Winning in the South
March 2008
I have a strong memory of the evening Labour took control of Southampton City Council in 1984, to become, at that time the only council in Labour hands south of London. No-one, including Labour Party Headquarters had told anyone in the media that it was possible for Labour to win anything in the south, so they simply ignored it on the night. ‘Surprise result in Southampton, and now back to Birmingham’ was the one and only acknowledgment of the result on television that night.
The culture of the south, you might say, simply assumes that people don’t vote Labour. And yet many of the pressing issues in the south – affordable housing in a market that has spiralled out of reach of most first time buyers in the south-east – public transport in a landscape of longer commuter journeys and hyper-congestion on the roads – skills in a high employment but high tech regional economy – are all Labour issues. And if you are poor in the south, you are relatively poorer than elsewhere in the UK – national benefit rates mean that tax credit, for example kicks in at about 90% of median income – but in the south it is just 83%: and the cost of food, housing and transport are all higher in the south than elsewhere in the UK.
Furthermore, there are pockets of extreme poverty in the south sitting alongside areas of great opulence. Perhaps the debate about transfer of wealth in the UK ought in the south to be as much about transfer wealth within the south east and away from the region and towards the rest of the UK. But even many of those who are not poor and who perhaps do not respond to the image of Labour’s traditional message to them are moving towards the idea in the south that individual aspiration only goes so far if it is surrounded by collective failure of the housing market, of the environment and of community health and safety.
Labour has done vastly better in the south in recent years than was the case even in 1992, when only about ten MPs were returned for Labour outside London in the whole area south of the Wash to Bristol. Winning those extra seats has been achieved largely by combining Labour’s more traditional messages with those that couch aspiration in terms of the collective provision that underpins it. Labour’s housing message for example, has become and should remain much wider than building publicly funded homes for rent – especially in a region where over a third of all first –time buyers now receive parental help with the mortgage.
And finally there is one other thing which has nothing to do with values or messages – and that is organisation. Fighting for votes when the default is not to vote Labour is always hard. There are virtually no places in the south and south east where there is a ‘reserve pool’ of votes waiting to be marched into the polling station, and yet, twenty or thirty Labour seats in the south makes the difference between government and opposition. Resources to keep the south Labour can make all the difference – at least until the day when the culture of the south has changed sufficiently so that ‘and now back to Birmingham’ is a thing of the past.
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