Steve McCabe, who ran Labour’s by-election campaign in Crewe and Nantwich, defends the party’s tactics and reveals the truth about that ‘toffs’ strategy’
I HAVE read a lot about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in the past few days. Most of it I don’t recognise so, at Tribune’s request, I’ve agreed to set out my recollections.
We were defending our smallest majority since 1997. It followed local elections where we secured 24 per cent of the vote and national opinion poll leads for the Tories of between 15 and 20 per cent.
I accept responsibility for Labour’s campaign. The plan was to protect as much of the core vote as possible. Only a hopeless romantic could believe there were voters to be won over. My anxiety was to avoid coming third which, following the local elections, was a real risk. We set out to secure between 10,000-11,000 votes. Allowing for a turn out of around 35-40 per cent, that was not unreasonable for a by-election. If there was no Liberal Democrat collapse, victory was possible – however unlikely.
A buoyant Conservative Party had a simple message. Vote against the Government and Gordon Brown over the 10p tax band abolition. This was reinforced with literature containing unflattering pictures and vicious comments about the Prime Minister. It worked because “time for a change” could be heard across the constituency. It also meant the Tories didn’t need to give too much exposure to their own candidate, Edward Timpson, who wasn’t a star and wasn’t selected to fight a by-election.
Labour had one outstanding asset in Tamsin Dunwoody. She looked and sounded the part and handled voters and the media as if born to it. Setting out to make it a choice between these two characters was obvious. The decision of the Lib Dems to dump their original candidate and thus cast a shadow over their choice helped in the decision.
Branding Tamsin Dunwoody as “one of us” was not difficult. Labour voters loved her and if she was one of us, what did that make her Tory opponent? He does come from a privileged background. No way is he a Crewe man. I’ll pay good money to the first person who finds me an ordinary Crewe voter who also received a race horse on their 30th birthday.
The secret of all good caricatures is that they need a grain of truth. We wanted people to choose between a woman who knew how to represent them and someone who didn’t. We had reason to believe that this would bear fruit, as information on the Tory candidate was thin. He had collected a petition on post office closures, run a couple of marathons and his children were born at a hospital in a neighbouring constituency. Voters regularly volunteered that they didn’t know him and sensed he didn’t understand their needs and concerns.
On his first visit to the constituency, David Cameron arrived 45 minutes late because of a delayed train. That left a lot of time for some very bored snappers to photograph the only thing on view – a couple of “joke toffs” we’d sent along to amuse and embarrass Cameron and Timpson.
I’ll credit the Tories with a useful bit of spin. It was smart to take the heat off a weak candidate by turning the by-election into a row about “toffs” rather than the strengths of the candidates. Theirs was a tactic that could only work because of a very uncritical press and some remarkably silly people in London who briefed rather than enquired. I guess that, like the scorpion, it’s in their DNA.
Inconvenient facts are often ditched at times such as this. I expect little attention to focus on the fact that we actually exceeded our turnout target or that the swing against Labour was smaller than we saw at other by-elections in Hodge Hill, Leicester South or Hartlepool. Of course, we were unable to counter a highly motivated and previously dormant true blue vote in Nantwich and the surrounding Cheshire villages. Nor could we stem the drift from Labour of the aspirational 25- and 35-plus age groups. Their message was simple. They were fed up with paying too much tax, too much for fuel and food, and feared for their economic future. Labour couldn’t claim to be on their side.
That remains the big challenge. What will we do to win back those “switchers” who feel that Labour has let them down?
And so I confess: there never was a toff strategy. There was an early caricature designed to help us emphasise the difference between the leading protagonists. It might have had some chance of success if it hadn’t fallen prey to a press which chose to ignore the question marks over the Conservative candidate, some useful Tory spin and cowardly criticism from within Labour’s own ranks.
In truth, it wouldn’t have made any difference, given the eventual size of the turnout and the scale of switching which is at the heart of Labour’s electoral difficulties.
There was no attempt to try out a general election strategy. The Prime Minister was not involved in devising or sanctioning any aspect of the campaign and those who gossiped never once spoke to me. I went to Crewe and Nantwich out of loyalty to the PM and the Labour Party. I knew from day one that it was mission impossible, but I’m not one of those who only surfaces when things are easy. Genuine Labour loyalists aren’t like that.
Each campaign has its own themes and perhaps we’ll shortly see a nice “fluffy” exercise without any negatives, where we talk solely about Labour policies and invite comparison with the other parties under the watchful eye of a balanced media and in the context of some electoral Queensberry rules. If that happens and we don’t get annihilated, I’ll eat my top hat.
Steve McCabe is Labour MP for Billesley, Brandwood and Hall Green and a Government whip
This article is posted for debate at www.compassonline.org.uk
