In the creation of myths we have some great names: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. But to this we must add a new name, and one that is not even Greek: the UK Labour Party. Currently, in the process of rewriting the history of the last 4 years so that the myth of Blairite supremacy, a monstrous creation no less artful than Proteus, a mythical creature renowned for shifting its shape, is the basis of Labour’s strategy going forward.
The myth being fostered by the beguiled members of the party, drunk on the Bacchanalian wine of Blairite promises of electoral success, is that only the Blairites with their charm and passionless policies, can overcome the beast that is the mainstream media. So enchanting is this myth and so intoxicating to members desperate to win that they are looking for a leader who can emulate the strategic genius of the Blair years.
Myths are usually rooted in people’s fears and have some connection to reality. But, as they are myths, they are exaggerations designed to play on our deepest fears and to create meanings which explain a hostile World. I have no doubt that those members of the Labour Party about to vote for Keir Starmer or Lisa Nandy are doing so in the very real belief that those individuals offer the quickest route back to Blairite supremacy, and Number 10.
But like all myths, the idea that the Blairites had some magic formula for electoral success that simply needs repeating bares less scrutiny than many members may believe. The myths are simple to understand. Electability, so we are led to believe, is about appealing to the centre. In order to do that, we must not appear extreme, for which read, left-wing. Only centrist politicians can win and they can only do so by attracting people who have been seduced by the Tory party. Winning back Tory voting Labour supporters is the key to electoral success. All very straightforward, and none of it supported by a scrap of meaningful evidence.
Part of the Blairite myth is that you don’t win elections by appealing too narrowly. It is necessary to have policies that will win over the supporters of other parties. Indeed, policies should be framed in such a way that they appeal across the board to all voters. A belief that to win it is necessary to win over Conservative voters is so ubiquitous that Sienna Rodgers, editor of Labour List, made this comment in a Labour List email recently discussing a poll by Ipsos-MORI on the favourability ratings of leadership contenders:
“Keir Starmer gets almost exactly the same score as Nandy on favourability, while Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long-Bailey trail far behind. Long-Bailey does much better among 2019 Labour voters, but crucially much worse among 2019 Tory voters.” Why, “crucially”? There is no explanation because like most people in the Labour Party Sienna Rodgers takes it for granted that for Labour to win they must attract Tory voters.
But, do the facts support the myth? Since 1983 there have been 10 general elections in the UK. The highest percentage of votes received by the winning party was 43.6% (by Johnson’s Tories in 2019). The average vote share to win is 40%. In other words, in order to win a UK General Election you only have to convince 44% of voters at most, and usually less than that.
Vote share Tory/Labour 1983-2019
| Tory | Labour | Combined | |
| 1983 | 42.4 | 27.6 | 70.0 |
| 1987 | 42.2 | 30.8 | 73.0 |
| 1992 | 41.9 | 34.4 | 76.3 |
| 1997 | 30.7 | 43.2 | 73.9 |
| 2001 | 31.6 | 40.7 | 72.3 |
| 2005 | 32.4 | 35.2 | 67.6 |
| 2010 | 36.1 | 29.0 | 65.1 |
| 2015 | 36.8 | 30.4 | 67.2 |
| 2017 | 42.3 | 40.0 | 82.3 |
| 2019 | 43.6 | 32.2 | 75.8 |
| Average | 38.0 | 34.4 | 72.4 |
The myth fostered by psephologists, and widely believed by Labour members, is of an electorate constantly in flux, but on closer examination this turns out to be highly unlikely. To be clear , seventy per cent of voters are either Labour or Tory and they tend not to vote for the other party. Swing voters may exist but not in the numbers we have been led to believe.
The Independent in 2016 published a piece which confidently asserted that: “Britain is turning into a nation of swing voters as increasing numbers of electors shop around at general elections before deciding which party to support.”
In truth Britain remains a two-party state (though it is a shame that until recently both of them were Tory). The proportion of voters who supported either Tory or Labour is on average 72% since 1983. Just a few months after The Independent’s assertion the 2017 election saw the big two claiming 82% of votes. Of course, there are so-called ‘floating’ voters, but all objective analysis must lead to the conclusion that there are fewer of these than popular media would have us believe. It is conceivable that these floating few determine the outcome of an election. Conceivable but not to the extent that designing policies simply to win them over actually works.
 |
| Picture from Samantha Baldwin |
It is not floating voters but stay-at-home voters who determine elections. In the three elections which the Tories lost since 1983 their vote share fell below their average 38%. It was 31, 32 and 32% respectively in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Labour’s vote share was significantly higher than average at 43, 41 and 35%. New Labour acolytes would have you believe that what happened was that the vote shifted from the Tories to Labour. A success for their astute policy of appearing almost as Tory as the Tories. But this does not explain what happened to the lost Labour voters in 2001 and 2005.
