Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt didn’t fail. They won. And their victory may well have been the final death knell for the Labour Party.
While Gordon Brown is still Leader of the Labour Party and Hoon and Hewitt are still on the backbenches, the “coup” attempt succeeded in allowing key figures to extract a number of promises out of the Prime Minister. Foremost amongst these has been the move away from what was loosely labelled as a “class war strategy” to the new labour politics of Mandelson and Blair.
This change in tactics is a mistake and ignores the key determinant of the Labour vote in elections in the UK, turnout. Voter Turnout in 2001 and 2005 was 15 percentage points lower than the trend rate for the past 50 years. This didn’t appear to hurt Labour at first as it benefitted from middle class voters who found themselves unable to vote for a Tory party in disarray. The voters who are no longer voting at all are those from low income groups who have lost their voice, Labour’s core vote. Most worryingly for Labour, it is the young working class voters who are most disaffected. Worrying because those who don’t vote in one of their first three elections tend never to vote. Worrying because Labour is losing a generation of voters.
And where’s the proof you ask? According to Mori, if there were an election tomorrow and turnout was 50%, we’d see a Tory majority of 100. A 78% turnout sees a Labour majority of 25.
Maybe it’s time for Labour to man the barricades.
