Last month’s local and European elections bore all the hallmarks of a dress rehearsal for next year’s general election. So what do they tell us about how ready Labour is for opening night in May 2015?

In a number of places with key marginal seats – Cambridge, Stevenage, Crawley, and Hastings – Labour made strong progress in the local elections. Its 15-point margin in London in the European election (coupled with victories in battleground councils such as Redbridge, Croydon and Hammersmith and Fulham) was impressive. Although no longer the political barometer it once was, the capital is home to seven of the 67 gains Labour needs to secure a majority in 2015.

At the same time, other seats on the party’s target list saw Labour actually going backwards: losing control of Thurrock and Great Yarmouth councils, stalling in Tamworth, and seeing the Tory grip on Swindon tighten. Moreover, Labour’s share of the vote in both sets of elections was disappointing. In the European elections, it came within a whisker of being pushed into third place behind the United Kingdom Independence party and the Tories, while its vote in the local elections tumbled by seven points compared to 2012, leaving the party just one point ahead of the Tories. Historical precedent suggests the political position of governing parties (including those, like Labour in 2010 or the Tories in 1997, which were heading for defeat) strengthens during the year leading up to a general election, making Labour’s current position a distinctly uncomfortable one.

Nigel Farage is the not especially funny joker in the electoral pack. Ukip’s victories in Rotherham, North-east Lincolnshire, and Hull suggest the party’s potential to replace the Liberal Democrats as Labour’s principal challenger in parts of its northern heartlands. At this point, however, Ukip appears primarily a threat to the Tories by splitting the centre-right vote. The danger for Labour is that, come next May, David Cameron manages to lure back many of those who voted Conservative in 2010 but have since drifted to Ukip. YouGov’s eve-of-election poll showing two-thirds of those who voted for Farage last month saying they would vote Tory next May if they lived in a Labour-Conservative marginal underlines that threat.

Looking ahead, the elections highlighted three weaknesses that Labour must now seek to address. First, the election campaign saw a positive tsunami of new announcements from the party: on increasing the minimum wage, capping rent increases, and GP access. These policies are undoubtedly popular. However, popular policies alone are not sufficient to guarantee electoral victory. In 1992, Neil Kinnock lost to John Major despite campaigning on the supposedly popular policies of higher child benefit and state pensions funded by an increase in national insurance contributions on the better-off. Similarly, policies on crime, immigration and Europe which scored well in the polls did nothing to save William Hague in 2001 or Michael Howard in 2005. The Tories’ chances then were sunk by the party’s lingering ‘nasty party’ image, which these policies also served to reinforce. Labour’s problem is somewhat different. As in 1992, its failure to convince the electorate that it can be trusted with the economy undermines much else it tries to do. Moreover, there is a risk that, while individual items on Labour’s policy wish-list are popular, cumulatively they play into swing voters’ fears about the party being free-spending and anti-business.

Second, the elections highlighted the limits to Labour’s focus on the ‘cost-of-living crisis’. As wage increases begin to outstrip prices there is a question mark over whether this campaign will reach its sell-by date before May 2015. However, the proceeds of the recovery are not yet being felt by all and the Tories have shown scant interest in ensuring they do. This presents an opportunity for Ed Miliband, but to seize it Labour needs to develop an agenda focused on future prosperity: one that is as much about growing the overall size of the cake as it is about sharing it out more fairly.

Third, Labour’s leadership appeared strangely unwilling during the campaign to tackle head-on the lies about Europe and migration that Ukip has been allowed to peddle for too long. Some are now arguing that Labour needs to toughen its line on both in response to the Farage surge. But this is a moral and political dead-end for the party. It risks both being seen as a cynical tactic, devoid of principle and alienating many of those currently supporting the party without gaining any new adherents. Let’s recall the fate of Gordon Brown’s ill-judged ‘British jobs for British workers’ pledge in 2007.

There are legitimate concerns about immigration – principally the exploitation of migrants and the impact on low-paid Britons – which need to be addressed (and, to his credit, Miliband has focused much attention here). And there is a rich agenda around reform of the European Union which supporters of Britain’s membership need to do more to advance. But basic principles – that migration benefits Britain socially, culturally and economically and that to cut ourselves off from the world’s largest single market would be an act of absolute folly – must be defended vigorously.

Labour not only lags the Tories on economic competence, it also lags on leadership. Miliband has previously indicated his desire to reshape the landscape of British politics in the manner achieved by Margaret Thatcher. She was, in part, able to do this because voters felt she stood up for what she believed in, even when they disagreed vehemently with those beliefs. Workshops conducted by BritainThinks for Progress in four key marginal constituencies last autumn found a desire and willingness to hear hard truths, even unpopular ones, from the party. A staunch defence of both immigration and Europe by Miliband might fly in the face of public opinion but, in so doing, it may give just the fillip to the Labour leader’s ratings both he and his party now need if it is to secure victory next May.

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Photo: plashing vole