Following last week’s elections, the conventional wisdom can be summarised roughly as follows. The cause of electoral reform is dead; Labour did well in Northern England but poorly in Southern England; Labour’s defeat in Scotland was unprecedented and historic; the Lib Dems got hammered by Labour; and Labour needs to move to attract ‘centrist’ voters and fight the Tories for the ‘centre ground’. I think the lessons of the elections give cause to challenge all of these.

Electoral reform: I don’t really want to add to the blame game about the fiasco of the AV referendum. As long as reformers learn the lessons, then this need not be a generational setback. By the time of the next election, Labour and the Lib Dems will both be preparing for a possible coalition. The idea of a referendum imposed from the top down thanks to a backroom deal was always a terrible one. A commitment to something like citizens’ assemblies which develop ideas for democratic reform from the grassroots, leading to options which have popular legitimacy when put forward in a referendum, has worked in other countries. This kind of approach could unite reformers from a range of political traditions and be part of the programme of the next government in five years, not twenty.

The other lesson for the Labour Party specifically is that Labour’s self-styled “next generation” should listen less to pressure groups like Progress and Compass, neither of which proved to have much ability to craft a compelling campaign, and more to some of the “dinosaurs”, from the Labour No campaign which forced the Tories to spend millions on undermining the Coalition, to Yes campaigners like Peter Mandelson who correctly, but too late, hit the No campaign where it knew it was weakest.

North/South divide: Labour has more support in Northern England, and the Tories in Southern England. But the picture is more nuanced than this. Labour failed to overtake the Tories in areas such as Warrington South, Stockton South, Morecambe, Wirral South, Keighley and many other Northern marginal seats. Meanwhile, in the South, Labour overtook the Tories in the popular vote in places won by the Tories in 2010 like Plymouth Moor View, South Swindon, Stevenage, Ipswich, Waveney, Thurrock, while picking up councillors in places like Abingdon in Oxfordshire and even matching the Tories vote for vote in central Witney.

The analysis is more nuanced than a simple geographical divide would suggest. I don’t have a full explanation, but successes seem to be clustered around active and campaigning local Labour parties in places as diverse as Gedling, Chesterfield, Manchester, Oxford, Liverpool, Reading and Birmingham Edgbaston, as well as the efforts of activists in places where Labour is starting local campaigning for the first time in many years. Bringing more areas up to the standards of the best over the next four years needs to be the absolute top priority for the party’s review.

Scotland: Going back to the 1950s, there has been a natural anti-Labour majority in Scotland – Labour’s support is narrow but deep (and much less widespread than in Wales). The problem which Labour faces isn’t that its natural hegemony has been broken, it is that the SNP have managed to reunite the anti-Labour coalition which was fractured by Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown. In other words, it’s not as bad as it looks for Labour in Scotland, it’s worse (though how much support the SNP will have after they impose savage spending cuts remains to be seen).

Lib Dems: The Lib Dems did badly in many contests with Labour, most hilariously in the case of Lord Storey of Wavertree versus Labour’s eighteen year old candidate. But in many of the areas that Labour will be trying to win from the Lib Dems at the next general election, the Lib Dem vote proved resilient. The Lib Dems also defeated the Tories in areas like Bedford, Watford and Eastleigh. Rumours of their demise are much exaggerated.

Taking leftie voters for granted: One notable thing about the local elections is that leftie voters didn’t automatically rally round Labour in areas where they had a plausible alternative. While the Trade Unionist and Socialist candidates made no impression, the Greens cleaned up in Brighton, and held on to wards in other areas in Lancaster, Liverpool, Norwich and others where they have an active local presence. If Labour decide to take leftie voters for granted and focus all their efforts on winning over Tories, they may find that these voters decide that they do have other places to go to.

Reader comments

1. Liberal Conspiracy

   Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections http://bit.ly/lXOLGc

2. Nick Watts

   RT @libcon: Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections http://bit.ly/lXOLGc