What Labour needs to do to win the next election

A large part of the election fall out has been on whether Labour was too left-wing or perhaps not left-wing enough.

As the party is in the process of choosing its next leader, YouGov (here's why we should still trust their research, according to them) have taken a look at how left- or right-wing the electorate is.

Perhaps a reflection of the general election result - where the Conservative party won a slim majority - there is a slight right-of-centre weighting to the chart of where people identify themselves.

As for what Labour should do next, well that's not exactly clear - although YouGov's Peter Kellner does point out that the leaders of previous elections who were deemed to have strayed too far from the centre (Kinnock, Hague, Howard and Miliband) all lost while those who "campaigned from the centre" (Major, Blair, Cameron) all won.

However, their research shows that the public has become ever so slightly more left-wing over the past decade.

The problem, as Kellner points out, is one of perception. Although previous research has shown that the public supported more left-wing policies than Ed Miliband, they actually perceived him to be much further left on the political spectrum than where they think Labour "should be".

So perhaps a successful Labour leader will be able to promote the left-wing policies that the public supports, while actually appearing to be more centrist than their predecessor.

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