Adam Gray asks why Labour fails to win in southern constituencies that would vote Labour if they were located in the North
Accept for one instant the premise that Labour under Gordon Brown didn’t understand the South (and it’s a struggle not to accept). Accept for another that possibly, just possibly, Labour throughout its entire term of office did not. Those two contentions pale into inconsequence compared to the third: that the south has never, ever, truly “got” Labour.
Prior to the 1997 general election, a much younger version of myself sought selection for the Hertfordshire seat of Broxbourne. Broxbourne has a deserved reputation as one of the safest Conservatives seats in the country; regularly with majorities above 20,000. What is Broxbourne? It is some exclusive leafy lanes where some of the capital’s football players make their homes.. But it is also places like Cheshunt and Waltham Abbey running up the eastern spine of the seat – the A10 corridor: commuter suburbs.
Cheshunt is where I spent most of my time when I was seeking the parliamentary nomination there. It’s a typical southern town: not huge, not especially glamorous, plenty of open space not too far from anyone’s doorstep, house prices affordable by London standards; not especially affluent but distinctly averse to Labour.
In London, much of the North West, Yorkshire and North East, the sort of political profile housing like that of Cheshunt would provide would be a decent Labour area. In Cheshunt, even when voters were really alienated by the Conservatives and turned to Labour to kick the Tories they still did not believe the party shared their values. Never did. Didn’t then. Don’t now. And that’s why it was so easy for the Conservatives to reclaim all the ground they lost in places like Cheshunt – and right across the south in the 1990s.
Cheshunt is southern England. The story of the south of England is commuter towns like Cheshunt. Reigate. Bracknell. Staines. Swanley. Epsom. Bushey. Leighton Buzzard. Basingstoke. Areas that in London are Labour. Areas that may occasionally elect the odd Labour councillor. Areas that are all part of safe Conservative parliamentary constituencies.
Why isn’t Labour the instinctive choice of voters in seats like those I’ve mentioned? Voters who aren’t overly wealthy, necessarily highly educated, working in vastly well-remunerated jobs; who have the same fears about schools transport and leaving their kids with a better legacy than they inherited from their parents?
Before Labour works out how it can appeal to these voters the party should work out why it has always underperformed in the south. If Labour could win plenty of votes in affluent, middle-class, picturesque Saddleworth in the recent by-election why can it not do the same in similarly or less affluent parts of the South? I
t’s not just a policy issue: it’s a perception problem. Labour just isn’t “for” the South, just as in large swathes of the north the Tories long ago relinquished any claim to be “of” those communities. And for Labour, the problem is about being seen to side with those who aspire to do better. Labour does not - and because it does not, it does not win southern votes who want a hand up, not a handout.
Labour has fallen back horrifically in many areas that should be ours – look no further than Basingstoke: a seat that would have gone Labour in 1997 on its current boundaries (and almost did on its old ones): now with a Tory majority of 15,000. One example of many, but if Basingstoke was in the Pennines, it would probably be Labour right now.
Sure, Labour doesn’t need to win Basingstoke or plenty of other southern seats like it to form a government, but its job at regaining and then retaining power would be one heck of a lot easier if it was at least competitive here – if only because the Tories would be obliged to spend much more to hold seats they currently simply bank.
Adam Gray is a former Labour councillor and party organiser
I was born and brought up in the south, in a seat very similar (High Wycombe)
ReplyDeleteI now live in the north.
I do think that the values of many of these average commuter suburbs are economically right of centre. Labour will never appeal to them because they just don't warm to our core beliefs
Mike, Thanks for the comment. The case I'm making is that what you call Labour's "core beliefs" either should appeal in the south, or the party is communicating those beliefs wrongly.
ReplyDeleteAre people any more worried about job security in the north than in the north than south? Do good schools, doctors, hospitals and sports facilities matter in the north more than they do in the south? Do people want more for their families if they live in Liverpool than if they live in Reading?
The answer to all those questions is no, isn't it?
So why do far more "northerners" of all sorts of backgrounds believe Labour best represents those values, but in the south similar people believe them to be Conservative values?
You say it's because they're economically right of centre. I disagree, though I think Labour needs to really fess up to itself just how much damage the Brown premiership and it's financial legacy did to the party right across the country.
I think it's much more because of all the other baggage that Labour carries with it. It's seen as the party that bungs money to its friends in the north rather than tackling deprivation in the south. It's seen as the party of trade unions when trade unions aren't simply not seen as relevant to many in the south - the hard left leadership of those unions actively attacks those simply trying to get on with their everyday lives. It's seen as the party of benefits claimants. It's seen as the party of ethnic minorities, less so white Britain. It's seen as the party that takes no account of rewarding effort and hard work in it's absurd strive for a mythical "equality". It's seen as unpatriotic and weak on defence - just read some of the outrageous comments from Labour people on other blogs yesterday about the selection of a former soldier as our candidate in Barnsley to see why.
And yes, issues like high taxes, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship, interfering less and regulating more effectively, not just more, all hurt Labour in the south too.
