Labour’s campaign was supposed to be a ground war. A
pavement pounding, door knocking, promise gathering army of volunteers was
going to drive high turnout and sweep Ed Miliband to power on the core vote, disaffected
Lib Dems and newly mobilised young voters. In the end thousands of tired, sore
footed volunteers were left staring wide eyed as an impossible exit poll gradually
becoming undeniable reality. The party’s message found no traction outside of
London and a handful of other gains, was swept from its Scottish heartlands and
bafflingly suffered losses in traditionally safe seats like Morley and Gower.
Labour has a significant volunteer and man power advantage
over the Conservatives, the membership is larger, younger, and more active. It
should translate into a powerful tool for getting out the vote and creating a
personal connection between voters and the party. Instead strong local
campaigns floundered in marginal constituencies, with Labour frequently going
backwards as in Hastings and Nuneaton. The Labour party had 5 million
conversations but what did they talk about? From my experience, efforts
focussed on gathering commitments to vote Labour in stronghold areas with a
view to driving election day turnout. This had built on the core vote strategy
for the party, a strategy built around a belief that Lib Dem losses would slide
to red and UKIP would mainly damage the Conservative vote. Both assumptions
were brutally wrong but focussing on Labour promises drove a party group think
that expected gains and ignored the frequent doorstep criticisms of Ed Miliband
as a leader and the party’s stances on immigration and the EU. In the end there
was simply not enough vote to turnout as traditional Labour demographics
switched to UKIP in significant numbers and too many don’t knows turned into
won’t votes or incumbent votes by default.
From the limited interaction I’ve had, the technology that
forms the bedrock of Labour’s ground campaign does not help. Its simplistic
reporting of preference does not translate to the complexities of voting
decisions, it encourages an overly optimistic reporting of Labour vote and it
is not accessible enough to produce analysis of voting preference or switches
in mood. Perhaps it is notable that when it was lauded in the Guardian,
it was in reference to Southampton Itchen one of several Conservative gains
from Labour. Any use of the tool also relies on consistent contact with huge
numbers of voters. Due to relying on volunteers, the low answer rate for door
knockers and people’s common refusal to discuss preferences the required level
of contact is only possible for designated battleground seats where help is
bussed in. Given the huge amount of preference data in the system and the
demographic data available elsewhere it should be more than possible for
campaigns to be run smarter as well as just harder. It is also an issue where
access to the system is only allowed after training but the data collection
itself is not as controlled. The data will only be useful if it is gathered
consistently, not just entered consistently.
A huge amount of effort and physical work from volunteers
went into a huge number of campaigns that went nowhere and amongst the
disappointment and deflation of defeat there is a real danger of those
volunteers drifting away from politics in general and Labour specifically. If
the party is to mount a more successful ground war in the future those volunteers
need to be maintained and engaged. Community events, issue campaigns and local
level casework will help build a foundation of local support for any future
campaign.
But all this work will be for nothing if the national
message from Labour fails again. The campaign, and the last 5 years of
opposition, simply did not communicate a compelling message to voters. There
were consistently encountered complaints about immigration and the EU, Labour’s
economic record and Ed Miliband as a leader. However the response to them was
not to engage with the complaint but to look towards Labour sympathisers and
seek revalidation that Labour’s answer was the right one. Perhaps social media’s
biggest contribution to this campaign was to exacerbate the group think around
the political left. People have allowed themselves to succumb to an echo chamber
that lazily accepts and promotes their views. A chamber that hates the Tories,
loves Ed Miliband, and sees signs of economic and social failure everywhere. It
was this collective affirmation that allowed Ed Miliband to survive as leader
despite consistent ballot box failure throughout his tenure.
Labour may be a party in favour of immigration but its former
core demographic is not. The message about preventing the damage from
immigration by controlling labour markets, increasing and protecting the
minimum wage, and legislating against importing low paid workers simply did not
fly. It was too distant, too theoretical and too clever to connect. To the
voters I spoke with it felt like a different point was being answered. They
complained about the flooded basement and were told how to fix the leaky roof.
