Labour may have little choice but to form a coalition government in May

Two things happen when you join the Labour party: lots of people warmly welcome you… and quite a few wonder loudly why you hadn’t joined earlier. Since I embraced the party in 2010, more than a few people have berated me for not realising that voting Lib Dem was a terrible idea and I should have come to my senses earlier. Perhaps, but I believe this attitude hurts the Labour party.

One of the down-sides of Labour tribalism is a common (but not all-pervasive) attitude that people on the left who don’t vote Labour haven’t come to their senses yet; and that they have nowhere realistic to go to. This tribalism may cost us the upcoming election.

It is highly unlikely Labour will reach an absolute majority of MPs in May – which was never surprising given the decimation of 2010. This means we have to start talking – seriously – about the ‘c’ word. Yes: ‘Coalition’.

Public sentiment may change but the polling allows us to predict that the SNP will get win anything between 20 – 40 seats across Scotland. They may even emerge as the third largest party in Britain. The Lib Dems aren’t irrelevant either; their national support is low but expected to be higher in areas where they have MPs (except Scotland). They are likely to come back with anything between 15 – 30 seats.

But put this aside for a moment. Labour’s tribalism isn’t just about an aversion to coalitions, it also affects how we see voters. ‘How could you have been stupid enough to vote Lib Dem in 2010?’ –  I always get asked. But I’m also a voter like anyone else, and anyone who blames voters for not picking them is missing the point. A smart leader asks why people are voting for others and tries to entice them, not blame them for picking others.

Labour no longer has a monopoly on left-leaning voters, and yet too many Labourites still believe it does. Our pitch in Scotland is summarised as: pick us, otherwise the Tories get in! Our pitch to Lib Dems is: pick us, because Clegg is dishonest! Those aren’t reasons to pick Labour over others, those are just pleas for tactical voting. They only end up destroying faith in our political system and hurt Labour over the long term.

As Stephen Bush put it: “the basic error was to assume that ex-Liberals were 2010 Labour voters who had seen the error of their ways.” In fact we have done that with many voters, some of whom have gotten fed up to leave for UKIP, Greens or none of the above.

Labour’s tribalist streak evolved into a sense of entitlement, which hurts in an era when people aren’t as loyal as they were.

Worse, this entitlement has started bleeding into discussions of coalitions, with MPs declaring that Labour should state it won’t go into an alliance with the SNP or Lib Dems, apparently to persuade voters to tactically vote Labour.

I have bad news – asking people to vote tactically against the Tories didn’t work in 2010 and it’s unlikely to persuade many this time around either. Sadly, large swathes of Scotland will vote SNP whether it helps the Tories or not, mostly because we haven’t done enough to earn their vote.

The Labour leadership won’t go into a ‘grand coalition’ with the Tories, despite the fantasies of some centrists, and they have ruled out a deal with UKIP. The SNP won’t work with the Tories, while the Lib Dems say they will first talk to the largest party by seats not the one that wins the popular vote.

This means two things.

First, Labour’s pitch should be on why they should vote for us, not why they shouldn’t help the Tories get in. Voters have to feel wanted by Labour, not be told that their stupidity might let the Tories back in.

Secondly, we have to accept that Labour will very likely need to form a coalition with the SNP and/or the Lib Dems to get into power in May. The stakes are too high for this country’s future (especially the NHS) for Labour to reject compromise. It would be incredibly “self-indulgent” – as one Labour MP put it to me – to ignore people who will be affected by Tory cuts and the Bedroom Tax. The Labour leadership cannot let tribalism cost us the coming election.