Elections aren’t won in the centre ground

It’s tempting to think that elections are won in the middle. Imagine a hundred voters – spanning a spectrum from leftie socialism to right-wing neoliberalism – and two parties. The party which is the more left-wing of the two is closest to all of the voters left of it and closest to half of the voters between it and other party; if proximity’s what matters, each party maximises its vote share by squeezing up tight next to the other bang in the centre of our imaginary scale.

That common sense idea is behind many of the claims that Labour needs to move towards the centre ground: towards the ‘Third Way’ of Clinton and Blair, the ‘one-nation conservatism’ of Disraeli, and the ‘radical centrism’ of Nick Clegg. YouGov produced some gloriously meaningless data showing the public agree with those calling for that rightward move, and think Miliband was left not just of the public but of his party.

The awkward, counterintuitive, inevitable truth is that elections aren’t that simple. Between 1950 and 2010, there were ten general elections at which Labour had shifted right: the party gained against the Tories in five of them and lost ground in five too. When Labour were in opposition, they shuffled their manifestos four times each way: twice they gained while swinging left, and three times – one being 1997 – while galloping right.

Individual elections tell intriguing stories of their own. In February 1974, Wilson launched Labour dramatically leftwards with a proudly socialist manifesto and hobbled to the headship with a four seat plurality. In 1979, Thatcher marched her party rightwards and strode to victory with seventy more MPs than Callaghan. In 1997, Labour did swing right, and Blair swept to Westminster on a landslide. In 2010, both parties barely shifted, each moving rightwards if at all; but it was enough for more than ninety seats to change hands and for the Tories to add two million to their vote.

Anyone who knows much about 1974 and 1979 will be quick to call exceptions: strikes, rebellions, and even Scottish nationalism mean these elections don’t squeeze easily inside a simple model. That’s partly precisely the point: elections aren’t just, if at all, about who occupies the middle ground. From the Falklands to Black Wednesday, exceptions also plague 1997 and 1983: the two elections, engraved so deeply in Labour’s consciousness, at the heart of many stories that the centre’s the place to be.

It may be that Labour’s best chance is to cosy up to the nicest Tories, but it shouldn’t be because we think we know that works. In a Britain in which most want nationalised railways and utilities and think reducing inequality is more important than faster growth, it’s not even clear where the median voter is or whether any one platform can capture all that they believe. If we choose not to move “beyond the old labels”, we must at least be wary of thinking sense always favours one.