Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and while many of us were far from optimistic ahead of last week’s election, few would have predicted such a resounding defeat.
But why didn’t we see this disaster coming?
Well, the truth is, we did. We just forgot about it. We all became distracted by Labour’s strong campaign and neglected the fact that a party’s reputation is built up over years and decades rather than weeks and months.
The Conservatives set us trap in 2010 and we walked right into it. This trap involved the Tories presiding over a recovering economy and Labour talking it down. First we were in ‘recession’, then we weren’t. So then the economy was ‘flatlining’ (complete with the shadow chancellor’s hand gestures). But soon it was growing, ‘but only for a few’, and then it really was growing, ‘but your lives are still rubbish’. So not only did we fall into the trap of appearing to talk down the economy, we were also both incredibility short-termist – therefore lacking credibility at every turn – and seemed to believe a good way to win an election was to tell people how bad their lives were.
The problem was that most people were relatively content and felt things were getting better. There was no ‘cost-of-living crisis’ for most people. So we lost.
But not only did we lose, we got hammered. We arrogantly assumed that Liberal Democrat voters were Labour voters who got out the wrong side of bed in 2010 and, when pressed, would vote for us. We forgot the Liberal Democrats were bang in the centre and that we were speaking from the left. We failed to understand that, while many decide who to vote for at the ballot box, an ‘aura’ is created around a party over time which influences public opinion far more than any policy offer. However good the ground campaign, it could not make up for our deficiencies in the ‘air war’.
So amid the disappointment what are the key lessons to learn for next time?
- Clear, consistent communication is key
To win in 2020 we will need to be clear on our strategy and communicating it. We will need to be absolutely certain about which message we want to push and repeat it in every interview for five years. The BBC’s Andrew Neil indicated he was sick to death of hearing the Tories mention their ‘long-term economic plan’, as was Nick Robinson upon hearing Gordon Brown pledge ‘prudence’ continually in 1997. Both worked perfectly. Ed Miliband, on the contrary, had dozens of slogans, yet I can recall almost none. The best by far was One Nation, but it was so poorly explained that it was eventually dropped. The problem, though, was with the communication, not the project itself which should have been a worthy successor to New Labour.
- Economic credibility underpins all else
Without stable foundations Labour will have nothing to offer the public. It is the basis for everything we do. That is why the Conservatives line ‘there is no NHS without a strong economy’ was so impactful. Not only was it true, it meant that Labour could no longer shift the conversation towards the NHS – not that this was ever working for us anyway. Why did we not move faster in pledging fiscal responsibility? Well, as I was informed by one of Ed Miliband’s closest advisers in 2013, ‘there’s no point talking about the economy now because we don’t know what it will be like in 2015’. I still cannot believe he said this.
- Labour must be a broad church
Labour’s biggest challenge will be to appeal to both its core vote and middle England. Choosing one or the other is not good enough, neither is offering retail policies targeted at separate groups. The new leader must devise a strategy which crosses class divides and is attractive to both middle- and lower-income earners, both of which want opportunities to enhance their prospects. They also need to appeal to the public’s sense of fairness and understand the extent of small ‘c’ conservatism in Britain today; a public desire for manageable change, not great levels of wealth redistribution or social upheaval.
And under no circumstances will there ever, in the future of British politics, be a place for a 35 per cent strategy. We were supposedly on 42 per cent when we first heard about that one. We ended on 30.5 per cent. Politics is an art as much as it is a science and we need a leader to inspire, not sit glued to a calculator pondering how many Liberal Democrat votes we can win back in Cornwall if we oppose a pasty tax. That is not the type of politics we need from the Labour leadership, and it is certainly not the type to win us the 2020 election.
To win again Labour must be bold, optimistic, open, honest, consistent and credible. Only then will we be given the opportunity to implement the change we’d like to see.
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Joe Jervis is a member of the Young Fabians executive committee. He tweets @joejervis89
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