From these two sets of figures we can see two trends. For the Tories, although they were 6% down on their average, their vote held steady in vote share terms. For Labour from a highly credible 43% in 1997, the trend was returning to the average, and it was downward. The myth makers would have us believe that this was just a consequence of being the party in government.
Between 1983 and 1992, when the Tories were the party of government, the Tory share of the vote was remarkably steady at around 42%. So, there is nothing inevitable about being in power that means you lose voters. Had Labour’s hierarchy between 2005 and 2010 actually paid more attention to their failing popularity and less to their own inner hubris, then perhaps we would not now be in the situation of having spent the last 15 years in opposition. It was the vagaries of the electoral system where it is not enough to win votes but also to translate those votes into seats that is the root of the problem. So long as you are winning does it really matter by how much? After all a win is a win. Blair did not expect to win in 2001, but having won he was not about to admit that he was anything other than a man “making history”.
Seats won Conservative/Labour 1983-2019
| Conservative | Labour | Lab +/- | Con +/- | ||
| 1983 | 397 | 209 | |||
| 1987 | 376 | 229 | 20 | -21 | |
| 1992 | 336 | 271 | 42 | -40 | |
| 1997 | 165 | 468 | 197 | -171 | |
| 2001 | 166 | 412 | -56 | 1 | |
| 2005 | 196 | 354 | -58 | 30 | |
| 2010 | 306 | 258 | -96 | 110 | |
| 2015 | 330 | 232 | -26 | 24 | |
| 2017 | 317 | 262 | 30 | -13 | |
| 2019 | 365 | 202 | -60 | 48 |
In 1997 Labour won 468 seats. It was a landslide victory. However, in the subsequent two elections seats won were pointing to an institutional problem. Labour was losing support, particularly in its own heartlands in the North of England. In 2001, Labour retained 412 seats. But, this meant it lost 56 seats, which is only 4 less than Jeremy Corbyn lost in 2019. To be clear, losing 56 seats when you totally dominate a Parliament is not a disaster, but it showed a trend that the mythmakers fail to acknowledge. Were it not for the total collapse of the Conservative vote in 1997 and 2001 then Tony Blair would have been a one Parliament Prime Minister.
Labour’s brilliant, according to them, electoral strategists might have been expected to reverse this decline. But as one Labour Minister is reported as claiming in Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People “This government was elected by spin, and it is dying from spin.” Part of the problem for New Labour was that they believed their own myths. Part of the problem for “Now Labour” is that too many members not only believe the myths but are seeking to recreate them by picking the most Blairite looking candidate.
It is possible that the Blair government could have gone down in history as the Labour government that transformed Britain and ended the Tory Party for good. In order to do so it had to enthuse those who voted for it in 1997 and consolidate its core vote. But, in 2005 they dropped down to 354 seats, losing close to 2.8 million voters as they did so. Did those voters 'go back to' the Tories. The evidence suggests otherwise, because the Tories lost almost 1.5 million voters of their own. The idea that large numbers of people are switching parties like they switch their insurance providers, is simply not borne out by any of the evidence.
In other words, party loyalty is still incredibly important, and hatred of your main rival is still a powerful motivating factor. Diehard Tories do not vote Labour. As far as they are concerned even Tony Blair was too close to communism. Trying to win them is pointless. Now, I know that the BBC found people who claimed to be life-long Labour voters who voted Tory in 2019. They are to be congratulated on doing so, for I can safely say that 3 million 2017 Labour voters did not vote Tory in 2019. I am 100% confident in this assertion because the Tory vote increased by only 190,000. We do not need to appeal to Tory voting Labour supporters, they are non-existent in any meaningful analysis of voting behaviour.
