Reassurance, reassurance and reassurance Rich Durber The Labour party is about to enter a crucial period. Next month at the National Policy Forum Jon Cruddas‘ policy review will report and present what is in effect a first draft of Labour’s manifesto. A lively debate has been raging across the party for some time as to how big Labour’s offer should be at the next election. Many are calling for Labour to be as radical and as bold as possible; others want a smaller offer. It appears that the radicals are starting to win out. This is generally a good thing – parties with big ideas tend to win elections. Being radical also comes naturally to our party – it is an instinct which has served us well in the past and which led us to create the NHS and introduce a minimum wage. Yet we should also not forget that to put all these ideas into action we first had to win an election and that right now the biggest barrier to Labour winning in 2015 is not that voters think we are not radical enough. No, instead our problem is that voters are unsure about what a Labour government would really mean for them and that, while they often like our polices, they worry we will not deliver on them. It is because of this that bold, radical and popular measures do not always seem to connect in the way we would like them to. The energy price freeze is a good example of this. Ask voters if they think it is a good idea and 80 per cent say yes. Ask if they think Labour would actually do it and that number falls by half. If we continue with a sense of unease around us, many voters will likely decide to stick with the devil they know and vote for the Tories. We should not be too down about this – it is, after all, a normal position for an opposition to be in before a general election. Just as at the beginning of a parliament we had to win the right to be heard, at this stage in the cycle it is all about winning the trust to govern. It is a test which every party has to pass at some point if they want to win an election and we need to make sure that we do so over the next few months. Let’s not forget that even in 1996, a time in which we now know that Labour was heading for a landslide, polls showed that large numbers of voters still did not trust Labour and worried that we planned to put most people’s tax up. Because of this our focus became reassuring voters this was not the case, through tough economic pledges, the culmination of which was the promise not to raise income tax. It worked and Labour won. It is also worth noting that this commitment to financial prudence had a secondary benefit, which Philip Gould noted at the time: ‘people took our other promises much more seriously when they knew we could pay for them’ However, times change and we of course must move with them. For taxes then, read the economy now. If in 1996 voters were still feeling the effects of the 1992 tax bombshell campaign, you can be sure that today the crash of 2008 is just as fresh in their minds. Competence to run the economy remains a Labour weakness, but just as tax did not prevent us winning in 1997, trust on the economy must not hold us back next May. We have 323 days to ensure that it doesn’t. Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury has already started Labour down the long road to competence with his work on a zero-based spending review. It is for the rest of Labour’s team to back him up now by making sure they spend as much time talking about saving money as they do about spending it. Our message from this point onwards must be radicalism tempered by reassurance. This does not mean we need to scale back our ambitions, I am not in favour of ‘shrinking the offer’ as some want to – after all, what is the point of winning an election if you have not going to use power to change things for the better? Anthony Painter for one has shown how economic competence and meaningful change can be combined into an appealing electoral prospect. So, yes, let’s offer that bold, hopeful vision of the future. There is, after all, no other way for progressive parties to win. But, equally, let’s not forget that we can only make good on that vision once we have earned the trust of the voters, and the only way to do that is through reassurance, reassurance and reassurance. ——————————— Rich Durber is a member of Progress
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:41:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015