Sunday 1 August 2021

Starmerism's Necessary Delusions

Keir Starmer's new head of strategy has spoken, and the words are ... nothing new. The strategic insights unveiled at a presentation Deborah Mattinson gave to Labour MPs last week revealed how Boris Johnson is becoming more annoying than endearing (a simple glance at recent polls would have told you that), and people aren't sure where Labour stands. Nearly 16 months into the job, one might ask who is to blame for that state of affairs. The big take home was how Labour has to win over voters who didn't vote Labour in 2019, and the party should adopt clearer positioning and more uplifting message. Money can't buy advice his precious.

Unfortunately, the whole piece is as lazy as the strategic guidance it reports on. Consider the line "millions defected to the Tories in 2019". This is simply not true. As most hacks are whizzes with Wikipedia, at the very minimum one would expect familiarity with the numbers our most recent general election yielded. There was a 3.7m vote gap between the Tories and Labour, but the Conservative vote increased by just 300,000 votes. What did for Labour was the splintering of the anti-Tory vote, with support bleeding to the LibDems, the Greens, the stay-at-homes and, oft-overlooked, the anti-second referendum protest attracted by the Brexit Party. This might be an honest mistake if the piece was penned by junior reporters as opposed to seasoned hacks, but an ulterior purpose is afoot. Further down we read "Some in Starmer’s team believe the party is still suffering damage from the Corbyn era, which ended with the 2019 defeat." Yawn. But we can see how the neutral reporting of this mood is tied with the spin on the election. If the evil doings of the former leader are the primary reason for the 2019 loss, we don't have to inquire too closely into the reasons why the previous coalition bled in all directions. Nor the role the party's current leader played in committing Labour to this vote-losing outcome.

To be fair to the Great Helmsman's chief navigator, I haven't seen Mattinson's presentation. There might have keen insights and worthy nuggets for all I know. But one thing that obviously wasn't mentioned, because the Observer piece doesn't reference it, is the 2017 general election. As the only time Labour has gained seats in an election since 1997, surely it would be reasonable to reflect on the hows and whys of an unexpectedly positive election - one depriving the Tories of their majority and seeing the greatest turn around in polling since 1945. There is an argument, though not a terribly convincing one, that the stars aligned in an entirely flukish way to grind out the result it did, but this doesn't feature in the report. This is because the Labour right aren't interested. To paraphrase a famous Blairism, even if going left was the only route to winning an election they wouldn't want to take it. Keeping their positions and securing future jobs as lobbyists, corporate executives, or star media people, it all depends on maintaining things the way they are. 2017 was a heart attack not just because it refused to conform to their strategy road map, but because it assembled a huge electorate behind a programme that broke with Labourism. It promised a politics in which managerialism was subordinate to the democratic impulse from below. What role for the social climber on the Labour benches when democratic input would have determined the fates of transport and public utilities, would have felt its presence on every company board in the land, and crucially would have reshaped the party around the aspirations of the many, not the careerist trajectories of the few? 2017 is more than a brush with collective death, it must be erased, purged from the party's collective memory while the screws are tightened to prevent its like from ever happening again.

As such, Mattinson's advice is shaped by the Labour establishment's chief desire and purpose - to remain the Labour establishment. The evidence is out there, don't take my word for it. Going from the past two elections, it's pretty obvious what Labour needs to do to win: consolidate the new base Corbyn was able to bring together and set about a twin track strategy of flushing out more potential voters from the pro-Labour demographics and winning over soft Tory supporters. This is eminently do-able. But instead, and going from how Mattinson's political imagination is stuck almost 25 years in the past, the thinking is going after hardened Tory voters by waving flags, bigging up the police and military, and opposing the Tories from the right will do the trick. Completely ignoring and disassembling the party's existing base, breathing more life into the Greens and LibDems is what they're actually doing. In their contrived forgetting of 2017 and partial view of 2019, the leadership are pulling together a strategy that just won't cut it. Couple this with the Labour right's habit to publicly broadcast how shit Labour is on every occasion, the destination Keir Starmer has set out for the party comes into view with increasing clarity: failure.

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10 comments:

Blissex said...

