Philip Gould, New Labour’s indispensable strategist

Within hours of his passing, heart-felt tributes poured in to the man who coined the phrase “New Labour”.

One of Tony Blair‘s closest advisers, Philip Gould worked on Labour‘s strategy and polling, helping the party to win three general elections, and is credited for changing the party’s emphasis – reflecting the opinion of the majority, rather than telling them what to think.

Philip Gould was trending on Twitter this morning, with tributes paid from across the twittersphere. Labour leader Ed Miliband said that Gould’s work “helped change the lives of millions of his fellow citizens for the better”.

However, the New Labour of the 1990s is now over a decade old, and left tainted by the final Brown-Blair years which divided the party from the inside. Is the legacy of New Labour – and Philip Gould – still a defining factor for the Labour party’s new generation and among the new centre left?

Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair told Channel 4 News that Philip Gould had been an “indispensable” part of the New Labour project. “He was a strategist, really,” Mr Blair said. “He understood big trends in politics… He was a philosopher as much as a political analyst.”

Listening to voters

Gould’s legacy could be best summed up by Alistair Campbell’s tribute: “His focus groups, far from being an exercise in PR, were a way of making sure that the kind of people he felt Labour forgot in the wilderness years had a direct voice to the top of politics.”

Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List agrees: “He introduced the idea that you have to listen to what people want instead of telling them what’s best for them,” he told Channel 4 News. “It sounds very obvious, but it was key. The idea that you have to listen to people’s concerns – about immigration, crime, unemployment – is still very much about what the Labour Party is about.”

Focus groups are here to stay, and that fixation with the southern lower middle class is now hard wired into labour’s DNA. Shamik Das, Left Foot Forward Editor

The “idea” of Philip Gould still looms large in the party, says Shamik Das, editor of the website Left Foot Forward.

“Philip Gould ‘the idea’ is the notion that Tony Blair in particular was fixated by focus groups,” he told Channel 4 News. “It’s also the idea that Labour at the top are terrified/obsessed with a certain sort of voter – southern, sun-reading, lower middle class lives in a town like Stevenage or Harlow.”

The importance of focus groups of a certain social class is still a major part of the Labour Party, says Mr Das. “Focus groups are here to stay, and that fixation with the southern lower middle class is now hard wired into labour’s DNA – almost any conversation about electoral strategy will come round to that aspect eventually.”

‘Coal face of the coalition cuts’

Moving towards reflecting the wider society is something that James Mills, campaign director of the Labour Diversity Fund, believes that the party needs to address. “He [Gould] was the right man for the right time and contributed to some of our biggest achievements,” he told Channel 4 News. “But we now live in a new decade and a new century. What Labour should stand for isn’t going to be the same.”

Gould was the right man for the right time and contributed to some of our biggest achievements. But we now live in a new decade and a new century. James Mills, Left Foot Forward

“The Labour Party is the people’s party and needs to be a reflective of wider society when only 9 per cent of the Parliamentary party (MPs) come from manual workers today. And in 1997, it was 13 per cent. The figures are only going one way. I want the next election to be fought by people from the coal face of the coalition cuts,” he added.

The power struggles of the New Labour movement are a bad memory to some. And with the Miliband brothers’ contest last year, it looked like history could be repeating itself. But for Labour List’s Mark Ferguson, it is all part of “distant history”.

“I would say a lot of the squabbles of the late 1990s and 2000s seem like distant history now,” said Mr Ferguson. “The Labour Party is incredibly unified in opposition, and I don’t think people expected us to be. It means that we look back at he record of New Labour with a healthy level of respect.”

Changing models of dialogue

Gould’s influence on the Labour Party was huge when TV was the main platform for politicians to communicate with the public. However the internet has completely changed the channels in which society communicates, and political parties needs to catch up, said Mr Das.

“Was Gould a campaigner for the TV age when politicians spoke in a one-way conversation with voters? But now we have social networking, where politicians are expected to have a two-way conversation with the electorate,” he told Channel 4 News.

“There are lots of third actors, like the blogs, you can’t control. So the idea of the centralised, standardised message is dying, so that leaves the Gould model with serious questions.”