Can Labour Win?: The Hard Road to Power

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Can Labour Win?The Hard Road to PowerBy Patrick Diamond, Giles Radice, Penny BochumRowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.Copyright © 2015 Policy NetworkAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78348-544-4ContentsAbout the Authors, Acknowledgements, Executive Summary, Introduction: Why Did Labour Lose?, The Electoral Battleground: Polling Analysis and the Views of Wavering Voters, Why Labour Lost: Party Views, What Labour Must Do, Conclusion: Labour's Hard Road to Power, CHAPTER 1THE ELECTORAL BATTLEGROUNDPolling Analysis and the Views of Wavering VotersThis chapter presents the quantitative polling research carried out by Ipsos Mori alongside the key findings of our qualitative survey carried out among voters across England, Wales and Scotland. The poll was conducted 10 days before the general election; it provides a snapshot of the electorate's attitudes and views as they weighed up which way to vote in the period up to 7 May. The chapter focuses on voters' perceptions of Labour and examines why so many were not prepared to support the party at the 2015 election.The results underline the scale of the political challenge now facing Labour in the wake of its election defeat. In 2010, our research for Southern Discomfort Again found deep disillusionment after 13 years of Labour government and the financial crisis. Since then, the party appears to have gone backwards: its strategic position is, in key respects, worse than it was five years ago. We found evidence of important differences of social class and geography in voters' attitudes, which partly explains Labour's variable regional performance and its inability to connect with large swathes of England. These voters recognise that Labour has a social conscience and wants to make Britain fairer, but they have little confidence in the party's economic management credentials seven years on from the financial crash. They will not take much notice of Labour's social vision until they can be sure the party will not plunge Britain back into economic chaos.Britain today is an economically anxious country where faith in politics has fallen to an all-time low. Middle-income, working- and middle-class Britain feels increasingly betrayed, unable to have confidence in any of the established political parties. These voters are aspirant and as anxious to get on in life as ever, but they are cautious about their prospects in the face of rising job insecurity, declining real wages, plummeting living standards and, as a consequence, a major increase in household debt. They want a better future for their children and grandchildren, but worry that life is set to get even tougher and that the advantages of a middle-class lifestyle – a steady, well-paid job, owning your own home, regular foreign holidays, a decent education – will be even harder to attain for the next generation. Middle-income Britain wants hope in the face of pessimism and uncertainty.LABOUR HAS GONE BACKWARDS SINCE 2010Labour today is seen as less of a national party than it was in 2010:• Only one-third of voters (34 per cent) now say that Labour is close to people in the south of England, compared to 55 per cent in 2011 (see Table 2.1). Unsurprisingly, 71 per cent say the Conservatives are close to people in the south.• This is mirrored by a fall in the proportion of voters who say that Labour is close to the middle class, down from 55 per cent in 2010 to 40 per cent today. This compares to 68 per cent for the Conservatives.• In 2010, Labour and the Conservatives were seen as relatively equal in terms of being close to those who own their own home (55 and 60 per cent respectively). By 2015, the proportion of voters who saw Labour as close to home-owners fell to 39 per cent, while it remained at a similar level (62 per cent) for the Conservatives.• Labour's pursuit of the '35 per cent strategy' targeting 'core' Labour voters and disaffected left-leaning Liberal Democrats a