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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

8 May 2008

There’s no denying that last weekend was a very bad few days for Labour but that didn’t stop our local Constituency Labour Party for Dover & Deal turning out in numbers on Saturday morning to hold one of our scheduled street stalls in the High Street.

To some extent the exercise lifted the gloom cast by the results of the local elections because we found the passing public as friendly and receptive as on any other Saturday and those that stopped for a chat were nearly all supportive. That’s not to say we haven’t got problems or that local support for the Government is as strong as it’s been over the last eleven years. By the time the next general Election is called we will have been in office for thirteen years and the simple mantra - ‘time for a change’ can have a lot of resonance under those circumstances.

The political journalists are working overtime in their search for the underlying cause of the huge swing of support away from Labour but the reality is that our popularity has been dented by a combination of issues and the idea being put around by some pundits - that it’s all down to Gordon Brown’s premiership - is simplistic and wrong. After all, this is the same Gordon Brown who has been acknowledged as the best Chancellor Britain has known in modern times and over the last decade, his minimum wage, child credits and pension credits have allowed us to do more than any Government in the last century to tackle poverty, help low-income families and deliver a fairer society.

It’s true that the opinion polls and the local results make pretty grim reading for the Prime Minister at the moment and his approval rating is low but these days public opinion is becoming more and more volatile and let’s not forget this is the same Gordon Brown who only a few months ago was enjoying a public approval of 32% when David Cameron was scoring minus 8% - and those responses came from Tory, Liberal and Labour voters.

Some of my colleagues have been panicked into calling for a change in policy direction and a dramatic swing to the left but I disagree with them too, because if Labour loses its ability to attract the middle of the road middle England voters who have supported us since 1997 it loses its ability to be re-elected.

If we are to continue appealing to our core voters while retaining the trust of those who switched to Labour in 1997, the Government has to be more careful in its policy planning and listen more carefully to its back benchers when they pre-warn them about bad misjudgements like the 10p tax fiasco.

The modern Labour Party has to convince people it is still on their side, that it is committed to delivering its core value of social justice and that the best way to achieve this is continued growth based on sound economic efficiency – and that all three are wholly compatible.