Harriet Harman: we must examine why even some Labour supporters were “relieved” we didn’t win the election

Harriet Harman, interim leader of the Labour party, has said that even some Labour voters were relieved the party didn’t win the election in May.

In an interview with The Independent, Harman drew on research she’s commissioned from Deborah Mattinson, who was Gordon Brown’s pollster. Mattinson’s initial focus group work found that even Labour supporters felt relieved at the election result.

On this Harman explained:

“Sometimes after an election, you get a sense that people think ‘Oh my God, that is terrible, what a disaster.’ A lot of people felt that because we got nearly 40,000 new party members who were very disappointed. But there is an even greater number of people, even though they were not enthusiastic about David Cameron or the Tories, who feel relieved that we are not in government.  We have got to address it. It was not a blip.”

She went on to say that voters up and down the country thought that Labour “doesn’t talk about me. She argued that “It doesn’t matter how many leaflets you deliver if the message is not right.”

Harman has set up a taskforce to examine why Labour lost the election, which is chaired by the former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. She outlined why the work done by this taskforce is important:

“Sometimes after a big general election defeat, some people take lessons that protect their own involvement in the campaign. They don’t want things looked at because they were a part of it and feel defensive. Others want to find things that support what they want the party to do in the future.  It is really important for the party that it is not defensive about the past but is absolutely honest and clear-eyed and faces up to the truth of what people are saying.”

She explained that both Ed Miliband and the party’s economic credibility will be under examination:

“People tend to like a leader they feel is economically competent.”

“We never got to grips with why we lost the economic argument [in 2010]. We really must do it this time.”

“If people had trusted us on the economy, they would not have worried that we would be pushed around by the SNP.”

However, she went on to explain that learning and moving on from the election defeat isn’t just about electing a new leader, saying:

“I don’t want people to think that the only thing we need to do is elect a new leader….When you change the captain of the ship, you should look at the direction it is going in.”

“It is really important for the party that it is not defensive about the past but is absolutely honest and clear-eyed and faces up to the truth of what people are saying.”

“It [the leadership contest] is about actively reaching out to engage with people who did not support us, not just those who did.”