But they're all things Labour could do something about. Many of us simply aren't convinced the party, especially with this leader, is the slightest bit interested in so doing.
This is a long one, so I’ve broken it up into two comments:
ReplyDeleteAn interesting and well written article, but I think mistaken on several counts.
Firstly, there's the myopia about bits of the south outside the commuter belt. As somebody brought up around 5 miles outside it (the countryside to the east of Colchester), this section really gets my goat:
"Cheshunt is southern England. The story of the south of England is commuter towns like Cheshunt. Reigate. Bracknell. Staines. Swanley. Epsom. Bushey. Leighton Buzzard. Basingstoke."
Because it's not true. That's part of southern England, but so are large provincial towns and cities like Swindon or Plymouth. So are small semi-industrialised coastal towns like Lowestoft or Great Yarmouth. So are more working class London overspill areas like Harlow or Medway. Or liberal Islington enclaves like Cambridge or Stroud.
Focusing on the seats that are least obviously receptive to Labour's message and ignoring these other groups is madness. I've heard people say we need to regain Stevenage or Milton Keynes half a hundred times since May. I don't think I've heard the same said about Waveney once. Except by Bob Blizzard, who was after all the local MP up until the election.
My second objection is that the comparison to the north is both misleading and a bit unfair. We aren't strong in outer suburbs in the north because of a strong attachment to Labour. We're strong because the Tories went to war with an entire region. These areas naturally fit the Tory demographic and most of them would have been safely Tory at just about every election 1950-1992.
Aside from which, it's worth noting that we saw big swings against us in outlying areas of Leeds and Manchester, for example, and we've never been able to get seats like Altrincham, which isn't too demographically dissimilar to Broxbourne.
Thirdly, it's madness to deny that most of these voters aren't economically right of centre. You can win them over with populist arguments and they aren't going to be in favour of all cuts, but these are voters who are fundamentally hostile to tax cuts or welfare spending. That is right wing.
Fourthly, you can't just put it down to Brown. It's not like we were too popular in these areas beforehand. We've only won in one ward in Broxbourne since 2002. In 2004 the Tories got over 65% of the vote in local elections. Blair didn't work either.
Fifthly, this paragraph might reflect the views of many in the south, but it's still wrong in just about every sentence:
ReplyDelete"I think it's much more because of all the other baggage that Labour carries with it. It's seen as the party that bungs money to its friends in the north rather than tackling deprivation in the south. It's seen as the party of trade unions when trade unions aren't simply not seen as relevant to many in the south - the hard left leadership of those unions actively attacks those simply trying to get on with their everyday lives. It's seen as the party of benefits claimants. It's seen as the party of ethnic minorities, less so white Britain. It's seen as the party that takes no account of rewarding effort and hard work in it's absurd strive for a mythical "equality". It's seen as unpatriotic and weak on defence - just read some of the outrageous comments from Labour people on other blogs yesterday about the selection of a former soldier as our candidate in Barnsley to see why."
We did tackle deprivation in the south, and any activist can show you half a dozen projects we launched, many of which are now being cancelled. It didn't make much of a difference, because most of the voters you're talking about aren't interested in southern deprivation, they're interested in their pocket-books. The notion that all unions are hard left and attack everyday working people is risible, although I do agree that we may have an image problem here - but it's solved by unionising the south, not by demonising unions and hence making trouble in our own backyards. We can't do anything about people complaining about ethnic minorities or benefits claimants, because we have a free press and the Daily Mail won't stop trumpetting this message even if we put bayonetting the unemployed in as a manifesto pledge. I'll leave aside "equality", because voters who think like that aren't ours, won't be ours and aren't worth worrying about. And I have never yet met a southern voter who has said we're weak on defence. Quite the reverse - I've heard umpteen complaints about Iraq.
The sixth complaint is that you don't mention that in much of the south the lost votes have gone to the Lib Dems. Not in commuter suburbs as much, but it's happened to at least some degree more or less everywhere. Is this because we're too leftwing? I don't think so. If you step right to win over the voters you want to target, you'll lose just as many off the other end. To win in the south we need a broad coalition of what there is of our working class base, families in the middle of the income strata and left-leaning professionals. Prioritising one of those at the expense of the other two is bound to fail.
I want to win in the south. I think we need more than ten seats here, and I've love it if we could get rid of the smug son of a bitch my parents still have as their MP. But we won't win throughout the south, large parts are beyond are reach and we need to accept that and target the bits that are plausibly winnable.
If our leader isn't interested in winning seats like Broxbourne, I back him entirely. In areas like that, we need to concentrate on holding a couple of district council seats through active campaigning, because it's the best we can do.
Adam - I do think that there is a sense of individualism which doesn't work in the north, but does in the south. Blair appealed because he instinctively thought like that.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, though, and say that I don't want to go in that direction.
I also wonder whether there's a question of both habit and local proximity. People in the south don't vote Labour because they haven't done for ages and don't know anyone else who does either. In much of the north its the same for the Tories. Sefton Central would be a rock-solid Tory seat if it was in the south