The clouds in last night’s silver lining

With results from parish, borough and AV voting now declared, the guest writer today continues the autopsy on Labour's performance in local elections. The guest writer today is Atul Hatwal, associate editor of Labour Uncut.

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.

What is happening to Labour?

What is happening to the Labour Party? News today that members of the public registering as individual supporters could be given the vote in leadership elections and at Party conference is an outrage. It makes a mockery of all those people, like me, who have religiously paid our annual subscriptions for membership of a political organization. It makes a travesty of those members of trade unions who have, over the years, consistently supported the Party by paying the political levy.

Peter Hain, the architect to the plan says the plans “… are designed to give Labour the chance to leapfrog the other parties and become a new party for a new political age.” So, the late 1990s we had the “New” Labour project – and that failed, and now we are going to have the “Squeaky clean, very New” Labour Party and guess what folks … it will fail too.

Those in favour of this approach argue it is because union affiliated membership has halved over the years and this will give ordinary working people a ‘say’ in the running of the Party. How short is the human memory? Last Saturday, 500,000 angry people marched through London calling for this Tory government to bring an end to the cuts. These people are our life-blood, our electorate – and many were students, pensioners, trade unionists and socialists – we cannot dismiss them so readily.

Hain goes on to say “If unions could rebuild their membership, they would speak with a stronger voice in society. Despite improved union recognition rights under Labour, they have been unable to do so.”

This is a fundamental bending of the truth. Since the May elections, trade union membership has dramatically increased and continues to grow. Daily, workers are recognizing they need the protection of working together under a trade union banner to protect their jobs, their pay and their rights. With each new member coming through the door, Labour has the chance of a new recruit. The fact the Party has been unable to attract large numbers of supporters says more about how we present Labour to the public than the demise of unionism.

Miliband has argued “The Tory-led government and its current alliance of power with the Liberal democrats does not change my belief that there is a progressive majority in this country.”

I confess I am not so sure. I think at the moment, many people are far more right-leaning than he gives credit for and in his naiveté, assumes Labour is on a roller coaster ride to sudden electoral victory. Well, we thought we would win under Kinnock and we failed. We should have won under Foot and we collapsed totally. The historical evidence tells us the British people are far more conservative. The right have long argued Labour is the natural party of opposition and the Tories, the natural party of power. It should be the job of Labour to reverse this, by educating and informing the electorate about socialist ideals and principles.

Giving a vote to members of MumsNet (however worthwhile the organization) is not the answer, nor is the notion of allowing floating voters who, on a whim, call themselves Labour supporters the opportunity to change policy. I have canvassed on doors before now and heard Labour supporters call for the return of hanging, tough immigration restraint and the castration of paedophiles. Do we truly want this kind of influx into our party?

Miliband must stamp on this report and throw it out. There can be no place for these principles in our great Party and should be shunned at all costs. If we fail, we might as well say goodbye to all vestiges of being a socialist party.

Instead, we should be helping to build trade unions and party branches so they become an effective resistance to this government’s uncaring, right-wing ideology. We should be a political vanguard pushing the cause of socialism on every front.

Above all, we must never lose our dedication to socialism and the trade union movement.

The "no help for the poor" Budget

Despite the fact that yesterday’s budget offered little to ease the burden on thousands being made unemployed , the trade body that represents the majority of apprenticeship training providers in England (the Association of Learning Providers) has warmly welcomed the further expansion in the government’s apprenticeship programme which was announced in the Budget.

ALP said the challenge is to ensure a good proportion of the extra places go to young people as well as to converting members of the existing adult workforce into apprentices. Well whooppee-doo, but where do they hope to find these jobs, when companies are reluctant to take on new staff. Or are they going to market apprenticeships as an easy way for companies to acquire little more than slave labour?

Whatever their reason, ALP has been pressing ministers since this Tory-led government took office for adequate pre-apprenticeship provision to be in place to help school-leavers who aren’t eligible to start full apprenticeships. Reasonable, except they are setting up young people to fail – at the moment, the jobs aren’t there and with OBR growth forecasts looking bleak there is little reason to assume it will change.

So what are they key areas of the budget that might affect those less well off? Well, he has proposed a rise in the personal allowance for income tax (£3.3bn) and a rise in the child element of the child tax credit (£1.2bn). As for the rest – well Osborne and the Tories would have us believe his measures will help the world know “Britain is back in business”. But let’s look at some of these key proposals that will help industry so much.

First there is the decrease in corporation tax – well as companies are struggling to make profits this will hardly have a profound effect. In case he hasn’t read the news, many sectors are struggling to expand and some are actually in decline. Admittedly he did offer some tokens to the construction industry, but it was hardly a mass house rebuilding programme - which is something this country desperately needs if it is to adequately address housing problems and homelessness.

According to the FT last night, the winners were most companies and motorists, whilst the losers were banks, oil companies, tax avoiders and people in Lear Jets. In other words; no help for the 2.5m unemployed, no support for pensioners as they face nearly 5% inflation and watch their savings become meaningless; no support for the sick and disabled as they struggle to face daily living on a fixed income that is generally regarded as being below the poverty level; no concrete measures to combat global warming and encourage companies to adopt greener machinery and hybrid vehicles.

