How The Leopard Got His Spots - And Why We Need To Change Them

A lot of the argument against Corbyn has been with regard to his electability. It is presented as a choice: principles, or power. I'd argue not only that this is a false choice, but that the side arguing against Corbyn will lead Labour to irrelevance, not power.

The political strategy of New Labour was a product of the British electoral system. It made sense to, essentially, take a large number of Commons seats for granted, and focus the party's policies on the small number of swing voters in a small number of seats. This strategy paid dividends, and enabled Labour to win with percentages of the vote in 2001 and 2005 that were smaller than that achieved by the Conservatives in 1979, 1983, 1987, and 1992.

The problem is, however, that this strategy relied on the assumption that you could take a large number of seats for granted - that the Labour voters in those seats would keep voting Labour, as they had nowhere else to go. As long as that assumption held, the strategy could continue.

That assumption no longer holds. Enough of those voters to make a difference found somewhere to go, be that the SNP in Scotland, UKIP in areas of the north, or simply staying at home instead.

To get a majority in 2020 Labour need to win about 100 seats. This seems to leave Labour in a bind - the policies to win current Conservative voters in England are likely to alienate former Labour voters in Scotland, and current Labour voters in the north of England. Currently, three of the leadership contenders seem to be reacting to this by simply ignoring Scotland - meaning it is likely Labour would need a double digit poll lead over the Conservatives to win enough seats in England. This doesn't appear credible.

The answer is to realise that Conservative voters are not the only source of more votes.

From 1945 to 1997, every general election had a turnout of over 70% (71%, actually). After 1997, no general election has. The impact of this is generally overlooked, with commentators instead focussing on the decline in the vote share of the two parties of government - a common narrative is that the electorate is splintering, and voters are turning to smaller alternative parties. The problem is, that narrative isn't true.

Figure 1 shows the reality. What I have done here is show share not of votes cast, but of the total electorate - I have included non-voters. (Yes, you're reading a blogpost with graphs in it. I am profoundly apologetic about this, but pictures help.) The green line is the sum of Conservative and Labour electorate shares, the orange line is the sum of Liberals and others, while the black line is the share of the electorate that did not vote.

If voters were turning away from the main two parties, the share of the electorate voting for others should increase - other than a rise from a very low share in 1970, the 'others' share of the electorate remains relatively stable. Instead, we see non-voters increase dramatically in 2001, and remain high. If this was due to voters for all parties being less likely to vote, then we'd expect to see a decline both in the electorate share of the main two parties and the other parties, but we don't.

The conclusion is clear - voters are walking away from the two main parties. The strategy of focussing on a small number of seats, and a small number of voters, has led to them both being unable to reach out beyond that small group.

Put it another way - since 2001, the biggest share of the electorate hasn't gone to a party, it has gone to non-voters. A party that can actually reach out to this group, and gain their votes, at least gains the possibility of a dramatic change.

Figure 2 shows the rise of non-voting, and the decline of both Labour and the Conservatives. It is, perhaps, instructive to note that even the landslide of 2001, when the Labour Party gained 62.5% of seats in parliament, was only won with 24.2% of the electorate - slightly less than the Conservatives received in 2015.

Of course, one reaction to all of this information could be "So what?". After all, if the point is to get to power, what does it matter if turnout falls, so long as you still get the biggest slice of the people who actually vote?

I'd argue that it is in fact harder to do that - convince Conservatives to switch to Labour - than it is to convince non-voters to vote. This decline in voting for the main parties hasn't just affected Labour - the Conservatives had their collapse in 1997, just one election before Labour, and haven't really recovered. (21.9% of total electorate in 97, 24.4% in 2015.) This means, just as Labour is left appealing to their die-hard core vote, so are the Conservatives - and those are precisely the people least likely to switch from one to the other. It seems far more likely that they will switch to not voting (as figure 1 suggests) or, at best, to an alternative party.

In fact, we have an example of what a difference an increase in turnout can make - albeit when combined with other factors. The turnout in Scotland for the 2010 general election was 63.8%, and Labour won 41 seats, the LibDems 11, and the SNP only 6. The turnout in 2015 in Scotland went up to 71.1% (the low end of the pre-2001 national turnouts), and the SNP took 56 seats, with Labour, the LibDems, and the Conservatives sharing the other three between them.

