Making Labour's case for the South
malcolmclark Fri May 25, 2007 at 11:46:42 AM GMT 
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John Denham's Fabian Society lecture on 'Southern Discomfort Revisited' provides some great material for debate within Labour - especially in southern England. Full transcript is here. John argued that Labour cannot comfortably govern the UK as a whole without a significant southern presence. I have listed some of the key points he made, including (bottom paragraph) why electoral reform is essential. On my own blog, I have also added comments made by Tony Travers, about how the changed political circumstances / culture mean the electoral pendulum may no longer swing back once a party has lost its base in a particular area - whether that be the Tories in certain northern cities or Labour in parts of the south / south-west.
It is a huge challenge to renew the coalition of voters that supported us in 1997. For John Denham that matters because ...
Labour's working majority depends on a number of southern seats. But we need to be more ambitious than simply hanging on to some key marginal Parliamentary seats in the South of England.
Labour's working majority depends on a number of southern seats. But we need to be more ambitious than simply hanging on to some key marginal Parliamentary seats in the South of England.
Can Labour can govern the UK for an extended period of time if we have limited electoral support, and very limited elected representation, in local government or Westminster? The Tories failure to win in Wales or Scotland triggered massive constitutional change. Labour weakness in the south would have different consequences but similar issues of legitimacy would eventually arise.
As the Tories found it becomes more and more difficult to hold Westminster seats when your local government base is eroded, and when the prevailing political culture begins to run against the governing party.
'super-marginal' strategies focus over-heavily on a small group of active swing voters in marginal seats. But this pessimistic approach obscures issues that must be addressed to build a broader and more reliable base of support.
There are thousands upon thousands of voters in every county and every constituency who will have no one to stand up for them if Labour does not. If we look beneath the apparent prosperity of the South we can see plenty of issues that only Labour will ever tackle: of inequity, of exclusion and of unfairness.
There is plenty in the values and aspirations of southern voters that can lend support to progressive politics. We can't claim these voters by right. But we can win their support and so ... strengthen their support for a progressive approach to politics.
One important ingredient to Labour's long term southern strategy is electoral reform. It is essential. A more representative voting system would, at a stroke, give Labour better representation and greater legitimacy in the South. It would, almost certainly, increase Labour's overall vote somewhat by bringing into the open our support which is currently suppressed in unwinnable seats. A reformed electoral system would also force Labour to consider more explicitly the interests of voters outside the areas we currently hope to hold. But electoral reform is not a magic bullet. It does not [on its own] guarantee the political debate about our overall strategy and approach.
Making Labour's case for the South | 8 comments (8 topical)
Making Labour's case for the South | 8 comments (8 topical)
