I used to think that coalition was the way forward: any hue that wasn’t blue would do me just fine. I thought that British politics was a disastrous night out: a nation determined to go for a pub crawl forced into Starbucks by three determined coffee-drinkers.
But I realise now that coalition politics isn’t the best of all possible worlds, but a dirty pint: an unwanted and unpleasant cocktail of everything the bar has to offer, poured into a glass that no one wants to put to their lips. There are times when a dirty pint isn’t the end of the world, in the company of friends, perhaps, at a party in a familiar setting, but the challenges of 2015 are going to require an assertive and effective centre-left government that can get things done, not a weak and unloved thing that has to hold a referendum on the D’Hondt method of proportional representation every other week.
The trouble is that, if an election were held tomorrow, it would result not in a Labour majority but a hung parliament, albeit one in which a government without a Labour component would be essentially impossible. That would be better than the coalition we have now, but it would also mean that the Liberal Democrats’ primary achievement – negation – would stop being a feature and become a bug.
On Saturday, Progress conference opened with a debate about whether or not Labour was on course for a majority, a question that might be better phrased as ‘Are you informed, or simply innumerate?’ It’s not a question of lurching to the left or nodding to the right; Labour is falling short of where it needs to be to achieve a parliamentary majority. It doesn’t matter how many essentially ridiculous electoral strategies you outline, the essential fact is that that Labour is not where it needs to be to govern on its own. That isn’t about where it sits on the political spectrum, but the robustness of its offer. Labour has many messages about marginalia, but few about marginal seats. It’s easy to offer a speech that speaks to people’s pain as far as the cost of living is concerned, but far harder to offer something that might actually reduce the cost of living. So far, the party has done an excellent job of the first, and a non-existent job of the second.
Instead, an atmosphere has developed where it has somehow become an act of disloyalty for Peter Mandelson to say that One Nation Labour is not enough on its own to win a majority. It should alarm no one that a noun is not, in and of itself, a guarantor of a parliamentary majority. It is definitely the beginnings of one – of the three Labour leaders to win a majority, only Clement Attlee did so without the liberal use of the phrase ‘one nation’ – but while it might be necessary, it is not sufficient. ‘New Labour’ did pretty well at winning parliamentary majorities, but the notion alone wasn’t enough. It had to be accompanied by a series of policies that underlined the party’s commitment.
So far, it is two out of three for Labour: an ugly and unworkable line on immigration, the right argument on universalism, the right call on the European referendum, but the unifying trait on all three areas is that they were policy areas decided in a crisis, not launched in calm seas. For Labour to win a majority, it will have to go from a posture of reaction to one of advance.
—————————————————————————————
Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb