The vote share point is really annoying because the Labour vote share is not independent of the Tory vote share (and vice versa). Corbyn may have motivated people to vote for him, but unfortunately he also motivated many people to vote against him - which is why although he got a higher vote share than Starmer, May and Johnson both got higher vote shares than him and he lost two elections. Motivation works both ways!
The vote share point is really annoying because it's true, seems to me.
Also: if we're talking about the 2017 & 2019 elections, why are we focusing on making guesses about leader popularity influencing votes, rather than Brexit? Brexit was, uh, something of a live issue at the time, you may recall.
Brexit was undoubtedly a factor and it's decreased salience has probably helped Starmer. However, it's still speculative to say Brexit was more important than the leaders of the parties. Polls consistently showed that Corbyn was highly unpopular with many people and they would not vote for him
Invoking Brexit is no more speculative than ignoring it as if it were irrelevant. And if inferences from polls don't count as speculation, one can cite polls suggesting that Brexit mattered, just as one can cite polls suggesting that Corbyn's unpopularity mattered.
(And if we're being really rigorous, to assume that Brexit and Corbyn's unpopularity are distinct causes is itself speculative! It's plausible that a significant part of Corbyn's unpopularity came from distrust cultivated by the delayed implementation of Brexit, and from Labour's slide from accepting the Brexit referendum's result in '17 to wanting a do over in '19. A key player in the latter was one Sir Keir Starmer QC, who bounced the party toward overturning the referendum with a surprise announcement at the main party conference that no one was ruling out overturning it.)
Totally agree. I think it’s really hard for a lot of left wing people to get their head around the fact that the electorate is not going to get magically more left wing just because we want them to. I was raised by a “Ken Clarke liberal” (his words) and I always look at politicians and think, would my dad have voted for them? I think he’d have been very tempted by Keir Starmer (and repulsed by the Tory scandals). So, yes, he’s probably played it very safe (arguably too safe), and a lot of left wing people are now convinced he’s a Tory, but he’s also in 10 Downing Street. Let’s hope he doesn’t waste the opportunity.
I think it's really hard for a lot of people who want to think they're left wing to get their heads around the fact that centrist politicians are less likely to enact left-wing policy.
It's well & good to win your dad's vote, but if that vote's won by a politician who's OK with war crimes as long as they're committed by US-aligned states, who has an austerian finance minister, who won't commit to a mass council-house building program...
We are now, of course, going to witness the hapless Conservative Party painstakingly learning exactly the same lesson it took the Labour Party a decade to learn. Normal people don't want to dismantle the welfare state any more than they want to smash capitalism.
Also, given that this was a “get the Tories out” election and there was a large amount of tactical voting, Labour’s share naturally ‘leaked’ towards the LDs in many constituencies. People who perhaps voted for Corbyn in 2019 and then watched the LDs come second to a Tory while their favoured candidate went down in flames, this time voted LD and got rid of the Tory.
An interesting thought-provoking read, thank you. You make a strong case for Keir (and his team) having a clear assessment of what was needed to win from 2019 - 2024. But I think to back up the 'Keir Starmer is extremely good at politics' headline you need to also look at his execution of that analysis (the latter being the straightforward bit as he had the New Labour example to follow). What's harder is implementing that analysis in the different 2019-2024 context through multiple behind-the-scenes decisions, and that's where his political skill matters. A few examples spring to mind - there will be others!:
1. Political management. KS's first shadow cabinet was chosen to i) give all of the party, including the left, something to unite around and ii) no 'big personalities', in fact quite a bland front bench, to allow KS the space to introduce himself to the electorate. It was only mid-Parliament when the Blairites (Cooper, Streeting, etc) were promoted with sensible allocation of roles to good communicators. Then you get into the Corbyn issue...
2. Getting ahead of issues. Most importantly, neutralising Brexit as an issue early on. I don't think it is understood how much this took away a key Tory (and Reform) attack line. Any hint of a reversal would have been a running sore. But you can see it in smaller ways; being quicker than the Govt to call for Sept lockdowns, calling for a windfall energy tax before the Govt in early 2022, having a hard-line on spending. You might even include KS committing to resign if found guilty for 'korma-gate', putting pressure on the then-PM and Chancellor. Throughout each is the political skill to get ahead of an issue that they can see emerging and defining the Labour message.
3. Tonal shift. From the Union Jack being everywhere to explicitly celebrating the New Labour years to KS courting the business vote at Davos, it felt blatant and unsubtle at times, but throughout there was a clear reasoning for each shift.
I think this amount to KS being extremely good at politics, as you say, but the 'doing' of it as well as the 'thinking' about it. There's a discipline and ruthlessness in delivering a political strategy which I think is genuinely rarer skill.
