Labour has held Copeland in every general election since 1935 and Stoke-on-Trent Central since its creation in 1950. No governing party has won a byelection since 1982, and Theresa May is quickly cementing a reputation for poor leadership while her government presides over one of the worst crises the National Health Service has ever faced. Against this backdrop, there is no good reason why Labour shouldn’t be on course to win both byelections convincingly.
In many respects, both constituencies represent some of the biggest challenges facing “Brexit Britain”. A huge majority of voters in Cumbria and the Potteries chose to leave the European Union. The economic and technological forces of globalisation that have weakened the social bonds of communities like these have also shaken traditional party political bonds, too. This isn’t a challenge unique to the Labour party or to the UK: across the world centre-left parties have taken a hammering at the ballot box because they have struggled to respond to an industrial revolution that is sweeping the globe at an unprecedented pace. A failure to come up with answers to the biggest worries facing voters could leave Labour facing a battle on two fronts at the next general election: to keep its traditional heartlands, while reaching out to constituencies that have rejected Labour in favour of the Conservatives over successive general elections.
We have seen for the past six years the consequences of Tory government, but we are yet to match them in the polls. Given the scale of these challenges, this is not the time for people who want to see a Labour government leave the pitch.
In spite of attempts by successive Tory leaders to rebrand their party as a “party of the workers”, committed to the “big society” and now the “shared society”, voters know that these woolly sentiments rarely translate into action under Conservative governments. It is a reflection of how unconvincing the Labour alternative has been during the past decade that people have looked to the Conservatives as the least worst option. Without credible alternatives to these testing economic, employment and social challenges, voters in the UK could follow those in the US and the European continent in abandoning mainstream politics altogether for the siren calls of the kind of ugly populism presented by the likes of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
Trump’s populist revolution against the political establishment has recreated one of America’s oldest and greatest political parties in his own image. Like him, we could play to people’s worst fears and instincts. We could blame foreigners for our problems and stoke anti-immigration sentiment. We could lead people to believe that Britain should become more protectionist and isolationist. We could be indifferent to autocratic countries like Russia bullying democratic countries along their borders. And, of course, we could bemoan the mainstream media and other bastions of liberal democracy as enemies of the people. But that is not a Labour response.
Labour was led to our second worst defeat in history in 2015, but we still managed to win the support of people in Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent. We shouldn’t be debating whether we can hold seats like these; we should be planning to win seats to a form a government.
This isn’t the time to walk away from politics. Those of us who want to see a genuine alternative to Trump and Farage have to roll our sleeves up and get stuck into the battle of ideas.
Wes Streeting is the Labour MP for Ilford North
