The numbers game

We all know what happened in the General Election and readers of this blog will no doubt have their own theories as to what went wrong for Labour. These are likely to differ somewhat from the “analysis” of the PLP and their right-wing cheerleaders. But, in trying to make sense of what happened it is worth looking at the numbers.

Labour polled 10,231,237 votes. Not an inconsiderable number and certainly comparable to 1987 (when Neil Kinnock lost) and 2001 (when Tony Blair won). But taking solace in these numbers fails to acknowledge a painful truth. Between 2017 and 2019 Labour lost  over 2.6 million votes. The only comparable loss in recent history is the almost 2.8 million votes lost between 1997 and 2001 by Tony Blair. As Blairite revisionists try to convince you that we should return to the example of Blair it is worth reminding ourselves that his unpopularity had begun to set in prior to the “illegal” war in Iraq. That disaster cost Labour a further million votes in 2005.

These numbers, however, are still relatively small compared to the Tories loss of  almost 4.5 million votes between 1992 and 1997. The point to take from these numbers is that losing votes does not have to be a catastrophe. Blair lost votes, but was still able to win elections. The Tories lost votes consistently between 1997 and 2005 but started to pick them up again from 2010. It is worth noting, in this context, that despite their recent landslide the Tories only recorded 190,711 more votes than they had achieved in 2017.

The conclusion has to be that there was no massive swing in support for the Tories despite the obvious swing against Labour. So, where did Labour’s votes go? The Lib Dem’s were the biggest winners gaining Close to 1.3 million votes. It is likely that some of this was Labour remainers voting tactically. But again, context is needed. The overall Lib Dem vote was 3,643,494 which whilst an improvement on 2015 and 2017 was still more than 3 million less than they achieved in 2010 before their disastrous  decision to prop up David Cameron’s Tories.

At a constituency level 51 of Labour’s 60 lost seats were in areas where leave had won in 2016. A further 5 were in Scotland where slightly different issues were in play. Many of those votes drifted away from Labour but not to the remain supporting Lib Dem’s. The combined Brexit Party-UKIP vote rose only 107,750 compared to 2017, so it would not seem that they were the beneficiaries.

In 2017 one of the best left performances had been in Durham North West where Laura Pidcock won with a near 9,000 majority in a seat that had been ours since 1914. On election night she not only lost her majority but her seat. The Tory received 19,990 votes up from 16,516 in 2017. Laura received 18,864 votes (considerably less than in 2017), but lost the seat partly because the Brexit Party took 3,193 votes, presumably many of them previous Labour voters. 

This is not definitive evidence that Brexit was the main cause of Labour’s woes. There were clearly other issues at play. Chief amongst them was the feeling amongst many Labour voters that they had been neglected by New Labour. A similar feeling that lost Labour the support of people in Scotland where the SNP are now firmly in control. We cannot ignore either that Jeremy Corbyn, a massive asset from a left perspective, was a real reason why many people did not vote Labour.

Laura Pidcock in her open letter makes the point that “We have to fight for our area. We must be there for our fellow working people and their families, who will be attacked under this new government.” But, she does not say who she means by “we”. And, whilst I do not wish to criticise Laura who has certainly been one of the bright sparks in Labour she does not really address how we bring back people and keep them.

In a way Laura makes the same error as many people in the party. That is to think the only hope is through finding out why people did not vote Labour and encouraging them to do so in 4 or 5 years time. Unfortunately, the problem with that strategy is that it prioritises one form of organisation over all other.

It also assumes that there is a magic solution out there and all we need to do is find it. Change the leader, say the right. People’s vote, say the right. Water down the manifesto, say some sections of the left. The assumption being that with this one change voters will somehow flock to the polls red rosette firmly planted in their lapels. 

Imagine for a second that Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper had become party leader in 2015. The chances are that we would have become a remain party much more quickly. Moreover, there would have been no influx of new members and the manifesto would have looked much like the one that lost in 2015. If the Tories had decided to call an election in 2017, though that is debatable, the result would not have been a loss of their majority but more than likely a result similar to 2015. 

Whilst dreaming of a Labour government (eventually) is tempting, perhaps we need to start thinking more holistically. At present the Labour Party is run as a bureaucratic organisation with a dazzling array of rules and procedures. This means that most party meetings are mind-numbingly boring and devoid of any political discussion or education. No wonder people don’t want to attend.

I remember a Twitter conversation I had with Seema Chandwani a short while ago when I said that the problem was that the right seemed to have a better understanding of the rule book than we did, and used this knowledge to stifle debate. Her advice was to read and use the rule book to our advantage. Frankly, if that is politics I’d rather not bother.

