The Tory election strategy has been clear for some time: persuade people that the general election is a foregone conclusion – a mere referendum on the government rather than a choice between two parties – and slip into Downing Street through the back door.
With the help of their friends in the right-wing press, they’ve been spreading the myth that this is just like the run-up to 1997. The election is over for Labour, they say, and all that matters is the size of the Conservative majority. But we must not fall for this Tory trap.
Wherever I’ve been in the past few weeks – whether at Labour’s north-west regional conference in Southport, on the phones with members canvassing for the Glasgow North East by-election or knocking doors with activists in my own constituency on Sunday mornings – I see a party determined to fight.
The reason why is that most of us remember what it was like in the run-up to the 1997 election – both for us as the Opposition and for John Major’s Conservative Government. And today it is nothing like 1996.
First, the Tory Government at that time was deeply and ideologically divided on issues such as Europe. The Cabinet was so split that, if Kenneth Clarke had been on the radio in the morning saying one thing, a Eurosceptic such as Michael Forsyth would be in the studios by lunchtime to contradict him.
Second, Labour was hovering at around 50 per cent in the polls. I remember Robin Cook guarding against complacency in the weeks running up to the election. In his pocket, he carried a newspaper cutting which said: “Poll fears as Labour slips below 50”.
Third, on the doorsteps, people said they wanted Tony Blair to be Prime Minister. They knew the Labour Party had changed and they wanted a Labour government. They wanted policies such as the windfall tax on the privatised utilities to pay for the New Deal jobs programme, a national minimum wage, shorter health service waiting lists and smaller class sizes.
Further, after 18 years of an ideology geared towards “no such thing as society” and public services being scaled back to the bone, people wanted a return to a stronger society, a greater sense of community and investment in public services.
Contrast all that with the current situation. There are no ideological divisions in the Cabinet. In fact, as we’ve seen over the past few of weeks, it’s the Tories who are still divided, most fundamentally over Europe.
David Cameron’s attempts to appease all factions of his party have ended in disaster. Take his original Tory leadership election promise to withdraw from the centre-right grouping of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. It won him the crucial backing of Eurosceptics to defeat David Davis, but it has left him looking increasingly isolated and powerless in Europe. Similarly, his grandstanding on the European Union was eerily reminiscent of John Major’s ill-fated “beef war”.
In opinion polls some months before the election, the Tories are struggling to stay above 40 per cent – let alone 50. Despite a difficult few weeks for the Government, a recent poll showed the Conservatives slipping down to 39 points.
While it can be tough for us in the Labour Party right now, I don’t detect any enthusiasm for a Conservative government. No one I speak to is saying they want Cameron as Prime Minister. Even those who are critical of Labour have grave doubts as to whether the Tories have really changed. And I’ve certainly heard no one say they want Tory policies such as an inheritance tax cut for millionaires or investment in schools to be slashed.
As for Cameron’s idea that the state is the problem rather than part of the solution, it could not be more out of tune with the mood of the times. People know the global financial crisis was caused by too little rather than too much regulation. And they know it is co-ordinated action by governments throughout the world that has prevented recession from turning into depression.
People are rightly demanding more, not less from public services. That’s why we have set out new entitlements that pupils, parents and patients can expect from schools and hospitals. But we can only make pledges like the right to one-to-one tuition for children falling behind and to see a cancer specialist in two weeks because of the progress we have made in the past decade and by continuing to invest in frontline public services.
We know there is only one party which believes in a free National Health Service and education for all. We know there is only one party that can get us through this downturn and do so fairly. We don’t need to go back to opposition to remind us why we need a Labour government.
Our job in the coming months is to show the public what’s at stake if the Tories get in – from Sure Start and tax credits to our school building programme. That is why we know that, whatever the Tories say, the general election is far from being a foregone conclusion.
Ed Balls is Labour and Co-operative MP for Normanton and Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
