Labour’s had a bit of a polling shock. A Tory lead has been a bucket of cold water in the face of Labour’s optimists, who have been talking for the last few years about a progressive realignment, an emerging Labour majority of loyalists, the young, and former Liberal Democrat voters.

Panicking is a stupid, useless reaction to this news. Labour is still in a position to win the European elections and gain hundreds of council seats. We can still win the next general election.

But while a couple of outlying polls is no big deal, and polls can and do change, the trend that has led us to this point is clear, and needs to be taken seriously.

Those of us who have quietly (and not so quietly) warned for a year or more that Labour’s poll ratings have been softening, and that we needed more support for victory, have faced a number of critiques.

There has been the argument that Labour’s lead was small but stubborn. Gone, now.

There has been the argument that Labour support has a hard floor it can’t dip below. Gone, now.

There has been the argument that that Tories will not reduce our lead while people are feeling worse off. Gone, now.

There has been the argument that Labour’s setting of the agenda with popular policies would strengthen Labour’s lead. Gone, now.

Suddenly, that unstoppable emerging majority looks rather fragile.

The last sandcastle against the tide is that Labour benefits from a stacked deck. A combination of differential turnout and delayed boundary reviews which mean that Labour needs fewer votes per seat than the Tories.

I am no purist about winning like that. The Tories did in 1951, and governed for 13 long years.

It’s not an inspiring prospectus, though. I do not much fancy relying on it, especially because the next government faces choices which will test Labour unity to the limit.

So where to now?

Some blunt talk is needed.

For all the irritation at campaign flubs, this is not the fault of the European election campaign. The decline in Labour share predates the campaign: the weaknesses in our polling today are the result of underlying weakneses visible months back.

Closer polls are not a reaction to an election broadcast or a duff poster. That gives too much credit to campaigns that pass most voters by. What we are reaping is a harvest of years of endemic certainty of victory, whose advocates consistently argued we did not need to persuade anyone else, meaning we scarcely bothered to try.

Next, it is time to junk any strategy reliant simply on ‘former Liberal Democrats’ who are exclusively on the left of politics. This is not because former Liberal Democrats are not important, or should not be measured, but because voters do not live in handy uniform blocks of shared views, to be moved about as strategists wish.

Thinking of voters as belonging to clubs with firm views will lead you to mistake those who do not quite fit the model. It is those voters with doubts and uncertainties, whether Labour, Tory or non-voter that are essential to victory.

Yes, a significant proportion of 2010 Liberal Democrats are leftish-inclined, and Labour will need to appeal to these. But others are not, and these have been leaking away. Some recent polls show almost as many former Liberal Democrats are voting Conservative or for the United Kingdom Independence party as Labour. Similarly, former Labour voters have been shifting to don’t know, or Ukip. It is the edges and the doubters on the fringes who are drifting away. We need to stop this, and attract some doubters of our own.

What to do?

Labour has two choices.

The first is to keep the existing strategy, but execute it better.

To win this way, Labour needs to hold on to every voter who supported us this time last year. We would need near-unanimous turnout of 2010 Labour voters, a large pinch of former Liberal Democrats, and a healthy portion of the young and non-voters.

The benefit of this approach is that it will appear intensely practical.

You would need to hire more ground organisers to deliver in key seats. You would need really detailed voter propensity modelling. You would need to remorselessly identify and go back to every one of those voters, with a specific, tailored message to them, and get them to vote.

You would need thousands of volunteers and several million pounds to do this, but what you would not need to do is change your messaging. After all, these are people who agree with us, or at least did last year.

So at a national level, the campaign would be a defensive war of attrition. We shall not give up a single Labour voter. We will fight for them in Thurrock, in Nuneaton, in Croydon, street by street, doorstep by doorstep.

Personally, I do not think such an approach has a cat in hell’s chance of working, or at least not well enough to do more than limp over the line.

One reason is because, by trying to hold on to every voter, we will be trapped by the tensions of our narrow coalition: can’t promise more for the NHS, as that would frighten off the fiscal doubters, can’t promise fiscal caution or tough immigration rules for fear of annoying the left and the liberals.

Trapped between Polly Toynbee and Thurrock, all that would happen is everyone would demand their own particular form of suicidal bravery (a billion here, a billion there), and blame the poor sods trying to hold the ring when they do not get it.

The other reason I do not think it will work is because it relies on perfection. Everything would have to go right, and things rarely do.

This is where we are heading now.

There is an alternative approach, but it is controversial and risky. It involves trying to persuade sceptical voters that Labour is not the party they think we are.

Instead, we would try and convince them we are a party with a heart, but we are also a party that likes saving money, that is clear about how tough things will be, does not pretend that every national problem can be solved by passing a bill, or a regulation, or even, let’s be honest, by putting a Labour government in office.

This is risky because the people we appeal to now are voting for us precisely because they like the big spending, moral markets party we have told them we are for the last three years.

Start confounding that expectation, and they will get restless.

However, the reward is big. First, Labour voters who have doubts about our economic policy and ability to take tough decisions might stick with us. Second, those voters who are rallying around other parties might reconsider us.

Third, even though we will not promise unicorns on sticks for all, we would offer credible progress on the issues our existing voters really care about.

Most importantly, we would be telling the truth.

We will not build a new Jerusalem with a regulatory shift here, or a cap on rents there. The world is too complicated, our national problems too significant.

A Labour government can make a difference, but it can’t wish away the deficit, or immediately solve Britain’s productivity problems. We cannot create a mittelstand from whole cloth or make every school-leaver skilled. We cannot undo decades of underinvestment from business with a tax change or a stern ticking-off of the CBI.

That is what we cannot do. But accepting this means we can focus on what we can.

If we want to really make progress against these big challenges, we first have to accept it will take years, even decades. But we can fix them. That is your message of optimism for the restless – you really want change? If you want it to be real, it can’t be easy and immediate. Nothing worthwhile is.

In such a context, a moderation, even a total rejection, of the deceptive lie of immediate promises is not a cowardly lack of bold radicalism, but recognition of the challenges that lie ahead.

Will this be difficult? Will it be painful? Undoubtedly. It will take a huge shift in political approach.

But consider what we have done for the last year.

We have promised people a whole series of popular stuff.

We have promised more housing, cheaper rents, lower bills, guaranteed jobs.

All the data tells us people want these things.

Yet promising them has not even maintained our current support. The more we have made firm promises, the more we have lost sceptical voters.

This is just my opinion, but I think voters distrust nice promises in hard times. I suspect they don’t believe it is that simple, and giving the impression we think it will be easy underlines their doubts about us.

Could a message of a hard, slow grind to progress be popular? It is counterintuitive, but perhaps.

Look at who is popular across Europe today. It is not the sellers of fairytales, the promisers of better, easier tomorrows. Rather, it is the people with determined faces who talk of hard truths, grand challenges and needed reforms. Matteo Renzi, using pledges for big structural reform to slow deficit reduction, not avoid it. Manuel Valls who says he ‘owes the French people the truth’. Angela Merkel, welcoming these new allies.

Each will face huge problems and major unpopularity, but for now they seem to offer something people want.

Call it a populism of the centre, or a populism of sweat and tears.

Whatever it is, it is an alternative to a year of grinding defensiveness.

It is an alternative to a slow limp to victory, or a gradual acceptance of defeat.

It at least deserves consideration, even if we decide that for this party with one year to go and strategy set, it is either too late or too early to adopt a new approach.

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Hopi Sen is a Labour blogger who writes here, is a contributing editor to Progress, and writes a fortnightly column for ProgressOnline here

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