We are just weeks away from a general election. The Tories, despite many factors that ought to favour an opposition party – most obviously, the worst global economic situation since the 1930s with the unpopularity it creates for whoever is in government – are not where they need to be.
Successive opinion polls see the Tories’ lead fluctuating, often dipping into single figures and showing a clear trend away from the period last year when they seemed unassailable.
The Tories went into their conference with great confidence, ahead in the polls and with new media backing. However, throughout the autumn and into this year they faltered.
Their economic message has been conveyed to the electorate: under the Conservative Party, you will see deep cuts, you will work longer hours, your pay and services will be squeezed and you may lose your job, but the richest estates in the country will be given privileged treatment with a tax cut benefiting a small minority. The risk to the economy that such an approach represents is also getting across. The weakness of the recovery in the last quarter poses even more sharply the danger of the Tory approach of slashing spending – putting more people out of work and reducing demand in the economy.
The Tories attempted a recalibration of their message earlier this month, seeking to package their scorched earth policies a little less harshly. But their ideology doesn’t let them. As former Chancellor Ken Clarke put it last weekend: “We are going to have to be much tougher on public spending than Margaret Thatcher ever was.”
This is the Tories’ problem. Economic reality demands a strategy not of cutting spending but seeking to boost growth. Basic Tory ideology demands a small state, cuts and slashing the deficit regardless of the economic situation. The Tories choose their ideology over reality.
Underlying this is also the political reality of a further underlying decline in support for the Conservative Party that once dominated British politics with the support of around
50 per cent of the vote.
Now, as Labour MP Colin Burgon has shown, the Tories averaged 40.6 per cent in the 138 polls conducted in 2009 published by UK Polling Report. That is below the 41.9 per cent achieved by John Major in 1992 – itself the lowest vote the Tories had received in winning a general election since the Second World War
Labour’s fundamental task is to turn the election into a choice between the two main parties, not a referendum on the Labour Government. The Tories talk about “change”– but change in favour of what? Once what kind of future for Britain people actually want is discussed, as opposed to simply “change”, the terrain shifts.
This is not simply about the economy. As we have seen with the attempt to discriminate against unmarried people or with comments from the Tory frontbench that they may attempt to tamper with the Good Friday Agreement for the north of Ireland, the more the Conservatives have to discuss what the choices are, rather than talk vaguely about change, they more they find themselves on the back foot.
If Labour is talking about protecting people from the effects of the recession, it will advance. If it is forced into competing with the Tories over the issue of the deficit or who will cut services, then the party will be pushed back.
We must ensure that all parts of our alliance are taken seriously. No Labour-Conservative marginal that we are fighting to retain is made up only of core voters or swing voters. We need to get all potential Labour voters out to win. In some inner city constituencies, for example, our core vote is often black or Asian; in others, it is white. In either case, we cannot afford to take any of these voters for granted.
The non-core vote is not homogeneous either. In many seats, the more well off voters lost to other parties defected over such issues as the Iraq war or student fees.
Winning back defectors to the Tories is important, but we must also clarify the issues to those voters who went to the Greens or the Liberal Democrats.
Labour can win. To do so, it needs to assemble every part of its constituency. It cannot be a campaign that focuses only on core Labour supporters or those who are swing voters. Those who seek to caricature policies, as with the top rate of income tax or the bank bonus tax, as a “core vote strategy” are missing the point. These policies are objectively right and massively popular, not just with core voters, but with everyone – middle and low-income people alike – who know that the alternative to such policies is that they themselves will pay more.
Who pays for the recession – bankers or ordinary electors – is key for this election.
