Four ways for Labour to win back working-class voters
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Version 0 of 1. At 9.45pm, I left our campaign headquarters in Darwen, Lancashire, in jubilant mood. Our “get out the vote” operation had been a huge success. I wasn’t sure we’d won, but I knew we’d increased our vote (as indeed we did). Election day was the culmination of 20 months of hard work as Labour’s candidate – pounding the streets in sun, rain and snow; thousands of conversations with voters on their doorsteps, at their places of work or in pubs and social clubs; even getting on a soap box for a series of old-fashioned open-air meetings outside the market in Rawtenstall and Darwen. But as my wife drove me home for a bite to eat before the count, the exit polls showed that our worst fears had come true. In the end, our numerical advantage on the ground – 20,000 conversations with voters in 2015 alone and 200 activists on the day – counted for little as a Tory tide swept us away. The post-election debate has focused on two topics: leadership and “aspiration”. We almost certainly would have done better with a different leader. Although a decent and principled man, Ed Miliband never connected with the electorate. I would frequently hear people saying “You picked the wrong brother”or “He’s not up to the job”. When I pointed out that he had done well during the campaign and stood up to banks and energy companies, voters agreed but it wasn’t enough for them to vote Labour. Related: Jon Cruddas: this could be the greatest crisis the Labour party has ever faced The hardest part of the campaign was hearing people’s harrowing stories about life on zero-hours contracts, paying the bedroom tax or relying on food banks. I felt proud of what a Labour government would have done to help and am terrified for their prospects under five more years of the Tories. But it is true that we didn’t have enough to say to those in the leafier parts of Rossendale and Darwen whose votes we needed to win the seat. In the end the Tories trumped us on childcare and promised to take more people out of tax so we were left with an energy price freeze at a time when bills were no longer rising. But a different leader and a bigger policy offer might only have delivered a hung parliament. If we want a majority again, we will need to think hard about how to win back the working-class voters, many of whom are highly aspirational, that we have lost in post-industrial areas. John Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, has pointed out that while our vote among middle-class ABC1 voters has held up since we won in 2005, we have lost a quarter of our support from working-class C2DE voters. From what I heard on the doorstep, I think there are four challenges. First, it was complacent to assume that the Ukip surge would be to Labour’s benefit, as some appeared to assume. In Rossendale and Darwen, Ukip’s vote more than quadrupled but Tory support went up as well. Labour’s national message that Ukip were “more Tory than the Tories” failed to resonate with many working-class voters who had decided a decade ago that Labour was no different to the Tories. Second, while our new position on immigration helped us get a hearing on the doorstep, we did not talk enough about welfare reform. It was disheartening to hear neighbours turn on one another about who was entitled to which benefits. But decent, hard-working people on moderate pay are incredulous that someone down the street who has never worked gets housing benefit, council tax relief and free school transport while they get nothing. Being clear about contribution and fairness in the welfare system is critical to ensuring that our legitimate arguments about the cruelty of the bedroom tax and benefit sanctions do not fall on deaf ears. Third, our reluctance to offer a referendum on Europe made us seem defensive rather than willing to have a positive argument about EU membership. In opposing a plebiscite we seemed more concerned about the hassle it would cause in government than whether it would get us there in the first place. Fourth, we failed to think through the implications in England of our response to the SNP. The defence of the Barnett formula during the referendum campaign, the failure afterwards to embrace a proper devolution of powers within England, and the reluctance until too late to reject any deal with the SNP played into the hands of those who wanted to paint us as anti-English. In thinking about the future we need more than a telegenic leader talking about aspiration. If we want to win back power, we will need to reach far beyond our metropolitan areas. We need to think deeper about why we seem out of touch to so many and understand the demands of cultural anxiety as well as economic prosperity. Will Straw was Labour’s candidate in Rossendale and Darwen |