The Tories would be right not to underestimate Labour

Recently Tim Montgomerie launched a campaign to encourage Tories not to underestimate Labour. Despite our recent difficulties, he’s right to do so. At the last election we picked up just 29% of the vote and just weeks from election day it looked possible that we could slump into third place in the popular vote. That would have been a disaster that the party might never have recovered from.

18 months later, and things (though improved) aren’t as good as we’d like them to be. The Labour Party – for perhaps the first time in its history – has had a good long drink of victory and government, and we’ve got a taste for it. Large portions of our membership, and a huge chunk of the PLP, aren’t used to opposition.

Being 10% higher in the polls is a good start, but as Emma Burnell rightly noted yesterday, “the problem is not that Labour are doing badly, it’s that the Tories are not.” We’re not happy doing “quite well” anymore. We want to be winning the arguments, and winning votes. Never again will the Labour Party attempt to argue that finishing second is some kind of moral victory. The Labour Party does not – despite what some would have you believe – enjoy oppisition this time around.

Montgomerie is right to say that the formation of the coalition was a huge gift to Labour. The party leadership won’t be forgiven if we don’t take maximum advantage of that.

Tim is right not to underestimate Labour. We should hope that the Tories take no notice of him.