The time has come to ‘shut up and put up’

Richard Cressey

08/12/09

Having read this article today, I am once again filled with dislike, albeit personal, biased and subjective dislike, for Hazel Blears. Ms. Blears comments are selfish and damaging to a party she claims to love. This is the type of finger-pointing and infighting that costs parties elections and backbench MPs must realise that what is good and right in private is not always good and right in public. Of course, if Ms. Blears feels her public image has been unfairly damaged by the Prime Minister, then nothing said in private can remedy that fact. However, an experienced politician such as Ms. Blears must realise the delicate position her party is in and be aware of the history concerning party disunity and its link with electoral failure. The Conservative Party has spent twelve years out of office, in part due to weakness of its policies, but also because of the divided nature of its MPs, candidates and members. The public does not like political division and is quick to punish any party deemed to lack sufficient political harmony.

Gordon Brown spent all summer deflecting and quashing informal leadership challenges and attacks on his position by a variety of members from James Purnell to Charles Clarke. Having come through this period of discontent whilst securing the backing of the majority of MPs and the silence of the minority, the Prime Minister has finally been able to focus his attention on winning the next election. Ms. Blears comments today have once again detracted attention away from the direction of the party as a whole and back on to individual criticisms of a leader who has done so well over the last year to secure his position. For now, I feel it is time for backbenchers to ‘shut up and put up’, at least for the next six months. After the election is May/June next year members can voice as much discontent as they feel necessary with Mr. Brown’s actions, however to do so before only makes a Conservative victory more likely; a proposition I am certain members like Ms. Blears find as worrying as I do.

(It’s not all) Doom and Gloom in the Heartlands

Richard Cressey (1/12/09)

Having been out and about campaigning for Labour Party candidates in both Sheffield and Manchester this week, I got a sense of core Labour voters’ attitudes to both the party and the current state of politics.

Sheffield and Manchester are traditional, industrial, Labour voting cities which, in recent years, have seen city-centre regeneration and massive amounts of money put into urban development projects. However, last year Sheffield found itself with a Liberal Democratic lead council and Manchester, although still heavily Labour controlled, saw its first Conservative councillor elected in 2008. The disaffection with the Labour Party seen nationwide is being replicated in its traditional heartlands; indeed in the 2009 European elections Labour was beaten into second place by the Conservatives for the first time in history.

What I found this week whilst talking to voters was that, in these traditional heartlands, people are not disaffected with the direction of the country as a whole; on the contrary, people seemed to have a generally positive view of the job Gordon Brown was doing in parliament. However, locally people see problems with their communities which are failing to be addressed by local government and this is giving them a negative impression of authority as a whole. Many people don’t know the difference in roles between national and local government; indeed even I, as a supposedly politically educated individual, do not know all the dividing lines. This needs to be made clearer to voters in the General Election campaign.

What is fantastic news for the Labour party though is that, although in many areas, people feel failed by their local authorities; all admitted a country lead by David Cameron et. al. would be too much to stomach. In the next few months Labour needs to remind the country, not only of its record, but also of the vision of the alternative party in British politics. Without trying to sound too left-wing and a sympathiser with ‘old’ Labour; the party needs to reach out to its roots and ensure the ‘core’ vote is prepared to stand up and be counted rather than let the Conservative Party undo twelve years of good work. The general anger with politics, and specifically Westminster, is spread across all the main parties and is a real danger to Labour’s chances at the next election. The country faces a choice, progressive Labour or regressive Conservative and if people fail to vote, vote Liberal Democrat or vote for another party, then the latter is the direction of this country.

Labour’s Uphill Struggle

Richard Cressey (17/11/09)

Labour’s victory in Glasgow North-East last week was a symbolic, if expected, triumph in a constituency among the most deprived in the country. For all the talk of a ‘negative’ campaign, a 7,000 majority is clearly a ringing endorsement of Labour’s record. However, elections are not won on past achievements, which is why the Labour Party must continue to demonstrate a progressive future for the country. The Conservative Party has been allowed to ghost through crises of the economy, the democratic system and public sector strikes without being pushed to provide a realistic alternative to Labour policies.

Instead, the Conservative front bench has itself conducted a negative campaign of attacking Labour policies for dealing with these crises without having their alternative vision properly critiqued. This has certainly been the case in relation to the media coverage afforded to the contrasting policies of Labour and Conservative. Labour is winning the policy war, as demonstrated by its method of dealing with the economic crisis, but it is losing the publicity war by not getting the message of policy domination across effectively.

Labour faces an uphill battle with the right-wing dominated press, which it is always bound to lose. The Guardian is increasingly being seen as a left-wing outpost out of touch with the majority of the electorate and finds itself preaching to the converted much of the time. The Telegraph is basking in the glory of Conservative ascendency and the populist ‘swing papers’ have seen the time to align against Labour.

If the Conservative Party continues to sit on its laurels and Labour takes the fight to the country as the real progressive force in the country the Great Escape is possible and a nationwide repeat of Glasgow North East will be the result. Remember 1992, and wait for Cameron’s “Kinnock on the beach moment”; the country refuses to like Cameron, Osbourne & co. but they still want to love Labour again, they just need to be given the opportunity.

Gordon Brown: Home and Away

Richard Cressey (22/10/09)

All the talk of postal strikes, continuing recession and the BBC’s decision to give Nick Griffin a spot on Question Time, have overshadowed the upcoming Copenhagen Conference on climate change. If, as many people say, the UK has adopted a presidential style of leadership over recent years; then the day to day running of domestic issues ought to be left to departmental ministers, and the Prime Minister himself become an international figure who performs primarily outside of the domestic realm. If Gordon Brown can play up to this and push his head out above the Labour Party’s domestic problems, he can really show his visionary quality on the world stage once again.

