May has been the cruellest month for Gordon Brown. Thursday's defeat in the Crewe and Nantwich by election followed similar embarrassments in the local and London elections three weeks ago. After less than a year, Brown's premiership is looking doomed.
Comparisons are being made with John Major, who led the Conservatives to their worst defeat since the 19th century in 1997. For much of his last five years in power, Major looked out of his depth, without the authority to pull his party back from the brink. The 1997 general election was, if anything, worse than many pundits and psephologists predicted. So Labour shouldn't bank on bouncing back over the next couple of years.
I wrote yesterday that many are arguing that the rise of social media means that political parties have to accept that authenticity is the key to successful communication, rather than spin. Labour's disastrous attempt to dismiss the Tory candidate as a 'toff' suggests that the party haven't kicked the spinning habit. Take this comment from Labour vice chairman Stephen Ladyman:
"He's a rich man and he won't understand the problems that people face day-to-day," Labour vice-chairman Stephen Ladyman said.
This was crass and patronising - and hypocritical from a government that increased the tax burden on the poorest by axing the 10p tax rate. Voters are capable of deciding if a candidate is out of touch.
Where did it all go wrong for Labour? How did the high hopes of 1997 turn to ashes? My view is that Labour was handicapped by its failure to set out a compelling vision for the country. The death of ideology may be welcome - most of us never embraced the dogma of left or right - but its replacement by managerialism was never going to capture hearts and minds. Throwing money at public services, as Labour did after 2000, was hardly a philosophy, especially when so many doubted how effectively the money had been spent.
Labour's other failing was in communications. As I wrote after meeting him in 2006, Alistair Campbell made the critical mistake of not realising that a different approach was needed in government. Campbell's aggressive style actually prevented Labour from telling its story. The government's admirable work in helping the poor went untold, which compounded the impact of the terrible mistake over the 10p tax rate. Labour spent a decade bad mouthing the state of public services - small wonder few thought those services may have improved.
If, as seems likely, the Conservatives win a landslide in 2010, a new pattern will have been established in British politics. For the second time in a row, power will have changed hands by a landslide: almost unheard of before Blair's triumph in 1997. (Labour's huge victory in 1945 was hardly typical, coming at the end of the second world war, ten years after the previous election. And Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 with a majority of just 44.) The 1997 and (likely) 2010 big wins suggest something else: that parties are finding it hard to renew themselves in government, and instead become remote and out of touch. But are voters becoming more fickle, switching allegiance as they grow bored with a party? There must be some truth in this, especially as the three main UK-wide parties have lost their distinctiveness.
The other lesson is the danger of alienating grass root supporters. The Thatcher-Major governments were the arch centralisers, ultimately destroying the Conservatives' base in local government - and demoralising the supporters they needed in the 1997 general election. Labour failed to learn from the Tory mistake, leaving the party vulnerable to a similar wipe-out in local government. The local election results in England and Wales earlier this month suggested that history is repeating itself. This does not bode well for Labour in the next general election.
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