Yes, other factors were most definitely involved, but take, for example, Gordon constituency. This was held in 2010 by the Liberal Democrats, with 17,575 votes, a majority of 6,748, on a 66.4% turnout. In 2015, the absolute number of LibDem votes went *up*, to 19,030 - but the SNP took the seat with 27,717 votes, a majority of 8,687 on a turnout of 73.3%.

Conversely, we can also see what not addressing this fall in turnout means. A frequent line that comes up in anti-Corbyn arguments is that he risks a rerun of the 1983 general election, a terrible showing for Labour. (It could be argued this was more due to the right of Labour breaking off to form another party, but that is a debate for another time.) If we look at share of the total electorate, we see this truly was an awful drubbing for Labour - only 20.1% of the electorate voted Labour. But it turns out we've already had a rerun of 1983 - 20.1% is what Labour got in 2015. Which was, in fact, an improvement over the 18.9% in 2010. Two of the current leadership contenders were in the cabinet or shadow cabinet for those elections.

The old strategy doesn't work. Trying to rehash it for another run in 2020 isn't going to work. Labour needs a different strategy, one based on reaching out to non-voters - and you can't do that by offering a subtly different version of what the other parties are offering. Those policies are what has turned people off from the two main parties.

Ultimately, you can't do it by listening to what (you think) voters are telling you - because the very people who we need to attract aren't voting. Instead, you need to look at the campaigns and organisations that are attracting members - and at the moment, they are to the left of Labour.

(Data sources: Political Science Resources UK General Election data, and Wikipedia for Scottish turnout and Gordon constituency results.)

The Pushmi-pullyu, and other fantastic beasts

Putting aside specific policies for the moment, the argument of the centrists (or moderates, or Blairites, or sensible ones, or right of the party, or whatever particular phrase you want) to those on the left (or hard left, or Bennites, or Trotskyists, or morons, or whatever particular phrase you want) has been that if they want to see any part of their principles enacted by a government, they have to stop campaigning for what they actually believe in, and start campaigning for a position close to "the centre ground", where the bulk of voters are.

An addition to this argument, perhaps to sweeten the pill, is that once a centre-left party has got into government, it can start to shift the centre ground leftwards. The LabourList article of Luke Akehurst's I looked at last time gives this argument:

"My vision for the country I’d like to live in is I know, somewhat to the left of most voters, but I hope not so far to their left that they couldn’t gradually be persuaded of it through incremental evidence of successful governments"

This is what I call the push argument - that you get into power, and then start pushing the centre ground to the left by implementing policies just slightly to the left of centre.

An alternative view is held by some on the left. This is that it isn't right to compromise on any of the positions, not (or, perhaps, not just) because of a moral belief against compromising, but because they believe by doing so, they can get more of their policies implemented more quickly. Their argument is that by arguing forcefully for their policies, they can begin to move the centre ground towards them.

This is what I call the pull argument - that power is at the end of the process, not the start, but that throughout you will be pulling the centre ground to the left by causing whoever is in power to compromise their position, and implement more leftwing policies to prevent the draining of their voters away.

It can be seen that, in an ideal world, these positions can be complementary - the crazy idealists provide a tension towards the left, while the sensible pragmatists get into power and implement slightly leftish policies to try to reduce this tension.

(Naturally, a similar argument would be taking place on the right, so the centre is under tension from both sides.)

In fact, this process can be seen most clearly in countries which use proportional representation - with the added benefit of the crazy idealists and sensible pragmatists having relatively open negotiations on the policies to be implemented if they are forming a government.

However, we don't have PR, as you may have noticed. Thus we have the Labour Party, a very broad church, which includes people from both the push and the pull positions. For a long period, the push side has been ascendant, arguably since the purge of Militant.

(For the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not saying Militant were the pull side. They were genuine entryists.)

However, up until the election of Blair, the usual push and pull tension carried on. Blair seemed like a continuation of the same, but instead of the usual way of reducing tension (that of making some compromises) he took a different path - he started to reorganise the party to remove the ability of the pull side to create any tension.

