After the 2000 US presidential election, Bill Clinton famously said, ‘the American people have spoken, we are just not quite sure what they said yet.’ Perhaps there was something a little similar about the 2005 British election. So, a couple of weeks after an election of slightly Delphic results, people were eager to meet up and talk it over. Progress’ post-election event – Message Received What Should Labour Learn from the Election?’ – could have filled the room four times over.
An outstanding line-up of speakers led by Neil Kinnock (whose remarks are reprinted elsewhere in this edition), including Margaret Hodge, Stephen Byers, Ed Balls, Stephen Twigg and Douglas Alexander, undoubtedly helped. With Jackie Ashley chairing, the meeting was frank and open about the lessons for Labour.
Ed Balls stressed how poor the results were for both the Tories and the Lib Dems. The Tories had worked hard to express their basic arguments in clear and simple terms – but still lost. As the Lib Dems did not advance a coherent argument, they neither won nor lost the debate. But they did not win the seats they had hoped for. However, Labour’s support of 37 per cent, on a low turnout, was not enough and too much of it was unenthusiastic. Balls pointed out that the majority of public service workers, those directly delivering Labour’s goals, did not vote for the government. Many Labour seats were now marginal, meaning Labour will have to distinguish between its policies and values and the essential unfairness of the Tory vision. If that argument was properly and strongly made, the debate was between left and right, not among the left.
Stephen Twigg described the beginning of a Tory revival at the local level in Enfield Southgate. The situation was exacerbated by a huge push to the Lib Dems and the Greens over Iraq and the related issue of trust and the disquiet of many Labour voters over immigration, on which too much territory has been ceded to the right. It was vital to sustain the New Labour coalition, Twigg argued, not only because it had won the election this time, delivering a third term, but it had also held on to some very vulnerable seats. As with the 2001 election, 40 per cent did not vote. To huge applause, Twigg wondered whether it was time to consider electoral reform, citizenship education or even compulsory voting.
Margaret Hodge talked about the election in Barking. The BNP had won 17 per cent of the vote (almost as much as the Conservatives). She described the enormous effects of changing employment patterns, property values and immigration on her constituents. Unlike the pure racism of National Front support in the 1970s, much of the BNP’s support stemmed from insecurity and fear of change. She wondered whether Labour has sufficiently considered the quality of daily life of people living in Barking and areas like it. Regeneration needed to be visible on estates up and down the country.
It was vital to think ahead to the population of Britain as it would be in 2009 or so, suggested Stephen Byers, and to what its concerns and aspirations would be at the time of the next general election. The Labour government would have to offer leadership on all of the big questions facing Britain pensions, local government finance and energy generation. It was essential, too, that Labour did not just administer but also provided political leadership to the country. It was vital to avoid chasing headlines using gimmicks or initiatives the task was more sustained than that.
Douglas Alexander made the point that throughout this parliament, Labour politicians should engage in a permanent conversation with voters. He saw the Lib Dems taking progressive voters from Labour, not because voters were pulled towards the Lib Dems’ policies, but because they had been pushed away from Labour and the Lib Dems were conveniently placed to benefit. It was vital that Labour remained the natural home of the progressive vote, and that the left did not splinter as it did during the 1980s.