In the cold light of day, it is clear that the Conservatives' election strategy worked. Their aim - which seemed hopelessly fanciful when said by David Cameron during the campaign - was to win around twenty seats; what was need to achieve a bare majority. In that simple aim, the Tories were even able to exceed their wilder expectations (given the polls), producing a - precariously-small - majority government.
The Tories are masters at winning elections, having been doing it on a regular basis since the 18th century. For this reason, to many people, they seem the "natural" government. The thirteen years of Labour government could be seen an aberration, only achieved by the Labour leadership under Blair by accepting many of the basic tenets of Thatcherism, the Conservatives' longest-serving leader of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the "post-war consensus", that saw the Tories move closer to the left than they have ever been, could be seen as the Conservative Party showing its chameleon-like ability to adapt to survive. Then, when the economic crises of the 1970s happened, the Tories under Thatcher seized on the opportunity to re-define and remake their party in its more traditional guise, and quickly shedding its support for the "consensus". Whether or not these facts are "fair" or "just" feels like a trivial point. The hard truth for those on the left is that, when it boils down to it, England is a "conservative" country in many ways.
This is a simplification, though. As we have seen, the election has shown us that the UK in 2015 is now more politically-fractured than ever before. The main point is that in spite of the fracturing of the political faultlines, the Tories still - in spite of everything - know how to keep their nose ahead of the rest to get over the finishing line first.
All part of the game
This author has talked before about the plethora of "dirty tricks" and negative campaigning used by the Tories in the 2015 election campaign. And the nakedly-cynical "divide and rule" strategy over the "threat" of the SNP - which even some Tory elders were warning of the dangers of - worked with clinical effectiveness at the end of the day. In the end, it was the Tories' sway over the "marginals" that ensured that Labour's result in England was no better than what they got in 2010, putting Labour's number of English MPs on the same level as what they got in 1992.
A BBC "Question Time" special on the day after the election provided some particularly insightful moments of analysis. Paddy Ashdown agreed wholeheartedly to the brutally-effective supposition put to the panel that the LibDems were punished for the mistakes of the Coalition, while the Tories were rewarded for its successes. As Alastair Campbell put it more bluntly, the Tories won because they were "ruthless bastards". Francis Maude, the Tories' member of the panel, kept quiet while these points were being made. His silence told its own story.
The LibDems, post-election, are - ironically - now having their biggest surge in membership in living memory. A wit might argue that this was many English voters now feeling guilty for realising that they had been savagely punishing the wrong party for the Coalition's errors. Certainly, Paddy Ashdown's indictment of how his party was punished for doing what it felt had been the right thing for the country was a very powerful point.
While the "divergence" of the two Coalition parties had been going on more at least a year prior to the election, it was Francis Maude - the Tory - who complained of the Coalition partners not "being fair" to the government. He should have known better, and Paddy Ashdown put his squarely right in his place. The Tories - and Cameron in particular - were shamelessly claiming credit for popular ideas (such as raising the income tax threshold) that were really LibDem policies that had never been in the Conservative 2010 manifesto.
But this is part of a trend with the Tories: to stab you in the back, and later harmlessly claim it was "part of the game" of politics.
This attitude is symptomatic of how people like David Cameron and George Osborne see politics not as a force for good, but as "sport". The two of them have made duplicitous, cynical and savage attacks on their opponents (and segments of society), but later on brush it off being "heat of the moment" stuff. A common accusation made against Cameron is that in spite of appearances, he never seems to take things very seriously. This feeds into a feeling that many of the Tories involved in politics still think they are playing by "boarding school rules"; certainly, the way that some of their MPs in parliament behave at times reinforces the view that Westminster is all "old school tie" and a callous "establishment" that treats democracy as an inconvenience to be tolerated
With this level of cynicism evident in the ranks of the Tories, it is no wonder that more and more people see the electoral system as a "fix". When things are constructed like this, how can they lose?
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
The 2015 General Election: the aftermath, and the implications for Labour and UK politics
The results of the general election were a shock, to Labour most of all. The Liberal Democrats suffered catastrophic losses, who - for their naive willingness to join in coalition with the Tories five years ago - may as well now be called the "Useful Idiots" of the last parliament. But this was not totally unexpected, given their low percentage of polling.
In spite of all the criticism of the pollsters getting the result so wrong, the reality was that they got most things more-or-less right - except for the polling for Labour and the Conservatives. All the other parties polled at roughly where they predicted. It was the "shy Tory" effect that the pollsters either completely missed or - just as likely - a collective "group think" that made polling companies discard "wrong" polling results that appeared to inflate the support for the Tories.
