Labour lost — becoming the Pepsi of politics won’t save it

Here’s the truth: Labour lost, and it lost big. I won’t get into why the Tories won, but share a few thoughts on why Labour didn’t:

• Lack of vision — The party signed up to an austerity plan that is popular with small “c” conservative voters but not so much with the angry, disgruntled non-voters who could have saved the day if Labour had made any efforts to appeal to them.
• Wrong instincts — even now, after the centre-left SNP wiped them out in Scotland, Labour will move to the right. That the Blairite Ed Balls lost his seat will mean little. The defeat will be blamed on Ed Miliband moving the party to the Left. That’s just nonsense, Labour is not left-wing by any definition, except its own. If you indulge voters in right-wing politics, why wouldn't they vote for the real thing that’s already in power and the status-quo bias works in their favour?
• A failure to appeal to the young — The party adopted many of the Tory positions on cutting or limiting benefits for the young and articulated no vision that would see the generational balance restored. Millenials are the largest single block of voters since the Boomers. No one can afford to lose them, as the Conservatives will find out the hard way in a few years.

This is just preliminary thoughts over morning coffee. We are preparing a full statement over at Precarious Europe so watch that space.