As the evidence stacks up against, Labour can’t pander to our own unchallenged beliefs

When you feel the views and the interests of the British people clash, which should the Labour Party seek to represent? This conundrum is at the heart of the party’s welfare row that, with a vote later today, is still far from over. In fact, as traditional party affiliations decline, and views appear to fracture more across boundaries other than class ones, it is a question that will only become more relevant. And in any case, how do you represent people’s interests without first representing their views?

When Harriet Harman made her comments about welfare during the Sunday Politics last week, it was effectively a grenade being lobbed into the leadership contest. Two months into the race, the candidates have settled on their lines, hustings have become increasingly predictable, and proper debates over the big ‘difficult’ issues have become vanishingly rare. Welfare is one of those difficult issues, and it seems Harman had also noted the stupor: her surprising intervention sparked real discussion, and forced dividing lines among the leadership hopefuls.

Yesterday’s report, ‘Listening to Labour’s Lost Voters’, based on conversation with ex-Labour members in some of the country’s most marginal seats, shows that the party has a difficult time ahead. Just as quantitative data has shown previously, this qualitative research shows us exactly what we don’t want to hear: the biggest problems are those we like to confront least. It is welfare reform, immigration, economic credibility, having a strong leader and, yes, even a lack of ‘aspiration’ that causes trouble for the Labour brand most.

Not that that should be a surprise, of course. Successive defeats tend to imply an institutionalised reluctance to deal with the most obvious problems. It is more comforting to find other difficulties, those that can be more easily explained by pandering to our unchallenged beliefs, to map a route map to power. Those maps guide down dead ends.

This latest research also seems to prove Harman right for some of her earlier comments, now largely forgotten, that caused an outpouring of condemnation from Labour activists last month. When the acting leader said that voters who were not enthusiastic about the Tories were “relieved” that Labour had not won, there was indignation. But this report shows that people in the seats Labour most needed to win, and who desperately wanted a reason to vote Labour, were relieved by the result on May 7th.

It is not the most comprehensive review of Labour’s defeat – it is the result of focus groups in five marginals – but it is still an important part of building an understanding of May’s loss. It is too easy to write off findings such as these as furthering an agenda, but the ‘Lost Voters’ report was carried out by former party staffers, and previous comprehensive polling was done by the TUC. Both make for miserable reading, but neither are entirely surprising.

We should welcome all of this. If people are willing to carry out such research and share it with us when it is needed most, it should at least be given due attention. And when it all the evidence so obviously stacks up one way, we should be cowed that we were so wrong, not given the strength to argue even harder.

All of this might be more difficult, had it come out of the blue. But if you’ve knocked on any doors at all in the lead up to May, you know these problems already exist. The four month leadership contest prompts a stale debate; it encourages the candidates to appeal to us who were wrong. And when the facts start piling up, we shouldn’t be relying on Harriet Harman to force an argument. We should be doing it ourselves.