Fabian Review www.fabians.org.uk Spring 2012 HOW LABOUR WINS Mapping the routes to the next majority The quarterly magazine of the Fabian Society Volume 124 no 1 £4.95 THE FABIAN SUMMER CONFERENCE Featuring a Q&A with Ed Miliband LABOUR'S next majority 30th June, 10am doors open for an 11am start finishing at around 5pm Millbank Media Centre, Ground Floor, Millbank Tower, 21–24 Millbank, London, SW1P 4QP Tickets for members and concessions are just £10 (£15 for non-members with six months free membership) Come and join the Fabians for our Summer Conference featuring a Question and Answer session with Ed Miliband. Debate Labour’s electoral strategy and put forward your take on some of the ideas we’ve explored in this issue of the Fabian Review. To book your tickets head to www.fabians.org.uk or call 020 7227 4900 EDITORIAL Image: Adrian Teal Age-old lessons Andrew Harrop asks if ongoing public support for pensioner benefits offers the left a way out of its welfare impasse If the polls are to be believed, benefits for pensioners (of which the the poorest get more – which the coali- cutting welfare is very popular. YouGov much-castigated winter fuel payment tion is busy unpicking though its tax reports that fewer than a third of and free bus pass make up just a tiny credit cuts. Labour voters and just 3 per cent of fraction). On top there is a generous A shared system, where every family Conservatives oppose it. This places the means-tested system which has done is a recipient, could open the way for left in a terrible bind, not least because much to reduce pensioner poverty. improved provision for the poorest in the public offers no consistent message Our pension system has strong public a way the public might tolerate. With when it comes to what should be cut. support because it enshrines what in the everyone in receipt it would become People seem to resent money being paid Fabian office we term ‘lifecycle welfare’: possible to introduce automatic earnings to both rich and poor: a large majority contributions ‘from us, to us’ over time, indexation without great controversy, support stripping child benefit from rather than ‘from us, to them’ today. The just as Labour did with pensions. In top-rate tax payers, but people most whole system is sustained by automatic today’s climate of opinion, this is surely want benefit cuts for the unemployed indexation policies, which mean that the only route to preventing the living and lone parents. pensioner living standards rise in line standards of the poor families slipping The public tell pollsters they want with the rest of the population’s. further away from the mainstream. welfare cut because it creates depend- The left needs to draw on this in Is any of this affordable? Well, we ency. But the logic of cuts is a more framing a response to its welfare can agree on design principles, without tightly-targeted system, available to impasse. We need ideas that breathe specifying the price-tag. In tough times ever less numerous and less popular new life into contributory ‘lifecycle’ new welfare entitlements might need groups of ‘outsiders’, with stricter welfare by making an updated offer of to be substitutes not supplements. entitlement rules which in turn create social insurance for when people need However substantial savings on welfare greater disincentives to work and save. it most. This could include support for are possible if there is radical change On the other hand, a more universal the costs of childcare and eldercare or more widely. Big savings can come if we system that removes disincentives and an adequate salary replacement when reduce the number of workless families gives everyone a stake would almost first unemployed. by creating jobs; if we raise low pay to certainly be more expensive. Next we must blur the boundaries scale back in-work welfare; if we tackle Perhaps some of the lessons from between universal and ‘safety net’ wel- our public health crisis so people can old-age welfare can be applied to the fare, just as has been achieved with state work longer and retire later; and if rest of social security. Pensioners are pensions. Labour should develop plans we restructure the housing market to the most popular group of welfare to turn Iain Duncan Smith’s ‘universal reduce the costs of rents. recipients – as George Osborne found credit’ into an entitlement that binds All that is possible, but it will mean out to his political cost when he de- in the vast majority, for example by the left must embrace a radical state livered his recent Budget – and the absorbing child benefit and childcare activism aimed at building a different state pension system now combines tax relief within it. The effect would economy. Without economic reform, a careful blend of means-testing and be to realise Gordon Brown’s original welfare will always just be sticking universalism. Half of all British welfare concept of ‘progressive universalism’ plaster. Little wonder the