Labour needs more than just a new leader

By Richard Darlington

Labour’s brand is in toxic territory and it’s going to take more than just a new leader to win a General Election again. That’s the only conclusion you can reach when you look at the shocking results of a new poll that Demos commissioned from YouGov to understand the outcome of the General Election.

Labour’s next leader is going to inherit a party that is seen by voters as representing ‘the past’ rather than the future. The most widely held perceptions of the Labour Party held by people who voted Labour in 2005 but not in 2010 were that the party is weak (73%), divided (72%) and out of touch (66%).

While a change of leader might shift perceptions of ‘weakness’ and ‘division’, the poll actually shows that Gordon Brown had a better rating for being seen as ‘strong’ than the party itself. It will be crucial that all four of the unsuccessful leadership candidates – and their supporters – unite behind the new leader. Any refusals to serve will be catastrophic for the party.

A new leader, supported by a strong, unified cabinet will help counter the perception of Labour as weak and divided but this will not be enough. Labour’s biggest problem is being seen as ‘out of touch’ and that will take more than a change of leader to address.

Two thirds (66%) of voters that Labour lost at the last election said the party was ‘out of touch’ and more than half (58%) said the party represents ‘the past’ rather than the future. One in four Labour voters actually put their cross in the box while believing Labour was ‘out of touch’. Thank goodness they did but we can’t expect them to do it again.

Perceptions of the centre-left as being out of touch are not confined to the UK. A global recession caused by the financial elite would seem to present the perfect opportunity for centre left parties. But with the exception of Greece, Spain and Portugal, across Europe the centre-right is in power. Even in Social Democratic Sweden, the centre-right is now in office. Some think this is because of crisis of social democracy and that demographic pressures are going to make it harder and harder to for the left to win elections.

The candidate who has spoken up for the European social model and styled himself as a social democrat, Ed Miliband, told The Independent:

“This poll should leave Labour Party members in no doubt that we must change if we are to win again. We need a commitment to change in our policies, change in our party and movement, and change in the way we do politics. While we achieved a huge amount after 1997, the New Labour formula has had its day with the public, and we need to move on.”

After the Tory defeat in the 2005 General Election, Michael Ashcroft published an analysis called ‘Smell the coffee: a wake up call for the Conservative Party’. He argued that:

“The Conservative Party’s problem is its brand. Conservatives loath being told this but it is an inescapable fact… the brand problem means that the most robust, coherent, principled and attractive Conservative policies will have no impact on the voters.”

If we look at the toxic nature of the Tory brand, we can see that perceptions can be changed. A Populus poll conducted in September 2005 showed that 72% of voters said the Tory party was “stuck in the past”. Five years later, the Demos/YouGov poll shows that 35% of voters see the Tory party as “the past” rather than the future.

So there are grounds for optimism. But only if we face up to the scale of the challenge and we do it quickly. In 1951 we lost and were out for 13 years. In 1979 we lost and were out for 18 years. Labour needs to buck a historical trend and learn to bounce back quickly.

CCHQ used to tell staffers to take Philip Gould’s ‘Unfinished Revolution’ and Alistair Campbell’s diaries with them for their summer holiday reading. Perhaps we should be taking Ashcroft’s book to the beach with us?

What is clear is that whoever wins the Labour leadership is going to need to rebrand the party to reinforce their new policy agenda and signal a clean break from Labour’s past. Most of all, Labour’s new leader needs to show they have listened to disaffected voters, not just party members.

Richard Darlington is Head of the Open Left project at Demos.