Labour Pains
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
6.TH E NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ELECTION CAMPAIGNS LABOUR PAINS GeoffMungham INTRODUCTION The reasons behind the Labour Party’s poor performance in the 1999 Assembly election campaign are not hard to find.Above all,th e campaign was burdened – some might say disfigured – by the legacy ofthe party’s second bruising and divisive leadership contest between Alun Michael and Rhodri Morgan.This worked in several significant ways,wh ich are discussed below. A POORLY PREPARED CAMPAIGN The leadership contest – together with other events (like the internal party battles over ‘twinning’a nd Assembly candidate selection) – had made the previous eighteen months difficult ones for Labour in Wales.P reoccupied by its own troubles,t he party was poorly prepared for an election campaign.Its campaign had been started without a manifesto – one was not to appear until nearly a month after the campaign launch and a mere three weeks before polling day.Nor had there been much discussion within the party about the manifesto.T he document,when it finally surfaced,was an anodyne affair, looking,as one Labour Assembly candidate put it,‘like a watered down version ofour 1997 general election manifesto’.The title ofthe manifesto, Working Hard for Wales – which became Labour’s campaign theme – was thought to be worthy but unexciting.On e earlier suggestion for a campaign logo, Standing up for Wa/es ,might have been a more inspired choice,given the effective play the nationalists were to make by presenting themselves as ‘The party ofWales’an d Labour as ‘The party ofLondon’. The National Assembly Election Campaigns 105 Further,t here was little evidence that Labour’s Assembly candidates had much opportunity to spend time thinking about election policy and strategy. Delays and arguments about candidate selection (another by-product ofthe Michael–M organ contest) had meant that the final slate ofcandidates was not agreed until a month before Labour launched its election campaign. Between the finalizing ofthe list and the start ofthe campaign,only one meeting (a day-and-a-halfa ffair in a hotel in Merthyr) was arranged for Labour candidates to discuss how best to fight the campaign and what issues to fight it on. THE FAILURE OF THE ‘KEY SEAT’STRATEGY A planned ‘key-seat’strategy (modelled on the one Labour had developed so successfully for the 1997 election) failed to materialize.E arly in 1998 Welsh Labour MPs had met with party officials to sketch out a strategy.Three seats in particular – Cardiff Central,C ardiff North and the Vale ofGlamorgan – all marginal seats in the South Wales Central Region,were identified as needing extra support and resources.The new electoral arithmetic meant that ifL abour were to lose one,o r even two,o fthese seats,it would be unlikely to pick up list places in this region. But ifL abour began the campaign with the idea ofa key-seats strategy, this rapidly unravelled,to be replaced by a key- seat strategy.As the campaign rolled on,and as it looked as if Michael’s own prospects for a seat (as top of Labour’s list in Mid and West Wales) might be under threat,the focus of attention turned to Labour’s fight against Plaid Cymru in this region.Yet even without this ‘distraction’,the ‘marginals’st ill had problems.T he centrally produced election material was often slow in being delivered,there were arguments over its content,pledges ofextra help were not always kept and a promised full telephone canvass was never carried out. DISAFFECTED ACTIVISTS AND RESENTFUL LABOUR SUPPORTERS Labour went into the election campaign with a party in which much ofthe grass-roots membership was disaffected and demoralized.There were two principal factors at play here.F irst,the long-drawn-out battle over ‘twinning’ in many constituencies had sapped energies,serio usly delayed candidate selection and left many party activists angry and demotivated.Second,many 106 Contemporary Wales – 14 ofthese same activists – along with a broad swathe ofthe party membership – had supported Morgan in the leadership contest and felt he had been cheated out ofthe prize.As a result,the very people the party depended upon to run the local election machines joined the campaign as reluctant warriors – if they joined in at all. Those disaffected party activists who did campaign,quickly ran into deeply resentful party supporters.One all-too-obvious leadership hangover was the hostility many Labour canvassers met on the doorsteps (or on the telephone) over the way the party was seen to have treated Morgan.As one party worker put it after an evening’s door-knocking in what had traditionally been a safe Labour seat,‘I was taken aback by the strength of people’s feelings.There was no point in trying to talk about the issues.People just wanted to have a go at us about the leadership thing.It cost us very badly.’ Anti-Michael feeling led some candidates to try to rethink their tactics, wanting to put as much distance as they safely could between themselves and the party leadership.T his was especially true for those who had supported Morgan for the leadership and who now felt at risk from the backlash from his defeat.Candidates like these were in an impossible position.They recognized that Michael,as party leader,h ad to have a prominent place in the campaign,would have to feature on Labour’s election material and be expected to make frequent media appearances.Yet they also knew that the more ‘intrusive’M ichael was,t he more it simply served to remind people of what they saw as the leadership ‘fix’. PLAID CYMRU AND THE LABOUR LEADERSHIP LEGACY The success Plaid Cymru enjoyed in the campaign was,t o a large extent,built upon the legacy ofthe Michael–M organ leadership battle.Alt hough every poll suggested Plaid would be able to turn out its core vote,it was equally clear that Labour would be struggling to enthuse its traditional supporters. Many had always been indifferent to the Assembly ‘project’.To stir their interest and to persuade the sceptics would require the full commitment of party grass-roots workers and activists.Bu t for reasons we have already discussed,too many constituencies found difficulty in getting party workers out in force. Again,Plaid’s clever rebranding ofitselfa s ‘The Party ofWales’wo rked so successfully because it was able to brand Labour as ‘The Party ofLondon’. Labelling Labour in this way would simply not have been credible had The National Assembly Election Campaigns 107 Morgan been Labour’s leader,a s Plaid were well aware.Iro nically Morgan, always tagged as a ‘crypto-nationalist’by Michael’s team during the leadership contest,was the one person who could have checked the surge to Plaid.The HTV/NOP poll (12 February 1999) was clear evidence that a Morgan-led Labour Party would have produced an election day ‘bonus’fo r Labour ofclose to 10 per cent,largely gained at Plaid’s expense.Bu t ‘The Party ofLondon’ch arge resonated with voters for the reason that Michael was seen,whether fairly or unfairly,as London’s creature.A nd if,a s Robert Worcester (a leading pollster and founder ofthe MORI polling agency) claims,vo ters increasingly identify with parties through their leaders, then Labour was burdened with a further problem.D afydd Wigley,then Plaid leader,co nsistently polled more strongly than Michael when voters were asked who would make the best leader for Wales. ISSUES? WHAT ISSUES? The salience ofthe leadership contest legacy,which found expression in the ways described earlier,ma de for an election campaign where policy issues were largely pushed to one side.Ap art from a brief spat between Plaid and the other parties over Plaid’s stance on ‘independence’(wh ich seemed to leave most voters unmoved) and a longer-run debate over Objective One-matched funding (an issue the wider public found it difficult to engage with),too often media attention became fixated on matters concerning Labour’s leadership. This was particularly true ofthe London-based press, which dominates the newspaper market in Wales.Their reports focused almost exclusively on Michael’s prospects in Mid and West Wales and what they liked to call ‘the rising tide ofWelsh nationalism’. What was clearly lacking,wh ere Labour was concerned,was a persuasive leadership ofa kind able to offer the electorate a vision ofWales to which the voters could respond.Michael,fo r all his many qua1ities,was never able to do this.T here were two in Labour’s ranks who could have done so.On e – Ron Davies – had lost the leadership through his own foolishness.The other – Rhodri Morgan – had had a glimpse ofthe leadership but was,in the end, effectively cheated out ofit. POST-ELECTION PROSPECTS There was naturally much speculation after the election about ‘mould- breaking’in Welsh politics.The surge in support for Plaid and Labour’s loss 108 Contemporary Wales – 14 ofsome ofits heartland seats to the nationalists seemed to some to signal a fundamental change in the political ecology ofWales.This judgement may prove to be premature.T here are a number ofreasons for thinking that the 1999 Assembly election results may not be repeated next time around. With the forced removal ofAlun Michael,L abour finally has a leader,in Rhodri Morgan,who is genuinely popular and who can clearly reach out to voters across the political spectrum.His dominance has also been helped by the departure ofDafydd Wigley,t he one politician in Wales capable of matching the popular affection and regard in which Morgan is held.Wigley’s going must count as a severe blow to Plaid,and his successor will find it difficult to fill the gap.Lab our has also – taking its cue from Plaid – taken steps to repackage itselfa s a distinctively Welsh version ofLabour UK.And, crucially,Labour has changed its internal rules to avoid another election contest using an electoral college system open to what Morgan himselfo nce memorably described as ‘genetically modified balloting’.