The connection may seem obvious to us and to the echo chamber, but to many it
was simply dodging the question. Labour failed to sell the connection, and
failed to highlight that Cameron’s economic recovery was built on increased
immigration. It was the key contradiction of the campaigns. Labour wanted to
protect wages and had no problem with immigration, Conservatives wanted to
raise GDP and restrict immigration. I don’t believe there is an easy answer to
this issue because there is no restriction on immigration compatible with
Labour’s core values and there is seemingly no end to voter’s frustration with
the issue. People feel there is a deep change happening to this country as its
identity changes with increased immigration. In London where there have been
large immigrant communities and a huge number of languages spoken on the
streets for decades UKIP cannot get a foothold and Labour was able to win from
the Tories. Elsewhere communities unused to the change they feel were given no
security by Labour and voted UKIP or Tory in their droves.
On the economy, voters simply did not see the same picture
that so many in the party saw. Headline figures of GDP and employment growth
masked all other factors and the Tories successfully drowned out other issues
as nay saying or anti British negativity. The cost of living crisis wasn’t
translated into the simple struggle to pay the bills that many experienced.
There does not seem to have been a popular hatred of zero hours contracts for
Labour to tap into, or people didn’t feel that banning them was the answer. The
economy has been a polling disaster for Labour since the crash and history
shows that parties not trusted on the economy find it hard to win power. The
constant reference to the 1% simply made no headway, it was too wonkish, the
stable of an internet meme not a winning political party. The idea remains
right, Labour should want to redistribute the economy and proposing an asset or
wealth tax of some kind will be the right side of that debate historically but
this has to be phrased in a way that appeals better to people’s sense of
fairness. At the moment it seems too many buy into the idea that Labour are
against aspiration. The appointment of Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor was a huge
and costly error, his ousting may have been a painful moment and Parliament is
weaker for losing a man of his intellectual calibre but it may be a blessing in
disguise for Labour. His and Ed Miliband’s deep connections to the Brown
chancellorship hurt the party again and again during the campaign. Attempts to
explain that the global financial crisis was beyond their control felt like an avoidance
of responsibility. Had the party had a stronger leader, and a shadow chancellor
better able to articulate the view, then they could have argued that their
policies before the crash were right but given the team they had, and Balls’
perceived arrogance, they would have been better to accept fault and move on regardless
of the truth of the matter. This party has now lost two elections because of
their 2007 financial policy and it is time to accept they have lost the
argument in the public mind. An election campaign is not a time to teach macro-economic
theory to a deeply unreceptive audience. The only answer at this stage is to
completely move on from the team of advisors, economists and politicians
associated with that policy. In the meantime it is perhaps worth reflecting on
the lack of voter engagement needed to install a figure so disliked that he
could not even retain his seat into the second most important opposition role.
On the economy, but also across policy areas, Labour never
shook the impression many have that the Coalition was a competent government. I
think everyone on Twitter will have seen a list like this or this at some point but how many of them were mentioned when talking to voters? For
instance I heard not one mention of food banks despite their increased use
being at the heart of the Labour campaign. That is not to say it isn’t a worthy
thing to campaign on, but it has to be asked why the punch didn’t land. Perhaps
a more negative campaign would have helped, perhaps a campaign more grounded in
individual’s lives. A single person using a food bank may have more impact than
being told a million do.