«Unfortunately, the whole piece is as lazy as the strategic guidance it reports on. Consider the line "millions defected to the Tories in 2019". [...] There was a 3.7m vote gap between the Tories and Labour, but the Conservative vote increased by just 300,000 votes.»

It is always sadly funny for me to point out how unrelentingly optimistic our blogger in his views, because when the Militant Mandelsoncy say “millions defected to the Tories in 2019” they mean that not with respect to 2017, but to 1997, or even better, to 1987, an election which was also blighted by the SDP+LD Alliance:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/peter-kellner-on-the-labour-party-crisis-7960234
The deep roots of Labour's red wall decline Peter Kellner

[...] The chart on this page sets out the transformation of British society that lies at the root of Labour’s problems. It compares the 1987 and 2019 general elections. Their overall results were remarkably similar: a big majority based on a 12-point lead in the popular vote.
[...] As Tony Blair’s landslide victories showed, instrumentalists and social liberals can vote the same way, despite their differences.

Tony Blair's electoral toxicity did not increase the number of votes from “instrumentalists and social liberals”, he lost several million votes, but the Conservatives has lost even more millions of votes, so the seats went be defailt to New Labour. My usual numbers that show clearly rather different changes in party votes:

1974: 11.45m Lab. 10.46m Con. 5.34m LP
--
1979: 11.53m Lab 13.70m Con. 4.31m LP
1983: 8.46m Lab 13.01m Con. 7.78m LP+SDP
1987: 10.03m Lab 13.74m Con. 7.34m LP+SDP
1992: 11.56m Lab. 14.09m Con. 6.00m LD
--
1997: 13.52m NLab. 9.60m Con. 5.24m LD
2001: 10.72m NLab. 8.34m Con. 4.81m LD
2005: 9.55m NLab. 8.78m Con. 5.99m LD
--
2010: 8.61m NLab. 10.70m Con. 6.84m LD
2015: 9.35m NLab. 11.33m Con. 6.30m LD,UKIP
2017: 12.88m Lab. 13.64m Con. 2.37m LD
2019: 10.30m Lab. 13.97m Con. 3.70m LD

CeltJules66 said...

Absolutely spot on

Alan Story said...

Oh....and one more delusion: that Labour can win without breaking from FPTP and endorsing proportional representation, something done long ago by ALL other social democratic parties in the developed world:
http://getprdone.org.uk/the-humbling-in-hartlepool-an-open-letter-to-keir-starmer/

A recent poll shows 83% of LP members back PR: https://labourlist.org/2021/07/exclusive-83-of-members-say-labour-should-back-proportional-representation/

Anonymous said...

I had a converstaion with Philip Gould in the early 1990s that was almost identical to what Mattinson is quoted as saying this week. Labour had already decided 30 years ago that it wanted to attract a certain type of Tory voter, and began running focus groups with these "swing voters in marginal constituencies" and, unsurprisingly, this group of people quote talking points from the tabloid press. I said to Gould "So that gives you a good idea of what Labour needs to argue against" and his reply was "No; we have to craft messages that resonate with this group of electors".

Running this very shallow form of focus group discussion with a certain group of voters has led the Labour Party to view this segment of the population as "normal people" and to then view party members as odd obsessives. What is convenient is that the views of such electors align closely with what is in the tabloid press, so repeating their views avoids taking on the press barons.

It is unsurprising that Labour is out of touch with this group of electors: it is made up of tabloid-readers repeating tabloid talking points. Trying to attract this group of voters by saying things that resonate with them has meanwhile alienated Labour from other voter groups. It does however allow Labour to remain in a comfort zone where arguments with right-wing forces are minimised.


Guano

Blissex said...

«one more delusion: that Labour can win without breaking from FPTP and endorsing proportional representation»

Oh really? Arithmetically under proportional representation a party can win only by getting more than 50% of the votes, and that would win also under FPTP.

The main cases for proportional representation, are:

* FPTP gives an advantage to the two largest parties, and New Labour is planning to become the third largest party to make the LibDems the second largest party.

* FPTP gives an advantage to the two largest parties, but New Labour is willing to sacrifice a lot of seats to let the LibDems have them.

* It is a matter of principle even if means losing the advantage of FPTP.

Blissex said...