Votes cast Labour/Conservative 1983-2019
| Labour | Change | Conservative | Change | |
| 1983 | 8,456,934 | 13,012,316 | ||
| 1987 | 10,029,807 | 1,572,873 | 13,760,583 | 748,267 |
| 1992 | 11,560,484 | 1,530,677 | 14,093,007 | 332,424 |
| 1997 | 13,518,167 | 1,957,683 | 9,600,943 | -4,492,064 |
| 2001 | 10,724,953 | -2,793,214 | 8,357,615 | -1,243,328 |
| 2005 | 9,552,436 | -1,172,517 | 8,784,915 | 427,300 |
| 2010 | 8,609,527 | -942,909 | 10,703,754 | 1,918,839 |
| 2015 | 9,347,273 | 737,746 | 11,334,226 | 630,472 |
| 2017 | 12,877,918 | 3,530,645 | 13,636,684 | 2,302,458 |
| 2019 | 10,231,237 | -2,646,681 | 13,827,395 | 190,711 |
| 10,490,874 | 11,711,144 |
Look at the Tory vote from 1992 to 2010 and what is clear is that Conservative voters were simply abstaining. In 1992, 14 million people voted Tory. By 1997 that figure had fallen to 9.6 million. The mythmakers want you to believe that they were able to convince 4.4 million Tory voters into the Labour camp. That would, if true, be quite a feat. But as Labour’s vote plummeted in 2001 and 2005 so the Tories started to improve. From 8.4 million in 2001 to a slightly improving 8.8 million in 2005. Tory abstainers were returning, Labour’s abstainers were growing. In other words, these brilliant strategists who want you to believe that they have the alchemy to win elections were successful in losing their own vote at the same time as the Tory vote recovered. By 2010 the Tories were the largest party with 10.7 million votes. Interestingly enough, as the Tories went through this terrible period nobody in their party saw the answer in purging their own party of its loyal supporters.
Part of the problem for New Labour was the one summed up by George Orwell in Animal Farm:
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
What we see is a growing cynicism from the electorate about the differences between the two main parties.
As British Election Study analyst Jane Green notes: “In 1987 just under 85 per cent of survey respondents agreed there was ‘a great deal of difference’ between the main parties. By 2005 that figure was just 23 per cent (British Election Study data).”
Faced with a choice between two Tory parties the electorate by 2010 were pretty clear. They preferred the authentic version to the fake one.
There is no doubt at all that many Labour members would dearly love to see a Labour government. Any Labour government. They are looking at Keir Starmer and thinking he looks a bit like Tony Blair, they are listening to a press that tells them that socialist policies never win and they are captivated by the myth of success which former Blairites, particularly Mandelson and Campbell, the Burke and Hare of New Labour, promote through their contacts in the right-wing press knowing that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth.
The real truth is that the very specific circumstances which allowed Blair a majority in 1997 are not likely to re-occur any time soon. Johnson may be a buffoon but he is their buffoon and he is malleable enough that he is unlikely to lose the support of the establishment. We cannot believe that a Conservative manifesto served up by Labour will have any affect other than that suffered by Gordon Brown in 2010 and Ed Miliband in 2015. We cannot rely on a Conservative collapse or the support of an inherently hostile media. To believe that we can is not just believing in myths but actually politically naïve.
It was not the manifesto that was the problem in 2019, but Brexit and the constant demonising of Jeremy Corbyn by Labour’s right-wing and an inherently hostile media. The problem of now chasing mythical Tory voters is that for every rightward policy shift to capture a Tory voter, more left-wing Labour voters abstain. It becomes, at best, a zero sum game. Forget floating voters, Tory voting Labour voters and winning over the media. The key to electoral success is bold policies that galvanise the core support. Labour has to clearly differentiate itself from the Tories. It has to do more than pay lip service to listening to its own members. Frankly, if ¾ of the leadership candidates don’t even trust us to pick our own MP candidates, then why should we believe that they trust us at all?
 |
| It's not as if we have not been here before |
Labour is at a crossroads. It’s time to stop believing the fairy stories of the right and face up to the reality that we keep losing because we lost our people in the 1970’s and we have been so busy tearing each other apart since that we have not addressed the real issues of how we get them back. Three successive terms in office for the right in which they lost voters and seats and which will be remembered for an illegal and destabilising war in the Middle East, PFI deals which the NHS is still struggling to pay off, and the introduction of a student loans regime leaving millions of young people with massive debts, offers no model for the future.
In opposition now, Labour has a real choice. Retreat and face defeat. Or, get off our knees and face up to the Tories. Not at the dispatch box, which is an absolute irrelevance but on picket lines, demonstrations, occupations and other acts of civil disobedience. A Labour leader worthy of the name will not retreat into Westminster and waste their time courting the press but will stand shoulder to shoulder with activists as they build the resistance to the Tories that will inevitably develop.
Rather than looking back to the failed Labour government of 1997-2005 we should be taking inspiration from young climate activists, Extinction Rebellion and, of course, across the channel from the magnificent struggle of the French working class determined to resist the attacks on their living conditions by the “centrist” government of Macron. They are not sitting around waiting for the next election. They are on the streets now. And, so should we be.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Many thanks for reading this post and for commenting.