So, perhaps thinking of ways to engage our own members and to make meetings more politically focussed would be a start. But, if you are going to a meeting you will already have committed to joining the party. What of those who are some way from ever doing so?

Many of the issues that Labour had on the doorstep came from ordinary voters repeating what they had read or seen in the media. Whilst it is true that the press is losing ground it is still highly influential. As of January 2019 circulation of the Daily Mail had a year on year decline of 7%, The Sun 9%, the Labour supporting Daily Mirror down 13%, Daily Express 12% and the Daily Star 16%. It isn’t just the tabloids that are losing readers The Times was down 5%, The Telegraph 6% and The Guardian down 7%.

If less people are reading the national press then how does it exert such a powerful influence? Firstly, people do see the day’s headlines even if they don’t read what’s written beneath them. But, more importantly the broadcast media relies on the press to provide its daily narrative on the political stories. So, you don’t have to read a tabloid for it to influence your thinking, as the BBC, Sky News and ITV rely on tabloid journalists to dictate the news agenda.

With the exception of the Mirror and Guardian, the bulk of the press are Tory supporting. Many of the political stories hostile to Labour and repeated by the broadcast media are direct from the Tory press. What this means is that people who are not particularly engaged politically are immersed in a culture that is inherently hostile to the left.

The National, a Scottish pro-independence newspaper found that there was a serious Tory bias on the main BBC political output.

“A sample of five mainly political BBC television programmes – Victoria Derbyshire, Politics Live, Question Time, Newsnight, the Andrew Marr Show – showed that Tory politicians appeared 102 times in total, with Labour notching 53 appearances, the Liberal Democrats 13 and the SNP just seven – the same number as Change UK/The Independent Group and two behind the Brexit Party”, they report.

This means that in order to reach those missing voters, Labour needs to cut through the prevailing pro-Tory culture. To be fair to the BBC and other broadcasters, it should probably be pointed out that not every show in which a Tory MP appears is slavishly pro-Tory, on occasions Tories are held to account, but the dominating narrative is Tory-centric. This is partly because the Tory pro-establishment narrative chimes very well with the type of people who manage the newsrooms. 

Cutting through is going to mean encouraging people to think critically about what they are being asked to believe. But doing this based purely on self-interest alone is likely to drive them back into the hands of the Tories. There is also a danger that in undermining trust in journalists to tell the truth, people will seek other sources of news that are equally as prone to misinformation.

Many people claim that they ‘don’t believe anything I read in the press and make my own mind up’. There is some evidence to support this lack of faith in the press. According to the Ipsos-Mori veracity index for 2019 only 26% of people trust journalists to tell the truth. But, and here’s the rub, that is considerably more than the 14% who trust politicians. A general cynicism about trust, not helped by the Government of the day spending a fortune on Facebook ads that were overwhelmingly misleading, does not encourage people to get involved in politics.

But if the press are losing readers and people don’t trust journalists more generally, how is it that their influence seems more pervasive than ever?

A general culture in which Jeremy Corbyn, a life time anti-racist, can be attacked as a racist in order to facilitate the election of a man with a long history of racist comments shows the depths to which political debate in this country has fallen. Laura Pidcock makes the valid point that during the general election journalists were primed to ignore the issues in favour of the days political gossip. By keeping negative stories about Labour on the front pages and on the main news bulletins it ensures that a negative narrative drowns out all attempts to widen the debate.

Some people think that the way round this is to control the media. However this is both unlikely to happen and even if we could do so would be counter to the free press we need to hold government to account. I have no objection to the press criticising Labour when they make mistakes or are being evasive. What I object to is when it is only Labour who are demonised whilst the Tories are constantly let off the hook or in cases covered for.

How then is it possible to counter the dominant narrative? One thing is clear it will not be easy. But what is also clear is that we cannot wait until the next election to do so. Labour is still a mass movement, albeit a slightly disillusioned one. We have activists on the ground. They came out in their thousands to promote the manifesto. Now, we need to think creatively about how we use that resource, the envy of every other party and the right in our own party, to plant the seeds of future victories.

In a previous life I ran seminars and lectured on the way the media works. Very often after attending people would tell me that they could no longer read the newspapers or watch TV news because they would find themselves annoying partners by saying “but where’s their evidence” or “that’s just repeating what one side said”.

We can shout that the media are biased, and we can use social media in an attempt to counter the dominant narrative, but until enough people have the tools to challenge what they read, and hear we are spitting into the wind. This is something that I think the organised left can do. Rather than repeat what may be perfectly justifiable conspiracy theories we need to make it our business to teach ordinary voters not to distrust all journalists but to question their taken for granted assumptions.