How can Labour win the next general election will be a
question exercising the minds of Labour’s leadership contenders and party
strategists alike.
The Tories, with their reactionary policy prospectus, have
just won an overall majority with less than 37 per cent of the popular
vote. That doesn’t of course mean that
63 per cent of the electorate necessarily want a progressive alternative. I do however believe there is a large enough
electoral cohort to give Labour the edge in 2020 if we can inspire enough
people who have just voted Green, Lib Dem or SNP.
I know that some people hark back to the New Labour
project. They suggest we must accept
privatisation, market economics and austerity if we are to stand any chance of
beating the Conservatives next time, but I think that would be a mistake. We should remember the words of Harold Wilson
who told the 1962 Labour Party conference that “this party is a moral crusade
or it is nothing.”
Labour’s purpose is to stand for something better, to offer
hope and provide a vision of a better world.
Our problem in the last election was that we didn’t persuade enough
people that we still represented the ‘moral crusade’ to which Harold Wilson
referred over half a century ago.
Even though our manifesto offered a genuinely progressive
policy prospectus, our timidity in decisively breaking with austerity and
failing to speak loudly enough about the importance of public services cost us
dearly.
I was one of the casualties of Labour’s diffidence, losing
Derby North by just 41 votes. The
Conservative’ negative and vituperative national campaign strategy undoubtedly
scared enough floating voters away from voting for me. But I would still have comfortably won my
seat for Labour were it not for the votes that were lost to the Green
Party.
I have been campaigning on social justice and green issues
since the mid 1970s, a vegan since 1976 and a League Against Cruel Sports
trustee since 1979. I won Derby North
with a majority of 613 in 2010 and had hoped the Green Party might welcome my
re-election as a kindred spirit. After
all, they weren’t standing in every constituency and I therefore thought they
wouldn’t put a candidate up against me.
But that proved to be a naïve pipe dream as the Greens did field
a candidate at the last minute who secured 1618 votes. I spoke to dozens of voters during the short
campaign who said they would support me if the Greens weren’t standing. Others told me it was “safe” to vote Green in
Derby North as they thought I was going to win by a “landslide”.
My experience illustrates why it is imperative for Labour to
win back those voters who dallied with the Green Party on 7 May before their
support becomes a long-term relationship.
To achieve this we must demonstrate that Labour is committed to a moral
crusade and remains the best vehicle to deliver social justice and progressive
social change.
If those of us who believe in a fairer and more
compassionate society continue competing for votes in marginal seats it will only
help the Tories to win again in 2020. People
may not like the first past the post electoral system, but it’s the one we’re
stuck with. We therefore need to work
within its constraints to deliver a better society. That means collaborating with fellow
progressives, including those in other parties, and convincing people to make smarter
voting choices in order to defeat the forces of conservatism.
Failure to rise to this historic challenge will see the
Tories laughing all the way to the despatch box, and leave Britain’s most vulnerable
citizens at the mercy of the most pernicious, ideologically driven Tory
government in living memory.
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