Rights and Wrongs
Now here's a timely article by Dan Hodges - a Labour supporter and former GMB union official - who writes a regular blog for the Telegraph.
I know from personal experience that it's not easy to criticise your own side because politics can be a nasty business at times - and some of your collegues will be inclined to punish - or even victimise - people who go against the flow and speak out of turn.
So I take my hat off to Dan - because what he has to say certainly strikes a chord with me.
Ed Miliband is right: saying 'We're right, the voters are wrong' is no way to win an election. So why is he saying it?
By Dan Hodges
According to this morning’s Independent, at last night’s Parliamentary Labour Party meeting Ed Miliband “hit back at criticism of Labour's direction under him from Tony Blair and his allies, accusing them of being out of date and out of touch with the public”. Why he did that isn’t entirely clear, given that Ed’s supporters are rushing around this morning telling everyone who’ll listen the Labour Party is perfectly united behind their man’s leadership.
But aside from the growing division over whether Labour is or isn’t united, the article includes a really interesting quote from Miliband: "We need to learn this truth: Opposition leaders who say 'we got it right, the electorate got it wrong' will remain leaders of the opposition.”
The quote was clearly aimed at Blair, and to a lesser extent Gordon Brown, both of whom are perceived to be resistant to acknowledge failures in their own premierships. And Miliband is of course right: thumbing your nose at the electorate is never a sensible political strategy. The problem is, that’s precisely what he’s doing himself.
On the day Margaret Thatcher died, Ed Miliband launched Labour’s local election campaign. His speech, understandably, was subsequently swept aside by the news of Mrs Thatcher’s passing. But in it, he addressed the ongoing debate about welfare, and George Osborne’s Mick Philpott comments. “I have got a very clear message for the British people on this,” he said. “We can either succeed as a country by uniting, by using the talents of everybody, by using the talents of everybody out of work, by putting them back into work and making sure there is real responsibility. Or you can say let's divide, let’s set one group of people against another – that’s not how we won the Second World War.”
I actually thought it was the 13th Guards rifle division at Stalingrad that won the Second World War, but that’s a separate discussion. The point is that with these comments Ed Miliband is, in essence, telling the voters they’re wrong.
According to his world view, you either harness the talents of those on welfare, by offering them the chance to get back into work, or you are “divisive” and undermining Britain’s Blitz spirit. But that’s not the perception of large sections of the electorate. There are plenty of people who think the option of a job is entirely irrelevant, and that many of their fellow citizens are subsisting on welfare out of choice. They may be right, or they may be wrong. But that’s what they think. And with his stance on welfare – opposing a welfare cap, failing to support the Government in the vote on welfare sanctions – Labour’s leader is telling them they’re wrong to think it.
It’s the same with the economy. In 2010 Labour went into the election with a fairly clear economic offer. It was to reduce the deficit, and ultimately the debt, but at a slower pace than the Tory party. The additional expenditure would be used to support the economy while it moved back towards recovery.
Nothing wrong with that as a strategy, you may think, either in 2010 or 2013. But the voters did think there was something wrong with it, which is why they gave Labour 29 per cent of the vote and the Tories 36 per cent, and why David Cameron is now sitting at Gordon Brown’s desk in No 10 Downing Street.
Labour’s response to this rebuff has been to look the electorate squarely in the eye, say “You’re sorry now, aren’t you? Bet you wished you’d listened to us after all,” and hold out precisely the same economic policy. When Ed Balls tells George Osborne “You’re cutting too far and too fast,” what he’s really doing is telling the British people “You booted us out too far and too far fast”. And what’s more, the British people know it.
Perhaps the starkest example of this approach is on Europe. Here Ed Miliband is so convinced he’s right and the voters are wrong, he isn’t going to bother asking their view on the issue. No referendum for Ed.
Once again, Labour’s European world view has hardly changed at all since 2010. And again, Miliband’s attitude is “like it or lump it”. Ironically, it’s an area where he and many Blairites are in agreement. Last month Peter Mandelson said it would be “clinically insane” for Labour to offer a Europe referendum in their 2015 manifesto.
Whether he realises it or not, “We’re right, the voters are wrong” has become Miliband’s unofficial slogan. From his belief he has no need to move his party towards the political centre, because the political centre is moving towards him. To his narrative that politics is about “doing what you feel is right”, rather than what the voters feel is right. Ed knows best.
And perhaps he does. Perhaps. come 2015, the British people, sick of austerity and the cuts and countless economic false dawns, will be seized with buyer’s remorse. But I personally think that when Ed Miliband says “opposition leaders who say 'we got it right, the electorate got it wrong' will remain leaders of the opposition”, Ed Miliband is on to something.
