The art of winning elections in a modern Western democracy is all about building successful electoral coalitions. By its very nature, the core support of a political party is not enough to win an election. At the last two elections, we have totally failed to grasp this straightforward truth, just as Labour failed to understand this in the 1980s. The great electoral politicians of recent decades – from Reagan to Clinton and from Thatcher to Blair understood and acted upon this.
Tony Blair was remarkably successful at building a strong electoral coalition, elbowing us out of the centre ground and making us appear permanently oppositional in our mentality. We allowed New Labour to steal our language of one nation and to steal the centre ground itself as we sashayed to a comfortable, but electorally pointless right wing wilderness. The same voters who had helped build the Thatcher coalition in the 1980s – C2s, aspirational working class and lower middle class people – switched to Tony Blair in droves. These “Blair Tories”, in the same vein as the “Reagan Democrats” in the US are crucial to electoral success.
All the recent polling evidence suggests that this group of aspirational voters are returning to the Tory Party in droves. The London Mayoral election, the Crewe by election and the polls in recent days showing record Labour lows and a strong Conservative lead all point to the fact that people now regard us as credible again. People now believe that we are in touch with them and understand their concerns. Our task is to make sure that these voters remain in the Conservative camp and ensure that they form part of a successful Cameron electoral coalition. This group of voters were drawn by Blair’s empathy, centrism and moderation in the last decade and put off by our perceived disunity, dogmatism and ‘extremism’. The modernisation project in the Conservative Party appeals very strongly to those whose support we need to win next time. At the same time, Gordon Brown completely fails to empathise with the voters who were the bedrock of the New Labour coalition. He comes across as knowing little of and caring less about the hopes and concerns of aspirational voters.
The failure of Gordon Brown and the success of our modernisation has meant that the New Labour electoral coalition has been smashed to smithereens. Labour are now dependent on their diminished core.
A crucial part of the New Labour coalition has now moved directly across to supporting us. We need to continue appealing directly to the voters who are put off by dogmatism, division and harsh language and policies. Our rhetoric and our policies have to continue appealing directly to the hopes and aspirations of people for themselves and their familes. We need to make quite clear that we understand and empathise. We must never forget that elections are won and lost on the centre ground. The aspirational voters who abandoned us in 1997 need to feel that the Conservative Party is, once again, their natural home. If we succeed in this, then we will have succeeded in destroying the New Labour coalition and building an electorally formidable progressive Conservative electoral coalition to replace it.
What is so sad for Labour is that, on top of abandoning their election-winning coalition, they have also abandoned their very reason for existence. The 10p tax band was evidence that Labour’s focus is just on beating the Tories. Playing politics with your core is never going to work.
In 2005, that was the key message of the last few days of the campaign. It was enough to beat us then. But we’re a very different party now and it won’t be enough next time.
Lest you think I am getting confident and assuming we will win, there will be other messages that could work. There is a massive task ahead of us. Labour (despite current evidence) won’t give up without a fight, and we can’t guarantee that they will campaign as badly as they did in Crewe in the general election.