The Day After Tomorrow

What are the lessons to be drawn? Hundreds of local government seats lost in local elections. A bad by election defeat: the portent of what is to come?

Difficult headlines day in day out. Poor opinion poll ratings. Ghastly editorials dissecting not only alleged policy failings but the failings of the Prime Minister, not least that it’s a “character” issue. Little is perceived to be going right. After years of growth, the economy under siege. Issues like immigration and Europe are rarely off the stage - obsessing politicians and newspapers alike.

The year above is actually 1991 and John Major was Prime Minister. Major had actually lost nearly 900 seats in local elections and the swing from Tory to Labour in the Monmouth by election was 12.6%.

Yet one year later, Britain – despite high inflation, high interest rates, worsening unemployment figures – votes John Major back into office in April 1992. Everyone predicted defeat. But Major won.

So what does this tell us for the prospects for Gordon Brown? First that the comparison being drawn by some (analogous to 1996 and the run up to 1997) is both presumptive and far from inevitable. The years to compare are actually 1991 and 1992.

Second, there is no room for complacency. Labour is in a difficult place. It is very tough. Tough for the Prime Minister, but as he is the first to recognize, it’s even tougher for everyone else. We all feel the pressure.

Third, that Labour can win the next election and with a good majority.

The extraordinary events of the last ten months are not that the Government has become unpopular, that policies are under attack, that the Prime Minister is not winning the ratings.
These events are far from extraordinary; normal service has been resumed. This is after all mid term in the third term of a Government which inevitably has attracted its fair share of disappointment, disillusion and weighty baggage.

The extraordinary period was Labour’s first two terms, between 1997 and 2005 in which e were rarely subjected to the slings and arrows of customary political fortune.

History here has something to teach us. Mrs Thatcher won General Elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987. Between polling dates, the Tory Governments were unpopular and the then Prime Minister was often seen as a liability. Government did not win by-elections. They lost them. And lost them big.

Remember the outcry over the Falklands? Michael Heseltine walking out of Cabinet? The Westland crisis? The poll tax? And riots on the streets of Liverpool? Europe? Yet she went on to win. And John Major had a party institutionally divided. At war with itself over Thatcher’s ousting, Maastricht, a pending recession. Yet he won.

The fact is once again normal politics has resumed itself – with undoubtedly a stinging vengeance, catching out politicians and political pundits alike.

And during normal service, the public are rightly harsh critics of what they don’t like. And they are telling us with no shade of ambiguity.

Labour’s test now is how we respond. Labour is in uncharted territory. There is no collective memory or gene pool in which to dip, providing compass and experience to reassure and guide. We are short of experience of long term governing (two out of every three years of the twentieth century Tories occupied Number 10.) Until 2005, Labour had never won a third term.

So we must look to ourselves for confidence and inspiration and make the case we are heading in the right direction.

This is as much about policy as it is also about relationships. Between ourselves and with the electorate. It is a relationship under stress. But however troubled, it can be both repaired and renewed.

Don’t just rely on history. It’s also common sense. Labour’s success in government is also Britain’s success. The Tories might crave failure, but why should Britain want Brown to fail? Our success is also theirs.

In 1997 Labour recognized the importance of enjoining aspiration and social justice. It was no longer a choice between prosperity on the one hand and a fair society on the other. Vote Labour and you could have both. So when in 1997 millions of people voted for Labour, they did so because their vote was a vote for themselves.
One critical lesson we must learn now is that the voters are questioning whether our political covenant with the British voter is still in the same place as 1997. Our challenge goes beyond our core vote, and extends to everyone who voted Labour in 1997. We must ensure they feel and know that when they vote Labour, it still represents the 1997 political covenant.

The voters in Crewe have sent us this very specific message. We need to show we’ve heard. We must now communicate with renewed and greater clarity that in a fair society, we want everyone to get on.

So we will have to work much harder at the relationship itself. With everyone - including and especially now our own Party and MPs. We have not a talent to waste.

There will come a day after tomorrow. The Opposition will be found wanting. Cameron has a large black hole in his project. He promises tax cuts, yet his frontbench equally commit themselves to new areas of spending. He can’t have it both ways. He is destined to break his promises.

He pledges to raise money from taxing foreign domiciles, yet his figures are predicated on a wild inflation of numbers on whom he could raise taxes.

His promises on tackling immigration or bureaucracy from the EU are carefully honed by his message department. But stoking fear and raising expectations are relatively easy; delivering his populist rhetoric is fantasy politics. Will he really take Britain out of the EU? And how would that help our economy?

So much of this will in the end come down to judgement. And my sense is voters at the next election will judge Gordon Brown made difficult but right choices and voters will deem Cameron found wanting and high risk.

The future is by no means certain. But the next election remains one for Labour to lose, not Cameron’s to win.