public say spending goes on non means-tested – where everyone gets something but they hate it. Spring 2012 Fabian Review 1 CHART 1: Unemployment Percentage 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 South West South East East of England East Midlands United Kingdom Scotland Wales North West West Midlands Yorkshire and The Humber London North East CONTENTS CHART 2: Public Sector Job Losses as a % of Total Employment (to 2017) Percentage P3 “LABOUR’S NEXT MAJORITY IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF P8 “THE BRITISH ELECTORATE WILL DECIDE WHEN THEY’RE ALL OF US” GOING3.1 TO2.9 LISTEN2.7 TO WHAT2.5 WE2.3 HAVE2.1 TO SAY”1.9 1.7 1.5 North East Yorkshire and the Humber P11 “EVEN THOUGH MOST PEOPLE THINK THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING A BAD JOB OF MANAGING THE P15 “THE AVERAGE WORKER IN A TORY HELD SEAT IS North West ECONOMY, ONLY ONE IN FIVE THINK EDS MILIBAND AND SOME 15.6 PER CENT BETTER OFF THAN THE AVERAGE BALLS WOULD DO BETTER WORKER IN A LABOUR HELD SEAT” West Midlands What’s the way for Labour to return to power? The Fabian Review London investigates the possible winning coalitions and what they mean South West for Labour politics LaBoUR’s NEXT maJoRITY 11 Which voters and how to 21 Allow organisers to organise East Midlands 3 Labour’s next majority win them Caroline Badley Marcus A. Roberts Tom Mludzinski South East 4 Achieving a progressive majority 14 Labour’s men have been left BOOKS through a progressive alliance behind 22 The liminal left East of England Neal Lawson Kirsty McNeill Jonathan Rutherford 5 Labour’s missing fi ve million 15 The Fabian Essay: The Tory Paul Hunter ‘feelgood factor’ THE FABIAN SOCIETY 6 The many, not the few Duncan Weldon 23 The Spring in review Tessa Jowell 18 The core vote, swing vote 23 Noticeboard 8 The Fabian Interview: fallacy 23 Listings Spring 2012 Miliband’s Mandelson Hopi Sen CHART 243: HouseholdsFabian Quiz on Low to Modest Incomes Mary Riddell Editor: Ed Wallis General Secretary: Andrew HarropPercentageRESEARCH Deputy General Secretary: Senior Researcher: Natan Doron Printed by: DG3 Marcus Roberts Research Assistant: Andrea Giesecke London E14 9TE 40 35 30 Research25 Intern:20 Linea Heinonen15 10 PARTNERSHIPS AND EVENTS Designed by: Soapbox Head of Partnerships and Events: MEMBERSHIP www.soapbox.co.uk Olly Parker Membership Officer: Giles Wright FABIAN REVIEW Senior Programme Manager, Local Societies Officer: Deborah Stoate North East Fabian Review is the quarterly ISSN 1356 1812 Partnerships and Events: journal of the Fabian Society. Like [email protected] Katharina Klebba FINANCE AND OPERATIONS all publications of the Fabian Society, Programme Manager, Partnerships Head of Finance and Operations: Yorkshire and the Humber it represents not the collective view FABIAN SOCIETY and Events: James Hallwood Phil Mutero of the Society, but only the views of the 11 Dartmouth Street individual writers. The responsibility London SW1H 9BN EDITORIAL FaBIaN WomEN’s NETWoRK East Midlands of the Society is limited to approving Telephone 020 7227 4900 Head of Editorial: Ed Wallis Seema Malhotra its publications as worthy of Fax 020 7976 7153 Media and Communications Manager: [email protected] consideration within the Labour [email protected] Richard Speight Wales movement. www.fabians.org.uk 2 Fabian Review Spring 2012 West Midlands North West South West UK Scotland East of England South East London LABOUR’S NEXT MAJORITY LABOUR'S next majority This issue of the Fabian Review in- voters. The project will consider voter Marcus A. Roberts troduces a major new Fabian project responses and model potential sup- is Deputy General – Labour’s Next Majority – which will port in terms of demographic groups, Secretary of the explore three broad propositions on socio-economic groups and geographic Fabian Society how an election can be won: concentrations of voters. We’ll consider how all of this plays out in terms of • the Progressive Majority theory that the party’s policy proposals and public One day Labour will win again. When emphasises the importance of Liberal messaging, and we’ll look at what this that happens, it will be because the Democrat, Green, Nationalist and means in terms of organising choices party has changed from 2010. When other voters in winning, outlined on – like considering the differing impact Labour wins again it will be because page four by Neal Lawson, on turnout of leaflets, canvassing and it has a strategy that doesn’t just deal • the ‘Five Million Votes’ argument voter registration. with the things we feel comfortable that only one million of Labour’s But electoral strategies can’t just be talking about – ‘fairness’, international lost five million votes since 1997 about parroting focus groups – after development, the NHS – but the things went to the Tories, as Paul Hunter all the way you win an election has a that Labour has traditionally strug- discusses on page five, huge impact on the way you govern.