In this election, it was a "perfect storm" of factors that resulted in Labour overall losing twenty or so seats, leaving them a hundred behind the Conservatives in parliament. Several factors over the duration of the last parliament swung things - unexpectedly - for the Tories, leaving them with a surprise (albeit tiny) majority. The collapse of the Lib Dems left twenty-odd seats there for the taking for the Tories. The surge in UKIP over the last few years has seen a portion of the working class transfer their vote from Labour and into the purple, costing Labour precious votes in key Tory/ Labour marginals. And the surge of the SNP has effectively left the three main parties locked out of Scotland, which cost Labour forty-odd seats.
These three factors, coupled with the simple effectiveness of the Tory message (in spite of its negativity and bare deceitfulness), allowed the Tories to fend off any Labour advance in the key battlegrounds. The result was a net gain of twenty-odd seats.
The road to contrition
Labour now has some hard questions to ask itself about what strategy they can formulate to regain power. Where did it they go wrong? The Tories were allowed to dictate the "narrative" of the events of 2008 without a coherent alternative argument (namely, the truth!). Many will say that the Tories' message about Labour was based on a willful lie - which is basically true - but the fact that the Tories were able to so easily get away with it demonstrates the weakness of Labour's leadership and message.
Equally, many will - rightly - point to the loss of the key marginals (places that, under Blair, usually swung their way). Winning back the confidence of those voters is key to Labour being able to eat into the hundred-seat gap that separates them from the Tories. The battle over "Middle England" (i.e. the marginals) is the key to getting into government. Regardless of how popular a party is in Scotland or Wales, England will always be the only way a party can find its way into government. This may be not what some Labour people want to hear, but that is the reality.
And herein lies a problem - several, actually. First of all, there has to be a realisation that the next time there will be an election (presumably in 2020), many people will have forgotten why the financial crisis happened. If Labour were unable to convince people of the truth about what happened in 2008 this time around, five years from now it will be basically impossible. Think about it: any voter who will be, say twenty, come the next election, was only a child of eight when the financial crisis happened. Arguing over what happened in 2008 in a 2020 election will look parochial and backwards-looking in the extreme, regardless of the truth.
Labour may well have to swallow their pride and - to an extent, at least - accept the "lie" of the Tory narrative. It's already too late to change people's minds about what they think what happened. While Labour go on arguing about the facts, the Tories have their "narrative". The average person will believe almost any narrative if it is explained simply and repeated enough: this is the simple (if sad) truth. The extent to which Iain Duncan Smith can still convincingly talk about "welfare reform" is a case in point.
To get to that point in the party, however, will probably involve a prolonged "blood-letting" exercise within the party, like that which existed in 2005 after the Tories lost their third successive election. This is will painful for many after the bitterness of losing an election they thought they had a good chance of "winning" (after some negotiation). Those people will have to simply take in on the chin if the party is to move forward, or look at leaving the party altogether.
But that exercise in "contrition" is only half of the problem...
The "Party Of Britain" no more?
Blair's Britain was the high watermark for the Labour party: winning three successive elections, two of them successive landslides. Whereas the Conservative and Unionist Party at one time represented the nature of the United Kingdom, under Blair, Labour came to represent the modern-day "Party Of Britain", leading in all parts of Great Britain. The Conservatives were reduced (and still are) to being essentially an English party, looking parochial compared to Labour's embrace of the modern, diverse Britain of the 21st century.
Come 2015, and the the UK looks more divided than ever, between the nations and between different segments of society. While Labour still dominates in its Welsh heartlands, Scotland's politics has effectively detached itself from the rest of the country. Meanwhile, England looks politically very similar to what it did twenty or thirty years ago: with Labour dominating the North, the English cities and London, with the Tories having a sea of blue in everything between. England is segments and islands of red in a sea of blue. And under the surface, UKIP is the second party in many places up and down the coast of England.
This leaves Labour in a more difficult situation politically than in 1987, when they last won a similar number of seats in an election. While the Tories' majority is slender (even less than in 1992), Labour - due to the factors mentioned earlier - have their work cut out to claw back the lost ground.
Assuming that the party choose a "modernising figure" (i.e. "Blairite", for want of a better moniker), this will help them win back the Tory marginals.
If Labour is very smart, they will also exploit the (temporary?) collapse of the Lib Dems and try and muscle into contention in places like the South West, where traditionally Labour have struggled against a Tory/ Lib Dem two-horse race. However, even this may be a lost cause, given that the LibDems look keen to get a new leader in quickly. Tim Farron, chairman of the party and a leading left-wing figure, looks to be favourite. Indeed, the LibDems may already have the threat Labour poses on their mind more keenly than Labour does, given Labour's post-election introspection. The irony here is that while it was Labour's failure of introspection post-2010 that resulted in a lurch leftwards and Ed Miliband becoming leader, a surfeit of introspection post-2015 may lead to Labour missing out the opportunity to quickly fill the political space in the centre by the collapse in the LibDems.
