Plugging the policy vacuum

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

Three problems have become increasingly clear to me over the last few weeks – and they all point to a much larger strategic problem for the party.

The first is something I’m finding it increasingly difficult to deal with: You’re on the doorstep, you’re having a nice chat, the voter history shows that they were tempted (or actually voted) Lib Dem last time. Their hatred for the yellow peril is now more visceral than my own. They’ll probably vote Labour next time. There I am reaching for the killer line that will seal the deal. And then bam, the voter asks the not unreasonable question – to which there is no national answer at the moment: “What would your lot do instead?”

The second problem is illustrated by results to some of the questions in last week’s ComRes poll. Nearly half (49%) of voters, credit Nick Clegg with the pause and rethinking on the NHS. The fact that there was a big ruckus at his spring conference caused, by among other things, our health team’s excellent attacks on their plans, and Miliband’s plugging away on the issue at PMQs has passed voters by. Lib Dems inside the coalition, involved in drawing up the plans and voting for them in parliament are now getting the credit for opposing, which means if they are eventually changed they’ll get the credit for that too.

The third, which may in part be a cause of the first two, is the inability of the Labour front bench to get air time to attack the government plans. This was reported in the Observer at the weekend and confirmed to me by an adviser to our front bench on Sunday. The media apparently are in thrall of the internal opposition in the coalition and in any case – going back to point one, don’t think Labour has anything interesting to say.

I’ve blogged before about the challenge to Labour of remaining relevant, and it seems that there’s growing evidence that we’re struggling. So what do we do about it?

The policy reviews and Refounding Labour are important pieces of work. But it seems that they’re currently trumping all other thought and even short term policy development could help us force our way back in to the conversation.

Flying a few kites in key policy areas could even aid the policy development process by testing public reaction to new ideas.

Take tuition fees, the Lib Dems are taking the blame because they voted for it having signed personal pledges against it. But we’re just opposing it without offering any alternative. Their treachery could be old news by the next election – funding of higher education won’t be if we’ve spent all the time opposing their plans and don’t offer an alternative model.

There are a number of ways of funding higher education, from a straight market with those able to pay paying and hang everyone else to fully funded free higher education to anyone that wants it if they meet the grade. In between there’s a number of options like some use of fees with means tested access to help. We could consider subsidised savings (on a private pension model) for more affluent people with more taxpayer funded help for those worse off, or of course a graduate tax for everyone. It’s absolutely right to oppose the fees hike, but we need to put something in its place. Some of these will be less or more popular with the public and the party depending on each individual’s view point. Sending up a few flares and seeing the public reaction will help us focus limited party resources in the right direction for the policy review.

This approach could work for any number of policy areas. I’m not suggesting a sort of political roulette with our party’s past and future. But being bold now could pay dividends in the future – as we get closer to the election.

And just like the coalition is gambling on an economic upturn that will help defuse the memory of the painful cuts, calamities, u-turns and lies, we can afford to test some policies that don’t make the final cut for our next manifesto.

The best thing about it, is that it will demonstrate to the public and the party that there’s an alternative view to what the government is doing. We’re not just anti them, we’re for something positive – something better.

Isn’t that what we got in to politics for in the first place?