Demos Open Left has today published the YouGov (very large scale) poll that comprises the next stage of the Open Coalitions project I’ve been leading on since the end of last year. While the initial analysis reached a point where we were ready to publish some initial findings, I’ve had access to the raw data for a number of weeks. In part, this explains why I have been critical of what I have described as the party’s oppositionalism.
To be honest, I was staggered when I first saw the poll. The areas where there was biggest gap between Labour’s lost and loyal voters had a very clear pattern. Some of the biggest differences were all seen in the questions related to the size, efficacy and function of the state.
When you take into account which voters Labour disproportionately lost- C2, D, E voters who are mainly working or lower middle class- these findings are even more stark. Ed Balls writes in The Times today about the three traps that Labour must not fall into in opposition. One is that it must remember that it was mainly working class voters that Labour lost not the middle classes. He’s right. But he omits the caution the party about understanding why it lost them. So he misses one gargantuan trap that the party could fall into- projecting the party’s assumptions onto voters. There is a very clear message that comes from the Demos poll. Labour must change and to not do so would be to fall into the biggest trap of all.
I’ve presented the poll findings in a small number of private settings to academic audiences etc and a number of objections have been raised. The first is the most telling- voters become less inclined to support public spending when there is a Labour government and more inclined when there is a Conservative one. This is empirically correct. However, I would say two things in qualification. This poll shows that only 14% of Labour’s lost voters believe the priority is to avoid cuts. That is exceptionally low by any standards. Secondly, the scepticism shown towards the state manifests itself across a number of dimensions not just spending.
Just take one area: we asked people whether the state was a help or a hindrance in the lives of the respondent and their family. By a margin of only 33%-27% lost Labour voters considered it to be a help rather than hindrance. The comparable figure for Labour’s loyal voters was 54%-14%. What’s more, in all these measures Labour’s lost voters are very near the national average. It’s the loyal voters who are a distance from the average.
The second objection to these findings is that all this will reverse once the coalition cuts bite and people fall in love with the state again. Undoubtedly, there will be some shift back to the party as a protest at the cuts- mainly from disillusioned Liberal Democrats or former Labour voters who didn’t vote.
But the concern with state is not just about its size. It’s about its form- over-centralised with too little choice and control. And it’s about its function as the ‘help or hindrance’ question demonstrates. Even if Labour wins the argument on avoiding cuts- which I suspect it will only do in part as it carries the can for their necessity in the first place- then it will still lose the form and function argument if it simply proposes returning to the world of May 2010.
This is all tough analysis and Labour can choose to listen and respond or not. But better to say this now rather than lose another election or two and then say it- or win an election narrowly but rapidly lose support and legitimacy thereafter. If I was David Cameron watching Labour in opposition I would be very relaxed indeed whatever the polls may say. He has the party exactly where he wants it regardless of any tactical victories. As things stand, Labour has decided not to change. And that will suit the coalition just fine.
August 3rd, 2010 at 13:42
There’s a saying – people don’t want big or small state, they want the state to be on their side when they need it….
You say, re: the argument on cuts – “I suspect it will only do in part as it carries the can for their necessity in the first place”.
But what does this mean? That we didn’t deal with financial regulation before the crash? Or that we cave into the Tory argument – which people will be finding it harder to credit as we are reminded of the scale of the bank bailout – that spending on public services is to blame for the deficit?
August 3rd, 2010 at 17:37
As large as the survey sample is, there will always be a flaw in questions about ‘the state’. The notion about the disproportional effect of Tory and Media bias against the state is a good one.
In local government we have seen this for years. Endless large scale surveys will ask about perceptions of crime, for example, and they are routinely improving and the public are happier. The same surveys asking for perceptions of the Police and local authorities role have a broadly negative response. This begs the question, “who’s cutting the crime then? the anti-crime faeries?” The public don’t always dissemble these points with the clarity political academics like us would prefer.
What you have is a similar emotive reaction to questions of ‘the state’ and the same question framed around ‘public services’, (insofar as they are the same thing).
The Big State can mean politicians, bloated budgets, quangos and waste OR it can mean more Bobbies on the beat, more nurses, new schools and helping hand for the needy. Perception is all.
I believe firmly in Big government because I do not create the false dichotomy between state and society. The state IS society, a place around which we coalesce to make life better for us all. The state is merely a structural element. School Governors, friends groups, tenants and residents, local partnerships are just a few of the places where volunteers play an active role and have for years. They are integrated into the system of government we have in a positive way. Cameron hasn’t invented this. His Big Society isn’t new in the way it seeks to increase involvement. It is a smokescreen, it is the way to say small government without saying small government, because even HIS market testing showed that to be an unpopular message.
This is another cover, like the overblown defecit rhetoric, for an ideological attack on the state, weakening our protection against marketisation and big capital. If, as you rightly say, people will value the state more when it is cut away, then it is a weakness on our part on the left for not making the case strongly enough for it when it is there.
August 3rd, 2010 at 23:05
Tim, you make a great point – politics is “perverted by language” to quote a Fall LP. People have different understanding of words.