Can Ed Miliband’s ground offensive withstand the looming Tory air attack?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/03/ed-miliband-tory-labour-conservatives-media

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The habit of using military metaphor to describe peacetime politics is ridiculous and irresistible. British elections are infected with the vocabulary of combat: “war room” for headquarters, “battle bus” for coaches, “boots on the ground” for activists.

Journalists, never shy of overstatement, are complicit, and politicians need no encouragement. Yesterday David Cameron declared “all-out war” on mediocrity in schools. (With what? Banality-seeking missiles?) This is the same prime minister who affected outrage because Ed Miliband was alleged to have said he would “weaponise” the NHS ahead of the election. Such hysterical gesturing is all part of the “air war” – the competition to control the terms on which the election is fought; to depict your enemies as a threat to civilisation and yourself as its salvation.

Tory firepower on that front is unchallenged. They have more money, more press support and a simpler message than Labour. Twice in the past week, Conservative-leaning newspapers have given front-page prominence to business barons, one of them a Tory peer, foretelling apocalypse if Miliband is elected. Those are just opening shots.

Labour’s hopes of resistance are pinned on the “ground war”. The opposition’s numerical advantage in activists is said by campaign strategists roughly to mirror the three-to-one advantage the Tories have in cash. Miliband has told his party it must conduct 4 million doorstep conversations by polling day. This is making a virtue of necessity since Labour can’t afford glossy brochures and billboards on every corner. The virtue is humility, a quality not much associated with Westminster politics and a prerequisite for regaining trust. The theory is that if you show people you are capable of listening, they might listen back.

I recently saw a masterclass in how this is done on a frozen Sunday morning in Stevenage. “I’ve lost faith in all of you,” said the middle-aged woman to Iain McNicol, Labour party general secretary, who had knocked on her door. She had voted Labour in the past but now doubted anyone could fix schools and the health service. She was unimpressed by Miliband. “He doesn’t come across well,” she said.

McNicol defended his leader as a man maligned by the press but motivated by high ideals. He accepted that politicians had got a lot wrong in the past and offered his presence on the cold pavement as a sign of willingness to change. She was still sceptical. There was particular scorn for glib sloganeering. (“If I hear one more politician say ‘hardworking families’ I’m going to smash the telly.”) But after a couple of minutes came a thaw: “Your sincerity really comes across. I’ll think about it. You’ve done a good job,” she said.

McNicol then arranged for this potentially receptive voter to get a call from the local candidate, Sharon Taylor, leader of the council. She was further down the street with a platoon of canvassers, some day-tripping students and local volunteers. This is not the most glamorous end of politics (it is rare to hear military jargon from activists who can tell the difference between a clipboard and a gun), but it works. Labour strategists point to research showing a correlation between the volume of personal contacts made by a party and its performance on polling day. The boost has been estimated at around four points, which can make the difference between winning or losing in Stevenage. And seats like Stevenage make the difference between a Labour or Tory government.

The Tories are mobilising volunteers through “Team2015”, a project run by the party chairman, Grant Shapps, that buses flashmobs of eager students into areas where local parties have atrophied. Organisational decay is a problem for Labour too in some places, especially Scotland where the nationalist surge has exposed complacency in seats where the party is unused to competition.

But even in places where Labour has an active local party, the advantage is hypothetical before the real campaign gets under way. In every marginal seat I have visited there is disdain for politics in general rather than focused rage against the Tories. There is not that tug of a cultural tide that reliably precedes regime change. Often I find people vaguely aware that an election is due and without a strong opinion. This mood is hard to read from opinion polls, which try to eliminate “don’t know” as a response by allocating a portion of uncertain respondents to whichever party they voted for last time.

So much of politics in the past four years has been about the people who care passionately, whether in support of one party or in virulent hatred for them all. The constituents from whom we have heard the least are the ones who feel neither tribal loyalty nor visceral loathing; the ones who don’t even know there’s a war on.

It is those people that the Conservatives think they can still persuade. Cameron doesn’t need their affection, he just needs to sow anxiety about a fragile economy slipping through inept Labour fingers. He can rely on friendly businessmen and newspapers to conjure that image. The riposte is that Tory tycoons and corporations that don’t pay their UK taxes are unreliable witnesses, but even the best rebuttal comes too late. The question is already posed: would Labour ruin the recovery? And setting the question is half the battle won because forcing an opponent to answer means he has yielded to hostile terms.

That is what air supremacy does and why Tory confidence is growing. Four million conversations on the ground can change a lot of minds, but Labour’s infantry will still struggle to be heard over the roar of the anti-Miliband jets.