As to Liberals or "Yellow Labour" pushing for proportionalism, they often don't realize that the LibDems would largely disappear, because after switching to proportional parties would not be like now with a lot more seats and votes for the LibDems and a lot less for the Conservatives and Labour+Cooperative, with the LibDems as kingmakers, able to impose liberal thatcherism on the other two parties as a condition for a coalition.

With proportional those parties that are coalitions of different ideologies would split to maximize their votes, and most likely the LibDems would split again into SDP and LD, and LD would pretty much disappear or perhaps merge with the whig wing splitting from the Conservatives, and then disappear, and the SDP would merge with "Blue Labour" and the Cooperative Party splitting from Labour.

If it is a matter of principle, let the cookie crumble whichever way it may, but if proportional is meant to make the LibDem the kingmakers (rather than ensuring Labour cannot win unless it gets more than 50% of the votes), careful what you wish for, and remember the success of "centrist" ChangeUK.

Unknown said...

Yes, in terms of focus groups, I would hope that Labour could offer more vision than simply mirroring what its focus groups come up with. We shouldn't forget that Corbyn almost won in 2017 on a more radical platform - and I dare to believe that he WOULD have won if half the parliamentary LP and the custodians of Labour HQ hadn't been working against him, as well as the usual suspects like the Murdoch press - a process that had accelerated by 2019.

Blissex said...

«began running focus groups with these "swing voters in marginal constituencies" and, unsurprisingly, this group of people quote talking points from the tabloid press.»

Interesting. Also reported by Tony Benn in his diary and by the book "The politics of marketing the Labour Party". As arranged by Peter Mandelson of course.

«I said to Gould "So that gives you a good idea of what Labour needs to argue against" and his reply was "No; we have to craft messages that resonate with this group of electors".»

My usual refrain: some but not many voters are so idealistic that they vote on what resonates with them, and most swing voters rather vote on their material interests which for tory voters is primarily high property inflation (and secondarily cheap labour costs). So arguing against the talking points of the tabloid press will be largely electorally ineffective, and the same for resonating with them, because those talking points don't drive swing voters that much, even if they drive subscriptions to the tabloid press, that therefore has as marketing strategy pandering to their target market. It is a a two-way influence, but it is more that tory reader cause the tory press than the tory press causes tory voters.

dermot said...

Blissex: "Oh really? Arithmetically under proportional representation a party can win only by getting more than 50% of the votes, and that would win also under FPTP."

Not necessarily. Depends on the system. Irish multi-seat consistuencies (from 3 to 5 MPs (TDs) per constituency) with STV/PR throws up seat bonuses at certain % ranges. So a party on say 40% will get 46 or 47% of the seats, and a party lower than that - say on 6% may only get 2% of the seats - still an improvement on the UK's system where a 40% vote share hands over 60% of the seats and a 6% vote share zero seats - unless you're the SNP and it gets you 55. Crazy.

A party in Ireland that won 48% of the first preference vote would easily win a clear majority. In the 2016 GE Fine Gael won 36% of the vote and almost won an outright majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Irish_general_election

A different system will be produced based on coalitions. Usually under these the junior party is the one that suffers most at the ensuing election - you've already seen this dynamic in the UK with the LibDems. So a dangerous game for Greens / Libs / etc., but one they'll have no choice but to play.

BCFG said...

“began running focus groups with these "swing voters in marginal constituencies" and, unsurprisingly, this group of people quote talking points from the tabloid press.”

You can hypnotise people to dance like a Chicken but you can’t make them jump off a tall building. Meaning that, yes the tabloid press influence people, but only because people are already primed to adopt the positions presented by the tabloid press. And this can be due to parents passing on their ignorance/prejudice/experience to children, the education/propaganda system, and most importantly, the fact that most shipping lanes are designed to supply this Island, among others, and that the average energy usage for a Brit is 11kw while the world average is somewhere near 1.8kw.

This puts most brits in the very top tier of the global elite and looking throughout history the global elite have never been ones to rush to the oppressed people’s banner!

Think of the UK as the Court of Versailles, where the rest of the world can eat cake. And then you understand Mandelson. The puzzle was Corbyn, but maybe he foreshadows the problems just over the horizon. In fact if you look at the horizon hard enough you may spot something that makes you feel uneasy. Can you feel it?