Thoughts after Beckett – Part 1: what makes a leader?

After a campaign led by backbench Labour MPs Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint, the Labour leadership has now released Margaret Beckett’s election post-mortem ‘Learning the Lessons’, commissioned by then-acting leader Harriet Harman in the wake of last year’s tragic general election defeat. This move has been welcomed across the party, and it is of course right that this should be so – those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, after all.

Analysis of the Beckett Report today has noted that it is not ground-breaking, and instead mostly provides further confirmation of what a tonnage of previous research, anecdotal reports from key marginals and conventional political wisdom has already suggested. Essentially, Ed Miliband was seen as a significantly weaker leader than David Cameron; the party was not trusted to manage the overall economy and public finances, and thus wasn’t trusted to safeguard, let alone improve, the lot of those in the middle; the public felt us to be out of touch over cultural valance issues such as immigration and welfare; and the existing fears over leadership were probably turbo-charged by the perceived threat of a Labour-SNP coalition deal. Moreover, these factors and the lack of a clear narrative meant that Labour lost in spite of it holding notional poll leads on public services, concern for ordinary people and on certain economic measures (cost of living, inequality), and despite having a number of popular, eye-grabbing left-wing policies in areas such as energy prices, housing and transport.

Nevertheless, the reminder is useful – first of all, many still hold dear the theory that we lost primarily because we were ‘Tory-lite’ and failed to motivate our base, a view that overlooks many of the nuances above and the overriding importance of competence. And the report also raises an opportunity to debate each of these individual issues, to evaluate where Labour stands eight months on and think about where it needs to go. To that end, I’m going to address each of the big problems Beckett touched on in a few blogs, starting today with leadership.

What makes a leader?

All of the factors Beckett explores matter, but leadership is perhaps the most vital, as the possibility of Labour addressing the electorate’s other priorities flows from the party’s leadership team appearing credible and communicative in the first instance (I’m tempted to stress “the possibility” - there’s at times been a tendency in Labour to assume a leadership upgrade will wipe away deeper problems, but that’s another problem for another day). It’s also a severe challenge for Labour in that the requirement to identify a good leader should be less ideologically divisive than many of the other issues we face - it’s a decision that owes more to collective instinct, political nous and emotional intelligence - but it is still one we struggle with a great deal. I almost feel that we in Labour no longer really know what a leader is for.

For the right of the party, the lesson to learn from last year’s leadership contest is that any prospective leader must articulate a set of values and a positive vision that Labour’s internal selectorate can recognise and feel inspired by. Electability alone isn’t enough - it was for a reason that one-half of Tony Blair's famous dictum acknowledged that “power without principle is barren". This was where the establishment candidates fell down in summer 2015.

But once they are in post, the single most important metric we must judge any leader against is how they play in the court of public opinion, and whether they strengthen or weaken the party as whole. If the leader’s personal ratings are notably worse than the party’s current position in the polls, they are an albatross, not an asset – leadership ratings are a reliable predictor of election outcomes. Raising the stakes further, our opponents understand this – the Tories showed it with Thatcher and IDS, and even the Lib Dems did with Ming Campbell. I preferenced Ed Miliband over David in 2010, but under his leadership, Labour feigned as though we didn’t understand these basic rules (I say “feigned” because I think many did in practice, but we also lacked the will or the ability to change the situation, so instead we made the best of it and hoped to outrun reality).

From there, we defended Ed long after the point that it was ideal to do so, a collective (in)decision that inadvertently put our loyalty to him first, above our devotion to the ideals he embodied and our duty to those who most needed a Labour government. We forgot that a leader is a means to achieve our social democratic cause, and with hindsight I feel like we almost made Ed himself the cause - a test-case of whether a thoroughly decent, slightly nerdy man who was scorned by a press we hated could get elected in Britain as it was. All of this was human, but it betrayed a lack of priorities on our part. This is why I said this is my post-election blog last May - “every single minute and moment we exhausted defending Ed’s leadership were ones when we should have been explaining our substantive agenda for the country instead – the leader should make the case for their party, not the other way around”.

Just as a leader is not a cause, they are not a comfort blanket – the left-wing faithful liking and agreeing with them doesn’t make a good leader. They should not be a preacher to the converted, but instead a missionary to new lands of voters, persuading undecideds and sceptics to join our Labour church and make it ever-broader. As it stands, Labour is risking picking leaders tailor-made in our current image – we can’t pretend it’s a total coincidence that we’ve chosen two unusual North Londoners in a row. Labourites must always be able to believe in our own leader, but we must also accept that the judgements that our fellow countrymen render on the leaders we put to them ultimately mean more than our own. As Alan Johnson put it bluntly last May, “the public is never wrong”, but the Labour selectorate unfortunately can be when we deem someone electable and this turns out not to be the case. We must admit to ourselves that this happened with Ed, and four months into Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, his current standing compels us to ask further questions of ourselves.

In terms of what the public as whole looks for, that’s the elusive X-factor we need to regain a sense of. ‘Prime ministerial’ is tricky to define. As Beckett notes in her report, Cameron already being the prime minister eases this question for him, but this doesn’t capture it fully – by 2010 Cameron was positioned fairly strongly on leadership against then-prime minister Gordon Brown, after all. Looks clearly come into it - Cameron has been described as looking like “a prime minister from central casting”, whereas Ed’s appearance, voice and so on were often remarked on. Age can be a factor (too young – 'inexperienced', too old – 'had it'). Charisma is a must. Since this is Britain, a bit of self-deprecation can come in handy (Ed wasn’t too bad here – "if spin doctors could design a politician, I suspect he wouldn't look like me" was a nice line he should’ve used more). Biography can be important, though its value is tempered by existing expectations and perceptions (take poshness, for example - it is dismissed in Cameron and Boris because people expect it of Tories and in Farage because he puts himself across as too blokey to have had his Dulwich College education, but polls found that from Ed's manner, people tended to incorrectly assume he was privately educated).

Strength is also pivotal - they must appear decisive and tenacious in the eyes of the public, trusted to steer the economy at home, represent us abroad and face down security threats. And for Labour leaders in particular, they must be ready for the baptism by fire in the media; soberly investing in smart management, minimising own-goals and never taking it too personally. Beckett notes in the report that even Blair was derided as “Bambi” (and as “the most dangerous man in Britain”, I’d add, to say nothing of what Kinnock, Foot and Brown went through). Ed was brought low by press treatment over the trivial (bacon butties) to the unforgivable (“the man who hated Britain”). But that said, I at least always admired his quiet stoicism, which brought out some of his best quotes (“I will put up with whatever is thrown at me in order to fight for you”, “hell yes, I’m tough enough!” - the comparison with “sorry commentariat!” and complaints to Britain’s world-renown public broadcaster makes me long for that now). We must examine our attitudes here.

Above all, leadership is a ‘know it when they see it’ thing for the public – something that we in Labour either will or won't get. It is incumbent on all of us to connect with people, and try harder to see what they see and get it right.