Hence the steady removal of democratic methods of holding the leadership to account, the hobbling of routes for the grassroots to direct policy, the change of national conference to a rally, and so on. In this way, tension couldn't grow from the pull side, as they had no way of being able to push their point of view - the democratic structures were removed.

So what happened? Membership fell. New parties were started, but failed. A purge without a purge happened - as the pull position came to see they could not influence the party, they naturally began to leave, thinking "why pay to be a member of a democratic socialist party which doesn't seem to want to be socialist or democratic?"

This isn't to say these people disappeared. Instead, activists of the pull position ended up finding other structures to work within. This could be: a single issue campaign, such as UK Uncut; a broader opposition to austerity, such as the People's Assembly; trade unions; smaller left parties, such as Left Unity or the Greens; or even a very focussed party, such as the National Health Action party.

While these groups did have some effect (the issue of tax avoidance was forced on to the mainstream political agenda by UK Uncut, for example) they were all hamstrung by their separation from the party political process, and by the British electoral system. So, for example, the People's Assembly could have huge meetings, but there was no-one for them to vote for that could implement their agenda. The National Health Action party could raise awareness, but people don't vote on just that one issue.

In other words, the pull position left, so there was no tension on the push position to bring them to the, uh, left. This would seem to be good for them - they could concentrate on winning votes in the centre.

Except...

Without the tension from the left, the push position could go further right, reducing the difference between them and the main opposition. After all, getting into power was the important thing - without it, no policies could be implemented. But the centre wasn't, and isn't, fixed. And the pull side on the right still existed, bringing their push side further to the right.

So the push side on the left keeps edging to the right, and the push side on the right keeps going to the right, and we end up with a Labour leadership who won't defend tax credits, who won't vote against making poor people poorer.

The leadership election, particularly following the changes made by Miliband, is one of the few democratic ways remaining for views different to the current leadership (and central party structure) to be expressed. The easy extension of the franchise to registered supporters was originally supported by the push side as they made the mistake of thinking that the people they crafted policies to attract were the same sort of people who would sign up, or join a political party.

They won't make the same mistake again. This is the opportunity for the pull side to actually exert some pressure, some balance. Even if the only thing Corbyn does is help rebuild the democratic structures of the party, he will have left a party better able to make genuine positive changes in the country.

But I don't think that is all he will do. I think he will actually provide a better electoral position for Labour than his opponents, and that is what my next post is about.

How the pendulum got his swing, and other stories

Well, I thought about writing this response the first time I read Luke Akehurst's post We've already tried Jeremy Corbyn's alternative electoral strategy and it didn't work, but decided I far preferred reading in the sun. However, a friend has pointed at his post as evidence for why not to vote for Corbyn, and so, here goes:

Akehurst's post is bunk.

I originally typed "whole post" but I was being unfair - I do agree that the distribution of political views is, probably, a normal distribution, with the occasional bit of distortion from specific policies.

Then it goes wrong. The second of his self-evident truths is arguable, but we'll skip over that, and look at what he tagged on to the end of that assertion - that a party is chosen for government by being 'sensibly' centrist, that being what the electorate want. While a nice Just So story, it is just as easy to tell a different one - that the electorate wants a centrist government, but only on average, over time, and this is achieved by voting for a party to one side of the centre, and then, after a period of time which may consist of multiple elections, the mood of the electorate shifts, and they decide they want a party on the other side of the centre to balance things out. Call it "How The Pendulum Got His Swing".

The important things to note about that story are: a) it explains the swinging of power between Labour and the Conservatives, and also suggests why the avowedly centrist party, the Liberal Democrats (and predecessors) haven't been in power (on their own) for quite some time - they don't provide enough of a balance to whichever party was in power before them, and b) I just made it up - I told a plausible(-ish) story to fit the observed facts, just like the story Akehurst presents as a self-evident truth.

There is also slightly more evidence for my fairytale than there is for Akehurst's - and it comes from the survey he cites.

To bolster his argument that Corbyn, Livingstone and (as far as I can tell) Miliband were too far left, he points at the political spectrum polling done by YouGov. Voters in 2015 put themselves, on average, at -7.1 on a political spectrum - i.e. just left of centre. But, horror of horrors, Labour (before the election) was seen as at -36.4, with Miliband, the closet Trot, at -40.1! No wonder Labour lost! Clearly the Conservatives were seen as more centrist!

