Labour’s Next Majority: The 40% strategy

There will be voters who go to the polls on 6th May 2015 who weren’t alive when Tony and Cherie Blair posed outside 10 Downing Street on 1st May 1997. They will have no memory of an event which is a moment of history as distant from them as Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election victory was for the voters of 1997. If Ed Miliband seeks to emulate what Blair did in 1997, he too must build his own political majority for the era in which he seeks to govern.

This report sets out a plausible strategy for Labour’s next majority, one that is secured through winning 40 per cent of the popular vote in May 2015, despite the challenges of a fragmenting electorate. It also challenges the party at all levels to recognise that the 40 per cent strategy for a clear majority in 2015 will require a different winning formula to that which served New Labour so well a generation ago, but which is past its sell-by date in a different political and economic era.