I’ve promised myself not to talk any more on the issue of our leadership, not least because every time I do, someone (Like Paul Linford in the last thread) quite understandably reads into it something I didn’t mean at all. So instead I want to talk about how Labour can fight back. Take as read whatever declaration of undying loyalty is the current gold standard to prevent specualtion..(should we perhaps call it a Harman Statement?)
You talk to some journalists and listen to some political commentators, and there seems to be an assumption that fighting back is somehow impossible, that once a poll lead as large as the Tories have is established it cannot be overturned. That’s simply not true.
Take the German 2005 election, where the CDU/CSU started with a 21 point lead, but ultimately edged the popular vote only marginally. The SPD, were it not for the presence of “the left list” Lafontaine party, could easily have won.
Or Take Harry Truman, who I’ve written about several times before. or from the other side of the fence, George H W Bush, who was 17 points behind Dukakis in the summer of 1998.
All of this tells us that fightbacks can and do happen.
Those who look at polling numbers and see gloom are right not to understate the scale of the problem, but we all have to remember that polls are trailing indicators, not leading ones. Polls tell you what people think because of what they’ve heard till now. They are not accurate predictors of what people will think after learning something new.
So what might a fight back campaign for Labour look like?
The first question is one of choice.
To fight back properly, you have to be clear that you are moving the electorate towards a moment of choice. In the SPD’s case, after losing North Rhineland Westphalia, they called a snap election. For Truman it was a long, arduous campaign ahead of a fixed election.
For the British, with no fixed date of election it becomes important to make clear to the British people when they will be asked to make a choice. Without that clarity of impending choice, a fight back is conducted against no apparent opponent, and can’t be effective.
That choice might be two years away, or a year, or 18 months, but knowing it is coming, and knowing everything that goes on before that is merely a warm up to that choice begins the process of people beginning to make a decision.
The second element is to ground your fightback only on a narrow field – the issues that matter to concerned voters.
Voters need to have a clear understanding of what divides Labour and Conservative on the issues that matter most to them. It is the task of a campaign to dramatise that.
At the moment, despite the problems facing the economy, I doubt that many voters could spell out what the choice between Labour and Conservative would mean for them, Not surprisingly really, as neither party has devoted much time to it.
We’ve spent our time defending our record, the Tories spend their time attacking it. As such, it’s unsurprising that their discontent is focussed on the government. After all, we’re the one’s driving the car.
The final element is one of style and tempo. Fight backs aren’t easy processions to government. They’re not the careful mainiteance of a poll lead built up in opposition. They’re challenging. Designed to make those who may have written you off, or lost interest to think again. Here’s a campign ad from the SPD in 2005.
I have absolutely no idea what he’ saying there. It’s the style I want you to note. It’s face on, confrontational, direct to camera, plain background, definitive, even challenging the viewer.
The visual message there is “you might not like me, but I’m tough as hell and giving to you straight, and you should respect that at least.” I was immediately reminded of my favourite fictional “fightback” speech which does something similar, but does it a little more schmaltzily. Still has me wanting to go out and vote for the guy, though.
Or how about this from Truman basically telling his audience that if they don’t vote for him, they’ll suffer and it’ll be their own fault.
So, those are the three elements I think are crucial in any Labour fightback.
Making clear its a choice,
Making it clear why that choice matters,
and finally being prepared to fight day and night for your side of that choice, in ways that are intended to be sharp, direct, even a little angry, on behalf of the people you wish to represent.
So that’s what I’m hoping for. A showdown with the Tories to focus minds. A clarity over the difference between what we offer and the Tories offer and a backs to the wall, fight till the last dog dies approach to the campaign.
The crucial element is the “what’s at stake” question.
Without that, the rest doesn’t work at all.
So here’s a question to Labour supporting readers. What do you think the most important issue at stake in the coming election is and how should we talk about it to our voters?
I’ve got my own ideas,m but I’d love to hear others first, so I can steal them, and then take the credit, most likely.
I remember the CDU poll leads being even larger in 2003 and 2004 than at the start of the campaign in 2005. To say nothing of some of the state election results during that period.
