Labour talking to itself - again

I was interested to read the summary of Margaret Beckett’s recent analysis of why Labour lost the last election. Before commenting on it I think it worth noting that the errors made by the opinion polls were almost certainly a contributory factor in the surprise result, with people fearing a hung parliament and a Labour-SNP alliance, so something needs to be done about the polls to ensure they are carried out more accurately. I could introduce the idea of a conspiracy here because all the polling organisations seem to have made the same basic error – strange that, but, like most conspiracy theories, it is probably wrong. Moving on: The causes of Labour’s defeat are predictable enough – Miliband’s performance and image, perceptions of Labour’s economic competence, fear of an SNP coalition etc. – but that is not really the point, I think. The point is that Beckett’s report is making a classic error. It is an example of politicians talking to each other rather that to the country. Above all the report seems to say that it was perceptions of Labour that were wrong and there was no real substance to them. This implies that the fault for Labour’s defeat lay with the voters’ misconceptions, rather than Labour’s own failings. Take Miliband’s leadership. There is a suggestion here that Miliband actually did well and would have been a good prime minister but that the voters didn’t realise this. Now, most of us who are neutral and can take an objective view , would agree that Miliband did not do well and showed every sign of being a weak prime minister. If we had any doubts, his support for the idea of the ‘tombstone’ of Labour policies proved his poor judgment. I think it was Berthold Brecht, commenting on the East German communist regime, who suggested that the regime would have liked to change the people before it would allow any form of popular democracy and, being unable to do that, it could not allow the people to have any influence. In a mild form, the Beckett; reform suggests the only way Labour could win is if the people themselves were reformed and could ‘see the light.’ The world is not like that. The people are the people, the media are the media and politicians have to live with them. It will not do simply to bleat that ’nobody understands us’