The purpose of understanding

The regional divide seems likely to widen, and not just because many public-sector cuts are still to come. Recent by-elections suggest that the decline in Liberal Democrat support will accentuate the gap by widening the Conservative lead in most southern seats and (to a greater extent) the Labour lead in the north. By forging a budget-cutting coalition with the Tories, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has damaged his party’s prospects in post-industrial northern towns.

In the 2010 election the Liberal Democrats got 16% of the vote in one such seat, Rotherham. In a 2012 by-election they got just 2% of the vote there. The UK Independence Party, which won 6% of the vote in 2010, came second with 22%, thus showing that its voters are not, as widely thought, exclusively found in the south. A right-wing party without the baggage of a Thatcherite past may complicate things further for northern Tories.

And in various practical ways the regional split is self-reinforcing. Previous successes mean the parties have their ground troops—activists, councillors and constituency MPs—in the wrong places. In 2010, for example, there were about as many Labour members in the five Manchester seats as in the 18 constituencies that make up Essex. The Conservatives have not one councillor in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield.

But some way to surmount the problem has to be found if either party is to get a respectable absolute majority. Though they will fight hard over seats in London and the Midlands—regions which have some of the post-industrial pallor of the urban north and some of the private-sector fizzle of the wider south—neither party thinks gains in those regions alone can win it an absolute majority.

The best way for a party to get into the other’s heartland may be to target the changing patterns of work that have perpetuated the split. Mr Green talks of breaking Labour’s grasp on Wirral politics by replacing monolithic provision of social services with a less statist political economy of “mutuals, co-operatives and co-production.” Other Conservatives point approvingly to the government’s moves to curb trade-union power. Labour, in turn, identifies a need to adapt to a larger private-sector workforce. Rowenna Davis, a broadcaster and Labour councillor (who has written for The Economist), points to the party’s moves to encourage companies to pay employees a “living wage” higher than the basic minimum wage.

Such strategies may bear fruit in the long-term. Looking to the 2015 election, the tactics are simpler: show up. The Conservatives have hosted a cabinet meeting in Leeds and included a number of northern seats—Wirral South and Berwick-upon-Tweed, for example—on their list of targets worth serious resources. David Skelton, who will run a pro-Conservative campaign group focused on the north, cites the attention that Michael Heseltine lavished on Liverpool when in Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet as an example for the party today. The former deputy prime minister still has “demigod” status in the city, according to local Tories.

Mr Denham (a close ally of Ed Miliband, the Labour leader) has prepared a detailed report on improving the party’s standing in the south. His practical prescriptions have much in common with those voiced by Conservative activists in the north. Northern Conservatives and southern Labourites agree that their parties must repudiate the labels “Tory south” and “Labour north”. Both groups want their party leaders to talk more about their region: Mr Denham urges shadow cabinet members to cite Southampton, Reading, or Exeter in their speeches; Mr Caldeira praises the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, for name-checking Liverpool in his.

The talk needs to be accurate, though. Chloe Smith, the Tory MP for Norwich North, was widely mocked for describing Sunderland in the north-east as “near” Bolton, 200km (125 miles) away in the north-west. Pamela Hall, the 2010 Conservative candidate in Liverpool West Derby, admits to some head-in-hands moments when bow-tie-wearing southerners in her party betray their ignorance of the north: “it’s an absolute disaster for us.” Fellow Tories, she reckons, should shelve in-house obsessions such as the EU, talk more about jobs and living standards and put up more northern and working-class candidates.

Another good idea is to concentrate on voters with shorter political memories. Few older Liverpudlians will ever back the Conservatives, local activists admit. Ryan Shorthouse, a young Conservative commentator, reckons the party can escape the decades-long shadow of the “Thatcher effect” among his generation of northern voters by focusing relentlessly on public-sector reform. Showing the party’s commitment to effective, universal services, he says, can help exorcise its ghosts.

Some worthwhile investments take time to pay off. Labour members in Southampton recently campaigned at every farmers’ market in Hampshire. In terms of immediate electoral benefit this is something of a long shot. But it may have gone some way to securing what Mr Denham sees as the key long-term goal: reassuring voters that “people like you vote Labour.”

The temptation to defer investments in opponents’ strongholds is great. But, argue the long-termists, such investments need to be made. The party which first smears its colours all over the map will be in a position to reknit England’s heart and soul on its own terms.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14