The Scottish National Party’s success at the Scottish Parliament elections is a telling reminder that Labour should be wary of treating mid-term elections as simply a referendum on the coalition Government.
As the next time Britain votes in a national poll will be at the European elections in 2014, Labour has to overcome its combination of hostility and indifference to the European Parliament and be prepared to talk positively about what it has achieved in the past and what it can accomplish in the parliament in the future. Paradoxically, the European elections will only be a springboard to future electoral success if the party is prepared to campaign in them on their own merits.
With the advent of fixed-term parliaments, we know that the European elections will come a year before the next general election. The danger is that, more than ever, the temptation will be to treat 2014 as a dress rehearsal for the main event of 2015.
Like anyone else in the Labour Party, I will always be in my comfort zone attacking the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for their failings at Westminster and advocating the case for how we can do better.
But what happened in Scotland should remind us that a different set of elections with diverse opponents demands a distinct message.
Scottish voters seem to have agreed with our criticism of the Westminster Government, but too many preferred to switch not to Labour but to a party they felt could best deliver for them in the context in which the elections were taking place.
Analysis suggests that although there were many negative reasons why voters should switch to Labour, we failed to give them – or were not seen to be giving them – positive reasons for supporting us.
There is a channel tunnel vision on Europe which affects Westminster representatives of all parties, Labour included. Too many strategists do not understand the mechanisms of European politics. They regard them as a diversion and – consciously or sub-consciously – adopt the Eurosceptic mantra that British voters don’t like the European in any case.
But it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that if voters only hear Europe described in terms of unwelcome interference or unnecessary cost, they will vote for parties in the European Parliament which best offer to obstruct or delay EU decision-making.
And no amount of Euro indifference from some within the Labour Party can ever match the straightforward Euroscepticism of the Tories or the UK Independence Party. So Labour must stop Daniel Hannan or Nigel Farage being to the European elections what Alex Salmond was to the vote in Scotland.
Three years, not three months or three weeks, before the European elections, the party must take a positive interest in what we can deliver in the European Parliament.
Labour MEPs must be given consistent political credit for what we achieve on issues ranging from employment rights to regional aid and combating climate change.
William Hague should be challenged for going to Mansion House to say Europe should do more for North Africa, while at the same time his party seeks to deny the EU the means to do it.
Labour MEPs are Euro realists, not fanatics. We desperately want our party to return to government in Britain to restore hope to the communities we represent with dedication.
But the risk is that the European elections will not be the best springboard to further success if we treat them exclusively as an opportunity to drive up voter contacts in marginal Westminster constituencies or to deliver national political messages in preparation for battles to come.
The Labour Party must look like a winner in the elections. We maximise our electoral performance only by recognising that European elections must be fought in their own right and on their own merits. As the memory of the 2011 elections begins to fade, the political lessons must be remembered far beyond the Scottish borders.
Richard Howitt is Labour MEP for the East of England and chair of the European Parliamentary Labour Party
