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.
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