negative effect on local parties with the electorate, so I wonder if you had any experience of this on the doorstep?
Looks like the results answer your question: no.