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.)

Politicians are all the same - except the ones that aren't

We've all heard, whether on the doorstep, on tv, or online, that politicians are all the same. It's not a bad shorthand, to be honest - general elections became about winning over a few thousand swing voters in a small number of constituencies, and naturally the two main parties began to adopt similar styles to try to attract them.

But that isn't the whole story. Remember Clegg-mania? Before the coalition, the Liberal Democrats had the freedom to be different. No-one, not even they, believed they were going to be in government any time soon (a hung parliament was considered a remote possibility) and so they didn't have to chase that few thousand voters - they could just be themselves instead, and it won them seats.

And then there's UKIP. They have traded extensively, and effectively, on not being like the rest. They're the authentic voice of the people, the only ones not in the Westminster bubble, not a part of the establishment, and so on. Most of these claims are absolute rubbish, but they are perceived as true, which is just as important.

Labour and the Tories, however, are seen as being pretty much the same. It's an understandable position - when one party announces they will follow the same spending plans as the other (as Labour did before 1997, and the Conservatives did in 2007), it's clear there is at least some similarity there. When you add the more recent capitulation in the argument about the causes of the government deficit and debt by Labour, leaving both sides apparently agreeing on the cause, and the solution, only differing on the details (pace, timing, marginal differences in scale of the cuts) it looks like they are more alike than not.

Don't get me wrong, I think an Ed Miliband led government would have been better for the country than this David Cameron led one, but it is easy to see how the vast majority of the electorate, who have only a passing interest in politics at election time (or no interest at all, given the number of non-voters) could think there isn't much difference.

The thing is, this is a product of the tactic of chasing the few thousand swing voters, and I no longer think that tactic is valid, certainly not for Labour. Targeting a few thousand swing voters in England is not going to win back the hundreds of thousands of voters we need in Scotland. Sounding like the Tories is not going to win back the disaffected "none of the above" voters in the north of England, many of whom voted UKIP. And if we can't keep hold of, or win back, those voters, the votes of a few thousand swing voters in the Midlands and South of England are irrelevant.

The thousands of swing voters tactic only works when the two parties are close in terms of seats. The brutal truth is that, having tried that tactic again last time, we are now over one hundred seats behind the conservatives. That doesn't call for a tactic designed to shift ten or twenty seats - it calls for a step change. It calls, in fact, for an attempt to fundamentally shift the parameters of the debate, much as the SNP managed in Scotland, much as UKIP are starting to do across England.

We're in a time of flux, and we need to win votes across the entire UK - in Scotland, to regain what we have lost, in northern England and Wales, to keep what we have, and in the Midlands and the South of England, to get back to power. The way to win those votes? By showing that we're different from the Tories. By showing that we don't think people should be criminalised for being poor, punished for being on benefits, or sanctioned for being sick. By showing that we do believe in investing in our young people, in our infrastructure, and in our country. By showing that when it comes down to choosing between the rich or them, we're on their side.

In short, by being Labour, by emphasising our differences rather than diminishing them, and, yes, by making the case for our positions, even when the electorate (currently) disagrees.

Fascism in the UK - All Labour's Fault?

I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. That's not a good feeling. But like it or not, the BNP now has as many MEPs for the North West as the Liberal Democrats. Over in Yorkshire, the former leader of the National Front was elected, giving the BNP the same number of MEPs in that region as Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

The various talking heads have said how awful this is, how the BNP will claim this gives them and their views legitimacy. And, well, the BNP will claim that. And, well, they'll be right.

You see, that's the point of democracy. Sometimes it throws up results you don't like. But that doesn't make them illegitimate - much as I may dislike it, the BNP put themselves up for election, and of those that voted, enough of them agreed with them for them to win seats.

But the key phrase there is "of those that voted". And that was a depressingly low number - in places. Overall turnout was 34.3% - down by 3.9% from 2004's 38.2%. But those figures mask the variation across the country.

In fact, in some areas turnout was up, though only marginally. The East of England, the South West, and the South East all went up by about 1%. But these aren't regions the BNP managed to do well in. The regions the BNP did well in have been traditionally associated with Labour. Obviously the proportional nature of this electoral system changes that a bit, but the ability of the BNP to claim seats must be seen, primarily, as a failure of not all parties, but of one - the Labour Party.

Let's look at the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber regions. In the North West, turnout went from 40.9% to 31.7% - a fall of 9.2%. In Y&H, turnout went from 42.6% to 32.3% - a fall of 10.3%. Put it this way: about a quarter of the people who voted last time didn't bother this time. That's pretty awful.

It gets worse for Labour. In hard numbers, about 470,000 fewer people voted in the North West - and Labour lost about 240,000 votes. In Y&H, about 363,000 fewer people voted - and Labour lost 183,000 votes. Half of the people who didn't vote had been Labour voters. In terms of their share of the vote, Labour lost 7% and 7.5% respectively - about a quarter of their share.

