Learning the lessons

Inquests into Labour’s election defeat continue. An ESRC-funded project, which interviewed over 1,350 Party members, put Brexit and the media at the top of the reasons why Labour lost so badly.

A leaked internal report attacked the Party’s electoral strategy, with allegations of inadequate material, poorly prepared canvassers and the wrong seats targeted. Anyone who took part in the mass canvasses around London will see a grain of truth in this.

 More significant is the wide variation in contact rate: in London marginals, 28% of eligible voters were contacted, in Scotland, it was just 6% - although still better than the 0.2% contact rate in South Shields when David Miliband was an MP there. The Guardian reported that “for every 10% change in campaign contact rate there would be a 2% increase in Labour’s vote share.” The concentration of Labour members – and canvassing – in the south clearly had an impact elsewhere.

A less-publicised report by academics at Europe for the Many, entitled The devastating defeat: Why Labour lost and how it can win again goes deeper and explores the demographic changes in the UK that make electing a Labour government more challenging.

The researchers divide the electorate into four main categories. First, multi-ethnic working class heartlands: seats Labour consistently holds, with high levels of inequality, deprivation and ethnic diversity. Second, young cosmopolitan centres of the new capitalism: seats Labour won for the first time in 2017, diverse, with large numbers of private renters and graduates and high house prices. Third, the Brexit-voting towns of left-behind Britain, which the Tories won for the first time - areas with low house prices, wages and ethnic diversity and high numbers of older people,with higher rates of home ownership and economic security. Lastly, the affluent Leave-voting Conservative shire seats, with low ethnic diversity and a large older population.

This re-composition, a feature of our post-industrial society, has been going on for decades, but only emerged clearly after the Brexit vote in 2016, claim the authors.The Tories’ ability to unite its affluent shire base with a section of Labour’s traditional electoral coalition underlines not just the Brexit divide. It potentially opens a new division between largely Leave-voting social conservatives and Remain-voting social liberals.

“The Tories now have a huge challenge,” argue the authors.” They have to keep control of seats desperate for investment, which look completely different to their consistently held seats, while also keeping their commitment not to raise any taxes over the next five years. We predict that they will combine very socially conservative policies on issues like crime and immigration with pork-barrel politics, targeting these areas for investment by cynically cutting funding to other areas, such as very deprived safe Labour seats.”

Yet Labour did not lose its working class base. Of the 20 constituencies with the highest level of child poverty in the UK, 19 are Labour. Evidence suggests there is also broad support for Labour’s economic policy among most votes.

The challenge for Labour is winning back the Brexit-voting towns, who are not just Leave voters – Brexit is unlikely to dominate the next general election – but socially conservative too.Whoever becomes leader, expect a big push from Blue Labour advocates to dump commitments to international human rights and adopt a more authoritarian approach to immigration and crime.

This, conclude the authors, would be wrong in principle. Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” pitch was not just outrageous: it bought into Tory messaging about the causes of the economic crisis. It was also ineffective:  such conservative soundbites are unconvincing to voters who know that most Labour members are socially liberal.Playing catch-up with the Tories’ authoritarian agenda would lose Labour the policy initiative, and anyway most voters would prefer the authentic Tory mantra to a pale imitation.

The report suggests Labour avoid shallow appeals around patriotism - terrain Labour cannot easily win on – and focus on concrete solutions to real needs – regional investment, publicly owned utilities, revitalising democracy.

Yet although Brexit won’t dominate the next election, the Tories are unlikely to abandon the nationalist themes that have served them so well. So one crunch issue Labour will have to decide on will be its attitude to Trident renewal and the future of Britain’s nuclear defences.

Paul Mason argues that Labour “needs to sideline all voices who believe having a strong national security policyis somehow 'imperialist'.”  Yet the case against Trident is not just moral – it’s economic and practical.

Labour’s electoral coalition is changing. It’s never had so little support among the over 60s, nor so much support from the under 40s. The challenge for activists is to win back lost voters while retaining principled positions on a whole range of policies, including international.