Two years ago Labour was consistently scoring 40 per cent in the polls. Then came the squeeze and a lead of 10 points closed to two, or on some days nothing at all. And it’s been a squeeze caused almost entirely by Labour decline not Tory progress. Support for the Tories has hardly budged and the traditional see-saw of British politics seems broken. Labour supporters should be thankful, because if the Tories had gained ground as much as Labour has lost it, then the election would be over already.
But an 8 to 10 point fall in the polls is still very bad news and to respond Labour needs to understand the nature of its decline: to identify who it is that has given up on the party and how they are planning to vote instead. New Fabian Society analysis looks at this question and shows that Labour’s retreat takes two separate forms.
Change in general election voting intention: October 2014 polling compared to a selection of 2012 and 2013 polls when Labour’s support was 40 per cent or more
Fabian Society calculations, derived from a selection of YouGov polls conducted in 2012, 2013 and October 2014. Click on chart to enlarge.
First, there has been a fall in support among Labour’s 2010 voters of 4 percentage points, so that this group makes up just 20 points of the party’s polling score. A drop like this was meant to be impossible. All through the parliament, the Labour hierarchy assumed that anyone who voted Brown in 2010 would surely stick in 2015. Well it turns out, you can’t take anyone for granted.
Second, there’s been a 4 point decline in Labour support from people who didn’t vote for any of the major parties last time (ie new voters, 2010 non-voters and supporters of minor parties). These were the vital new arrivals on which Miliband’s 40 per cent strategy was counting, once it became clear that Labour would convert precious few 2010 Tory voters. The idea was to ape the 2008 Obama campaign by reaching out to people who hadn’t backed a major party for many years, if at all.
The saving grace for Labour is that the Lib Dems have been doing even worse and as a result Labour’s support from Lib Dem converts remains solid (still accounting for 6 percentage points of Labour support). These ex-Lib Dems seem now to count as part of Labour’s new core vote, alongside the 2010 Labour voters who are still with the party. But combined that only makes 26 percentage points of the minimum of 35 the party needs.
The Fabian numbers show that Labour’s mid-term support has scattered in all directions – to the Tories, the Greens, the Nats and Ukip. All four parties have attracted a growing number of 2010 Labour supporters and the smaller parties have also picked up the new voters Labour had pinned its hopes on.
So the political sagas of Labour crisis and Ukip surge are only loosely related. Labour should be doing better on all fronts, but it isn’t spilling its 2010 voters to Ukip more than anyone else. Compared to two years ago, the Kippers have taken a couple of points of support directly from Labour, but no more.
So it’s not just about Ukip, it’s about Labour. The party is failing to inspire each constituent part of its potentially broad coalition. That makes its challenge harder in some ways, for you can’t tack right to appease white working class England, if you’re also worried about voters flirting with the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens. However, the uniformity of Labour’s retreat also suggests its troubles aren’t about the policy detail, but communication, energy, connection and vision.
And for all the gloom, Labour remains best placed to win next May, because of the Tory/Ukip civil war. The Conservatives’ polling numbers have been stuck in the low 30s for years now, because Ukip made such inroads into their vote by 2013. The Tories hoped it was a mid-term blip but this year, as the election has neared, they’ve lost even more support instead of squeezing the Ukip vote.
So there seems to be stability in the political tectonic plates – the left is more united, and the right more divided. Yet Labour has lost all that ground despite it. As a result it’s become possible to imagine the Conservatives beating Labour even if these structural forces don’t unwind. But while they’re still in place, the fundamentals are all there for Labour to bounce back.
But victory will only happen if the party earns it, by finding a passion and a clarity of communication that inspires potential supporters. It turns out that when the Tories lose 6 points to Ukip and Labour gains 6 points from the Lib Dems, victory for the reds is still not a certainty. The party’s lacklustre recent performance shows that Labour could end up losing even if the realignment of politics is here to stay. But it is not inevitable: it’s time for Labour to make some political weather.
Andrew Harrop is general secretary of the Fabian Society
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