When Labour loses an election there is a tendency on the left to first indulge in the wisdom of hindsight, and then to project the party’s failures eternally into the future. As I put money on an overall majority for the Tories and have the William Hill betting slip to prove it, I cannot be accused of the first. But the conviction that Labour can never win again is harder to resist. Just because it was so wrong in 1992 does not mean it is wrong now.

After Labour's election horror, the soul-searching begins Read more

There is plenty of space for a social democratic party in Britain capable of speaking for two-thirds of the country or more, and able to appeal to both aspirational and left-behind voters. It is just very hard to see how Labour, with its current activists and MPs, could ever be that party. For it is the party’s inability to connect culturally with most British voters that lost it the election.

Leaving aside the issue of economic competence and Ed Miliband, it simply had no answer to nationalism in Scotland, Ukip English populism in the Midlands and the north (which in those areas gave it nearly 17% of the vote and 44 second places), and the free-market modernity of southern England.

Labour is a self-consciously progressive party dominated by highly educated people who tend to believe they see the world more clearly and understand people’s interests better than they do themselves – the default instinct of both the educated and the centre left. But this top-down political temperament and the wider worldview and language of the Labour activist barely overlaps any longer with the average voter. That voter has a hotch-potch of sometimes conflicting political feelings about the world, which might be summed up in Matthew d’Ancona’s phrase “individualism plus the NHS”.

He or she has a left or liberal side: most people oppose unjustified wealth and hierarchies (though might disagree about the definition of unjustified), are suspicious of authority, are comfortable with “abroad” and support equal rights (including for women and minorities). But he or she also has a conservative or communitarian side: most people are suspicious of change, want to live in stable communities, think people should take responsibility for themselves (and think today’s welfare system discourages them from doing so), want to live in relatively traditional families and, without being flag-waving nationalists, think that national citizen preference matters.

A country with a large group of strivers, but decent pay for those who do basic jobs, is becoming harder to achieve.

As the left v right spectrum has partly faded, commentators now talk about political views lining up along a libertarian v authoritarian, or an open v closed spectrum – but the latter distinction is just self-serving liberal propaganda. Nobody believes in a closed world.

Most people (including ethnic minorities) do want immigration to return to more moderate levels and think EU citizens should have to work for a few years before qualifying for tax credits or social housing, but they are modern “easyJet” people: socially conservative on some things and sort-of liberal on others.

A more relevant spectrum would highlight different emotional attitudes to change, mobility and belonging. Educated progressives and liberals tend to welcome change, are comfortable with mobility (their own and other people’s), and not especially bothered about belonging, indeed are suspicious of most group allegiances. Yet most voters are more likely to see change as loss and – without being sentimental for the often oppressive communities of 1950s Britain – want to live in relatively stable places with a high level of trust, low crime, and a degree of neighbourliness. And most people place the interests of fellow members of the local or national club before outsiders. This is the spectrum which finds most voters in a very different place from today’s Labour party.

On social mobility too, Labour’s graduate professionals seem to be saying: climb those ladders as we did. Of course, Labour should be on the side of ladder climbers, but it has been insufficiently sensitive to the shadow they cast over those who cannot or do not want to climb with them. Just as London can make the rest of the country feel inconsequential, so those who get to university and into the top part of the labour market can make those millions of decent, responsible people doing ordinary jobs feel like failures.

This is the dark side of meritocracy, and Labour should have thought far harder about it

This is the dark side of meritocracy, and Labour should have thought far harder about how to mitigate it. As it was, the party had far more to say about universities than the continuing mess that is non-university post-school education and training. As Labour MPs Gloria De Piero and Jon Ashworth wrote in the Times after the election: “In the election, it looked like – so far as Labour was concerned – aspiration was just about going to university, hence our promise to cut tuition fees. But aspiration is also finding your children a place in a good school; getting your foot on the housing ladder; or starting a business or learning a new trade. These are becoming harder not easier, but Labour was not talking enough about them, let alone persuading people we had the answers.”

A country with a large group of strivers, but also decent pay and status for those who stay put and do basic jobs, is something that is becoming harder to achieve – both financially and psychologically – as the labour market and the education system increasingly divide into insiders (mobile professionals/graduates) and outsiders (immobile people without A-levels doing often basic jobs). This is a problem for all advanced countriesand for all political parties, but Labour should have made this aspect of inequality central to its story instead of fixating on the super-rich.

It is, however, no use just having the right policies to connect the aspirational and the left-behind. In several areas, such as welfare and immigration, Labour did have quite socially conservative policies – milder versions of the Tories’ own policies – but did not really believe in them or embody them. Embodiment is vital in today’s politics. As left v right arguments become more blurred, Labour needs a leader and a critical mass of activists who can embody social democracy with a provincial, socially conservative accent.

The election was a decisive vote against metropolitan liberalism – against mass immigration, further European integration, and the high-churn society that discomforts so many people. It was also a vote against London – the city that most represents those things. United against it were not just SNP and Ukip voters but many Tory and Labour ones. Yet London is Labour’s new heartland.

There has recently been much use of the famous Bertolt Brecht quote about dissolving the people and electing another. Labour has to do something similar – if not dissolve its current membership, then at least find a new set of leaders who connect culturally with the country it aspires to rule.