Five Million Conversations
How Labour lost and election and rediscovered its roots
Published on 20. September 2015
288 pages
978-1-910324-59-2 (ISBN)
Description
On the eve of the general election, Ed Miliband declared that Labour had won the 'ground war'. He proclaimed that his activists had been in touch with many more voters than his opponents: 'We have had five million conversations. This will go to the wire.' Yet the Conservatives went on to win a majority for the first time in more than two decades - while Labour lost seats in England, and were all but wiped out in Scotland. How could they get it so wrong? Iain Watson followed the Labour campaign around Britain, and now he examines what its senior politicians are now calling the party's 'political and organisational failures.' He exposes the high-level divisions over when to rule out a deal with the SNP, the gulf between perception and reality over Labour's level of support, and looks at the more successful campaigns of the Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists. He sets out the challenges for the next Labour leader, having had his own conversations with voters, activists and senior party figures, and discovers there is no easy solution to the party's problems.
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Person
Iain Watson is a BBC Political Correspondent, working across TV, Radio and the Internet. He experienced the drama and disappointment of Labour's General Election campaign first hand while travelling around Britain with Ed Miliband. He has spent the summer following the contest to elect a new Labour leader. Iain has previously reported for the BBC on Newsnight, the Today programme, the War Report - after 9/11 - and as a Washington correspondent. He is a former Westminster Editor of the Sunday Herald and covered the first elections to the Scottish parliament for the paper. He has report-ed from across the UK, Europe, the US and Japan.
