Iain Duncan Smith was able to make election gains against the government; Labour should be able to expect Jeremy Corbyn to do so

The point of playing down your prospects in an election is to make your success seem all the more noteworthy. It also makes political leaders seem humble, taking nothing for granted. No one likes the whiff of triumphalism. And when you win, you can look all surprised and grateful. It is a well-worn political trick.

This year, Labour’s strategists are playing down Labour’s prospects, not in the anticipation of success, but in the solid expectation of failure. This is the expectations game played to lose. Despite the efforts of Labour’s doughty doorstep campaigners, Labour’s leadership seems to have written off its candidates’ chances before the ink on their nomination papers is dry. We are not witnessing a clever attempt to manage expectations; this is slashing your own tyres before the race has started.

On 29 February, the shadow communities secretary Jon Trickett gave a PowerPoint presentation on Labour’s election strategy to Labour members of parliament and peers. It was jaw-droppingly amateurish according to many accounts, but far more worrying was the utter lack of ambition to gain any seats or councils. Every ‘battleground’ was already Labour-held. It put forward the holy trinity of low expectations: no gains in England, Wales or Scotland. This is Labour’s official goal: to make no gains whatsoever.

Yet there are five councils that Labour could take outright with a gain of just one or two seats: Kirklees, Plymouth, Newcastle-under-Lyme, North-east Lincolnshire, and Calderdale. Can Jeremy Corbyn really not deliver a Labour council for these communities?

The wagons are already circling around Corbyn. And the waggoneers are spinning the line that Labour’s support in these seats is at a high water mark, and it is unreasonable to expect any further advance.

This line of defence is laughable. In their first year as leaders of the opposition, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Ed Miliband all made gains against the Tories in local elections. William Hague, Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron all made gains against Labour in opposition. It is scarcely credible that Labour will not make gains in terms of councillors. If Duncan Smith can do it for the Tories, we should expect Corbyn to do it for Labour.

This line is also a bizarre reversal of the claims made by his supporters six months ago. Back in the autumn, we were told that the public, having just elected the first Tory government for 20 years, wanted a straight-talking, honest alternative to austerity. We were told that the young people and non-voters would flock to a Corbyn-led Labour party. Yet now, with the first real chance for millions of people across Britain to vote Labour, we are being told we should not expect them to. We are being told to go back to our constituencies and prepare for defeat.

The numbers should speak for themselves: in May 2012, when council seats to be fought next month were last up for election, Labour gained seats on a turnout of just 31 per cent – four percentage points lower than in the 2008 poll. A higher turnout of voters inspired by the new leadership ought, on this logic, to see new gains for Labour.

No one is expecting victory on the scale of 1995, when Labour won 48 per cent of the vote and gained 1,807 new councillors. Corbyn is no Blair. But it is entirely reasonable for Labour to be targeting around 500 gains in May, plus a good showing in the Welsh assembly, police and crime commissioner elections, and victory in London. This would represent modest electoral improvement under Corbyn. It would suggest that the public are starting to come back to Labour after too many years estranged.

Corbyn’s failure to make inroads not only condemns millions to Tory councils, councillors and PCCs, it also raises questions about his true aims. We have seen the Labour leader swap the doorstep for a demo almost every weekend this year. His closest ally has described joining the Labour party as a ‘tactic’. There are tons of tales coming from constituency Labour parties of ‘new members’ refusing to help in local election campaigns because they ‘only joined to get Jeremy elected’. There is plenty of Corbynista chatter on the likes of ‘Labour Party Forum’ on Facebook that local elections do not really matter. One comment was that they are ‘irrelevant’. Opinion polls, election results, Labour councillors: all part of the old politics.

The Labour party was created to fight and win elections; to seize power and exercise it. And not to merely seek to influence others by painting placards and marching up and down. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss the conference where we voted to become a non-governmental organisation. We remain a party committed to democratic politics, and no amount of revolutionary nonsense alters that. On the doorsteps, Labour campaigners are fighting to win. It is a shame the same cannot be said of their leaders.

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Photo: Steve Punter