Britain’s Labor Party plots a return to power

The last time Britain’s Labor Party was banished to the political wilderness, it wandered there, chastened and weak, for 18 years.

This time, party stalwart Frances Butt doesn’t expect such a long exile.

“I don’t feel quite as depressed about this, because in my mind, it’s only temporary,” Butt, 66, said of the party’s recent fall from grace. “It gives us time to regroup, to get ourselves organized, to get focused and to get our energies back.”

After 13 years in government, the left-of-center Labor was exhausted and limping by last month’s general election. The party pulled in its lowest share of the vote in a generation, and got shoved back onto the opposition benches in Parliament by a new ruling coalition headed by its arch foe, the Conservatives.

Now, the party must set aside recrimination and despair if it is to remain a potent force on the altered political landscape. The task is to figure out what lessons to absorb from the loss and, perhaps more daunting, to produce a compelling new vision capable of recapturing the public imagination.

Much of that process will depend on who emerges as the party’s new leader. Many Labor supporters pin much of the blame for the stinging electoral defeat on then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and they’re eager to find a successor who can not only reverse the damage inflicted by the prickly Scotsman but also present a sunnier, more suave manner.

Though still in its early stages, the leadership race is already creating a bit of a buzz because two of the best-known candidates are brothers.

David and Ed Miliband served in the previous government as foreign secretary and secretary for energy and climate change, respectively. Both are articulate, savvy, well regarded by their peers and relatively untainted by scandals and policies, such as the Iraq war, that have alienated many Britons.

Either of the Milibands, who are in their early 40s, would inject some youthful vigor into the party, and put them on a more even footing with the leaders of Britain’s new ruling coalition. Prime Minister David Cameron is 43, as is Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who heads the Liberal Democrats.

At the moment, David Miliband is the front-runner out of a field that also includes a confidant of Brown’s, Ed Balls, and the first black woman to contest the leadership, Diane Abbott, who probably stands little chance of winning but could shake up the dynamics of the race.

Whoever triumphs this fall will face a conundrum that has puzzled Labor before. Do you tack left and shore up support among traditional constituencies, including trade unionists who think the party has sold out on core principles? Or do you slide to the center, as Tony Blair did when he led “New Labor” to a landslide victory in 1997 after 18 years in opposition?

History hasn’t been kind to the former approach.

“The Labor Party in the past has often swung quite sharply to the left after an electoral defeat.... They did that in the 1930s and again in the ‘50s and in the ‘80s. That’s been an electoral disaster for them,” said Gidon Cohen, a political scientist at Durham University in northern England.

The key is “finding a way of reinventing themselves, developing a new appeal to the British public, which doesn’t just retreat to the core support of the party,” he said.

Butt, a retired school principal, sees Labor as “left of center, if you like, not hard left.” And her clear choice to helm the party is David Miliband, whom she described as “quite magisterial.”

Her village, Peasedown St. John, near the city of Bath in southwest England, is a traditional Labor stronghold, a legacy from its days as a coal-mining area. But the wider parliamentary district exemplifies the work cut out for the party.

In 1997, voters ejected their longtime Conservative member of Parliament and embraced Blair’s New Labor revolution. Last month, the pendulum swung back, with the incumbent Labor lawmaker turned out in favor of a Tory challenger.

Any hopes of retaking power would require Labor to win back districts like these.

Most of today’s Labor leadership candidates are career politicians, who have become too entrenched in the system, said John Whittock, 74, a Conservative local government councilor. What Labor needs, he added, are people with real-world experience.

The winner of the leadership contest is due to be announced at the party’s annual conference in late September, after a complex voting process involving Labor lawmakers, party members and trade unions. The result should give a clear indication of the direction in which party members and activists think Labor should go.

Cohen said the party enjoys some unexpected room for maneuver.

The Conservatives have moved more sharply to the right with their recently unveiled budget, which calls for deep cuts in public spending. And the Liberal Democrats, by joining the Tories in a coalition government, have had to surrender ground on the left that Labor can now reclaim if it wants.

“The political space is going to be open to them,” Cohen said. “We’re in a very interesting time in British politics.”

henry.chu@latimes.com