Why does Labour need to publish yet another report on why it lost?

It must come as a relief to many Labour MPs worried about their party’s electoral chances that the official report into why Labour lost in May will finally be published. But will it really make much of a difference? The BBC reports that the document, compiled by Margaret Beckett, will identify four key reasons for the party losing in May 2015, which are that it failed to shake off the myth that Labour was responsible for the financial crash and failed to build trust on economic issues, it didn’t connect with voters on key issues such as benefits and immigration, that Ed Miliband was not seen as being as strong a leader as David Cameron, and voters’ fears of the SNP propping up a minority Labour government.

So far, so unsurprising. It’s a wonder, really, that the party has been reluctant to publish this, given other reviews, such as that conducted by Jon Cruddas, reached similar conclusions months ago. When I interviewed Cruddas, he explained that what did for Labour was that the party’s anti-austerity message put voters off. His inquiry divided Labour’s supporters into three groups: Jeremy Corbyn’s tribe of affluent, socially liberal, metropolitan ‘pioneers’; the less starry-eyed pragmatic ‘prospectors’; and socially conservative ‘settlers’ concerned with home, family and national security. By the time of the election, only the pioneers were left as Labour voters. The others hadn’t connected with the party and had turned elsewhere.

So though, as Frank Field says, not publishing the Beckett report is like ignoring a report into why the Titanic sank and continuing to build Titanic-type ships, publishing it will most likely confirm the nature of the iceberg that Labour sailed into, not reveal anything particularly surprising about that berg. So why are Labour MPs like Field agitating for publication? The reason is that the more opportunities these MPs have to press their party leadership on what it is doing in response to the evidence about why Labour lost, the more difficult it is for the leadership to make vague noises about anti-austerity messages and non-voters. And the more opportunities the Labour membership has to see the next iceberg, the better placed those members might be to start thinking about whether Jeremy Corbyn and his comrades are the one to steer the ship safely past.