My first thoughts after Thursday’s results were with all Labour’s fantastic candidates who were standing up on stages across the country as their results were read out but going the wrong way: the likes of Will Martindale, Uma Kumaran and Luke Pollard would have made great members of parliament – and hopefully still will some day. However, as the dust settles the true tragedy of what happens next is emerging: scrapping the Human Rights Act, further penalising people on disability with harsher cuts, our NHS in turmoil. With real-terms cuts to the education budget we face a society in which where you are going is even more dependent on where you come from, and cuts in legal aid mean that justice is only available to those who can afford it. This election defeat is not a blow for Labour as much as it is for the vulnerable people in our society who we were fighting to protect.
So where did Labour go wrong? The warning signs were all there – no party has won a general election having been behind on the economy and leadership ratings. The public preferred David Cameron as prime minister over Ed Miliband, despite Ed’s late bounce. The ‘cost of living’ argument did not work as it focused on people’s personal finances; all the academic evidence says that elections are won on the retrospective macroeconomic performance of the incumbent government. The best case study of this is M.J. Hetherington’s study of the 1992 US presidential election, where despite people feeling no worse off all the media told them that the economy nationally was in a bad way and George HW Bush lost the election. The two Eds failed to convince and all the voters who were undecided when they walked into the polling booth went for the devil they knew over risking the recovery. We know that after two years of stagnation the economy has grown despite, not because of, the Tories, but their economic message was clear and strong and Labour did not address the blame for the financials crisis early on. The positive party usually beats the negative one, and it was the Tories who had a positive message about the economy and Labour who had a negative one. People’s concerns about the cost of living and the NHS did not cut as deep as fundamental economic security and leadership.
At the national level, the next Labour leader must appeal to people’s aspirations. When asked a question about aspiration by the audience at the televised Paxman interviews, Ed Miliband had very little to say. Labour needs a positive message about how we will enable people to succeed, from getting more women into work and addressing the gender pay gap to enhancing the general prosperity of the nation (including those at the top as well as the bottom). By 2020, Tony Blair will have been the only Labour leader to win a general election in 41 years because New Labour built policies geared to the needs of a post-industrial society and did not try and turn the clock back to the 1970s. That is not to say we should now regurgitate our 1997 policies – no one is suggesting this – but we should come up with an innovative new programme for government. We must build a Labour party that represents the radical centre and which is focused on the needs of 2020 but with a vision for 2025.
Labour must also learn from comparing our successes stories to the disappointing defeats. Although Labour actually lost seats in several parts of England, Wes Streeting defied the odds to regain Ilford North (a seat we lost back in 2005) through immense hard work on the doorstep and by being a strong local voice. Ben Bradshaw nearly trebled his majority and Labour gained council seats in his Exeter constituency – Exeter now being a sole red dot in a south-west sea of blue – because of a machine-like ground operation and by being a popular hard-working local MP. We can also think back to Margaret Hodge’s demolition of the BNP in Barking and Dagenham in 2010 by revitalising the activist base and engaging with the concerns of the local community. CLPs cannot be inward talking shops for lofty policy obsessions that will never see the light of day, but outward and hard-working campaigning machines that regularly speak to and engage with local residents. After years of complacency in previously safe Labour seats, hard work on the ground is how we will slowly begin to rebuild after the Scottish tsunami.
In truth, too much focus on the national opinion polls clouded the reality of the election that began to emerge at 10pm on 7 May, despite the warning signs. It is not just for the next Labour leader but the whole of the party to get behind a positive agenda with policies that enable people across the socioeconomic divide to realise their aspirations and by relentless work to engage with communities on the ground. Let’s learn from the past to build more success in the future and make sure the last Labour government was not a mere blip in nearly half a century of Tory rule.
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Edward Jones is a member of Progress. He tweets @EJCJones93
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