Shocking news – Labour’s election team are seeking advice from those who have won elections

There’s been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth/yelps of delight (delete as appropriate) amongst some in the party this morning over an Observer article that claims there will be a “key role for Blairites” in Labour’s General Election team. A more prominent role for Alastair Campbell (whose reputation has been enhanced and reformed since he left Downing Street ten years ago) has been broadly welcomed. Yet the thought of Alan Milburn – for example – making a return to Labour’s top table has set some teeth on edge, to put it mildly.

And yet it you look past the slightly hyperbolic write up that the paper has given to the leaked memo (has someone left something on the photocopier?) what’s being proposed isn’t that remarkable or surprising. For starters, Toby Helm’s piece claims that Ed Miliband will be having regular meetings with Milburn. Yet if you read the memo on which the whole piece seems to be based, it says that Douglas Alexander, not Ed Miliband, will be having an occasional chat with Milburn (who ran Labour’s 2005 campaign).

I’m not sure a phone call every six weeks justifies either the term “key role” – or the front page of a national newspaper.

Essentially what is being reported is the shocking news that the people who are running Labour’s General Election campaign are going to occasionally get advice from people who have previously run pretty successful (with the exception of 2010) election campaigns. It doesn’t mean that Milburn, Campbell or anyone else are going to be running the election campaign – there’s no change to what has already been announced by the party thus far.  It merely means a few people who can already be seen regularly flitting in and out of Brewer’s Green and the Leader’s Office will be having a few more conversations with a few more people. The election plan – including the changes to digital campaigning and community organising which are already underway – appear to remain, so far, unaltered from what we’ve heard before.

So it’s not the names that worry me, or the fact that they’ll be having sunday lunch or an afternoon coffee with Douglas Alexander or Spencer Livermore that worries me. Those aiming to put Ed Miliband in Downing Street can and must engage with those who have the rare experience of running winning election campaigns.

What worries me is that there seem to be lots of people involved in the campaign – you can’t run a general election by committee. There are also far too few women involved – as Jacqui Smith and Emma Burnell have noted here before. And there aren’t enough new faces. Campaigning has moved on quite a bit since we last won an election in 2005, and there are plenty of good campaigners with relevant experience who have come through in the last decade who could add something to the campaign.

Despite the hyperbole in today’s Observer, Labour isn’t going to be running an election campaign like 1997, 2001 or even 2005. The political circumstances have changed, as have the ways in which political parties campaign. Ed Miliband has given Labour’s new election team a very clear steer as to what kind of party he wants to see – a movement party. As Miliband told me a few months ago:

“We know what the old problem was – a diminishing number of people knocking on a diminishing number of doors. And this is about an increasing number of people, not only knocking on an increasing number of doors, but playing a different role.”

On campaigning we have to go “forward, not back” – but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the past. And that includes their mistakes, as well as their victories.