From Builder to Soldier: Britain Succeeds When Working People Succeed

27 March

 

• Ed Miliband unveils the main theme of the campaign.

 

• The Labour battle bus isn’t all that it seems.

 

• The new leader will have to find language that encapsulates a broader electoral appeal.

 

 

‘THIS IS THE PLACE where all of the United Kingdom came together and showed the world what we can do.’ It wasn’t exactly a subtle message from Ed Miliband. He was getting his retaliation in first by firing the starting gun on Labour’s election campaign just days before David Cameron would go to the Palace and formally begin the race for Downing Street. The venue was London’s Olympic Park and clearly Miliband was hoping to associate himself with the success, patriotism and optimism of 2012. He had packed a large number of journalists, activists, and most of the Shadow Cabinet into a very small space 300ft above ground, in the pod of the Orbit – Sir Anish Kapoor’s sculpture-cum-observation tower. The structure’s contorted metal construction – which gave it the appearance of a dysfunctional helter-skelter – would probably have made a better metaphor for a general election which was going to bring all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. The UK, however, didn’t exactly come together on this occasion when extremely disgruntled visitors found they had been barred from the attraction until the Labour team had left the building.

I was there with BBC producer Dan Grant, whose cruel and unusual punishment for being resourceful and creative would be to spend six weeks ‘on the road’ with me following the Labour campaign from target seat to target seat across the UK. We had primarily wanted to give some new broadcasting equipment a dry run – and take a peek at Labour’s ‘battle bus’ which was being paraded for the first time, and on which we assumed we would be travelling. But it soon transpired that there were to be two buses. These were similar, but not the same.

Ed Miliband would be ensconced in one vehicle with his entourage and it would be used only to travel short distances between train stations and speech venues. The other coach would convey the broadcast media and the Press Association across the country. It had one advantage over the Labour leader’s coach – its facilities included a WC. But its lack of Labour politicians meant we would use the bus only fleetingly, usually when Ed Miliband deigned to pop on board for a chat. Instead, we would often anticipate which trains Miliband and his aides would be using, and then book tickets on the same service.

There was, however, a story to cover today, too – it was one of the mini-announcements with which we would become familiar. In this case a five per cent profit cap on big NHS contracts won by private sector companies. This small, but new announcement would be used to attract press interest, and then the Labour leader would re-announce existing but more significant policy, such as plans to fund 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more doctors in the NHS in England. A similar template would be applied to other policy areas.

But what was far more valuable on the cusp of the campaign proper was to hear Ed Miliband’s announcement of the theme for Labour’s forthcoming political contest. It, too, by now was familiar but was about to become far more prominent.

This election is not simply a choice between two different parties and two different leaders. But two different visions of our country. That Tory vision that says Britain succeeds when only a few at the top do well… Or a Labour vision based on the idea that Britain only succeeds when working people succeed. That’s why this election matters so much.

It formed just one paragraph in Ed Miliband’s speech but distilled his approach to the election. He wanted voters to think about who was on their side. In the jargon of his aides, he had been a ‘builder’ earlier in his leadership – reaching out for new support to construct a majority. But now with an economic recovery which didn’t appear to be spreading the benefits fairly, he was to be transformed in to a ‘soldier’ who would battle on behalf of those who were losing out. This was a recognition that the Conservatives had a solid lead on the economy which would be difficult to challenge head-on so now here was an attempt to change the terms of the debate. Political arguments should no longer simply be about who could best deliver growth, but about who should reap the rewards.

The message had taken the best part of a year to refine – especially the key phrase ‘Britain only succeeds when working people succeed’. Labour insiders had been worried that there had been a lack of clarity about what the party stood for – not just in the minds of the target voters it needed to convince, but even amongst its core support. And no wonder. There had been huge frustration at the party leader’s previous willingness to chop and change.

Initially, he had championed the ‘squeezed middle’ – his pollsters had liked the phrase as it had suggested broad appeal, and not simply a focus on the least well-off. It had even played well with Telegraph readers. But it had been squeezed out following a frankly embarrassing interview with John Humphrys on the BBC’s Today programme in November 2010 when Miliband appeared to have trouble defining exactly whom he had in mind. Then there had been the ‘Promise of Britain’ – which was supposed to be about the next generation doing better than the last. Labour’s pollsters said that once the idea had been explained to voters, it had proved powerful – but, unfortunately, they found the phrase itself meaningless. In June 2011, in what was unofficially referred to as a re-launch of Miliband’s leadership, he gave his ‘responsibility’ speech – stressing the need for responsibility both at the top and bottom of society. In turn this theme was subsumed in a wider message of ‘rebuilding Britain’ – a slogan that would be replaced at the 2012 conference by a new ‘One Nation’ narrative. This, in turn, was slowly smothered by the emerging ‘cost of living crisis’. This is when, at last, those around Ed Miliband felt the party had really broken through but Labour’s own polling suggested that around the turn of the year – January 2015 – the falling oil price was having a positive impact on family budgets, so the ‘crisis’ had become less resonant with key sections of the electorate.

