As Ed Miliband surveys the results after his first major test as leader he will have mixed emotions. Great in England, good in Wales, bad in Scotland and rapidly forgotten on AV.
A curate’s egg, whatever one of those might be.
While the dynamics of devolved government mean the results in Scotland and Wales are driven by regional factors, and AV is done for a generation at least, it’s the English local elections where the tea leaves for the next general election can be best read.
England is where Labour needs to win the key seats, and its England where Labour has proportionately lost most voters since 1997. Ostensibly, the results give a sound basis for hope.
Not quite street party territory, but at least a couple of glasses of sherry.
On this happy path, the numbers of new Labour councillors elected take Labour back to respectable mid-2000s levels of representation in local government. Gains in a single election on this scale have not been seen since the mid-1990s.
This is not to be lightly dismissed. Revival in local government is an essential pre-requisite for national success.
Then there’s the overall vote share. While not spectacular, it was much improved over the election last year and progress at this rate would lead to a solid Labour majority at the next general election.
But still, there’s doubt.
Can a national result be extrapolated from local elections? Is this really a foundation for victory built by winning back Labour sceptics? Or a house of cards made from passing protest votes?
A few months ago in this column, I highlighted Labour’s poll challenge by looking at three specific questions asked intermittently by YouGov in their daily and weekly polls, and tracked their responses over the previous three months. These questions examined voters’ attitudes to the defining issues for the next general election.
The updated results to Labour’s poll challenge hold the key to interpreting last nights mixed election results.
The three YouGov questions look below topline voting intentions to reveal how voters feel the government is hitting them in the wallet, their view of how the government is cutting the deficit and who they prefer as a leader – David Cameron or Ed Miliband.
The public’s answers over this year have involved responses from tens of thousands of people and give a clear view of the scale of the problem.
To misquote William Cobbett, I defy you to agitate a man on a full wallet. The higher the wallet line, the better things are for the government. Because it focuses on peoples’ perceptions of their own financial future it gives quite a different response to doom and gloom about the general economic state of the country.The wallet line has remained largely constant this year. In January, 74% of people didn’t view the coming year as posing a major financial drama. In April this had risen a little to 75%.
In key Labour battlegrounds such as London and the Midlands, there are the early rumblings of actual optimism. The latest figures show that well over 40% think the worst is over and that the situation will either get better next year or at least stay the same.
That’s three-quarters of Britain thinking that things aren’t actually so bad and almost half of the public in key English regions, rich with key seats, thinking things can only get better.
This doesn’t suggest an electoral situation ripe for people to reverse their vote from the general election last year.
But, while worry about personal finances is often a driver of change, it is not sufficient alone. Winning the economic argument is what is needed, and can make the difference on its own.
This is what the middle band on the graph tests. The deficit is the defining economic issue of the day and the public’s attitude to how the government goes about cutting it will be a key determinant in how people vote at the general election.
The results here for Labour are worst of all.
On this central economic argument, Labour has not only failed to make ground, it has fallen further behind. At the start of the year, the majority who felt the way the government was cutting the deficit was necessary compared to unnecessary was 17%. In April, this had grown to 28%.
Well over 50% of the public consistently believe that the government approach to cutting the deficit is necessary.
And voters remain in no doubt as to who to blame for these cuts.
In January, 41% of voters blamed the last Labour government for the cuts, compared to 25% blaming the current government and 24% blaming both. In April, it was virtually the same. 41% blamed the last Labour government, 25% the current government and 23% both.
The public’s basic position is that Labour is responsible for the deficit and the government’s cuts are necessary. If anything, people are becoming more, not less, convinced of it over time.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of economic policy, purely in political terms this is a huge problem. From the mid-1980s through to 1992, Labour made an economically cogent but politically suicidal case for higher taxation.
The deficit is this decade’s tax.
Ed Balls is a big beast who knows how to take the fight to the Tories. He’s added vigour and aggression to Labour’s attack on the economy. But when he became shadow chancellor, he set himself the measure of putting Labour “on the front foot” on the economy.
Three months into his tenure, beyond the rough and tumble of day to day debate on the economy where Labour’s performance has improved significantly, the party is now more distant than ever from being trusted on this defining economic question.
Perceptions of Labour as a realistic government in waiting are further undercut by the leader gap.
At the start of January, Cameron’s lead over Miliband as peoples’ preference for PM was 12%. By the end of April, this had been pegged back slightly to 10%.
While this measure is going in the right direction, the level of reduction in Cameron’s lead begs the question – why so little?
Miliband’s press operation has been much sharper since the appointment of Tom Baldwin and Bob Roberts at the start of the year, he has been getting the better of Cameron at prime minister’s questions on an increasingly regular basis and the government has gifted Labour a conveyor belt of gaffes and U-turns.
Forests, defence, the NHS, schools, universities – virtually no corner of public policy has been left without a government crisis entirely of its own making.
If, after all that, Cameron still has a double digit lead among voters as the preferred PM, its hard to think what will shift the numbers decisively.
Looking at the three elements of the graph in the round, the overall picture is not a pleasant one for Labour.
It describes an electorate for whom the personal financial salience of the cuts is limited. Where Labour is seen as the cause of the problem and opponents of the solution. And where leadership is something only Cameron can provide.
In this context, the happy path that starts with these English election results ultimately leads back to the general election of 1992, or maybe even 1987.
The reality is that yesterday’s result in England was a blind trail of protest votes. People aren’t enamoured of this government, and showed it. But the local elections weren’t a choice between Labour and Conservative; they were a chance to vent at the government.
Based on the underlying factors picked-up by the wallet line, the argument gap and the leader gap, any pressure on Labour in a real election and the poll lead will collapse. Unless Labour can shift these key drivers, future mid-term victories or upturns in the headline polls will just be more false hope.
The sad truth is, one year on from the start of the Tory-led coalition, Labour’s journey has taken it back to square one.
No comments:
Post a Comment