Labour will not recover unless it learns these five lessons from history

Oppositions are only credible if they can ditch bad policies and grasp the appeal of the other side

The creation of a commission, by “Labour Together”, to analyse why their party has lost four successive general elections is an excellent idea. Much as we Conservatives might wish our opponents to stick with unelectable leaders and policies, we know that this is not good for the country. A well-functioning democracy needs more than one party that could realistically provide a government.

The last time a Conservative government won re-election by an increased margin after nearly a decade in power was in 1959, under Harold Macmillan. This was followed by a serious study entitled Must Labour Lose?, which helped persuade Labour’s leaders to change their approach. Five years later they were back in power – a warning to today’s Tories never to succumb to complacency.

The findings of Must Labour Lose? made clear the extent to which the image of the party was “increasingly obsolete”. A comparable exercise was published by Lord Ashcroft in 2005, entitled Smell the Coffee, analysing why voters had yet again rejected the Conservative Party. In both cases, highly uncomfortable findings were embraced by a party hungry to recover the ability to win.

While there is no one formula for an opposition to return quickly to office – otherwise I might have discovered it in my own term as opposition leader

– a willingness to listen to dispassionate analysis and act on it is common to all the successful cases in post-war history. There have been six occasions since 1945 when an opposition has returned to government after a substantial spell – more than one parliament – out of it. These were in 1951, 1964, 1970, 1979, 1997 and 2010. Despite the great variety of policies and events over that time, there appear to be at least five factors common in all these cases.

The first is an appreciation of the strengths and appeal of the other side. As we struggled to compete with Tony Blair, we spent many hours discussing his success and secretly admired him as a class act. Yet I am willing to wager that many of the possible candidates for Labour’s leadership are utterly baffled by Boris Johnson, and even more as to why traditional Labour voters deserted to him. They have behaved as if he has no redeeming features at all, and as long as they believe that they will not be able to counter him.

Secondly, recovering oppositions stop making excuses and recognise they are the problem. The initial response of Labour’s current leadership was to blame Brexit for their defeat. But the prominence of Brexit and the widespread support for it was hardly a surprise. One of their number, Richard Burgon, even blamed the BBC, evidencing a total detachment from reality. The truth is that if you lose heavily against a party that has just been through a pretty shambolic period and changed its leader twice, it’s probably your fault.

A third common characteristic is the ditching of outdated policies and the acceptance of many of the actions of the incumbent administration. The Tories adopted the welfare state and NHS before their return in 1951 and Labour acquiesced in much of Thatcherism to pave the way for their victory in 1997. For Labour today, there are obvious candidates for deletion. For instance, no successful centre-left government in the world is plunging down the blind alley of nationalisation.

But this time there will be an even greater than normal change with which an opposition has to come to terms. By the time of the next election, Brexit will have happened long ago. A new framework of British trade and fresh ideas for promoting enterprise in the UK will be in force or underway, for good or ill. Labour will need to make both a big policy switch and an even bigger psychological leap to showing how it will make the most of Brexit. This is a far greater challenge than it was for Conservatives to accept the minimum wage or Labour to go along with council house sales.

The fourth factor present in all six historical cases, is that a successful opposition offers reassurance to sceptical voters. Blair was the master of giving comfort to wavering Tories, just as Harold Wilson was before him. Even Margaret Thatcher went to great lengths before her first victory to reassure floating voters that there would be no return to a three-day week horror – putting noted Tory Wets in charge of relations with trade unions. Voters know that changing governments is always a risk, and need to hear that previous mistakes will not be repeated. Given that they associate Labour governments with running out of money, presenting them with the biggest set of spending promises ever seen in an election was most unlikely to work well.

A fifth crucial ingredient has been that the opposition has successfully associated itself with modernity, riding the waves of futuristic ideas. Churchill advocated the bonfire of wartime controls, Wilson promised policies “forged in the white heat of the technological revolution” and Cameron adopted policies on climate change, overseas development and same-sex marriage that underlined the huge change in his party.

The combination of our fourth and fifth factors – reassurance coupled with modernity – has been the defining appeal of all six of these incoming governments, usually after ruthlessly employing the other three. Just think of the three Labour leaders who have won majorities – and there are only three – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. In each case the voters felt the security and economy of the country were safe in their hands, and yet they would also move things on after a long period of Conservative rule.

Labour cannot be reassuring with a leader who refuses to support the use of armed force, and can never be modern without appreciating that capital is now mobile and can leave any country where it isn’t welcome. In Jeremy Corbyn, the party managed to find a leader who was the exact opposite of what experience would indicate it required.

Only one of the three electorally successful Labour leaders is alive today – Tony Blair – and his party would do well to listen to his advice last week that “quasi-revolutionary socialism never appealed to traditional Labour voters and never will”. If they heeded his words and studied the lessons of recent decades, they would choose a centre-left leader and soon be a formidable force again. It might be the good fortune of Boris Johnson, himself a student of history, that it is looking like his opponents are not.