Labour and the new realities of UK politics

Commentators and potential leadership contenders are, understandably, anxious to arrive at conclusions about why Labour did so badly in the general election. As is always the case at this stage, however, all such conclusions are predominantly intuitive, rather than based on meaningful evidence.

But, come conclusions are inescapable. First, Scotland aside, the results were different according to regions and, in some cases within regions. Labour won 51 seats in the North West, up four from 2010. Our share of the vote increased by 5.2% points, to 44.6%. Labour won a larger increase in their share of the vote in the North West than in any other nation or region of the UK.

Within the North West, whilst Labour were successful in winning 51 out of 75 seats available, the actual results paint a more complex picture. For example, Labour gained Burnley from the Lib Dems and the City of Chester from the Tories, but lost Bolton West to the Tories. Also, notably, Labour also failed to gain in either Warrington South or Weaver Vale – two of their key target seats in the North West.

Secondly, there is – at least on the part of some – a tendency to frame it in either left or right terms or, rather, Old versus New Labour. This rather misses the point: many people – particularly younger voters – do not perceive politics within an ideological framework. Increasingly, voters are becoming less ideological and more pragmatic with their choice of elected representatives. The term transactional politics does accurately describe the way in which, increasingly, many decide their political allegiance in the context of a particular election.

Thirdly, we need to more fully understand the rise of UKIP and the SNP. Paradoxically, this is more of a Tory than a Labour problem, but one which has profound implications for Labour. Whatever else happened in Scotland – and heaven knows plenty did happen – people in Scotland became increasingly frustrated that, although they repeatedly voted overwhelmingly Labour, they still ended up with Tory governments. The SNP exploited this, but failed to explain how, by simply replacing Labour, the outcome would be different. In reality, Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the SNP, only to wake up on Friday morning with yet another Tory government.

It became increasingly apparent in the many conversations I had with potential UKIP voters up to and during the general election, that their reasons for switching to UKIP were not uniformly anti-Europe or even anti-immigrant. Many were, but they also tapped into a well of latent frustration with politics which, despite Ed Miliband’s brave efforts, Labour has yet to get the measure of. The depiction of UKIP as racist, xenophobic and with dodgy ideas about the NHS, true as it may be, did not cut through, because we failed to understand the context – albeit amongst a limited pool of voters – in which they flourished. By viewing the phenomenon of UKIP though a familiar ideological prism, we did not pick up that they are very much a part and parcel of transactional politics. One example from canvassing in Knowsley serves to illustrate the point. A woman in her late 20s/early 30s, previously a non-voter, told me she was thinking of voting UKIP, so I asked her why. She was unable to say, but I did manage to discover that she had no wish to leave the EU and had no problems with immigration – her choice was a visceral choice for a different (new) brand (happily, in this case, the woman concerned was quite easily persuaded that our brand was better).

Even if the spasm UKIP is experiencing leads to its implosion, there is still a market for a populist English equivalent of the SNP. It could, moreover, be equally one tinged with traditional leftist hues, rather than those of the right.

Finally, there is an issue about the terms in which we conduct our political discourse. In a less partisan, ideological and deferential era, nothing can be taken for granted. Consequently, the words we use, and the manner in which we express them, are vitally important. The challenge for Labour – and particularly for the candidates aspiring to lead our party – is to find a way of articulating our enduring principles in language that relates directly to the new realities of politics, the many and varied lives people lead and the sort of country they want to be a part of.

George Howarth is the MP for Knowsley