It is with genuine sadness that I am also forced to reflect
on Ed Miliband’s personal failure. He is, I think, a good man. He seems to
genuinely believe in a progressive agenda for improving the UK and has proposed
a great many brave and worthy ideas but his failure to promote himself as a leader
has cost Labour dearly. Nowhere more so than in Scotland where the firebrand authenticity
of Alex Salmond and the calm steel of Nicola Sturgeon were telling contrasts to
his hesitant, awkward style. That comparison hurt him even in England and Wales
as the Tories ruthlessly exploited the command gap by portraying a future Ed
Miliband PM as beholden to his SNP rivals. From the moment Ed Miliband reacted
with shock and terror at being elected leader to his reedy Hell Yes he has struggled
for command and power when talking. It is depressing that it should make such a
difference but politicians’ careers can be predicted on three attributes Voice,
Persona and Policy (and by voice I mean their speeches and talking style). Ed
was never helped by his brother to overcome his persona problem, if David had
ever joined him on the front bench or supported him it would have killed the
stab in the back myth that persists to this day. Ed won a fair contest, but he
was never able to shake the illusion that he in some way screwed his brother
over and it hurt his image and was brought up on the doorstep even 5 years
later. On policy he was strong, but his speeches were betrayed by his style. He
always appeared to be second guessing his own sentences until he remembered his
training to be passionate at which point he would lurch awkwardly into fist
pumping staccato intellectualism. His phrases never stuck, having tried
predatory capitalism, one nation, and zero zero economy, amongst others, none
formed a key theme for the campaign.
Even the commitments he made were phrased in the nervous uncommitted
style of his speech. There was a promise to “Strengthen” the minimum wage, not
raise or enforce but the entirely meaningless “strengthen”. His infamously
written in stone pledges, leaving aside the fact that the 6th was
awkwardly added mid campaign after not being included on the actual pledge card,
contained not a single genuine policy commitment. It made the #EdStone so much
worse that none of them are written in language that could even be checked
against in five years. ‘A Strong Economic Foundation’ is not a rising economy
or falling unemployment, it’s not even a strong economy. It is a meaningless
phrase in a campaign that was all too full of them. This is only made more
baffling by the good reception most announced policies received. The removal of
the non dom status in particular got fantastic coverage and looked to be
winning the campaign until it was shunted from news schedules by Fallon’s
personal attack on Miliband and never heard from again. All through the
campaign I saw and agreed with mockery of Lynton Crosby’s two issue campaign
from Labour sources, but that focus gave clarity to voters that the Labour
party could not give them. Ultimately voters ask themselves why they would vote
for a party, what vision can they project, what goals do they propose? The
Conservatives gave a clear answer, promising economic security and strong
leadership. Labour produced six vague sentences carved into an 8 foot slab of
limestone.
In Scotland this failure to provide clarity helped an SNP
surge. Sturgeon could not have been clearer in her anti austerity rhetoric even
if her policies were decidedly more aligned. Miliband always minded his words
and could offer no resistance when the SNP decided they were a genuinely left
wing party for social justice and nuclear disarmament. Labour should not fool
themselves into thinking this is purely a result of the referendum campaign,
the wheels were set in motion far earlier with the SNP’s crushing victory in
the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary elections which allowed them to hold the
referendum in the first place. However, that referendum campaign positioned
Labour as part of a Westminster bloc that opposed the fundamental political
principles of a socialist Scotland. It is hard to see how a campaign that could
have stopped the SNP would have been economically conservative enough to
survive in England so it is easy why Labour struggled so desperately to match
the SNP. But it now has to examine how it can ever win back Scottish hearts and
minds whilst continuing to appeal to England and Wales. That Labour lost so
comprehensively north of the border but lose only two shadow cabinet members,
one from Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, suggests another, deeper,
problem with Scotland’s relationship to the party’s leadership.
The Labour party is now in a tough bind. It must select a
new leader quickly or Cameron and Sturgeon will frame a national debate without
them, but it must also take its time to take a genuine look at what happened
and what to do next. An honest, public debate is deeply needed not just to
identify the right way to move forward but the right person to do it as well.
Whichever way the party goes, they and the country need clarity. Cameron faces
a challenging second term with major issues to be resolved on a small majority,
so strong purposeful opposition is vital for all our sakes.
Of course, having written two and half thousand words on why
Labour lost, it’s important to remember that two parties also won, the
Conservatives and the SNP. A huge part of rebuilding the Labour party will come
from questioning how and why they won and seeing what can be replicated within
the confines of Labour, but maybe that’s an unnecessarily long blog post for
another day.
