Talk to most people in the Labour Party and there is a growing consensus about our future electoral prospects.
We are told that all we have to do is play a waiting game – the Liberal Democrats are inevitably going to fall out with the Tories and people are going to come flocking back to us in droves. The logic goes that the Lib Dems will be punished for their coalition with the Tories and their support for the programme of savage spending cuts.
This viewpoint is flawed on a number of levels – just because we hold the Lib Dems in contempt for entering into an unholy alliance with the Conservatives does not necessarily mean that the electorate will feel the same way.
To say that the Lib Dems are going to break the coalition any time soon is wrong. Of their 57 Members of Parliament, 18 are ministers and we should include at least another 20 who will have been bought by promises of jobs in any future reshuffle.
Besides, who would want to walk out of government and go back to just being the third largest party in the House of Commons? Once people get used to the smell of leather in a ministerial car, it is very difficult to give
it up.
As for people suddenly coming to their senses and voting Labour, there needs to be a serious reality check. Our share of the vote just a few months ago was 29.67 per cent – just 1.4 percentage points higher than the 28.28 per cent Labour recorded in 1983, our worst electoral performance since 1918. There is still a mountain to climb to regain the trust of the people.
If we look at the figures on a constituency-by-constituency basis, the argument is further weakened. In only 17 seats, the Lib Dems came first and Labour second. There were 38 seats where the Lib Dems came first and the Conservatives came second. In 76 seats, Labour came first and the Lib Dems finished second.
If the coalition does implode and the Liberal Democrat vote collapses, it will be the Tories, not Labour, who emerge as the beneficiaries. Of those 38 seats where the Tories are placed second, it is only in Cambridge and Argyll & Bute that we are within striking distance of taking the seat. It also worth noting that in Gordon the SNP came second to the Lib Dems and in Ceredigion Plaid Cymru was the nearest challenger.
In the 76 seats we hold, where the Lib Dems lie second, apart from increased Labour majorities, there would be little or no effect on the overall result if the Lib Dem vote collapsed. Even if we did take all of those 17 seats where we are currently placed second, it would still not be enough for an overall Labour majority. To be blunt, if all we do is play the waiting game, then the figures simply do not add up.
Indeed, if we were to look at the 94 seats we lost, 87 went to the Tories with only five going to the Lib Dems, while Brighton Pavilion went Green and Arfon to Plaid Cymru. Only by regaining these seats can we ever hope to see another Labour government.
To complicate matters even further, the Labour Party seems to be losing the economic debate. The narrative in the media is that there is no alternative to cuts in public spending. So the Lib Dems can quite effectively argue they are in the right and that they went into coalition with the Tories for the good of the country.
Besides, anyone who has ever had to take on the Lib Dems in local or national election campaigns knows how adept they can be at divorcing national politics from local issues. Slogans such as “popular local candidate” and “I live here” have been staples of Lib Dem candidates’ propaganda for years.
Rather than waiting for the Lib Dems to collapse, we have to focus on defeating the twin enemies that Labour has had to face whenever it has found itself in opposition – complacency and the Tories.
We have to fight the Tories on the economy. We must challenge the conventional wisdom that severe cuts must be implemented in order to pay off the deficit. Let’s expose the nonsense that we have to follow some sort of timetable. Is the world really going to end if we do not pay off the national debt in four years?
It would be a complete miscalculation if the Labour Party were to fight the next general election on a platform of “nice Labour cuts versus nasty Tory ones”. If we follow such a course, people are simply going to say they will stick with what they know.
We need to make the case for huge investment in industry and infrastructure and set out how the welfare state can encourage people back into employment. There is still only one way to pay off the deficit and that is through raising revenue, which is only achieved by stimulating growth and putting people back into work.
Labour lost the 2010 general election because people believed we were no longer listening to them. Many often view removed from the community to which they belong. The challenge, then, is for the Labour Party to change.
We need to give people a reason to vote for us. Policy is important in this, but we have to do more. We must re-engage with local communities and show how we can work together to empower them and improve people’s lives.
In this mass media age, people are bombarded by messages every single day. it is simply no longer good enough to stuff thousands of leaflets through letterboxes. Inevitably, they will end up in the bin. We need to show people who we are and what we stand for.
This means personalising our message. There is still no substitute for knocking on doors, talking to people, listening to and understanding their hopes and aspirations. We need to support our members to become school governors, get involved in their local neighbourhood watch or set up an environmental group.
The path back to power for the Labour Party calls for us to practice what we preach. That means becoming a true party of the community. And there is nothing complicated about that.
Christopher Evans is Labour MP for Islwyn
