Leadership Quote by Francis Maude

Maude’s line is the kind of unsentimental self-diagnosis politicians reach for when they want to sound brutally honest without conceding anything to the other side. “Our problem is not Labour, it is us” borrows the cadence of a confessional, but it’s really a strategy memo in the form of a soundbite: stop treating the opposition as the main obstacle and start treating voters as consumers who need a better product.

The key verb is “attractive.” Not persuasive, not right, not principled - attractive. Maude is talking about politics as market competition, where the task is to repackage a brand so it can pick up “disillusioned Labour support” while simultaneously fighting the Liberal Democrats for “loose votes.” That phrase, “loose votes,” is revealing and a little chilly: these aren’t citizens anchored by ideology; they’re floaters, bargain-hunters, people whose loyalty has lapsed and can be poached. It’s a worldview that assumes volatility is normal and that emotional texture - competence, reassurance, modernity - is as decisive as policy.

The subtext is also a quiet rebuke to his own side’s habits: stop shadowboxing Labour and start confronting why swing voters find you unappealing. It hints at a specific British context where the center ground is crowded and elections are won not by converting true believers, but by triangulating between a bruised Labour base and a third-party alternative that can siphon off protest votes. Maude isn’t offering a moral argument; he’s offering a map of the battlefield, and it’s drawn in the language of customer acquisition.