‘History and poll leads suggest Labour can be bolder, even if it costs some votes’

Should Labour members get ready to party like it’s 1997? The consistent message of opinion polls certainly suggests that the bumper crop of Tory MPs opting for retirement or Reform UK might have got something right for once.

A more reliable psephologist, Sir John Curtice, estimates the chances of a Conservative victory at no more than 1%. This might be erring on the side of generosity for Rishi Sunak and his mutinous crew; in the absence of dramatic, unexpected and favourable happening between now and polling day, they are sunk and they know it.

There are, of course, no precise political precedents; as Heraclitus could have told the Tories, one cannot step into the same sewer twice.

The Reform factor of 2024 is one significant difference. Before the 1997 election, the Conservatives were sufficiently spooked by the threat from the further right to make significant policy concessions on ‘Europe’. As a result, the Referendum Party, UKIP and the BNP won just 3% of the vote between them, and the Conservatives incurred only superficial damage in 1997.

While Nigel Farage decided not to fire from the right flank in 2019, this time round the really Bad Boys of Brexit will be impervious to desperate Tory concessions like the ‘batshit’ Rwanda export scheme.

Labour has probably been more effective in office than opposition

If Labour owes its commanding position to disarray on the right rather than its own positive virtues, this is nothing new. As I and my co-authors explore in our new book Keeping The Red Flag Flying,  a critical review of its history as the official party of opposition, beginning in 1922, is best summarised as ‘could/should do much better’.

The party’s ‘out of office’ highlights, arguably, are Hugh Gaitskell’s opposition to the Suez fiasco of 1956, and its passionate support for the victims of Thatcherism in the first half of the 1980s.

Yet these prime examples of an opposition party fulfilling its chief purpose – offering the public an alternative perspective when governments are committing moral crimes as well as tactical mistakes – did not save Labour from demoralising electoral defeats, in 1959 and 1983 respectively.

In short, despite its obvious imperfections as a party of government, since 1945, Labour has probably been more effective in office than in opposition. Yet its initial purpose was to challenge the existing order in society as well as politics – on the face of it, a promising platform for invigorating opposition.

Arguably, Labour’s indifferent performance reflects another enduring aspect of its ethos – a kind of ‘revolutionary defeatism’. Too often, it seems, Labour has accepted the Tory claim to a divine right to misrule. When it finds itself in a winning position, the instinct of its leaders has been to play safe rather than trying to exploit the situation to promise, and carry through, meaningful change.

Starmer’s Labour should be less afraid of backlash to its manifesto

In this respect, the 1997 example should be a warning rather than an inspiration. Determined to deny any opportunities to the Conservatives and their ‘dirty tricks’ operatives in the right-wing press, Blair’s conduct in opposition landed him with a mountainous mandate for change which he had no intention of using.

Thus, in 1997, Labour campaigned on a ‘managerial’ prospectus when it would have won easily in any event. There is a danger that the same thing might happen this time round, for much the same reasons.

Yet the fear factor should be sharply reduced this time round. Labour’s press enemies will probably continue to peddle the kind of nonsense which helped to thwart Neil Kinnock, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, but their transparent desperation and plummeting sales figures make it much easier for the opposition to defy them.

Obviously, Labour must avoid an electoral outcome like those of 1964 and the two contests of 1974, resulting in either a hung parliament or a wafer-thin majority. However, in those cases the Conservative ‘brand’ was tarnished rather than toxified as it is now.

For Labour, ironically, a more relevant scenario is that of 1979, when the Callaghan government was doomed to defeat by fresh press-assisted memories of ‘the winter of discontent’.

Before the election, the Prime Minister famously mused about a ‘sea-change’ in politics, which made it impossible for a government to do or say anything which would convince voters to keep it in office. James Callaghan thought that the irresistible tide favoured Margaret Thatcher; in truth, it was swamping his own party, regardless of the opposition leader’s thinly-veiled intentions.

More scope for risk-taking on policy than Labour seems to think

The overall majority (44 seats) which Thatcher’s party secured in 1979 might be far below Labour’s current expectations but proved more than sufficient for a Prime Minister who interpreted it as a licence for radicalism.

Whatever his critics might think – and despite improbable claims that Labour will effect a similar kind of transformation – Sir Keir Starmer is no Thatcher.

Yet if the 1979 example applies (albeit in reverse), party strategists have more scope for risk-taking on the policy front than they seem to imagine. The injection of more radical ideas between now and the election might reduce Labour’s eventual majority, but this might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

At a minimum, the party must bring an immediate end to its sustained run of policy U-turns. The opinion polls suggest that voters have tolerated these awkward detours to date, but an apparently insatiable appetite for appeasement (more than John Smith’s mildly progressive ‘shadow Budget’) helped Kinnock to clinch a fourth successive defeat in 1992.

Almost certainly, Labour can look back on the 2019 contest as a good election to lose; a Corbyn-led government, confronted almost immediately by the Covid pandemic, would have been hounded by a merciless right-wing press rather than the forensic ‘Captain Hindsight’. By contrast, the 2024 rematch falls emphatically into the ‘must win’ category.

Yet the party’s history since 1922 shows that an overwhelming victory without a clear purpose would be much worse than a relatively modest majority which reflects a widespread desire for more than a change of names on ministerial doors – after all, apart from Getting Brexit Botched, constant personnel rotation is the only Tory achievement over 14 years.

Limited room for manoeuvre is no excuse for immobility, whatever the temptation to just sit back and watch the Tory implosion; in troubled economic times, the public is likely to be more receptive than usual to innovative ideas. Although Labour might have provided inadequate opposition since 2010, this should be seen as an opportunity to exceed expectations in office.

Keeping the Red Flag Flying (co-authored with Gavin Hyman and Richard Johnson) is the first published study of the Labour Party’s record in opposition over the whole period since it became the main challenger to the Conservatives in 1922. It was published by Polity on April 25th.

Read more of our coverage of the 2024 local elections here.

If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this or any other topic involving Labour, on record or strictly anonymously, contact us at mail@labourlist.org. 

Sign up to LabourList’s morning email for a briefing everything Labour, every weekday morning. 

If you can help sustain our work too through a monthly donation, become one of our supporters here.

And if you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or content, email mail@labourlist.org.