Ed Miliband goes on to argue,New Labour's proposition was very simple - we need to persuade Tory voters to come with us. The task is very different now.
Allegra Stratton in the Guardian covered the Essay this morning. As did Shamik Das at Left Foot Forward, complete with graph of the new Ipsos data.Five million votes were lost by Labour between 1997 and 2010, but four out of the five million didn’t go to the Conservatives. One third went to the Liberal Democrats, and most of the rest simply stopped voting. It wasn’t, in the main, the most affluent, professional voters that deserted Labour either... You really don’t need to be a Bennite to believe that this represents a crisis of working-class representation for Labour – and our electability.
This is the final essay in the Fabians' leadership essays, which will be published in a single volume on the Fabian website over the next few days.
2 comments:
Most people in my area did not bother voting and it's a real working class area, most said they'd rather vote BNP then vote Labour, lucky for some we did not have a BNP candidate.
But in the end I looked at the ballot paper and I decided not to bother I cannot vote New Labour and I will never vote Tory, so I went home.
My wife who has voted Labour since 1966 voted Tory, as she said since new Labour dumped us she said she dumped New Labour.
There are two things that Labour needs to do if it is to convince voters to return - including swing voters:
1) To counter the incessant ability for the new government to re-announce policies that have already been implemented as their own achievements and/or to announce wishful 'aspirations' in lieu of actual targets: http://etonmess.blogspot.com/
2) To remind voters that it was the financial crisis and deregulation that caused the economic problems we now face, and very little to do with 'excessive' public spending.
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