(Remember, even with a falling turnout, the share of the vote would stay the same, all else being equal. A declining share of the vote means, in this case, and in my opinion, that former Labour voters are overwhelmingly more likely not to have voted than those of other parties.)

These figures illustrate a catastrophic collapse of the Labour vote in these areas. In comparison, the Tory vote stayed relatively stable - in fact, their share of the vote increased by only 1.5% in the North West, and dropped by 0.2% in Yorkshire and the Humber. This wasn't a flight to the Tories - they stayed pretty much the same.

A very fair point to make is that the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber were all postal votes last time round. The other two regions that were all-postal last time were the North East and the East Midlands. This time, their turnout dropped as well. In fact, the North East's turnout dropped by more than Yorkshire and the Humber - it went from 40.8% to 30.4% - a fall of 10.4%. The East Midlands, however, had a more modest drop - from 43.4% to 37.1%, a fall of 6.3%.

But I think clinging to the hope the drop in Labour's vote is due mainly to the change from an all-postal ballot is wishful thinking. For a start, the drop in turnout was significantly larger in the areas Labour had previously been stronger - the East Midlands saw a much smaller drop. But, much more significantly, it ignores Wales.

Wales didn't have an all-postal ballot last time. But they saw the biggest percentage drop in turnout this time round - from 41.4% to 30.4%, a massive 11%. About 239,000 fewer people voted - and about 159,000 fewer people voted Labour. The Labour share of the vote went from 32.5%, the second highest of any region in the UK, to 20.3%, the fifth. And, for the first time since the Labour Party became a national party, Labour were beaten in Wales. And beaten by the Tories.

This wasn't a change from an all-postal ballot depressing turnout. No, this was the Labour vote not turning up. There could be many reasons for this. Anyone who has read my past few posts will know I think policy is a main one. Others will point to the expenses scandal hitting Labour harder than the other parties.

I think it's that we have reached a tipping point. And I don't know if Labour can recover from it.

More than 5 years ago, I gave a speech at the final hustings to become the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a safe Labour constituency - my home. And because I cared about my home, and because I was worried about the path the Labour Party was on, I gave an honest assessment of where I thought we had been going wrong - ignoring our grass roots, not pursuing policies that would create a fairer society, introducing privitisation into health and education, and so on.

And I told my fellow party members that I wasn't worried about Labour winning in that constituency at the next election. But I was increasingly worried about the election after that, and the one after that. Because I felt the central Party had made a decision that they could safely ignore their heartlands, because they had nowhere else to go, no-one else to vote for.

And, you know what? They are right. The heartlands don't have anywhere else to go. But these European results show that they don't have to go anywhere to cause problems for Labour. They don't have to go to another party. They don't have anywhere to go. So they just stay at home.

(Incidentally, the other place strongly associated with Labour is Scotland. They, however, had a strong opposition to Labour that wasn't the Tories - the SNP. Turnout fell by only 2.4%. Labour lost about 81,000 votes. Coincidentally, the SNP gained about 89,500 votes. In Scotland, former Labour voters do have somewhere else to go.)

Now, I know that European elections are different from general elections. People vote differently, they protest, or they just don't care. But this election, the Labour heartlands have learnt an important lesson - they don't have to vote Labour. They can just... not vote.

That's why the BNP won seats - the Labour vote collapsed. In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour needed only another 10,270 votes to have stopped the BNP getting a seat. In the North West, Labour would have needed another 60,000 or so - but their vote had fallen by about 240,000. (UKIP would have needed only another 2,449 votes, or the Greens would have needed 4,962.)

No, the election of the BNP isn't a failure of all parties. It's not a failure of the political system. It's not even a sign that the country is becoming racist. It's a sign that the Labour Party is failing, that the Labour Party cannot energise its core vote, that the Labour Party vote is collapsing.

It's a sign that the Labour government needs to start listening to what its party members and voters actually want them to do.

But because they didn't, because Labour failed, I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. For the next 5 years. Thanks a bunch.

Anger and Apathy

So, then, the G20 summit has passed. Maybe it's saved the world, maybe it hasn't. I'm not going to pretend I can make an educated judgement about the likely success or otherwise of the new attempts to restart the global economy when even economists are holding their breaths. I don't know. I just don't know.

The other hot topic is the way police treated the demonstrators. There are questions to be answered about exactly what happened around the death of one man, Ian Tomlinson, especially as it looks like he wasn't even part of the demo, just someone trying to get home. The tactic of 'kettling' is coming under renewed scrutiny, as thousands were kept in one place for hours. And the behaviour of the police towards peaceful protests is causing concern, after allegations that the Climate Camp protest was violently broken up once the TV cameras had gone home.

(You know the police tactics and actions may have gone too far when The Times starts to question them.)

But that's not what I want to talk about today. There are no doubt thousands of shrill voices across the internet making their views felt on these issues, and I won't add my own to them.