Er, no. The same poll put David Cameron at 45.8 - further from the apparent centre than Ed Miliband. The Conservative Party was seen as even more right wing, at 50.7. When you take into account the average GB voter put themselves at -7.1, David Cameron was 52.9 points to their right, while Ed Miliband was 33.0 points to their left. Or, in other words, Miliband and Labour were, according to that survey, closer both to the average GB voter, and to the absolute centre.

What can we learn from this? People lie to pollsters. People are happier to say they are leftwing than to say they are rightwing. And, maybe, just maybe, we learn that simple divisions of left and right aren't a fantastic way of looking at the spectrum of political views, or how people will vote. (No matter how nice your Just So story is.)

But that was just the preamble, the poorly argued assertions that came before the main, monster, assertion: that a Jeremy Corbyn general election campaign in 2020 would be similar to the Ken Livingstone London Mayoral election campaign in 2008.

Edit: Sharp eyed readers will have noticed I start talking about the 2008 mayoral election, when the linked article is talking about the 2012 election. This is because I am an idiot. I'll leave the original blurb here, but struck through, and you'll see another edit after it where I try to correct my error! Edit ends.

First things first: we don't know what a Corbyn campaign would look like. The assertion that it would have the same strategy as the Livingstone campaign in 2008 is just that - an assertion, not a fact. But, even accepting the broad premise for the sake of argument, there are other issues.

Secondly, turnout. I'll be coming back to turnout in a later post, but for the moment, just this - turnout was 45.33%. Goodish for a local government election, appalling for a general election. In essence, we can expect more people to vote in a general election, and, broadly, that tends to favour Labour. (But only broadly.)

Thirdly, Livingstone was the incumbent. Yes, he had a lot of publicity for the previous few years - but he was up against someone who wasn't short of a bit of publicity himself. In which case, you get someone who has to defend a record, against someone who can promise everything for the future.

Finally, and importantly, you may recall some pretty major events around 2008. We were in the middle of a bit of a financial brouhaha. You may remember it. It was in all the papers.

The Labour Party's poll rating tanked. The poll published just before the election for national voting intentions put Labour at 26%, while the Conservatives were on 40%. While it may be nice to think that the electorate in London would have calmly put aside the slow motion collapse of the global financial system, the panicky headlines, and the opportunistic finger-pointing of the Conservatives, and instead focussed only on bus fares and rubbish dumps, it seems rather disingenuous to claim the spreading disaster didn't figure at least slightly. In which case, with a result (on first preference votes) of 37%, Livingstone, as a proxy representative for a government he was not part of, outperformed expectations.

Edit: The 2012 mayoral election was fought in different circumstances to the 2008 one. The financial crisis was still rumbling on (as, indeed, it still does today) and Labour had not challenged the narrative that they were to blame. Ken Livingstone was no longer the incumbent, losing both the advantages and disadvantages this gave in 2008, but was, now, someone who had been previously defeated in an election for this position - yesterday's man, if you like. In addition, London was gearing up for the 2012 Olympics, an event causing some excitement, and which Boris Johnson had been able to personally associate himself with (while still being able to hold himself blameless for the levies on council tax payers to help pay for it).

Significantly, the coalition was now in power, and this had a clear effect on the Liberal Democrat vote - it more than halved between 2008 and 2012 in percentage terms. Turnout was also very low, at only 38.1%. All of these factors had some effect. It is, however, worth noting that Livingstone did in fact increase the share of the vote Labour received, suggesting the impact of the campaign strategy was, in fact, positive. End edit.

All of which is to say that each election is unique. Can some lessons be learned? Of course. But can definite conclusions about a possible election five years in the future be drawn from a different type of election seven years in the past, completely divorced from the circumstances it was held in? No, of course not.

If your fear is that a Corbyn general election campaign would just be a repeat of a Livingstone mayoral campaign, rest assured that isn't the case. The differences are far, far greater than the similarities.

And, if I haven't managed to convince you of that, consider this: Livingstone won the first two.