Go back to your constituencies and prepare for opposition

Will the caricature be confounded? (image: www.toryrascal.com)

CONFERENCE newspaper sketches and meteorological observation seem inextricably linked. Delegates gather under either “cloudy skies” or in the “autumn sunshine”, depending on the morale and fortunes of their party. The wonder, therefore, is that a new ice age has not descended on Brighton, where Labour meet for what will almost certainly be its final conference as a party of government for the foreseeable future.

Political betting expert Mike Smithson maintains his own “golden rule” for Labour standings in the opinion polls; whatever is the worst rating will be closest to the final result. If that is so, Gordon Brown and his party are heading for a defeat of catastrophic proportions – perhaps as low as 25% UK-wide. Given the party’s persistent under performance in Wales, the mind boggles as to what might happen here.

The parallels with the twilight of John Major’s government are hard to avoid. Then, Michael Heseltine acted as a flamboyant lightning rod for a Prime Minister ignored and condemned by the voters. Today, Lord Mandelson – an equally controversial figure within his own party – hogs the limelight. Heseltine used to provoke mirth by predicting a Tory majority of “60, nudging up” at the 1997 election. Not even Mandelson’s undoubted chutzpah goads him into such reckless psephology.

After 15 years of ruthless party modernisation, the expectation is of a conference delegate caucus dominated by focused, smartly-dressed young would-be politicians of no fixed ideological abode. Yet the average Labour conference delegate has remained of a type recognisable to an observer of the 70s or 80s. Trade unionists, public sector workers and councillors still predominate, as do those of more advanced years. The agedness of Labour’s activists has been well observed, just as it was for the mid 1990s for the Conservatives. As then, it is used to evidence the party’s cyclical or even terminal decline.

They may be old, but these are Labour’s unflinching infantry. And, just as they have remained unchanged despite the New Labour transformation, so too has their own image of Labour as the party for the least well-off and most vulnerable in society. They are dismayed by the more controversial policies, such as PFI and contestability in public services, but are also able to compartmentalise these as aberrant, misguided steps, rather than a fundamental departure. For their many and deep-seated objections to the market-focused edge of Blairism, these most faithful do not think the party has abandoned its roots, or if they do they also believe such roots can readily be unearthed. For the holders of the flame, power is always worth it, no matter how messy the compromises or how uncomfortable it gets on the doorstep, because with it you can always edge toward the new Jerusalem. As one delegate from south Wales put it, “the worst Labour government will always be better than the best Tory government.”

But this very long term view of the left-right faultline in British politics is also generating a different, more reflective response. There is a silent realisation that a fourth general election victory, even if it were obtainable, would be a bad thing for the party and the country. While the idea of Bullingdon Club Tories slashing and burning their way gleefully through public services remains the most powerful incentive to campaign for that win, others are now beginning to think constructively about how to use the impending period of opposition.

“There’s no real appetite for Cameron” is an observation you overhear wherever you go, and which Lesley Griffiths AM argued on this site last week . While some cling to the coolness of the voters towards the Conservatives as a chink, others realise revulsion with Labour will overwhelm it. But this does not mean it is an observation without merit. After the financial crash of 12 months ago, the belief now emerging among Labour’s hard core is that, deep down, Cameron’s politics represent the opposite of what voters are looking for. They perceive a groundswell in favour of a politics that will seek to reduce the vast disparities of wealth, and curb the speculative culture of the bankers. This is not about clamping down on bonuses. It is about a platform of policies that speak to people’s anxieties about an angry, atomised society caused by rampant inequality. The corollary, that this is not and never will be a Tory agenda is hard to challenge. The more penetrating question is whether it can be a credible Labour one again.

Then there are those who present a cogent argument for a new Conservative government enjoying only the briefest of honeymoons. It’s all very well for David Cameron to talk glibly about doing more with less, they say, but on the ground that means ward closures, school mergers, public sector redundancies and no space for pet projects. Within a year of taking over, some argue that the next Conservative government will find itself deeply unpopular and appearing lacking in direction.

But the question remains whether the voters will listen to Labour as an alternative any time soon. Here, some dare to believe that, for all the current voter anger, Labour will not remain despised and mistrusted for anywhere near as long as the Tories were after 1997. The Conservatives were known as unkind but efficient, but when Black Wednesday happened they lost even that quality. Labour has historically been regarded as kind but inefficient, and arguably its big mistakes have been ones of delivery, impetus and presentation, rather than of compassion and belief. This holds out the possibility that the voters may not be left with a wholly negative impression of Labour, and will be prepared to accept their appeals for compassionate cuts more readily.

Some, particularly the swathes of voters repelled by Labour’s entanglement with Iraq, may find that analysis unduly optimistic. Then there is the question of how the party might emerge from what is likely to be a full-throated leadership contest, with some searching questions asked about fundamental direction. Nevertheless, the notion of a Labour Party rediscovering a language and politics of greater cohesion and equality which chimes with the public mood, as a Tory government mired in unpopular cuts struggles to set out its own vision, is not entirely implausible.

The spectacle of Brighton’s bars and seafront coffee shops alive with optimistic chatter about the future is not therefore quite so surprising. Very few Labour activists want their party to be defeated – it will mean their local MP vanquished in many cases – but now that defeat appears inevitable, the party seems to be anticipating the perks of opposition and the chance of regeneration it promises. Perhaps it is also beginning to look forward to rediscovering  an insurgent mentality denied by such an unusually long period of government.