Labour lost because it didn’t have the right approach on immigration. That’s the view being debated by a number of people analyzing the party’s defeat. I don’t know if they are right but I do know that Labour should read political tea leaves with care.
Many (not all) of those expressing fears over the party’s approach to immigration have taken their lead from ‘the doorstep’ – people they met during the campaign. That’s not a bad thing to go on but must be treated with a pinch of salt. Proactively, most campaigners will have only met a very small proportion of the electorate. And reactively (street stalls etc) only those passionate enough to come forward.
Moreover, it’s not entirely clear whether it was Labour’s policies that were wrong or the communication / understanding of them. Given that immigration increases as a political issue the closer in inverse proportion to the number of migrants living in an area, it’s reasonable to presume that the same people aren’t well versed on ‘who is coming in’ or even what hoops ‘they’ have to jump through to come here.
More detailed, constructive psephological and qualitative research will doubtless be available although Labour won’t be able to afford the sort of detailed analysis that Michael Ashcroft of Belize funded for the Tories. But even then, accurate opinion research tends to take second place for many people if it doesn’t underscore what they already wanted to say. How many times does an MP say ‘I’ve changed my mind now I know my constituents don’t think like that’?
Moreover, it’s becoming more difficult to construct a single policy position with widespread appeal as the country fragments into lots of nuanced positions. You can’t rely on a single demographic (whether class or faith-based0 to react in the same way as you previously presumed. And even if it was, we also know that in 2005 the Tories had the most popular policies (when tested ‘blind’) but that because the Tories were saying it, they didn’t make the breakthrough they hoped.
Finally, the most creative, inspiring campaigns aren’t those tested to destruction. Those companies with the best ads, products, ideas are usually those which don’t rely on sentiment worms, focus groups et al to determine what they do, merely to inform decisions they make. And even then they interrogate the analysis to work out exactly what it means. There’s no way that Boris Johnson would even get admitted to party membership (even in the Lib Dems) if we judged our politics based on a focus group ideal.
None of this is intended as a specific riposte to those who say Labour needs a different approach on immigration (it might), nor those searching for reasons as to why it lost (we need them, supported by evidence). But if the formation of the Con Dem coalition has taught us anything so far, it should be that politics is as much about chemistry as it is physics, instinct as much as analysis.