Policy Research Media Morhamburn

As a football fan, the accusation that a manager is ‘tactically naïve’ is an oft used, if often misunderstood accusation from disgruntled fans. It usually indicates that things are not going well, and that from the outside at least, those who find themselves in a position to do something about it are unable, unwilling or both.

That senior Labour politicians are now actively encouraging voters in certain areas to tactically vote possibly says a lot about how the campaign has gone for Labour.

The ‘bigot’ comment, the car crash at the poster launch, and the general consensus that Gordon Brown, while not being bad in the debates certainly hasn’t been good, have all left the Labour campaign feeling like it just never really got going.

And while politicians will look at a disastrous set of polls and tell you with a straight face that ‘polls are sometimes wrong’ and that they firmly believe they will win, a direct appeal to voters to tactically vote against your main opponent rather than for your own party is surely an admission that things don’t look good.

While Gordon Brown may be relatively new to the PM post, he has been effectively No.2 in the UK for the last 13 years – and this great albatross of incumbency has weighted heavily upon Labour in this campaign.

It is not easy to sell disgruntled voters a message of change and/or renewal when you have been in charge for so long – because you will always be vulnerable to that simple but effective question ‘so, why haven’t you already done it?’

How does a party refute this? Yes, if it has a new leader it can get some distance, but Brown is so intimately linked to the entire New Labour government and to Tony Blair’s premiership that this has really not worked; this problem of association is of course only magnified when you accept that the biggest issue in this campaign – the economy – was his portfolio for ten years.

Once the electorate decide that change is what’s needed, the incumbent is fighting a losing battle.

However, another football cliché that could serve Labour well is that every team loses, its how a team reacts to defeat that determines their quality. In other words, this coming defeat, which looks like it will be reasonably narrow, need not be disastrous if they can react in the right manner; some necessary introspection, a clear focus on direction and probably a new leader, and then they may just have to wait.

Because when the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King reportedly said that winning this election may be a curse, Labour should take solace. A new government, with a wafer-thin majority (if at all) imposing stringent economic measures should not be so tough a nut to crack in 5 years time, than selling a message of change after 13 years in the job is proving to be now.

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