Something funny happened to me in the run-up to last week’s general election: my Vote Labour garden stake was stolen. The day after it went missing I received a ransom note saying it would be returned on 8 May or, in the words of an anonymous ultimatum, it would be far more preferable if I was to erect a Conservative one in its place.
Unbeknown to the garden-stake larcenists a neighbour has a private CCTV system which fortunately was trained on our drive. Knowing the approximate time that the stake went missing it was possible to identify the criminal masterminds responsible.
The truth was that the stake had been removed by another neighbour as a joke and after playing along for a little while my board was back in situ after a day or so.
The incident was clearly a prank and I must say that it was fairly amusing but there is a serious point.
I live on an estate of approximately 200 homes which were built around 15 years ago. Each house is a detached family home of either three, four or five bedrooms. My estate is nice but it isn’t super posh. Many of the couples who live here, like my wife and I, moved in when the houses were built and have had our children here. A number of those children will soon be ready to fly the nest.
In years gone by my town and many others like it up and down the country were filled with terraces occupied by coalminers, foundry and factory workers but as many of those industries have disappeared it is now populated by a new type of worker, a new type of working class.
On the whole my estate is home to sales staff, call centre workers and warehouse operatives, not merchant bankers and hedge fund managers, the type of worker who in the late ‘1990s and early 2000’s flocked to Labour feeling connected with a narrative of enabling a better life for them.
Residents on estates such as mine are not expecting to be millionaires, we expect to pay fair taxes and have decent services provided. We hope that after working long weeks we have enough to drive a decent car and maybe take our families on holiday. The past few years have been tough for many of us, and job insecurity and redundancy have been commonplace, but we are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel and maybe are feeling just a little better off. For many of us it seems last week we were forgotten by Labour.
To a great many workers living in newbuild estates throughout the country Labour was an implausible option because we had nothing to say to them.
Put bluntly, the many people who I have spoken with who live in the type of houses I do were fed up. They were fed up of Labour talking about the bedroom tax and rent controls, they were fed up of our party seemingly wanting to punish the wealthy and they were fed up of all politicians taking chunks out of each other.
They wanted someone to give them hope and to facilitate their aspirations but in Labour, to many, they simply got ignored.
Maybe ignoring newbuild estates of ‘commuter cottages’ as one colleague disparagingly calls them was part of a not-so-secret 35 per cent strategy? If it was then we were spectacularly successful in that regard. We can, however, rest assured that unless we change our offer reaching out to such a vital group of voters, the new working class, then they will not be coming home to Labour any time soon.
Perhaps the strangest thing about my garden stake was not the fact that it was for Labour, or even that it was stolen, but that it was the only one for any political party on the entire development. And that is where we have hope.
Residents on estates such as mine are in general not emotionally attached to the Conservative party. Many have been raised in homes where voting Labour was second nature. Many, even now, see the Tories as the party of the rich and the privileged. Despite the fact that the Tories are seen as competent many want a reason to vote Labour.
It is vital that we spend time reaching out in the next five years and giving them just such a reason.
Today I was talking with one such neighbour about last week’s election. She said to me ‘Leon, I was in such a quandary’. I asked her why. Her answer to me perhaps encapsulated much of the reason why we lost and much of the reason why we should have hope.
She said, ‘Leon, when I went into the polling booth I wanted to vote compassionately. I had to vote for capability.’
In that sentence it is easy to see people like my neighbour actually want to vote for a party like ours. We just have to give them a cause.
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Leon Spence is a county councillor and Labour lead for children and young people at Leicestershire county council. He tweets @CllrLeonSpence
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Dear Leon, may I suggest that though in your comment you say that “people want a reason to vote Labour”, can I put it to you that it is Labour who has always had every opportunity to reflect the “grounded” view of failings, challenges and aspirations of the British people – but, miraculously failed!!
There is a fundamental question that goes to the heart of the Labour party – its leadership and team members: With a recession still burrowed deeply in the hearts and minds of many British people – suffering stifling to professional and personal goals amid the vast policy failings of governments that cut the key for the massive banking crises (and the small ‘viable’ business that were failed… homelessness too… need I say more(?) – how is it possible that a Labour party could not have purposely felt it was wrong, weak or suicidal to ‘harness the voices’ to reflect this reality with the Challenges and Aspirations that the British people face in their lives? How could Labour get it so wrong?
If the people have had to be Resilient and Creative in how it ‘gets back on its feet’, how is it that the Labour party failed to do the same?
After all, isn’t leadership about being Bold enough to do what is TOUGH – NOT doing what is easy?
I have every reason to vote Labour but the political choice for me stinks as I have the options to vote for a number of right wing tea party type parties including DUP & UKIP, a party that still smells strongly of cordite and like the SDP wants to redefine the UK (Sinn Fein), a Nationalist party (SDLP)which is weak, anti choice and defined by its Catholic roots, a Tory party-light (Ulster Unionist) and a Liberalesque party of ineffectual do-gooders (Alliance). Sadly living in Northern Ireland I can not vote Labour despite its ‘one nation’ stance, but boy do I want to, but the party refuses to let me. Yet a lack of Labour government in Westminster will no doubt see me unemployed and the basic public services which so many like me rely on will be irrevocable damaged. Its time for Labour to get over its inequitable exclusion of voters in Northern Ireland.
….oops SNP not SDP!
Your neighbour’s words sum up the truth. It was not a failure of our policies for the future which cost Labour votes but our failure to scotch the myth that Labour screwed up the economy. People I spoke to on the doorstep were obsessed with four things: Labour’s record on the economy (as they saw it), immigrants “filling up the country”, the SNP taking over and breaking up the UK and Ed Milband’s appearance. The question is whether we can ever get truth and common sense across to people.