How to fight a living standards election – lessons from Israel

If in the UK the ‘middle’ are being squeezed, in Israel they are being crushed. One in five working families with kids live in poverty. The cost of housing rose 70% in 10 years and now outstrips most American cities. A country founded in part by idealistic socialists has the highest poverty rate in the OECD.

Despite that, the conventional wisdom is that Israeli politics is all about peace and security. However, our first survey for the Israeli Labor party in the run up to the 2013 elections showed that things were going to be different. Israelis were nearly twice as likely to prioritise the economy as prioritise peace.

As Britain heads towards its own living standards election, there are lessons to be learnt from the dynamics that played out in Israel. I want to pick out four:

Passion for the middle not against the top

Israelis are angry and they rightly believe that the state has made this extreme concentration of wealth and power a reality in their country.

However, their political passion is not against the rich. It is reserved for a politician who they believe will fight for the middle class. By a margin of 85:9 Israelis wanted a politician who would stand up for the middle class over one who prioritised standing up against the tycoons. Simply switching the order of sentences in a message, so the middle class focus came before attacking tycoons, added 10 points to its power.

A politician fired up with anger against the top is compelling; one fired up by a passion for ordinary working people is one people will vote for.

You can’t win a living standards election by simply being defined against the top. You need to be defined as being for the middle. Ed Miliband’s early adoption of the ‘squeezed middle’ as central to his project shows exactly the right prioritisation.

Once identified with the middle, the left can gain from highlighting unfairness at the top

Focusing on the middle doesn’t mean giving the elites a bye. Voters in Israel absolutely bought into the idea that their struggles were a symptom of stitch-ups at the top.

However, when addressing the privileges of the elite it is important for politicians to show that they are on the side of the producers. People who contribute, pay their taxes, create jobs and so on are valued by voters who understand the need for a vibrant economy. The problem comes when the concentration of wealth and power tilts the playing field against ordinary working people. A tax cut for millionaires may or may not be wise in and of itself but it becomes a campaign issue when it is at the cost of tax rises for people on middle incomes and lower.

For voters, living standards means prices

Economists tend to be united in their view on living standards: looking for answers in prices is looking in the wrong place. The real problem is wages.

In Israel, salaries for people with degrees have fallen 7% in real terms in the last decade. The official unemployment rate nearly doubles when you take into account people who have simply quit looking for work or who are working part time when they want full time – a problem that is particularly acute for women.

Fine. But that’s not how voters see it.

Voters are sceptical that the government can boost wages at any great speed. They buy that we need to be a high-skill economy to avoid competing on wages with the rising economies to our east and south. But that is an issue for the country, not for them as individuals. Their day-to-day issue is prices.

Answers must be serious and long-term as well as delivering help now

Voters across much of the developed world want action on living standards.

But that hasn’t made them forget about everything else. In Israel they didn’t forget that the prime minister has to do more than manage the economy. They also need to deal with the country’s security. While the economy trumped peace as a voting issue, it only tied with security.

Here in the UK the contextual issues are less focused on security and more on other aspects of the economy. Voters want a living standards answer that is also a debt answer and a competitiveness answer. The same is true in the US. Our polling consistently finds that short-term solutions and throwing money at problems rather than addressing root causes does not help. Voters want to know that plans will work in the long term.

The Israeli election has important lessons for progressive round the world. The focus on living standards ought to be bad news for the right, but if and only if, parties of the centre-left can show that they have the passion and policy to do something about it.

A version of this essay was originally published in ‘Reflection and Renewal: where next for the left in Israel’, a policy report by the Fabian Society.

James Morris is a campaign pollster and strategist. A former speechwriter to Labour leader Ed Miliband and advisor at the Number 10 Strategy Unit, Morris runs Greenberg Quinlan Rosner’s London office and advised the Israeli Labor party during the 2013 election.