Labour’s election inquest report not welcome

A quick response to the media reports that the new report “LabourTogether 2019, general election review“ has been generally welcomed throughout the Party.  Well, I don’t share that welcome.

The basic question asked by the review (and I have skim-read most of it) is:  “What do we have to do to win the next election?” – whereas it should have been: “How can we persuade voters to support our policies?”

The report repeats the widespread but incorrect view that the 2019 result was the worst ever (see my blog article "Not the worst ever result").  It is good that it deals with the decline in the Labour vote share since 2001 rather than dealing with 2019 in isolation, but it still underestimates the effect of the Brexit issue in 2019.  Despite Labour's efforts to change the subject it WAS the Brexit election.  Indeed the other alleged reason for Labour's defeat (antipathy toward Jeremy Corbyn) was in large part based on what was perceived or portrayed as his indecision and lack of leadership over the Brexit issue - albeit the perception was unfair.

Look at the polling figures for the year before the election. In the spring of 2019 Labour had a lead of up to 10% over the Conservatives (although this was somewhat distorted by the intervention of UKIP and the Brexit Party).  What changed the position was the European elections on 23 June, followed by the replacement of Theresa May by Boris Johnson. On 11 July Survation reported a Labour lead of 6% (with the pro-EU LibDems on 19%). On 24 July Boris Johnson became Prime Minister with a promise to "Get Brexit Done", and from then onwards the Conservatives went into a lead averaging over 10%, which was maintained until the election.

The "Labour Together 2019" report also underestimates the extent to which Johnson was able to present himself as a radical reformer, adopting many of Labour's key policies (ending austerity, supporting the NHS, investing in infrastructure - financed by borrowing). 

 

I am old enough to remember the aftermath of the 1959 General Election and I still have a slim volume published in 1960 entitled "Must Labour lose?" by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose.  This followed four elections in which Labour lost Parliamentary seats, and this was attributed to changes in social and industrial structure that favoured the Conservatives.  Then, as now, there was a general despondency about Labour's future and a feeling that Labour could not win without giving up its basic principles.  Abrams and Rose disagreed.  Their concluding sentence reads: "If the Labour Party will now champion, without equivocation, this aspect of socialism [the generous impulse in man], there is every prospect that it will once again come into its own."

They were right then, and I think they are still right.

©   Robin Paice   2020