Labour’s next majority

In the hustle and bustle of an election campaign, often the hardest thing is being able to see the wood for the trees. There is never a shortage of tasks to be done – direct mails to deliver, doors to knock on, posters to put up – but the difference between victory and defeat often comes down to how well focused are your efforts. Even the biggest and best resourced campaign fails if resources are deployed in a scattergun approach.

The importance of this for Labour, in comparison to our opposition, cannot be overestimated. We should be under no illusion that the Tories will massively outspend us in 2015 – as they did in 2010. In order to cling to power, their hedge fund backers will throw the kitchen sink at us. And our ideas could struggle to get a fair hearing in the press. Our response should be to make the most out of every single penny and minute we spend on the campaign. We must ensure every leaflet, every volunteer minute and every bit of media time for our candidates has the maximum possible impact. And just as importantly, we must maximise the party’s biggest strength – our volunteer army – members and supporters who vastly outnumber our opponents. If we are to we win the general election in 2015, it will be because we win the ground campaign.

I was first introduced to the scientific approach to field organising in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign. For a politician, there is nothing more heartening (or more likely to stave off “candidate-itis”) than being able to numerically track progress towards set targets that you are confident will deliver victory on polling day. The approach outlined in Labour’s Next Majority was instrumental to me retaining my seat of Tooting in 2010, beating the national swing despite being a top Tory target seat and facing a tide of Ashcroft money. Since then, it is an approach I have championed in every election I have been involved in – from Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign to the London local elections this May.

This pamphlet describes an approach to campaigning that is still relatively young in Britain. Every organiser I know has stories of candidates who insist on ‘going with their gut’ over what the numbers say. But it is an approach that we now have overwhelming evidence works. We see it in seats that bucked the trend in 2010, like Birmingham Edgbaston, Oxford East and Bethnal Green & Bow and the fact that on average a professional organiser was worth a 3.5% swing to Labour at the 2010 election, to the stunning victories in London boroughs like Redbridge, Croydon and Hammersmith and Fulham in May’s local elections.

Labour’s local election campaign in London in 2014 was the most professional field campaign in which I have ever been involved. We had more organisers on the ground than at the last general election, all working to individualised ‘win numbers’ for every ward we were targeting. The recruitment and deployment of volunteers across the capital was superb. We built on the community organising work of Arnie Graf and spent a huge amount of energy building the capacity we needed to make more than one million contacts over the 2014 campaign. We followed the ideas in this pamphlet – and it worked. We had the best results in London since 1971, gaining 203 councillors and 5 new Labour councils.

Labour’s Next Majority is designed to be a step by step guide to running a scientifically targeted and organised campaign. Marcus Roberts has a track record of winning campaigns in Britain, with input from those at the cutting edge of developing and testing these techniques both here and abroad. From developing a win number, to structuring your campaign team, to fundraising, deploying volunteers and using policy and press – it’s all tested and it all works. The national political picture matters hugely, but never underestimate the importance of well organised, local campaigns for affecting the result of a constituency election.

Sadiq Khan MP is Labour’s Shadow London Minister. 

Today the Fabian Society releases its second pamphlet in the ‘Labour’s Next Majority’ series, designed as a constituency guide for candidates and organisers. The pamphlet was written by Marcus Roberts and the foreword is by Sadiq Khan