The last few weeks have been an object lesson in the strengths of retail politics. The way Labour’s energy freeze pledge has dominated the political agenda since party conference is a simple demonstration of how a policy that makes immediate, concrete sense to people can be politically transformative.
I want to generally leave alone the question of whether Labour’s energy price freeze is good public policy or not. While Jonathan Portes has described Labour’s pledge as ‘stupid and potentially counterproductive’, many energy policy experts see the freeze as a popular wrapping on the more significant policy of demanding a reset of the entire energy market. Given this underlying shift, the debate over whether the temporary freeze alone is a good or bad idea is perhaps beside the point.
The fact that such policies are described as a ‘retail offer’ isn’t coincidental. It’s about selling. Whether on the doorstep, on advertising or in direct mails, the price freeze offer answers the most basic of questions faced by sales teams everywhere: ‘Yes, but what will it do for me?’
When faced with an offer like that, which both acts as a good deal for voters and a dividing line against the competition, opponents often struggle. The last similar offer was the Tories’ inheritance tax pledge in October 2007. Labour dismissed, then half-heartedly imitated the promise, but by that stage the damage was already done. The Tories had been lagging Gordon Brown by between five and 10 points. After the conference season, a combination of the promise, Brown’s decision not to call an election and the first bank run in Britain for decades, the Tories had established a comfortable lead. Labour never led again.
So everything is rosy, right?
Well, almost. While retail offers are effective sales tools, they aren’t in themselves an argument.
Politics can be wholesale, as well as retail. While the struggles of the government to respond to Labour’s retail offer are clear, it is much more comfortable on the wholesale politics. Its message to the nation next time is going to be ‘Labour nearly stuffed the country. We’ve rescued it, but now we’ve got to rebuild it. You can’t trust Labour with that task.’
A single retail offer, no matter how powerful, can’t act as shield against that argument forever. Eventually, other issues will move into the news. PMQs will address other issues.
Further, Labour has had astonishing success with the energy issue, but the truth is it’s shifted the polls only very slightly since September. While Ed Miliband’s personal ratings have risen, and Labour supporters are much happier with the party, the views of the doubtful and the sceptical have not changed much, if at all. We’re effectively where we were in August, and a little down on where we were this time last year. Retail politics has its limits.
It’s here that Miliband’s earlier ideological spadework must show its worth. Miliband has a wholesale message, which he’s spent a lot of time identifying. In order to take the thinking that drives the price freeze and make it an extended argument, that wholesale argument needs to be extended and made explicit in areas like increased wages, improved regulation, and long-termism in the economy.
In essence, Labour has to go back to the same ideological spring, again and again. The difficult part is that these subjects don’t lend themselves easily to the clarity of the price freeze.
Next week, Miliband is scheduled to make a big speech on wages, but while promising ‘living wage zones’ or increased wages in certain sectors is certainly attractive, it is, by definition, a more limited offer than the price freeze.
In pensions, Labour has a clear case for reform and a compelling argument for better value for savers, but the whole area is terrifyingly complex. As for long-termism, here Labour is trapped by its indecision on High Speed Two. You can make an argument for proceeding or not proceeding, and still make long-termism. What you can’t do is hedge and delay your decision.
However, this momentum has to kept up if Labour’s price freeze is to be more than a defensive short-term policy that leaves the field open to a wholesale narrative that, however attractive our promises, we just can be trusted on the big stuff because we haven’t changed.
When these arguments are put to them, Miliband advisers tend to make two points.
First, they say that Barack Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney demonstrates how effective a cost of living argument can be. They’re right, but Obama also ran a wholesale ‘We’re putting America right, don’t let the GOP ruin it’ message.
Second, they argue that the ‘stickiness’ of 2010 Lib Dem defectors mean that Labour can win by exciting and motivating our existing voters, not having to persuade them. This is a real insight, and the value of 2010 Lib Dems to Labour’s coalition shouldn’t be underestimated.
Both these points are well made. However, given Labour’s current poll position, a few new supporters would still be most welcome, and it would be good to translate Labour’s energy policy from attractive retail offer to be emblematic of a wholesale political message that can compete with a Tory narrative about recovery and risk. That is Labour’s next challenge. The good news is that Miliband seems up for it.
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Hopi Sen is a Labour blogger who writes here and writes a fortnightly column for ProgressOnline here
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