Why Labour is losing: a response to O’Hara and Pye

In their recent posts for SPERI Glen O’Hara and Robbie Pye articulate the reasons why the Labour Party currently appears suspended between optimism and despair.  O’Hara makes powerful use of historical polling data to reveal why Labour’s position as an opposition party currently appears weak.  A prospective party of government ought to be doing better at this stage of the electoral cycle.  O’Hara’s analysis corroborates damning evidence from local by-elections and predictions of Labour’s performance in the forthcoming Scottish, Welsh and English local government elections.  The argument O’Hara elaborates focuses on Labour’s electoral predicament, but there is ample reason for pessimism about the intellectual crisis afflicting the party.  There is little indication so far that Corbyn’s radical critique of austerity economics is likely to be matched by a powerful policy prospectus akin to the alternative strategy developed by the Labour left in the 1970s centred on import controls, nationalisation and industrial planning.

In contrast, Pye contends it is too early to dismiss the positive impact of Corbyn’s leadership: if Labour’s polling performance currently appears unimpressive, that is largely the result of a hostile media and a divided party.  Labour’s opportunity is to mobilise marginalised sections of society into a new electoral majority.  Instead of focusing on narrow tactical battles, Corbyn’s supporters want to redefine the landscape of British politics, shifting its ideological compass significantly to the left.  He may not yet have a fully developed programme, but Corbyn is embracing the concept of a ‘strategic state’ influenced by innovative economists, notably Marianna Mazzucato, built around sustained government intervention.

Understandably, most contemporary analyses of the Labour Party take Corbyn’s remarkable leadership insurgency as the starting point.  This is not surprising: Corbyn is an intriguing and beguiling figure, almost a political ‘anti-hero’.  He won in 2015 by promising to be the antithesis of Tony Blair. Detractors insist this rejection of New Labour is the central reason for Corbyn’s unelectability.  Admirers claim that only by breaking with Blairism can Labour identify a route back to power.

Nonetheless, an alternative viewpoint is plausible: the Labour Party is indeed in deep electoral and intellectual trouble, but the reasons are much more fundamental than the alleged inadequacies of Corbyn as a political leader.

Electorally, Labour is losing because it cannot secure the base of geographical and class support required to win British general elections in a first-past-the-post parliamentary system.  The party’s former policy co-ordinator, Jon Cruddas, insists this is because blue collar working-class voters have peeled away from the party, alienated by its refusal to address social concerns, notably welfare and immigration.  Other analyses have shown the extent of Labour’s marginalisation in Southern England and among affluent ABC1 voters.  Labour’s growing weakness in England was compounded by the party’s devastating wipe-out in Scotland.  There is something about today’s Labour Party that voters across the United Kingdom dislike, as its reputation for economic competence was destroyed by the 2008 financial crisis.  It is perceived to offer neither sound financial stewardship nor a viable crusade against social injustice.  Corbyn’s ascendency might have compounded that problem, but it was not the cause of the problem.