Jonathan Todd

I departed the UK for a family holiday in the US the morning after the night of James Purnell’s resignation. I have been desperately trying to keep up with events in the UK, despite the time difference, family obligations and the lack of Adam Boulton. But, in effect, though the much anticipated meeting of the PLP is still to happen, my sense is that Labour’s fate was sealed before I boarded Virgin Atlantic. The Cabinet’s failure to follow Purnell’s lead means that Gordon Brown remains Labour’s destiny. 

Throughout the debates about Brown’s leadership, I have always maintained that Labour has three options: 1.) Back him, 2.) Replace him, 3.) Allow him to continue without backing him. The third of these options is the worst for Labour but the choices made by key figures in the Party over recent days have placed us definitively with this option, while effectively closing off the first of these options and not quite reaching the second. So, the transatlantic view from Virginia Beach is that of a “wounded elephant” – as a Labour MP described Brown to the Guardian – continuing to lead Labour.

The Conservative performance in the local and European elections wasn’t awfully impressive – less than 30 percent of the national vote in the Europeans. Yet, David Cameron will delight at facing off against this “wounded elephant”. Labour’s Cabinet might lack a killer instinct but Cameron certainly doesn’t. He will relish the prospect of savaging a beast now wounded by blows inflicted by his own comrades.

Labour’s weakness, more than Cameron’s or the Conservative’s strength, opens up the possibility of a victory at the next General Election that will keep the Conservatives in government for a generation. Given this, why have senior members of the Labour tribe chosen to leave us in the third of the worlds described above?

We are told that this is a Blairite resurrection. Ken Livingstone has obliged Number 10 by beating this drum. But it is a funny kind of Blairite resurrection that is beaten off by Peter Mandelson – and how curious it is that Livingstone and Mandelson, once great foes of Brown, should join ranks with an ex-Tory MP, Shaun Woodward, in being Brown’s most reliable defenders. The terms Blairite and Brownite are now as hackneyed as they are meaningless and do not help us understand the events of recent days.

There is no ideological or policy divide between those called Blairites and those called Brownites, as Europe divided the Tories in the 1980s or nationalisation separated Bevanites from Gatskellites in the Labour Party of the 1950s. There are, however, those that doubt Gordon Brown’s capacities as a leader and communicator – in various senses, this was the message of resignation statements not just from Purnell but also from Caroline Flint and Jane Kennedy – and those that do not.

To these resignations Jon Cruddas has retorted: “What I don’t understand is that there are all these resignations and yet there is no difference in policy. Everybody is taking their bat home with them, but they are not staking out different ideological or policy-based ground”. John Harris has dubbed it a “confused rebellion” for the same reason.

But when Labour has suffered its worst result in a national election for 99 years, is it necessary to have a policy difference with the leadership to call into question its effectiveness? Isn’t it enough to say that our message is being lost by the messenger? 

Cruddas and Harris want to say that policy changes are required because they desire policy changes. But, while there are certainly important policy debates to be had within the Labour Party, it seems easier to find evidence in the local and European elections for deficiencies in our ability to communicate our message than in the content of the message itself. 

Slogans that are redolent of past General Elections – Labour investment versus Tory cuts, etc – no longer cut any ice in a much changed fiscal and economic context. The public may not understand the full details of this context. (Who does?) But they sense – and they sense rightly – that the real debate isn’t about investment or cuts but about how much cutting and what kind of cutting. The wisdom of the crowds is too great for the wool to be pulled over their eyes for long. 

We need to be more imaginative in our policies – as I said, there is certainly much room for debate about Labour Party policy. But, even more crucial than this in averting complete and utter disaster at the next General Election is an increased capacity to be more straight-forward, empathetic and emotionally intelligent in how we communicate these policies. Peter Kellner sees in the local and European elections an indication that Labour has lost the ability to persuade ordinary voters that we are on their side. This is both the tragedy of these elections and the challenge that they pose for the next general election. 

John Prescott was scathing about the European campaign. It seemed to me like a sorry hangover from the 2005 general election campaign, which was itself a little brother to the 2001 general election campaign. Massively improving upon this seems more important than policy revisions, irrespective of who is our leader, though my instinct now is that our leader will remain the architect of the 2005 general election campaign: Gordon Brown. However, what worked in 2005 will not work now.