For weeks now it’s looked like the next election will be fought on familiar lines: Labour investment versus Tory cuts. Today David Cameron did a pretty good job of chipping away at Gordon Brown’s dividing line. That’s no bad thing for the Labour Party.
Gordon Brown may want to fight the next election on the basis of investment versus cuts but it won’t work. This isn’t just my opinion, this is a fact. Labour has tried investment v cuts at the last two elections – 2001 and 2005. It didn’t work at either election.
There are all sorts of ways of testing an election slogan – through polling, focus groups, media monitoring, on the doorstep and more besides. But the ultimate test is what happens on polling day. Judging a slogan any earlier is like assessing a football team on paper before the cup final: useful and informative but ultimately inconclusive.
In 1997 Labour got 13,518,167 (43.2%) votes compared with 9,600,943 to the Tories on a 71.5% turnout – giving Labour 418 MPs. The Labour message was ‘things can only get better’. They promised some incremental improvements to public services (no class size of more than 30 for 5,6 and 7 year olds) but also to keep inside Tory spending limits for the first two years and no increase to basic income tax.
In 2001 Labour got 10,724,953 votes (down 2.5%) compared with 8,357,615 for the Tories on a 59% turnout – giving Labour 413 MPs. The Labour message was ’schools and hospitals first’. So Labour actually lost votes. The message didn’t work.
In 2005 Labour got 9,562,122 votes (down 5.5%) compared with 8,772,598 for the Tories on a 62% turnout – giving Labour 356 MPs. The main message was ‘Forward, not back’ but it articulated a message about public service investment (and reform) against cuts. The message of investment AND reform was important during the passage of the main bills in parliament on public services throughout 2001-2006, partly because it united a coalition of support where merely ‘investment’ concerned some of Labour’s electoral coalition.
General election results are complicated and people vote for a range of reasons. However, investment v cuts has not worked. If it hasn’t worked for other reasons then – ok, let’s give it another go. But there are compelling reasons to believe it won’t work this time either.
1. The public know that the government is deeply in debt. There is a growing discourse which believes that the public sector wastes money. Investment alone is not universally popular.
2. Experts won’t be quiet in the next nine months if the government keeps talking about investment v cuts. The governor of the Bank of England, the IMF, the IFS and more – all will testify that the government needs a plan for getting the deficit under control. The (cautious) support of Paul Krugman will not be enough.
3. It won’t build a successful electoral coalition. The Doctors who have had a pay rise thanks to Labour’s investment are not grateful. The nurses who have had a pay rise thanks to Labour’s investment are not grateful. The administrative assistants who have paid more tax are not grateful.
4. The numbers involved are too big to make sense – and the public don’t trust statistics from the government. The billions of pounds are so many, the sums of cash so incomprehesibly big – and with nothing to compare them to – that the investment narrative and the £20bn hidden cuts talk – just doesn’t resonate.
If David Cameron has decreased the likelihood of investment v cuts being the narrative at the next election, he may have increased Labour’s chance of winning.
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- Labour must read political tea-leaves carefully
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Tags: credit crunch, David Cameron