Leading labour.
| Author | Archer, Robin |
| Position | Guest editorial |
We now know who is to lead the Labour Party. But where should he lead it, and what does that leadership require? What, in short, should their leadership strategy be? The starting point for answering these questions must be an honest assessment of the leadership strategy which the Labour Party adopted in its last leadership election more than sixteen years ago. The architects of that strategy - Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson - have had a long period of unusually complete dominion over the party in which to test it. So we are in a good position to assess their strategy - as good as we are ever likely to have with such a strategy.
To make a proper assessment we must take care to avoid overly simple conclusions that place too much weight on a particular personality or policy. There is little doubt that the anti-charisma of Gordon Brown played a role in Labour's defeat. But we must keep clearly in mind that 80 per cent of the 5 million votes that Labour has lost since 1997 had already been lost under the leadership of Tony Blair, and that Labour's now startlingly low share of the vote is the continuation of a trend that has been apparent throughout the New Labour years. Equally, it is clear that the quixotic decision of Tony Blair to invade Iraq - and the supine acceptance of it by his cabinet and party - was a terrible and foreseeable error with important consequences both for the election of 2005 and for the party identification of some voters ever since. But the underlying problem with the New Labour model of leadership is more fundamental, and flows directly from a strategic orientation that has been explicitly adopted and systematically pursued throughout the New Labour period.
Party strategy and preference-shaping
The similarities between the basic policy stance adopted by the Thatcher government and that subsequently endorsed by New Labour have often been noted. What is frequently overlooked, however, is that the leadership strategies of Thatcher and Blair were radically different.
We know from opinion surveys that when voters' preferences are plotted on a left-right spectrum the resulting graph typically takes the form of a bell curve, with the largest numbers of voters clustered around the median voter in the centre and decreasing numbers holding positions as we move further to the left or right. In plurality or majority electoral systems dominated by two main parties - and note that, if the Alternative Vote is introduced, Britain will still fall into this category - two pure strategies are available. One is a preference-shaping strategy that seeks to use the power of leadership to change voters' preferences by shifting the curve so as to move the centre to either the right or left. The other is a centre-seeking strategy that seeks to gain and retain office by locating one's own stance as close as possible to that of the median voter. Each could in principle deliver sufficient votes to guarantee electoral success. But in practice, most political leaders pursue neither strategy in their pure form, but rather a mix of the two. And therein lies much of the 'art' of politics.
In recent decades, however, British politics have...
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