Prescribing Blairism today is mathematically illiterate

Seumas Milne had an interesting wee article in The Guardian yesterday, which rather backs up my recent blog post about Labour:

The fallout from that mistake was clear last week: in the haemorrhage of votes to the Scottish National party, Ukip and the Greens, and the reluctance of many working-class voters to turn out at all. […] [T]he idea that New Labour-style politics would have fixed the problem is clearly delusional. Would Blairism have won back voters from the SNP, which had positioned itself to Labour’s left and campaigned against austerity, or the Greens, or the anti-immigration Ukip, many of whose voters are pro-nationalisation and state intervention, and want protection from corporate globalisation? Where exactly is the centre ground between the SNP, Greens, Ukip and middle-income English voters?

I thought it would be interesting to look at the numbers behind this. I consider Scotland to be a lost cause for Labour, so I’ll concentrate on England and Wales in the following.

Last week’s results were as follows: CON 329, GRN 1, LAB 231, LD 7, OTH 1, PC 3, UKIP 1.

Let’s assume that a successful Blairite strategy would make 10% of Tory voters swing to Labour, but that it would also make 5% of current Labour voters switch to the Green, another 5% to UKIP, and another 5% would go apathetic and stay home on the couch. The 2020 result would then look like this: CON 312, GRN 1, LAB 241, LD 12, OTH 1, PC 4, UKIP 2.

On the other hand, what if a new Labour leader instead decided to copy Nicola Sturgeon’s programme and style, adding 10% to the turnout (all Labour) and taking back half of UKIP’s votes (the half that aren’t xenophobic but just crave a genuine working-class voice), but losing 5% of voters to the Tories? The result of this would be CON 266, GRN 1, LAB 299, LD 4, OTH 1, PC 2 (in other words a clear Labour win).

Of course the swings above have been chosen more or less randomly, but not unfairly — I think getting 10% of Tory voters to vote Labour just because they had a handsome leader with Tory policies is very generous.

It’s very clear Seumas Milne is right. The Blairites cannot win the 2020 election, because the crucial voters that Labour needs are the ones that have deserted the party. 2020 is not 1997, when the political landscape looked completely different, and prescribing the old medicine will simply not work any more.

PS: In case any Labour person reading this doesn’t believe they cannot win Scotland back, the two scenarios above would look as follows north of the border: With Blairite swings Labour would retain their single seat but the SNP would win the remaining Tory seat; however, the alternative scenario sees Labour taking one seat from the SNP. I do realise that’s an increase of 100%, but it’s hardly going to determine whether the UK gets a Labour Prime Minister.