Interestingly, the CDU’s inflated leads where mainly the result of working class SPD supporters telling the polling companies that they weren’t going to vote.
I want the PM to stay but he will need to do all this windfall tax, and tax cuts for the poor to proove why working class people still need to vote for the party.
Excellent post.
One thing about both Truman and Schroeder was that they attacked their opponents from the left (Truman on the New Deal/Fair Deal, Schroeder on the flat tax and Iraq). Another example is Al Gore, who came back from large deficits in the summer to win the popular vote with the ‘people versus the powerful’.
(Actually, anything which helps us frame this election as a re-run of Gore vs Bush, with Brown as Gore and Bush as Cameron would be good, particularly since Cameron is running the Bush 2000 strategy).
Crucial to Truman’s victory was adopting a strongly pro-civil rights policy. The pundits at the time said this would be a disaster, the leadership opposed it and it split the Party, but the activists turned out to be correct that the Dems couldn’t have won without it.
So lessons from history would suggest a more left-leaning populist economic policy and a clear dividing line on at least one high profile and controversial issue of social and/or foreign policy.
Not that lessons from history are infallible, of course.
More to the point the Conservative Party turned around a huge Polling deficit by losing Thatcher. I think it would be worth getting rid of Brown whatever the Polls say and it has to be Milliband as well . He is far the best option and immediately worried Conservatives whatever they say and he only lacks plausibility because he is new to the voter( You will not see this , you are too close )
Your stuff about trying hard has usually meant dirty politics of the Ken Livingstone sort on the ground but the Labour attack machine also turns people off. Leave it , looks 70s. Effort is not he answer , a clean modernity is essential because effort is bound to look like class war.
The truth is there is only one way to win and that is to get into the middle , Brown was a poor choice being perceived as left of Blair. The left of the Party have to be dropped and everything ,I mean everything, the Labour party say has to be aimed at one group . Middle earners
They are convinced that Labour means to tax them to death ( as they have done ) for which they get nothing . They are also tired of being told their money is not earnt by them. This is why Hopi I hope you keep Brown and bang on about all the charitable work you want to do on our behalf . Every word loses a vote and gains a friend who will not vote. Imagine a Labour that has a presence in the South of England and that is what it must be , if that cannot be reconciled with the Party you have not only post but risk blinking out of existence . This may well be inevitable .
Labour usurped the Liberals as the urban working class was born. That class is now gone and if Labour cannot move on they will simply be replaced by the Liberals or some new grouping .
newmania you say you voted blair now you are a tory. You are just weather vane not something to ask for advice.
The economy is obviously the number one issue, specifically inflation in food and energy/fuel. What the government can do about this directly is little. They fanned the flames of food inflation with a fool hardy biofuels rush (even though the Tories were criticising them for not doing more, faster) and we/they’ve not spent enough time in the last 11 years focusing on energy efficiency and renewables, meaning we’re more at risk of fuel price hikes as we rely on oil and foreign gas.
Ironically, the government resisted things like microrenewable feed-in tariffs because they didn’t want to increase bills for consumers, yet energy prices now are so high, paying a little more ten years ago wouldn’t be looking like such a bad thing now if it meant we didn’t have 35% energy bill rises thrust upon us.
I’d say the only major thing the government could do is to introduce a new top band tax on the ‘super rich’ as they are known, and use it to give a tax cut to most everyone else, framed with the argument that in these times of economic hardship, those with the broadest shoulders should help those without.
Wrote a post in Forgesian Thinking on a similar topic. You can read it here:
http://forgesianthinking.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/on-labours-badly-needed-new-message/
(Sorry, too lazy to re-write as a comment)
“17 points behind Dukakis in the summer of 1998.”
