Leadership was told by its pollsters and focus groups that is was regarded as being on the side of the workshy and undeserving, leaked memo shows

The Labour leadership was told by its pollsters and focus groups after the 2010 election it had to change direction on immigration, the deficit and welfare since it was seen to be on the side of the workshy and the undeserving, a leaked memo shows.

The warnings were leaked to the Guardian amid fears among some party figures that Labour is hoping to sidestep the same message from the 2015 election, or alternatively become over-confident that the electorate can be won round to its way of thinking.



The message is likely to be seen by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn as an attempt to frighten the party from voting for their candidate. They are confident his authenticity can make voters change their attitudes on these “threshold issues”. They also believe he can mobilise those that have been previously alienated from politics.

The leaked memo is also intrinsically fascinating, since it shows the extent to which Ed Miliband was pressed internally from the outset on how to appeal to a lost Labour electorate, and how he was told that the issues on which he had campaigned within the party to win the leadership had resonated little with voters.

The memo’s author is James Morris, who works for Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and acted as a chief pollster both for Ed Miliband personally and then for the party. It was based on four focus groups conducted in September 2010 designed to probe the thinking of key groups, including the “lost working class”, Middle England and Lib Dem switchers.

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He wrote: “Across all the groups, the Labour party was felt to be on the side of the undeserving – particularly the workshy and immigrants. In the six years I’ve been doing focus groups with these people, I have never seen Labour’s core brand strength of being ‘for ordinary people’ more recessive. It is part of the party’s past, but a very long way from being part of the present reputation of the party.

“Participants really struggled to dredge up any positive associations with the Labour party. The most commonly mentioned strength was investment in schools and hospitals and there was also a sense that Labour kept interest rates low for a long time. But the abiding sense was that the last 13 years have ended in failure, with the country plunging downhill.”

He wrote: “There were three very clear threshold issues where the party needs to show a new approach: immigration, benefits and the deficit/economy.”

Morris wrote: “Labour is seen as having consistently ignored English people’s views on immigration. A Labour leader who wants to show change has to show that they understand that. This is not just an issue for lost working-class voters – it was central to Middle England and a major concern for Lib Dems. Out of the 40 people who took part in the groups only one person mounted any sort of defence of a relatively open policy on immigration.

“The concerns were broad. Among C2s and Ds there was a particular concern about competition from eastern European migrants for work (esp in the trades). There was a universal concern about benefits and the provision of services, with immigrants sending child benefit abroad symbolic of the issue. Just as common was a cultural concern. This was partly about people adopting British culture when they come here and partly about standing up for British and in particular English traditions and English people. There was a strong sense that people who are born and bred in England should be prioritised.

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“Linked to immigration, but distinct from it, was the issue of benefits. This was the symbol of a deep concern that Labour does not understand the link between effort and desert (which also coloured views about Labour’s position on 50p tax). People in all the groups felt that, while they worked hard for their money, there were people who are able to sit at home and not work.

“This was put down to two things – first that some people are lazy and choose not to work; and second that Labour has created a system in which many people are better off on benefits than in work.

“Labour is seen to have been a principal architect and defender of a benefits culture. Participants in all the groups felt they knew people who were leading lights in that culture, while they went out to work. Several people in the ‘lost working class’ thought they would be better off financially if they didn’t work.”

Morris argued that the third defining issue for a new Labour leader who wanted to show change was the economy. He said the symbol of this change is the approach to the deficit especially for what he described as the Middle England focus roup.

He wrote: “While people did see bankers’ risk-taking as a key cause of the recession, there was also a belief that Labour spending helped create the economic mess we are in. The belief was that public spending is like private spending – if you spend more than you are getting in, you are storing up a problem for the future. Beyond that, public understanding is sketchy.

“So the test for a political party is whether they recognise the problem and promise to address it by matching spending to income. A Labour leader who argues that we should keep spending to secure growth is flying in the face of common sense and would need a volte face by the entire media to have any chance of success.”

Morris said Miiband’s leadership election campaign themes did not resonate with voters. He wrote: “The overwhelming response to the campaign’s key policy positions (tuition fees, Iraq, 50p, harder for longer for less, civil liberties, getting away from idea that private=good, restraining markets) was that they are largely irrelevant to the issues that they face and that they want the Labour party to address.

“This is compounded by saying that Ed wants [to] ‘shape the centre ground from the left’ which is largely incomprehensible because ‘left’ and ‘right’ didn’t mean much to participants; but to the extent to which it is understood, seems unreasonable almost by definition. It is not that people want ‘the centre’ (that means no more than ‘left’ or ‘right’), but that given a choice between the three terms, ‘centre’ is the only one that sounds sensible.”