Labour could learn from Justin Trudeau’s Canadian Liberals if they want to win the next election by “calmly explaining what extra government borrowing could pay for”, a member of the shadow cabinet and former adviser to Gordon Brown has said.

Jonathan Ashworth, who is a shadow Cabinet Office minister and sits on Labour’s national executive, said his party was facing “catastrophic opinion poll ratings” and should think about the Canadian prime minister’s tactics.

“Our demand for a general election may prove irresistible to Theresa May. Whoever wins our leadership contest will need to urgently put in place a strategy for making us competitive again. I believe there are lessons we can learn from the Canadian experience in 2015,” he told the Guardian.

Trudeau, who leads the centrist Liberals, won an overall majority in Canada in 2015, four years after the party had fallen into third place behind Labour’s sister party, the NDP.



In a new pamphlet for Policy Network, Ashworth said: “Trudeau said, ‘this election is a clear choice between smart investments that create jobs and growth, or austerity and cuts that will slow our economy further’. But rather than going heavy on evermore shrill anti-austerity rhetoric, the Liberals calmly explained what the extra borrowing would pay for.

“Trudeau brought alive the ambition of the infrastructure pledge, talking not just of spending billions but of connecting Canadian cities while supporting the middle class with a targeted tax cut and raising taxes on the richest.”

Ashworth, who worked for Brown in Downing Street, said Labour must also look to the lessons of Quebec and prioritise rebuilding in Scotland in order to blunt Tory attacks that any potential Labour government would be reliant on “separatist” SNP votes.

He said Labour must target those voters who had switched away in recent elections, including crucially those who voted for the Tories.

“Trudeau ran on a progressive platform arguing against austerity, calling for tax rises on the wealthy and defending a woman’s right to wear the niqab,” he said. “But rather than traduce the motives of those who had voted Conservative in the past, Trudeau directly appealed to them, describing them not as ‘enemies but neighbours’. This point is likely to run into fierce opposition from Jeremy Corbyn supporters who believe it is enough to win over those who traditionally have not voted to ensure electoral victory.”

In terms of practical campaigning, Ashworth said Labour could learn from the Canadian Liberals by investing heavily in data, targeting their message to key groups of voters and social media.

He said Labour strategists put too much emphasis on “five million conversations” in 2015 and community organising while the Tories used data and ruthlessly targeted swing voters. The MP argued that simply building a “noisy social movement” would not be enough to win the constituencies needed to form a government.

Looking at the NDP, he said Labour’s sister party was making strides through a policy renewal programme called the “leap manifesto”, with members of both parties sharing an appetite for bold change, rejecting the cautiously incremental approach of 2015.