Last Thursday could have been better, but it wasn’t a disaster

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

There’s a column from former Blair speechwriter Philip Collins in the Times today(£), in which he describes last weeks Labour performance as a disaster. For those of you who don’t have your “Columnist Hyperbole to English dictionary” handy, disaster is the new shorthand for “not as good as I might have liked”. Or for critiques of Ed Miliband, “anything Miliband has done that I disagree with”.

To be fair to Collins he is far from the only person to adopt this strategy. When in opposition, there’s a great opportunity to make waves and gain attention for your views by opposing the party line. Opposition is an almost completely, relentlessly, horrifically unpleasant for everyone involved. The party you care about is out of power. The country is headed in the wrong direction. There’s plenty to be angry about. Kicking against your party (especially when you disagree with/didn’t vote for your party leader) is something that feels good. It feels like you’re helping. I know because I’ve done it, and I’m sure I’ll do it again.

The problem comes when the analysis only half stacks up, and when you scratch below the surface to find that the arguments being made are infinitely more complex than can be summed up in a few hundred words. Labour gained 800 seats. It could have gained more. We failed to make the headway that we’ll need (four years from now) against the Tories in the South. That’s true. That’s something for party strategists to pick over and analyse. But a disaster? Gaining 800 new Labour councillors? That’s not a disaster, as Luke Akehurst’s nuanced assesment proved earlier this week.

There’s also a myth emerging that Ed Miliband doesn’t believe that we need to win votes from the Tories, which doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. He began his leadership talking about the squeezed middle. It has been the unifying strand that has ran through his time as leader. He drops it into every interview, TV appearance and doorstep conversation. And it is beginning to be proven correct. The squeezed middle isn’t a core vote strategy. It’s a message that speaks to millions of people who voted Tory but feel that their living standards are under seige. It’s a message that will grow in resonance over time. And while I share Philip’s concerns that Labour isn’t yet making the gains neccessary in southern seats, the choice of Milton Keynes to help prove his point (where Labour was two votes short of defeating the council leader) is an odd one.

Where Collins is spot on – and this section of his column should be required reading for party members of all stripes – is that there’s a risk of “all three parties locked into their core vote”. Knocking on doors for the Tories in Newcastle would be as fruitless at the moment as knocking on doors for Labour in Sussex. We are about to see the two party system writ-large, North vs. South, Labour vs. Tory unless someone can break the deadlock. Yet I am not so pessimistic about Labour’s chances. Whilst the current Tory plans have zero chance of gaining resonance in the North (and the Lib Dems are considered yellow Tories), Tory economic strategy is not a sure fire winner in the South, no matter how popular they may be at the moment. The pressure on middle income earners will rise. They won’t be able to afford the holidays they once could. Their children may not be able to afford to attend university. Discontent can settle in. A more positive message from Labour to these voters – a message of aspiration – could start to win over swing voters in the South.

Collins is also right to say that there is a sizeable proportion of the electorate who consider Labour’s period in government to have been spendthrift. That’s not a matter for debate, that section of the electorate undoubtedly exists. Anyone who knocked on doors last year will have faced at least one loud “Gordon Brown bankrupted this country”. And while it’s easy to write off some of these people as Tory supporters (and undoubtedly some of them are), we do need to win a proportion of them back, and a large chunk of them are (or were) our supporters. Collins says that Labour must stop “denying its part in our economic downfall” and “scale down to what people want”. On the second score he’s right – we need to spend money on people’s priorities, but taking the first piece of advice and publically flagellating ourselves for thirteen years of spending under a Labour government would be a disaster.

Repeated critiques from Labour voices that the party “spent too much” in government are always missing one critical detail – what would you have done differently? Would you have shelved Sure Start? Spent less on the NHS? Perhaps you wouldn’t have invested in building new schools? Could Trident have been shelved? Or maybe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were too expensive and should never have happened? Beating ourselves up over our record in government is ok. It’s one of the uses of opposition. It allows us to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again.

But it needs to be rigorous and comprehensive. It can’t just echo opposition attack lines – or we just do their job for them.