Don’t you mean 1988? I think even GHW Bush had got the message that he wasn’t wanted 6 years after he lost the presidency…
More seriously, all bar the CDU collapse of 2005 were before the days of sophisticated polling, and all – and I mean ALL – owed at least as much to careless blunders by the other parties as to the merits of the candidates. So, for instance, Dewey ran an extremely weak, low-key campaign in 1948, and nobody knew what he offered, bar a couple of gaffes which got full prominence – something that could not be said of Truman. Merkel foolishly let a professor of economics off the leash, who succeeded in terrifying the SPD supporters so much that they changed their minds about not voting (as noted by alunephraim). Dukakis was brilliantly incisive, reasoned, logical – and so emotionless that Bush slaughtered him by rabble-rousing and mudslinging (Gordon Brown please note)…
I don’t think that all is necessarily lost for Labour on the basis of the polls. I do think that all is lost while the government drifts helplessly on the Micawberish assumption that “something will turn up” – which is what their assertion that Tory support will fall upon “scrutiny of their policies” really amounts to. Certainly Labour cannot assume that Cameron – who is after all a PR man – will make the same sort of silly mistakes as the others you name.
You’re right about the issues being important here – Labour has to have a reason for people to vote for it, something badly lacking at the moment – the snag is, can a party in power for 13 years, and ergo to blame for much of the current turmoil, really provide answers? More to the point, can they do them under the man whose original answers to older questions have now caused the current problems?
If you can convince me as a fairly clever floating voter that you can, then you’ll be on the right track – but I doubt if you can achieve it under Brown.
I’m up for it. Just need someone to rally behind.
Once we have some to rally beind, be that a renewed Brown or someone else, we should fight on the economy and do it from the centre left. The fact Labour is taking the flak for failures in advanced banking instruments is surely ironic.
We should borrow from Roosevelt. 100 days of action to turn the economy around. We should dramatically ditch almost all other legislation until that is sorted out. It would allow us to lose “unhelpful” and expensive policies. We will prove we are prudent. There should be no half hearted measures.
We should pre-announce the date of the next election for after the 100 days. We can have a referendum on the package. It’s a risk, but it might wipe the memory of the debacle last year and we will set the agenda. It’s a gamble, but right now we have nothing to lose.
Possible Changes.
Tax changes have to be matched to specific programmes one for one.
We should lower tax on the poor by raising it on the 100k+ super rich. Sorry they have to do their bit. Maybe we should bring back the 10p tax band and say sorry.
If we tax big oil, it should to pay for an increased heating allowance only or a direct means of reducing fuel poverty.
…
After 100 days of action, exclusively focussed on the economy, we might just stand a chance.
But as your clips showed, we need a strong communicator who is confident, can go on the offensive calmly and is positive about the future.
“something will turn up” – which is what their assertion that Tory support will fall upon “scrutiny of their policies” really amounts to.
As hardly a week goes by without Labour copying a Conservative Policy that really is a forlorn hope.
Welfare to work
Border Police
Crime maps
IHT
The New Statesman threw in the towell today admitting there was nothing Labour could do but hope something turns up.My only interest is that I woud rather have Labour than the Liberals to beat.
Most voters don’t need to “focus ” their minds.
Most voters think quiet well for themselves, thanks .
Most voters can actually see through the mists of lies, deceit and incompetence.
Since you denied there would be any economic shortfall this year vis a vis Darling’s hopelessly optimistic budget projections ( 2.3% GDP growth and $90 oil) , I don’t include you in the above category .
Let me put it quite clearly:-
Your Government lies.
Your Leader lies (5,000 troops home by Christmas.. remember?, 10p tax etc etc )
And those of your Party who do not lie (not many I know) are just plain incompetent. (HIPS? SATS tests to name but 2… the list is so long).
And you have royally screwed up Government finances.
Only voters with the attention span of a gnat – and a rough approximation to its capacity for logical reasoning – can see that you are not fit to govern.
The by elections tell you what we think.
So what do you do?
Answer: tell more lies and do nowt.
You deserve the kicking at the next GE you will surely get…
At the first opportunity…
In this period,
and in its true
light, the sound
of a picture forgets
and emotion in
the care of a faith;
a candle reappears,
a delicate silence
remembers a river
and then, at the
first opportunity,
I’ll love you my
darling…..
Francesco Sinibaldi
The Blair memo has proven most this infighting is just vindictive blairites getting back at the PM they should shut up. The tories did not recover in 97 because they had too many backstabbers. Backstabbers shut up.