The blame game isn’t particularly dignified and is self-indulgent. The average person on pretty much any street, either in Canterbury or Grimsby, cares very little for our soul-searching. They just want good schools, safe streets, a doctor’s appointment and for everyone to have enough. When you’re left on the floor of a hospital gasping for breath, or you can’t get your kid a school place, the simplest things are your idea of radical.
I decided early on in the campaign that I was going to try to help in the difficult seats of the Midlands and the north. We are not a red wall, we are not an angry mob, we are not your helpful TV buzzword, we are a delightfully varied bunch. I represent a Leave seat (60% Leave) and have never found it difficult to engage with my constituents on Brexit.
My constituents don’t mind that we might disagree – they appreciate above all else a straightforward approach. I can’t help but think that the fact that we saw only a tiny swing away from Labour in my seat was because of our ability to disagree well, with good humour and a shared vernacular. I love the people I grew up among, and I think that they can tell, even when we might have just had a bit of a barney. I guess it’s about trust – you don’t have to agree with every word someone says if you have good faith in their intentions.
Everywhere I campaigned, I heard the same thing. It was less about Brexit and more about belief. In these places of generations of Labour voting, they did not believe a Labour government would or could deliver for them. They didn’t trust us. They didn’t trust the Tories either, but then they never expected to, so that letdown was lesser. I spoke to people in my constituency and others who were distressed that they couldn’t vote Labour, visibly angry because they felt we, our leader and what we were presenting to them had put them in this position. They were not shy Tories of the 2015 election – they were sad and disappointed Tory voters.
There will be a thousand hot takes on where the Labour party went wrong. Lots of them will be more about those who are defensive rather than what we need to be – determined to crack on and do something about it.
Thousands of people who were inspired to activism by Jeremy Corbyn are angry that it has ended in tears. Telling them “I told you so” will do nothing to deal with that anger. Telling them everything has been crap won’t encourage the honest self-criticism we badly need.
Those of us who warned we were heading for defeat are angry. I’m angry that a generation will now be scarred, their whole lives governed by a party that’s done nothing to help lift them up. I’m searing with anger that in the UK today people have got used to accepting the idea that things will probably get worse. I am apoplectic that people no longer expect progress because for so long they have worn the clothes of decline. But that anger can’t be directed towards the activists who gave everything, or, worse, towards the voters who we let down. Instead, we need to turn our hot anger at this defeat into cold, clear anger that will inspire us to do everything we need to win again.
To get a majority at the next election, we would need to gain as many seats as we did in the landslide of 1997. But if there are still those who think victory relies on digging out New Labour strategies, they are just as delusional as those who have spent the last two days trying to explain away the scale of the defeat.
In the 1990s, Labour needed to bring middle-class voters into a coalition with a working-class base. Today we have the opposite problem. The more working-class a constituency was, the worse the result was for Labour. The problem isn’t just that working-class people will be hurt by the Tories – it’s that too many don’t believe we’re better than the Tories. Belief matters, and we failed the test. That is an existential problem for the party that is named for working people.
Lots of politicians have spoken about the need to reflect since the gut-punch of that exit poll. But reflection suggests looking backwards. The period of reflection so many are talking about cannot be a mirror of past battles. Since we lost a decade ago, the debate about the party has focused on what your view is of a leader who, at the time of the next general election, won’t have fought an election in 20 years. Some call me a Blairite because I’m evangelical about the difference Sure Start and tax credits made to my life. But I marched against Iraq, and I didn’t even become an MP until eight years after he’d left parliament, so how does that fit?
That label is as meaningless as labelling people Gaitskellite or Bennite. Are we going to allow another label attached to a former leader to keep us in the past? Surely we can do better than define ourselves in relation to the men who led us in the past? I genuinely met a bloke on the doorstep in Yardley who told me he would never vote Labour because he blamed Ramsay McDonald for the fact that his dad lost his job. You won’t see that in any of the post-election analysis, because 100-year grudges or 20-year grudges or even grudges of the last four years do naff all to actually change people’s opinions or their lives. That’s the goal, right?
If we are to find a way to reconnect with those working-class voters, we have to be brave. It’s time to try something different, rather than re-enacting old battles. I’ve never been afraid to say what I think. The truth is, there are corners of our party that have become too intolerant of challenge and debate. The truth is, there is a clique who don’t care if our appeal has narrowed, as long as they have control of the institutions and ideas of the party.
We’ve all got to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions about the future of our party and the future of the working-class communities who need a Labour government. Because the alternative is that the working-class voters who, in despair, lent the Tories their votes on Thursday, never take them back. If, like me, you woke up sickened and fearful on Friday, you have two choices. You can despair, or you can stay angry and do something about it. Join Labour to help change Labour. Help those of us willing to ask the difficult questions by adding your voice to the debate that’s coming.