During Gordon Brown’s time in Number 10, the electorate have never really bought him as a political entity. This can be attributed to a variety of factors none of which I have the time or space to discuss here. However, the Prime Minister’s problems have mostly been domestic both in terms of policy, performance and image. By contrast, on the international stage, he is admired for his vision, economic prowess and straight talking manner. This international image may be the Prime Minister’s window for a comeback, and the big event on the international political calendar in the coming months is Copenhagen.

If Mr. Brown can show himself to be a leader on economically sustainable climate change and draw in traditionally resistant polluters like China, India and the USA to a strong deal, it will add weight to the good international image he already fosters. This may be one way he can force himself ahead of David Cameron, who can be portrayed as an international lightweight who follows opinion polls domestically. Luckily for the Labour Party, the electorate have yet to be convinced by Cameron et. al. either. The hope for Labour is that international prestige translates slowly, but surely into domestic recognition of the Prime Minister’s, thus far, unrecognised political, economic and interpersonal skill.

Hot on the Sun: Labour and that headline.

Richard Cressey  16/10/09

The Sun is the UK’s most popular (by circulation) daily newspaper, reaching over three million people each day. Whatever people think of it as a journalistic institution, it is undoubtedly part of the national makeup and it has been suggested that it can even decide the fate of elections.  What does this mean for the general election? and Labour inparticular?

Analysts of all relevant subjects have pointed out the correlation between, the support of The Sun newspaper and the result of the subsequent General election. Throughout the previous twelve years of Labour rule and the three elections this has included, 1997, 2001 and 2005 The Sun has supported the Labour Party explicitly and the result has always been a Labour victory. The Sun, however, is not a left-wing traditional supporter of the Labour Party like, say, the Guardian and Observer; its ideological background is populism.

The notion of populism is crucial for understanding the Sun’s position currently. Taking the initial proposition that The Sun chooses its side and the election result follows, leads us to the conclusion that The Sun is part of the input of the process rather than an intermediary factor. Instead I propose that the citizenry is the input and The Sun merely reproduces what it thinks the population wants to hear. This is the essence of populism, following the mood of the public and reactively forming your own position; it in no way implies any sort of proactive opinion formation. I believe the current Sun editorial board have followed David Cameron’s rise and rise alongside Labour’s continual slump and taken the decision to withdraw support for a party they believe is going to lose the next election.

One instance that may pose some problems for my theory is when, in 1992, Neil Kinnock seemed, according to most polls, destined for Downing Street and yet failed to win the election. Historically, this has been attributed, by some commentators, to The Sun’s headline on polling day; “If Kinnock Wins Today Will The Last Person To Leave Britain Please Turn Out The Lights”. Indeed, the paper itself declared the next day “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”. However this can be explained by The Sun’s early decision to back the incumbent Conservative government against what it saw as a weak opposition, and this decision perhaps showed some foresight about the truth of public feeling rather than misleading opinion polls.

David Miliband said, “The earth does revolve around the sun, but not the one printed in Wapping”. Labour must strive in the coming months to prove that they have the ability to second guess The Sun, and once and for all make a mockery of this phoney image the paper has created for itself of political opinion creators.

Party Conference: Operation Fightback

Richard Cressey

Last week’s Labour Party Conference has been hailed as the start of “Operation Fightback”, but the fightback will only work if it has the full backing of MP’s and activists alike. Labour needs to rekindle it’s core, working class, vote without further alienating the middle classes which have already started to slip back towards the Conservatives.

The ‘fightback’ kicked off on the Monday with Lord Mandelson declaring how the party is in the “fight of our lives” and “if I can come back, we can come back” alluding to his previous periods in the wilderness from mainstream politics.  Labour’s challenge proves an equally mammoth task: certain polls suggesting levels unprecedented for Labour, even during the dark days of the 1980’s.

This big speech of the week, however, was Gordon Brown’s policy-filled hour on Wednesday, in which he announced, amongst other things, free home care for some of the elderly who are most in need, supervised housing for young, single mothers and a referendum on electoral reform. Other highlights included David Miliband’s detailed attack of Conservative European alliances, frontbenchers and policies (or lack thereof), Tony Woodley ripping up a copy of Thursday’s Sun newspaper and Alistair Campbell announcing policy regarding government transparency in financial matters.

A cardinal aim of Fightback is to lay to rest any leadership challenges and party quarrels from within. In that respect, it seems to have succeeded as all major challengers are now firmly on message and behind their leader. Backbenchers must realise this fact and throw their whole-hearted support behind their leader. To do otherwise would be to display disunity and when faced with what is, in public, an extremely united Conservative Party would spell the end for Labour’s term in government. It has now become a pipe-dream for dissident Labour backbenchers to think that getting rid of Brown now would be to their benefit; they have gone beyond the point of no return.

Party activists too all have their role to play.  They must emerge must also now come out of hiding and prepare for the battle or face a Conservative victory. The very notion of being an activist is that you hold something to be so important that you are willing to give up time and energy for it. Labour needs its activist groups to pour back out on to the street in the realisation that to stay at home would result in four or more years of Mr Cameron and his cronies running this country. The same can be said for the core voters. However disaffected they have become with Labour and its policies of the last twelve years, they must reassess the merits of staying at home, spoiling their ballot paper or voting for a minority party against the undoubted outcome, a Conservative government.

Labour cannot take the core vote for granted, it must reach out to the working classes again, show what has been achieved over the last twelve years in comparison to the alternatives and it must offer them more of the same. The risk being that, in doing so, Labour alienates the burgeoning middle class and loses key constituencies to the Conservatives. But the task is not impossible and the coming months will define Gordon Brown’s time in Number 10, he will either perform the Great Escape or the Great Disappearing Act.