Monday Book: Socialism buried under a landslide

OPINION POLLS, like alcohol, are essential to the smooth working of the political process. But when politicians become addicted to either weakness, the result is always intellectual deterioration and sometimes total incapacity. Robert Worcester - Bob before he slightly mysteriously became a professor - is not the man to warn against the dangers of poll dependency. He is to polling as brewers are to beer.

In Explaining Labour's Landslide - written with Roger Mortimore, a member of his staff at the MORI opinion research company - Professor Worcester asserts his "firm agreement" with Douglas Hurd's view that "the job of a politician is to persuade, not automatically to follow". Then he quotes Edmund Burke and Rousseau to prove the democratic importance of people with clipboards asking motorists if they want better roads.

Although Professor Worcester protests too much in defence of his trade, he is undoubtedly its most distinguished practitioner in Britain. That makes it dangerous to disagree with him on a fundamental question about the polls' effect on political behaviour. But to claim that polls do not advocate "any particular policy, subject or topic" it is at best naive.

Polls advocate doing what is popular rather than what is right. Their sub-text is "winning". In some of his more reflective moods, Professor Worcester both admits and applauds the pressure they put on politicians to adjust their principles. "Too many politicians... drift too far from those they lead, either through ignorance, hubris or inertia". Then the appeal to democratic principle deteriorates into the last line of opinion polls' defence: politicians who, because of their ideological commitment, do not pay proper homage to opinion polls, lose elections.

No politician who lives in the real world "wishes to prohibit polls, nor in any way limit their use". But no objective commentator can doubt that their "existence and increasing sophistication" has changed the way in which political decisions are made.

Gladstone delayed sending a relief expedition to Khartoum because he believed that the British people regarded General Gordon as an irresponsible adventurer. If the Liberal Party of 1855 had employed the Mori organisation, Professor Worcester would have warned its leader that Gordon's death would destroy the government. In consequence, Gladstone would have been presented with a dilemma from which ignorance protected him. In the innocence of late Victorian England, he wasn't required to choose between conscience and office.

In my experience, politicians (of all parties) normally set out to win elections on the principles in which they believe. They are frightened off the path of virtue by professional pollsters' advice about the prejudices of the electorate. It is not power that corrupts them, but the fear of failure. That gloomy conclusion is confirmed on every page of The Unfinished Revolution, the chillingly frank account of how Labour fought the 1997 campaign by Philip Gould Tony Blair's personal political pollster.

When Clare Short suggested that "people like her should pay more in taxes", nobody in the party leadership considered the merits of her proposition. Their only concern was how voters would react to the idea.

The announcement that "we were considering the abolition of child benefit for the over-16s" was - judged against the same criteria - regarded as "the right decision". Gould's endorsement had nothing to do with principle or even good practice. "It sent out a tough, strong message" that helped Labour "to be taken seriously on the economy". The ability to read the electorate's mind is a dangerous weapon in the hands of those who believe that winning is an objective in itself. That is not an argument for worse opinion polls, but for better politicians.

That rule applies to elections in general. Professor Worcester seeks to explain one landslide - the avalanche of 1997 - in particular. He describes with convincing scientific certainty the way in which five years of Conservative failure made a Labour victory inevitable long before Parliament was dissolved. In so doing, he destroys the disreputable myth that John Smith would've led the party to its fourth consecutive defeat - an idea put about by the Blairites and typified by the title of a talk by Gould himself, "How the modernisers saved the Labour Party".

If the 1997 result was a foregone conclusion, then the sacrifice of principle was unnecessary. Tony Blair certainly increased Labour's majority. His leadership was probably responsible for the landslide. But a Labour victory was certain after "Black Wednesday" and the EMS [European Monetary System] crisis. "The squandering of their reputation for economic management, disunity over Europe, and the clinging fog of Europe, had destroyed the [Tory] Party's image of being fit to govern".

So a crucial question still needs to be asked. Why did New Labour, so obsessed by the polls, not take notice of the one which showed that the Tories had already lost the election and that victory was possible without parroting so many Conservative policies and values? The answer stands the usual formula of political deception on its head. New Labour did not abandon socialism in order to win. Winning was the excuse for abandoning socialism.

Roy Hattersley

The reviewer was deputy leader of the Labour Party, 1983-1992