There can be no doubt that over the past few weeks Labour
has enjoyed its best run for a long time – certainly since the surge of
popularity that came with Gordon Brown taking over the premiership in 2007
(remember that?).
The opinion polls give Labour a massive lead over the
Conservatives that would yield a comfortable parliamentary majority if
translated into votes in a general election, even with the proposed reduction
of the size of the Commons and redrawing of constituency boundaries.
A fortnight ago, Labour did much better than anyone expected
in the local elections, gaining more than 800 council seats across Great
Britain. It took control of councils in the south-east and east of England
where its parliamentary representation had been reduced to a handful by the
2010 general election. It emphatically reversed the drift away from Labour in
local government in south Wales. And it at least stood up to the nationalist
challenge in Scotland. Ken Livingstone losing in London was a disappointment,
but Labour did better in the London Assembly election than ever before.
The coalition government, meanwhile, is facing troubles that
it shows no sign of containing. George Osborne’s budget, giving money to the
rich and taking it from the poor, was a public relations disaster that he will
not easily live down. The economy is in the doldrums and shows no sign of
recovery. And the Tories’ intimacy with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is slowly
but surely being exposed to public view, text message by text message, email by
email, at the Leveson inquiry.
The Tory right’s dissatisfaction with the compromises of
coalition in general and with David Cameron in particular is palpable. So too
is the Liberal Democrats’ fear that they face electoral disaster if they stay
on their current course.
To top it all, Ed Miliband has been doing rather better than
before as Labour leader. He still appears awkward a lot of the time, but he is
now matching Cameron in parliament and seems to have seen off the sniping of
Blairite nostalgics in his own party. Why, this week Ed Balls and Peter
Mandelson even co-authored a piece for the Guardian’s
comment pages declaring that they agreed on Europe (except on the small matter
of whether Britain should join the euro).
It is, however, too early for Labour supporters to break
open the champagne. We are three years from the next general election, and a
lot could happen in that time. Mid-term local election successes on low voter
turnouts are not reliable guides to subsequent general election results. As for
the polls, it is only four months since the Tories and Labour were
neck-and-neck, and a Tory recovery cannot be ruled out.
Everything depends on what now happens to the economy – or
rather what is perceived by voters to be happening. So far, the coalition’s story
that austerity is necessary to pay back the debt left by Labour’s irresponsible
spending spree before 2010 has chimed remarkably well with the electorate: the
big question over the next six months is whether Labour can get a hearing outside
the political class for its moderately Keynesian alternative.
Here, Labour could do worse than emulate the thrust of Francois
Hollande’s successful French presidential campaign – maybe not a 75 per cent
tax on very high earners but something similarly symbolic of making the rich
pay their fair share, along with a package to boost demand in the economy (through
building council houses, say). That’s pretty much in line with what the shadow
chancellor would like to make his message: Labour now needs Balls to do it with
some élan.