“To win the game with the electorate that Labour was actually playing, trade-offs had to be made, and ultimately, they were exactly the right decisions to make, because now that Labour has won – and has won big – Starmer gets to claim the prize that has eluded his party since 2010: The opportunity to implement at least some of its ideas and spend five years reshaping Britain in its image” Yes…I want to agree…I probably do agree …..But …But. .if like me you live in a Tory stronghold constituency (Harborough) since 1945, with a typical previously (2019) 17,000 majority seat, now turned into only 2,000 majority…it is very frustrating to learn that in my constituency (I am not a Lab or any party member, but lifelong Labour voter, moved into this Tory stronghold from (then) rock solid Labour Leicester) got NO regional and national support because it was not a target seat. We are never going to get a change if there is not a) appointment of current excellent candidate to build on her position now over the next 5 years (to be able to match the constant publicity about local achievements our excellent, but Tory, MP will garner) and b) political public education starts in earnest here from now.
I'm not sure. The Tories just did an awful job combined with Reform taking a huge chunk. He got less than Corbyn '17 '19. His majority in Holborn and St Pancras was halved and he's lost two members of the SC. It's one of the lowest winning shares at ~33 per cent. 10 lower than the Tories 5y ago. I'm not even politically-savvy, just that these are all circulating online.
That's because there are a lot of quite silly people who have a lot invested in saying 'Keir Starmer is rubbish because I don't like him'.
It's fairly simple. You don't win elections on overall vote share you win it by having the highest vote share in the most seats, and there's a subtle difference in the requirements. Think of it like an American election whereby it's really daft to do things that might maximise your vote share in states you know are safe if there's even a chance they might alienate those in swing states. Starmer and his team's gambit was that it was worth doing (or not doing) certain things that they knew would upset ultra-progressive voters clustered in seats they tend to win by a street, if they made people more comfortable voting for them or the Lib Dems in less progressive parts of Britain. So they sacrificed, say, big ticket items in their manifesto that would've created more enthusiasm but made people more likely to have been frightened into voting Tory.
Obviously they would have been happier if Gaza hadn't emerged as a rallying issue for voters who were in the Corbyn camp and they'd largely grudgingly stuck with Labour. But the overall strategy is sound and was executed perfectly as they had more than enough breathing space for there to be a substantial rebellion on the left and cruise to a huge majority. It doesn't happen by accident.
The vote share point is really annoying because the Labour vote share is not independent of the Tory vote share (and vice versa). Corbyn may have motivated people to vote for him, but unfortunately he also motivated many people to vote against him - which is why although he got a higher vote share than Starmer, May and Johnson both got higher vote shares than him and he lost two elections. Motivation works both ways!
The vote share point is really annoying because it's true, seems to me.
Also: if we're talking about the 2017 & 2019 elections, why are we focusing on making guesses about leader popularity influencing votes, rather than Brexit? Brexit was, uh, something of a live issue at the time, you may recall.
Brexit was undoubtedly a factor and it's decreased salience has probably helped Starmer. However, it's still speculative to say Brexit was more important than the leaders of the parties. Polls consistently showed that Corbyn was highly unpopular with many people and they would not vote for him
Invoking Brexit is no more speculative than ignoring it as if it were irrelevant. And if inferences from polls don't count as speculation, one can cite polls suggesting that Brexit mattered, just as one can cite polls suggesting that Corbyn's unpopularity mattered.
(And if we're being really rigorous, to assume that Brexit and Corbyn's unpopularity are distinct causes is itself speculative! It's plausible that a significant part of Corbyn's unpopularity came from distrust cultivated by the delayed implementation of Brexit, and from Labour's slide from accepting the Brexit referendum's result in '17 to wanting a do over in '19. A key player in the latter was one Sir Keir Starmer QC, who bounced the party toward overturning the referendum with a surprise announcement at the main party conference that no one was ruling out overturning it.)
Totally agree. I think it’s really hard for a lot of left wing people to get their head around the fact that the electorate is not going to get magically more left wing just because we want them to. I was raised by a “Ken Clarke liberal” (his words) and I always look at politicians and think, would my dad have voted for them? I think he’d have been very tempted by Keir Starmer (and repulsed by the Tory scandals). So, yes, he’s probably played it very safe (arguably too safe), and a lot of left wing people are now convinced he’s a Tory, but he’s also in 10 Downing Street. Let’s hope he doesn’t waste the opportunity.
He being Keir in those final sentences, not my dad, who is also playing it safe by being dead.
I think it's really hard for a lot of people who want to think they're left wing to get their heads around the fact that centrist politicians are less likely to enact left-wing policy.
It's well & good to win your dad's vote, but if that vote's won by a politician who's OK with war crimes as long as they're committed by US-aligned states, who has an austerian finance minister, who won't commit to a mass council-house building program...
We are now, of course, going to witness the hapless Conservative Party painstakingly learning exactly the same lesson it took the Labour Party a decade to learn. Normal people don't want to dismantle the welfare state any more than they want to smash capitalism.