No, instead I want to look at another side of it. It happened only slowly, as the news media started to get a little disappointed. Despite their dire predictions of mass riots in the capital, of a re-run of the Poll Tax riots, of the imminent collapse of Western society in an orgy or rage and violence, the protests themselves were rather quiet.

I mean, the police bottled up approximately 4,000 protesters right outside that symbol of the collapse of the banks, and the unrestrained greed that started it, and seems to continue still, RBS. And they broke 3 or 4 windows. A revolution, this was not.

And all told, we're looking at at most 30,000 protesters This was not the population taking to the streets. Now, I have no doubt that part of the reason for this is the dire predictions the media were making - surprisingly, when the media repeatedly refers to possible violent clashes, riots on the street, and such like, a lot of people won't go. The police must have been overjoyed at the scaremongering by the media.

But some commentators have been proudly claiming this shows that there just isn't that much anger out there, that we know it's tough for the government, but have faith they will do everything they can to get us out of this mess.

Part of me would really like to believe this.

But this doesn't match with what I'm coming across out there. I'm not seeing burning rage, certainly, but I am seeing a sullen resentment. I'm meeting people who are confused as to why we can't spend billions to fix the pensions hole in the Post Office, when we've spent far more than that on bailing out banks. They don't see why we're closing libraries when we're creating money to pour into the financial system. They don't understand why the same MPs demanding new financial prudence from banks are also claiming thousands for second homes.

They don't see why they are suffering when those at the top seem to be carrying on as usual.

And it doesn't take much to trigger them from resentment to anger. Just ask them about Labour - suddenly the rage is evident. Maybe it's worse because Labour is supposed to be the party that protects them. Maybe. Maybe it would be just as intense whoever was in power. Maybe.

Regardless, they're not going to vote Labour. All this talk about the polls turning round if we start to see signs of recovery, how the support for Cameron and the Tories is soft, how we can still make it, sounds more and more like wishful thinking.

And the reason is simple: I don't think the people I'm talking to actually think the Tories will do better. They don't think they'll do worse. They don't really think about that at all. No, the reason they will vote for the Tories is to punish Labour. And I don't think that desire to punish them will go away even if Gordon Brown does magically bring us to a land of milk and honey within a year.

Because, and this is where it links in with why people haven't been protesting, I think far, far too many people just think they can't have an effect. Nothing will change. As the old saying goes, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

I think the perception, true or otherwise, that the three main parties are essentially saying the same thing with slightly different spins hasn't helped. People are beginning to think that voting doesn't really make a difference. So we have falling turnouts, attempts to shore up turnouts with postal voting (because we can't convince people to walk a few hundred yards down the street to vote), and the rise of smaller, more extreme parties - ones that at least offer something different.

But if you didn't think voting made a difference, there was always protest.

I remember, way back when, marching against going to war in Iraq. Maybe it's because I was young and idealistic, but I really thought we could make a difference. I looked around at the sea of people I was part of, stretching across Hyde Park, and I thought "Surely this means something? Surely no politician can just ignore this?".

Like I said, I was young and idealistic.

It wasn't just me. No matter whose particular estimate of numbers you want to go with, the two marches against the war that took place in London attracted huge numbers of people, a vast amount who believed that they really could make a difference, that they could make their voice heard, that their protest would have an effect in a democratic society.

But we all know how that story ended.

Now, I'm not saying that this means the UK isn't democratic - ultimately, MPs voted to go to war. It was a democratic decision, regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

But I am saying that decision had an effect on democracy. The marches were an incredible occurrence. A vast coalition of people from all walks of life came together to be heard. News reports described it as historic. Everyone seemed amazed at the size of these events.

And they failed. That's the important point - despite mobilising more people than anyone possibly imagined, they failed. Regardless of the rights and wrongs, regardless of whether it was democratic or not, millions of people were able to see on TV that protests didn't work.

So, when people think the parties are all the same, that protests are useless, what do you get? Apathy. Or at least it looks like apathy - people simply stop taking part. They make what seems a rational decision not to waste their time on something that will make no difference.

And that apparent apathy is what I think is the real threat, the real way that society can break down. People really are angry. Yes, they're keeping a lid on it (heavens, we are British, after all). But that doesn't change the fact that it is there.

Along with that anger, they feel powerless. They feel as if the people at the top will just keep on doing whatever they want, regardless of what everyone else wants them to do. They feel that voting makes no difference, that protesting makes no difference.

They feel they are ignored.

That's a dangerous combination. Anger, and powerlessness. Because as that anger grows - and it will, as the recession continues - as it grows, it has no way of being let out, no safety valve. Which means it builds up, until finally something, some spark, some event, something we can't predict, something happens that causes it to burst free.

What I worry about, what I'm scared of, is that we're not seeing a population happy to give the government the benefit of the doubt, but that instead, we're just seeing the calm before the storm.

That's what I'm scared of. I'm almost certain it won't happen. But that 'almost' is still scary.