Next week, I’ll be speaking at the Labour Women’s Network Political Day in the session on ‘Will Labour win from the centre or the left?’ One of my arguments will be that it is only in the centre of the political spectrum that we will find the policies and the support to get elected in 2015.

Unlike David Cameron, I don’t want to drag an unwilling party to the centre by entering a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I don’t want a cobbled-together post-election coalition based on dumping your manifesto and finding willing human shields for the bad decisions you want to make! But the only way to avoid having to enter into that sort of coalition after the 2015 election is by building one now.

I want a real coalition of support for the programme of a majority Labour government – young and old, north and south, people from different backgrounds, with different passions and interests. In work and out of work. In the private sector and the public sector. Unionised and non-unionised. Business leaders and trade union leaders.

But to win a majority, electoral arithmetic tells us that we will need to win the support of those who always vote Labour and those who never have before.

To win a seat which already has a Labour MP, you only have to get people who voted Labour before to vote Labour again. But that doesn’t get us back into government. In the Tory marginals which we need to win, we need to get people who voted Tory, United Kingdom Independence party or Liberal Democrat to vote for us. It will, in fact, be mainly Tory voters that we’ll need to attract as there are more of them to aim for. There may be a longer-term project to get non-voters voting, but that won’t deliver the 2015 election.

Opposition can lull you into a false sense of security about the breadth of your support. After the unpopularity of our final years in government, people and causes are willing to associate with us again. We are ahead in the polls as people begin to listen to what we have to say and as they seek to protest against the current government.

But we can’t get re-elected by simply bringing together all those who have a gripe against the current government. There aren’t enough votes in a coalition of protest. That’s relatively easy, but doesn’t give the chance to put things right. In the 1980s, we were very busy in the Labour party – listening, commenting, and protesting. We had a strong sense of the righteousness of opposition. It felt like lots of people shared our outrage at the destruction wrought by a Tory government. Feeling good is never a substitute for doing good and, until 1997, there was little we could actually change or improve.

As I’ve previously argued, I had a sense of this danger with the campaign around the ‘bedroom tax’. I’m glad that we’re pledged to get rid of a damaging and failing policy but feel far more cautious than many of those celebrating the pledge. First, we can’t do anything about this until we’re in government again. Second, most people are not affected by this policy and most people still support the government’s stated welfare reform aims. This policy promise is right, but it’s not an election-winner. I think the test for our big campaigning ideas between now and 2015 should be that we can talk about an issue on every street, every doorstep and at every street stall and that it will resonate with most, if not all, of those we need to vote for us to get back into government.

So let’s get to work on our coalition now – a coalition convinced that we understand and can act on their concerns – not just speak out against what they’re worried about. A coalition of support for ideas to govern and the only way that we’ll get the chance to.

———————————————————

Jacqui Smith is a former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @smithjj62

———————————————————

Photo: chinahush