There had, however, been an earlier recognition that a phrase which encapsulated a political attack would be inadequate as a general election slogan in any case, so work had already been undertaken to find new words that would sum up Labour values.

A transatlantic current flowed in to Labour’s thinking. Former Obama aide David Axelrod was appointed as a campaign strategist just over a year before the election. For all of his talk of standing up to the Leader of the Free World, Miliband was quite keen to engage one of the President’s former staffers. Axelrod had helped mastermind Barack Obama’s victory, first to be the Democrat nominee for the White House, then to be elected the 44th US President in 2008. He had gone on to advise him for more than two years in office and had returned for the successful 2012 re-election campaign.

Labour had wanted a ‘big name’ for their own campaign, following the Conservatives’ successful signing the previous year of Jim Messina, Obama’s former campaign manager. With his pedigree, ‘the Ax’ didn’t come cheap. Some insiders have suggested he was paid more than £300,000. And he didn’t come to Britain often. One insider told me:

He earned more in a month than I got in a year. He was a senior member of the team. I saw him in the office no more than twice.

Instead he dispensed his advice in weekly telephone calls. But he was ideologically compatible with Labour.

He had initially propelled Obama towards the White House on the promise of change, but also of bringing the country together – a not dissimilar approach to Labour’s abandoned ‘One Nation’ theme. But in 2012 he had changed tack – majoring instead on tackling economic unfairness, or what some sections of the conservative press in the US dubbed ‘class warfare.’ He had been influenced by a book co-authored by the Labour, and Democrat, pollster Stan Greenberg and straight-talking strategist James Carville.

Both men had been key figures in the ‘war room’ which had overseen Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign more than 20 years previously and which will always be associated with the well-known political catchphrase ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Their new work was entitled It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! and it chronicled the falling living standards and insecurity from which a broad swathe of the American workforce had suffered even before the financial crash struck. It highlighted growing income inequality – while the majority worked longer hours for fewer rewards. And it exhorted Obama to take up the cudgels on their behalf.

In 2012 it had been clear who Obama had been for – and what he was against. In other words, he had successfully gone from being a ‘builder’ to a ‘soldier.’ In a rare meeting with Miliband in London in May 2014, Axelrod had been critical of what some in the Labour Party had described as the series of ‘retail offers’ or ‘small scale bribes’ in the absence of an effective overarching story. According to Patrick Wintour’s account of the meeting in the Guardian (3 June 2015), he had characterised the party’s approach as ‘vote Labour, win a microwave’.

So with Axelrod’s input, Labour’s strategists spent the spring and summer months in heated debate over what slogan might encapsulate the party’s appeal. The American ‘middle class’ were substituted for British ‘working people’. One attempt at a new phrase – ‘Putting Working People First’ – had the benefit of clarity, but was felt to be too divisive. In a speech to the Blairite Policy Network think tank in July 2014 Miliband tried out various phrases – he talks about ‘people succeeding’ and ‘Britain succeeding.’ He also highlighted what he saw as the ‘broken link between work and reward’ – which could have been lifted from Greenberg and Carville’s call to action. What he said in the speech about ‘reforming markets’ was tested in a focus group in the marginal Harlow seat in Essex – but voters simply assumed he was going to interfere with their street stalls.

Axelrod assisted with language and definition. Finally, the phrase ‘Britain Succeeds when Working People Succeed’ was agreed. Obama’s former aide liked the fact it mentioned people, and the idea of ‘success’ implied that Labour would grow the economy. But above all he approved of the link between an individual’s self-interest and the country’s well-­being. This elevated Labour above mere traders in free microwave ovens, in his view.

Miliband used the phrase in anger in his ‘zero-zero’ speech in November that year – when he was fighting back after the failed coup against his leadership. In a reference to attempts to undermine him he said: ‘I am willing to put up with whatever is thrown at me, in order to fight for you.’ Then he went on to denounce both the insecurity of zero hours contracts and corporations which pay ‘zero’ tax. He saw real substance behind the phrase which is why he subsequently insisted it wasn’t just a slogan. But it certainly had been designed with that purpose in mind. As one insider said, it could go on a banner in the way that ‘a cost of living crisis’ could not. Though it would have to be a rather big banner. Or, in truth, a metaphorical one.

And now it would become a key theme of the campaign, and would almost always be juxtaposed with an attack on the Conservatives for standing up for those at the top. Miliband would subsequently use it in his brief opening address at the only TV debate of the campaign in which he and David Cameron would appear together – and it would be prominent on the cover of Labour’s manifesto.

But not everyone had been chuffed with it. One adviser said it gave the impression of a ‘big offer’ to voters but in fact concealed a ‘small, scratchy offer’ which didn’t speak adequately to the concerns of those in the middle. And the emphasis on ‘working people’ would also focus attention on Labour’s policies towards those who employed many of them – British businesses.