To win power, opposition parties need to say something compelling about the status quo. This isn’t necessarily as easy as just advocating “change”, the word Labour has chosen to emphasise in the speeches and backdrops of its big election events and on the side of its battlebus.
Promise too much change, as the party did in 2019, and voters either won’t believe you can make it happen, or will be put off by the potential disruption. Promise too little change, as Labour did at the 2015 election, and voters will remain unengaged.
Then there is the question of communication. How good is the opposition leader, and their candidates and activists, at making change sound appealing? Under the careful, conscientious Keir Starmer, Labour seems to offer a welcome shift from the Tories’ slapdash and reckless rule. But whether such a switch to what you could call slow politics has long-term appeal to an electorate that has got used to manic governments is something we have yet to find out.
Trickier still for Labour is the issue of voter complicity with the Conservatives. Even the most rotten status quo always has beneficiaries. Some of them are rich and powerful, with privileged access to the media, such as the non-doms, private equity firms and rightwing press proprietors that have flourished under the Tories. But others are relatively ordinary citizens, such as the better-off pensioners and homeowners whom Conservative policies since 2010 have also blatantly favoured. All these interest groups usually see a Labour government as a threat – despite the party’s patchy record of redistributing power and........