North and South - What Jeremy Does Next Pt2

So, the great, glorious day has finally come - and gone. An avowed socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party, elected on the largest democratic mandate any leader has ever had.

Now what?

Corbyn faces significant challenges, including political opponents inside and outside Labour, building an electoral coalition, and getting a fair hearing from our media. None of these are going to go away just because he won, or by the use of a good hashtag. They need to be faced and addressed. In this brief series of posts, I'll give my own ideas on how we do this. Here I look at dealing with Labour's political opposition.

Labour faces two major opponents to a Labour Government: the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party. In England, Labour gained seats in 2015, whereas in Wales, we lost ground slightly. Broadly, Labour suffered from the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, while the Conservatives capitalised.

In Scotland, however, the SNP gained votes all over. An anti-politics (or rather, anti-Westminster politics) and anti-unionist mood combined with a party espousing left-of-centre policies to give a near clean sweep for the SNP.

Much discussion took place in the leadership election about attracting converts from the ranks of Tory voters, with relatively little discussion on how to do so with SNP voters. I believe this was a mistake, and a symptom of the lack of fresh thinking in what was the Labour mainstream - essentially, they felt they knew how to fight Tories, so were happy to talk about that, but had no idea how to fight anyone else.

Tories first. We can't rely on appeals to morality, justice or fairness over welfare cuts, public service cuts, and so on. People are worried over their own finances, and the persistently weak state of the economy. Even if sympathetic to the plight of others less fortunate than them, they also need to have confidence they can keep their own body and soul together.

That's why we need to take the initiative on the economic argument. We have run away from it for two elections now, preferring to capitulate completely to the Conservative framing of both the financial crisis and the appropriate response. The hope seemed to be that if we owned up to something we didn't do, people would forgive us, and we could move on. Well, it turns out they didn't, and actually we do have to have that hard conversation about the real causes and problems. No, it isn't going to be easy - complicated economic arguments will just turn people off. But we have to try - the alternative has failed dreadfully for us.

So, for example, make the case for quantitative easing and investment - make the point that the size of the economy is a measure of money flowing through it. It gets bigger when you spend the tenner in your pocket to buy groceries, because the grocer uses it to buy stock from the wholesaler, and the wholesaler pays his suppliers, and his suppliers pay their staff, and their staff put it into a bank, and the bank lends it to a business for an investment in new machinery, and the machinery manufacturer pays it to you for your wages, and you then go and buy groceries... Getting that money flowing is vital, and at the moment, banks aren't lending, and that flow just stops. So we will invest in infrastructure ourselves - and that money will flow out into the economy, instead of getting stuck in banks. The economy grows, we have a proper recovery, and as profits go up, tax take increases, and we pay down the deficit.

Make it snappier, though.

My point is that we used to have the courage and belief to make these arguments - don't give up just because it doesn't fit into a 5 second sound bite.

It may also be useful to highlight the constantly shifting goalposts of Osborne - his dates for deficit reduction keep moving back, and he ends up borrowing more and more. It would be worth testing to see if this attack actually has legs - that Osborne borrows to keep the lights on, whereas we'd borrow to build a power station, or words to that effect.

Then we have the SNP. I think for this group of voters a softer line is needed - while the push for economic competence will make inroads here, I think we have to accept there is also a big cultural move going on here. The rise in support for independence was, I believe, greatly helped by a feeling of despair among Scottish voters who lean to the left that there was no chance of getting a truly leftwing government in the UK. It is for that reason we need to highlight the strong leftwing policies of Corbyn - against welfare cuts, for example.

But as well as showcasing ourselves, we must go on the attack. The SNP have been in power in the Scottish Parliament for many years now, but have made little progress in areas they say are their priority. Remember, they have tax-raising powers, so if they truly believe a service is worth protecting, why haven't they taken advantage of them? Or is it that they like complaining, but don't really believe in implementing solutions?

Polling in Scotland shows, I believe, that support for the SNP is soft. Yes, the headline figures are horrifying - 62% plan to vote SNP in the constituency ballot, and 54% in the regional. But if you look past that, only 25% think they've done a good job on the economy, 34% on the NHS, 30% on education, and 23% on crime and justice. These are not the figures of a party running rampant - they are the figures of a party with weak opposition. We now have the chance to change that.

In this regard, the hysterical comments by the Labour old guard during the leadership campaign and afterwards will be a help - they help define a clear difference between the Labour Party that many Scots turned their back on, and who we are now. This is turn gives us the opportunity to gain a new hearing - and we must make use of it. Attack the SNP's record in government, and promote, for example, Labour's position on PFI in the NHS, on mental health funding, on social care, and on the National Education Service. Crime and justice looks like an area advances can be made also.

Crucially, Labour UK need to take the Scottish Parliament more seriously. For too long, Scotland was taken for granted, and Scottish Labour weren't given the intellectual freedom or the resources to fight the battle in front of them - the SNP. It's not enough to call them "Tartan Tories" and think the same old attacks against the Tories will work against the SNP - that is not how they are perceived. Nationally, we need to be more comfortable with allowing Scottish Labour to not only use a different emphasis on policies, but also to develop their own, more suited to devolved matters in Scotland.

Finally, we have the minor parties - Greens, UKIP, Liberal Democrats. Throughout the leadership campaign, there were persistent stories of Green Party members or voters becoming Labour registered supporters to get a vote. I don't think they were nefariously trying to influence the election, I think they were happy to have a candidate they supported in Labour. I suspect the Green surge will fall dramatically, to Labour's benefit. This is not to say we can afford to be complacent, but the policies Corbyn is espousing are likely to attract them naturally.

The Liberal Democrats are discredited in traditional Labour seats, and many others, due to their coalition with the Conservatives. Unfortunately, this means we can't rely on them to take seats away from the Conservatives. On the other hand, it is unlikely there will be a significant exodus from the right of the Labour Party to their banner. (Now there's a hostage to fortune if you ever saw one...)

UKIP is more interesting. I think they have taken advantage of a general mood against politicians and politics, but that this isn't the whole of the story. Insecurity over work, family finances, access to public services, and so on, has been manipulated by UKIP (and, to an extent, the Tories) into blame directed at immigration. By reducing the insecurity many of these voters feel - policies supporting welfare, tax credits, stopping cuts in public services, etc. - Labour can attract back many of these voters. Even just demonstrating Labour is a mass movement party that listens to its members is likely to assist in this.

Of course, the big caveat around UKIP is the EU referendum. A vote for out may mean UKIP falls apart, its purpose achieved, or it may morph into a partnership with the Conservatives, or try to reconstitute itself as a generalised protest party against the modern world. A vote for in may, just as with the SNP in Scotland, reinvigorate it as an expression of cultural connection. I don't know, and I wouldn't like to guess.

The (hopeful, but no doubt ill-informed and naive) advice in this post basically boils down to: have the courage to promote leftwing policies. Focus not on outrage over the suffering of the poorest (though it must be mentioned) but on the better economic performance investment in the country will bring. Wheel out friendly economists to agree - there are lots of economists who do. (Whether they are friendly or not, I don't know...)

And, ultimately, attack the record of incumbents. I was amazed that the Tories are still viewed as competent, given the sheer incompetence of some of their ministers in the last government. I don't mean in their policies - my disagreeing with them is not a sign of incompetence. I mean in terms of how poorly they manage their departments, or deliver their policies. The poster boy for this is, of course, Iain Duncan Smith.

For too long, we allowed ourselves to stay on the defensive. The moments Ed Miliband went on the attack - over Murdoch, over the hatchet job of his father, on Syria - he was successful, and popular. Defence doesn't defeat a government - we need to attack.

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.