No such thing as a safe seat

 Dunfermline, Crewe, Glasgow East – the phenomenon of safe Labour seats being upended is one that deserves a little more attention. Let’s consider that incredible turnout in Glasgow East – 42% in a seat where 48% turned up for the general. For the first time in decades, a political party (the SNP) campaigned hard there. People knocked on doors. The nationalists raised, and deployed, an army of people and asked Glasgow East voters what they thought, they engaged with them. And it worked. 

Remember the BNP’s electoral successes – such as they are – come from exploiting the forgotten people in Labour’s modern-day rotten boroughs. They were the first to spot the trend now appearing: that a “safe” seat is only safe if no one bothers to campaign there. Labour has allowed its safe seats to become terra incognita: it has no canvass returns, presence on the ground or (crucially) a discernable mission. The SNP explored and charted this territory better than Labour, and their reward was the best by-election result since Winnie Ewing took Hamilton. The forgotten people of this constituency were finally given the attention reserved for swing seat voters. And look at the result. 

So alongside the Tory “marginal seats” strategy and the “Lib Dem lovebomb” strategy, is there room for an audacious “Labour heartlands” strategy? Glasgow East teaches us that Labour has little to say to the people it has left languish on benefits for years, aside from “you’re poor, so you’ll vote for us, remember Thatcher, yada yada yada.” The SNP message was “you’ve voted Labour for 90 years, look where that’s got you. Try someone different”. If the Tories have the audacity to say the same, then they could remould the landscape of British politics. 

As Blair would perhaps say, the kaleidoscope of British politics has been shaken and the pieces are in flux. Cameron may well be able to remake the world around him.