Couldn’t have put it any better.
Also, given that this was a “get the Tories out” election and there was a large amount of tactical voting, Labour’s share naturally ‘leaked’ towards the LDs in many constituencies. People who perhaps voted for Corbyn in 2019 and then watched the LDs come second to a Tory while their favoured candidate went down in flames, this time voted LD and got rid of the Tory.
An interesting thought-provoking read, thank you. You make a strong case for Keir (and his team) having a clear assessment of what was needed to win from 2019 - 2024. But I think to back up the 'Keir Starmer is extremely good at politics' headline you need to also look at his execution of that analysis (the latter being the straightforward bit as he had the New Labour example to follow). What's harder is implementing that analysis in the different 2019-2024 context through multiple behind-the-scenes decisions, and that's where his political skill matters. A few examples spring to mind - there will be others!:
1. Political management. KS's first shadow cabinet was chosen to i) give all of the party, including the left, something to unite around and ii) no 'big personalities', in fact quite a bland front bench, to allow KS the space to introduce himself to the electorate. It was only mid-Parliament when the Blairites (Cooper, Streeting, etc) were promoted with sensible allocation of roles to good communicators. Then you get into the Corbyn issue...
2. Getting ahead of issues. Most importantly, neutralising Brexit as an issue early on. I don't think it is understood how much this took away a key Tory (and Reform) attack line. Any hint of a reversal would have been a running sore. But you can see it in smaller ways; being quicker than the Govt to call for Sept lockdowns, calling for a windfall energy tax before the Govt in early 2022, having a hard-line on spending. You might even include KS committing to resign if found guilty for 'korma-gate', putting pressure on the then-PM and Chancellor. Throughout each is the political skill to get ahead of an issue that they can see emerging and defining the Labour message.
3. Tonal shift. From the Union Jack being everywhere to explicitly celebrating the New Labour years to KS courting the business vote at Davos, it felt blatant and unsubtle at times, but throughout there was a clear reasoning for each shift.
I think this amount to KS being extremely good at politics, as you say, but the 'doing' of it as well as the 'thinking' about it. There's a discipline and ruthlessness in delivering a political strategy which I think is genuinely rarer skill.
Completely agree with all of this - very perceptive points!
“To win the game with the electorate that Labour was actually playing, trade-offs had to be made, and ultimately, they were exactly the right decisions to make, because now that Labour has won – and has won big – Starmer gets to claim the prize that has eluded his party since 2010: The opportunity to implement at least some of its ideas and spend five years reshaping Britain in its image” Yes…I want to agree…I probably do agree …..But …But. .if like me you live in a Tory stronghold constituency (Harborough) since 1945, with a typical previously (2019) 17,000 majority seat, now turned into only 2,000 majority…it is very frustrating to learn that in my constituency (I am not a Lab or any party member, but lifelong Labour voter, moved into this Tory stronghold from (then) rock solid Labour Leicester) got NO regional and national support because it was not a target seat. We are never going to get a change if there is not a) appointment of current excellent candidate to build on her position now over the next 5 years (to be able to match the constant publicity about local achievements our excellent, but Tory, MP will garner) and b) political public education starts in earnest here from now.
I'm not sure. The Tories just did an awful job combined with Reform taking a huge chunk. He got less than Corbyn '17 '19. His majority in Holborn and St Pancras was halved and he's lost two members of the SC. It's one of the lowest winning shares at ~33 per cent. 10 lower than the Tories 5y ago. I'm not even politically-savvy, just that these are all circulating online.
That's because there are a lot of quite silly people who have a lot invested in saying 'Keir Starmer is rubbish because I don't like him'.
It's fairly simple. You don't win elections on overall vote share you win it by having the highest vote share in the most seats, and there's a subtle difference in the requirements. Think of it like an American election whereby it's really daft to do things that might maximise your vote share in states you know are safe if there's even a chance they might alienate those in swing states. Starmer and his team's gambit was that it was worth doing (or not doing) certain things that they knew would upset ultra-progressive voters clustered in seats they tend to win by a street, if they made people more comfortable voting for them or the Lib Dems in less progressive parts of Britain. So they sacrificed, say, big ticket items in their manifesto that would've created more enthusiasm but made people more likely to have been frightened into voting Tory.
Obviously they would have been happier if Gaza hadn't emerged as a rallying issue for voters who were in the Corbyn camp and they'd largely grudgingly stuck with Labour. But the overall strategy is sound and was executed perfectly as they had more than enough breathing space for there to be a substantial rebellion on the left and cruise to a huge majority. It doesn't happen by accident.
Keir Starmer and/or Morgan McSweeney, you mean...
So true, in fact I just posted something along similar lines myself
If England play as well as they should today then I might still believe in your genie. Echoes of Wilson 1966 😀