Noticeably, when Osborne down and listened to Ed Miliband deliver his response he looked singularly at the accusations being made against him. Admittedly Clegg tried to come to his aid by calling on Miliband to calm down – why Nick? Didn’t you like hearing the truth that you are mixing with a crowd that are creaming the wealth out of this country and sharing it amongst their capitalist cronies?

The sooner we can dump this government the better.

This morning, several thousand people working in the welfare to work sector will wake up realizing they are close to their last day in work as their redundancy notices finally expire. Thousands more in the same sector are waiting for the axe to fall on them. Osborne’s budget changes will have done nothing to save them and offer them little hope for finding alternative employment. Yet these are people that have given years of their lives to supporting and helping thousands of people out of joblessness. They never asked for huge salaries – indeed, many earned quite low incomes and nor did they want acclaim and fame. All they wanted was a little job security – but the Tories and the bosses took that away from them.

Some in this sector are in their late fifties and will probably never work again. They had never intended to retire and until recently had hoped for a few more years work to build up a small amount of savings to help them in their later years. They won’t have that now – and the finger of blame lies firmly on the likes of Osborne, Duncan Smith and Cameron.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people will march against this government to show them we can take their type of politics no longer. We will show the Tories you can’t mess with the working class and get away with it. Some of my readers may not see themselves as political, others are perhaps less left-wing than myself. But I am convinced all of you care about the people in this country.

Whatever you are doing on Saturday, if it can be delayed them join with us – come to London and let your voice be heard. Let Citizen Dave, the people’s toff know we will not sit idly by and watch thousands of good people in the welfare to work sector get pushed aside for the sake of a Tory dream.

If you don’t tomorrow the bosses may well be calling you in and giving you a redundancy notice!

The way forward for Labour

The candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party continue to vie for nominations and one can only hope John McDonnell manages to secure the 33 necessary votes to place him on the ballot paper. Unfortunately, there is a real danger Diane Abbott’s entry into the race might split the left vote and leave them both sidelined.

The tragic part of this is both candidates are supremely loyal socialists who, if elected, would radicalise the Labour Party in a way not seen since the days of Keir Hardie, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Stafford Cripps or Aneurin Bevan. In fact, there is a strong argument that either Diane or John would take the party on a left-wing path that Labour has never truly accepted. After all, when it comes to the election of a leader, the party has a history full of missed opportunities – take for example Hugh Gaitskell against Harold Wilson (who was then a left-winger), Jim Callaghan against Tony Benn, or even Neil Kinnock against Eric Heffer. Even Michael Foot, with all his allegiances to CND and the Tribune Group proved to be a disappointment to many on the left.

Of course, the reality is that, once again, the party will probably adopt a safer route and select an ‘Ed’ or a ‘David’, rather than take the risk of being true to its conscience. Consequently, as committed as he may be, John McDonnell is unlikely to gain sufficient votes to get through to a second round, much less gain the reins of leadership. But this shouldn’t be enough to stop people voting and fighting for John or joining his campaign. A solid left vote for an LRC endorsed candidate would send a resounding message to any new leader that there is an urgent need to push aside the ideas of the New Labour project.

Many of the problems Labour now face stem from a false belief that Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell could be the salvation to all the party’s ills. This right-wing triumvirate convinced members that abolishing Clause IV, changing the rules surrounding conference procedure and restructuring the party would bring electoral success. It was a mythology that kept them at the heart of government for many years, whilst dedicated party members resigned in droves.

The Labour party won the 1997 election for a number of reasons – in part because the electorate were sick and tired of the Tories, in part because the party offered some very real radical programmes, but also, Tony Blair presented as a charismatic, affable politician in whom the electorate could believe; making him a key vote winner. Unfortunately, by 2001 voters were starting to see through the ‘spin’ and Labour started to lose votes. This spiral was gaining momentum by 2005, but because Labour had established a substantial majority in 1997, it allowed the party some leeway. By then the Labour majority in the house of Commons had reduced from 179 to 66. and when Gordon Brown took over as leader in 2007 it was, in many respects, ‘all change’.

By 2007, the UK had lived through 10 years of Blairism, along with the Iraq war and conflict in Afghanistan. The electorate were starting to see through the media hype of the Third Way, Communitarianism and the New Labour project, and like a plumber trying to block the leaks with his finger, Brown struggled to stay in power. All the polls were sending a clear message that voters were unhappy with the Labour government and they wanted change.

At the same time, Clegg and Cameron were being put onto centre stage as clean faced, bushy tailed young men with new ideas that could cure the ills of the country. Of course, everyone knew we had been through a recession and that we would all have to draw our belts in, but unfortunately, in the 2010 election, the party was unable to expose the underlying right-wing nature of modern Toryism and Liberalism.

So now we have to fight back the right to be considered reputable and worthy of the right to govern this country. We have to show the country and the people in it we can still bring equality and fairness to everyone. And we have to remind electors that once Labour brought to this country an exciting programme of nationalisation, alongside a planned economy and a welfare state where no-one was allowed to fall by the wayside. Labour needs to show that it is a party that brought a national health service where anyone could have free medical care at the point of need, regardless of their background, their upbringing, or their wealth.

If Labour can do that, Conservatives, Liberals and all their wealthy hangers-on will quake with fear and a roller coaster of left-wing ideas will engulf this country, destroying the Con-Dems and pushing them back into the pit of iniquity from which they came.

Tacitus