Originally published March 2013.
Labour are in deep trouble even if they don't yet know it. They may be consistently and significantly ahead in the polls but if they are complacent enough to think that the next election is in the bag they need to wake up quickly. Ten-point-plus leads held throughout the lifetime of a parliament can quickly evaporate when the electorate come to focus on the choice before them. Only two words should be needed to remind Labour of this - 'Kinnock' and 'Sheffield'.
Labour are in deep trouble even if they don't yet know it. They may be consistently and significantly ahead in the polls but if they are complacent enough to think that the next election is in the bag they need to wake up quickly. Ten-point-plus leads held throughout the lifetime of a parliament can quickly evaporate when the electorate come to focus on the choice before them. Only two words should be needed to remind Labour of this - 'Kinnock' and 'Sheffield'.
Firstly, Labour are in trouble on the economy. Ed Balls and Alistair Darling may have been proved right with regard to the overly aggressive fiscal tightening embarked on by the Coalition, but 'I told you so' will not be a sufficient argument at the next election. Nor will it be enough to offer to do the same as the Tories only slower - if the voters have accepted the need for cuts (which so far they have) it is likely they would prefer get it over with sooner rather than later when faced with the choice. Nor is offering tax cuts and bankers bonus taxes enough. There needs to be a clearly articulated and demonstrably different approach on offer to persuade the electorate to change course. Though Ed Balls favours short term borrowing to finance a fiscal stimulus, and to his credit has consistently stuck to that line since the election, Labour has ceded too much ground to the Coalition on this and allowed the argument to be framed in Cameron and Osborne's terms. Balls was right when he argued that Labour should have been shouting the case for stimulus instead of allowing a policy vacuum to develop since the election, but that moment has been lost now. The debt is now projected to hit 85% of GDP; 100% is the tipping point at which it is generally accepted it begins to destroy growth, so to start demanding extra borrowing for stimulus going into the next election is going to be difficult (note though that Japan finally took that route, after decades of stagnation, despite their debt massively exceeding that of any other developed nation).
Labour are also in trouble on welfare. The current government's policies may be unfair, may hurt the poorest the most, and may be based on deliberate misinformation from the government and from their supporters in the right wing press, but hacking back the welfare budget is popular amongst the 60% of the population who are net losers or net no-difference from the taxes they pay and the benefits/services they receive. Labour need to be able to demonstrate how they will reverse the attacks on the very poorest without, in the process, alienating swing voters in the marginals, who largely see welfare as overly generous and wasteful. It will be very hard to reconcile these attitudes with those of 'traditional' Labour voters who see welfare and redistribution as the measure of a decent, progressive, coherent society.
Labour are also in trouble on welfare. The current government's policies may be unfair, may hurt the poorest the most, and may be based on deliberate misinformation from the government and from their supporters in the right wing press, but hacking back the welfare budget is popular amongst the 60% of the population who are net losers or net no-difference from the taxes they pay and the benefits/services they receive. Labour need to be able to demonstrate how they will reverse the attacks on the very poorest without, in the process, alienating swing voters in the marginals, who largely see welfare as overly generous and wasteful. It will be very hard to reconcile these attitudes with those of 'traditional' Labour voters who see welfare and redistribution as the measure of a decent, progressive, coherent society.
Labour are in trouble on tax and spending. The government have managed to persuade the majority of the electorate that uncontrolled government borrowing was the cause of the financial crisis. This is untrue, but the fact is that at the last election government spending was around 50% of GDP, this is scheduled to fall to the lowest in the G20 at around 26% (from memory) by 2016/17 though the absence of growth may scupper that. To change these plans and preserve public services Labour are going to have say where they will raise taxes. Borrowing to fund services is out of the question (it would be electoral suicide); more/better services requires taxation, plain and simple.
And Labour are also in trouble on education. Gove's reforms may be a shambles and may have forced secondary schools to opt for quasi-privatisation to protect their budgets but nonetheless people do like the idea of choice and diversity, even if they do not have access to sufficient information to make an informed choice. It will not be easy for a 'consumer' of education to switch 'providers' midway through their child's education; so any such consumer pressures improving outcomes (the Tories preferred model for education - parents 'voting with their feet') will be felt over a number of years of intakes, not within a single child's education, so the model is somewhat broken. I feel that the public do sense this to some degree, but still, Labour need to demonstrate a vision for education that takes us on from SATs and league tables. Planning to reverse Gove's reforms is not enough.
But above all Labour are in trouble with Ed Miliband as leader. He may be popular amongst Labour activists but I have met no-one else, and I mean no-one, who believes Ed is prime ministerial material. This will be disastrous for Labour come the election, given that the Tories will fight a presidential campaign based around Cameron. Ed has been putting in some much improved performances of late, but the public are making their mind up about him NOW - unless he begins to articulate an alternative vision (and by that I mean with policies, not just slogans) to change public perceptions before they have formed their opinion then I think the die will be cast. He will put up a good fight, but he will lose.
Sad to say, and unfashionable though it may seen currently, my money is still on a small Tory majority in 2015. UKIP will fade, the LibDems are toast, some small semblance of growth will have been restored to the economy. The Tories will ask for 5 more years to 'see it through' (by which they covertly mean completing the dismantling of the welfare state), and I believe the public will give it to them. That is, unless Labour can come up with a radical game-changing manifesto that discards the failed approach of the last 30 years - more on this in a later post.