Labour made the assumption back in 2010 that a collapse in LibDem support would leave a mass of support flocking to Labour. The 2015 election proved this to be a pipedream. While this effect won them maybe a dozen seats, the same effect won the Tories around double that. It is possible that the transfer of votes in Tory to LibDem is "soft", and therefore malleable to the right kind of Labour message; but it's tall order. The right kind of message from a LibDem leader would see them simply switch back to what they know.
Many Labour figures are talking about a ten-year plan, with no realistic hope of regaining the lost ground needed in time for the next election. Unlike in 1987, Labour's position is precarious because the diversification of the British political scene is mostly to the cost of Labour. If Labour, as necessary, move to the centre to reclaim the middle ground as Blair did, it leaves their left flank exposed. Under Ed Miliband, their positioning was deemed to far to the left to convince enough centrist voters to back them. If Labour move more to the centre as anticipated, it will be more difficult to dissuade the working class against switching to UKIP. As Labour move to the centre, more of their "core voters" will see them as increasingly out-of-touch compared to the straightforward message of UKIP. This may be a risk that Labour will have to take: will the votes they gain from undecided voters in marginals be more than those lost to UKIP?
Regarding the Greens, it is unclear if they had a decisive effect on the Labour vote or not. Apart from in a small number of constituencies, their numbers did not seem big enough to have a decisive effect either way, compared the striking performances of UKIP.
Lastly, of course, there is the SNP. Politically, Scotland is now separated from the rest of the UK, leaving Labour without one of its heartlands. The one-time "Party Of Britain" is now looking like a party without a country - in a sense, a "stateless" party. The Tories may have retreated into being "Little Englanders", but at least they have retained their coherence; the diversification of British politics has left the Labour party being ideologically and geographically pulled apart, with little unifying coherence remaining.
Ironically, while the Tories may be a party in hock with The City, Labour cemented its political dominance of London itself in the 2015 election. London remains the most "Blairite" part of the UK, and a Labour citadel. It is the miles of towns and countryside around the rest of England that are largely with the Tory camp. Meanwhile, the Labour supporters in the Welsh and Northern heartlands are politically closer to those supporting the SNP. Trying to keep these differing versions of "Labour" together is becoming a more difficult challenge given the changed landscape
The battle for the political soul of Britain is not over, but the forces that are pulling Britain's politics and identity apart are winning. And time is running out.
In spite of all the criticism of the pollsters getting the result so wrong, the reality was that they got most things more-or-less right - except for the polling for Labour and the Conservatives. All the other parties polled at roughly where they predicted. It was the "shy Tory" effect that the pollsters either completely missed or - just as likely - a collective "group think" that made polling companies discard "wrong" polling results that appeared to inflate the support for the Tories.
In this election, it was a "perfect storm" of factors that resulted in Labour overall losing twenty or so seats, leaving them a hundred behind the Conservatives in parliament. Several factors over the duration of the last parliament swung things - unexpectedly - for the Tories, leaving them with a surprise (albeit tiny) majority. The collapse of the Lib Dems left twenty-odd seats there for the taking for the Tories. The surge in UKIP over the last few years has seen a portion of the working class transfer their vote from Labour and into the purple, costing Labour precious votes in key Tory/ Labour marginals. And the surge of the SNP has effectively left the three main parties locked out of Scotland, which cost Labour forty-odd seats.
These three factors, coupled with the simple effectiveness of the Tory message (in spite of its negativity and bare deceitfulness), allowed the Tories to fend off any Labour advance in the key battlegrounds. The result was a net gain of twenty-odd seats.
The road to contrition
Labour now has some hard questions to ask itself about what strategy they can formulate to regain power. Where did it they go wrong? The Tories were allowed to dictate the "narrative" of the events of 2008 without a coherent alternative argument (namely, the truth!). Many will say that the Tories' message about Labour was based on a willful lie - which is basically true - but the fact that the Tories were able to so easily get away with it demonstrates the weakness of Labour's leadership and message.
Equally, many will - rightly - point to the loss of the key marginals (places that, under Blair, usually swung their way). Winning back the confidence of those voters is key to Labour being able to eat into the hundred-seat gap that separates them from the Tories. The battle over "Middle England" (i.e. the marginals) is the key to getting into government. Regardless of how popular a party is in Scotland or Wales, England will always be the only way a party can find its way into government. This may be not what some Labour people want to hear, but that is the reality.
And herein lies a problem - several, actually. First of all, there has to be a realisation that the next time there will be an election (presumably in 2020), many people will have forgotten why the financial crisis happened. If Labour were unable to convince people of the truth about what happened in 2008 this time around, five years from now it will be basically impossible. Think about it: any voter who will be, say twenty, come the next election, was only a child of eight when the financial crisis happened. Arguing over what happened in 2008 in a 2020 election will look parochial and backwards-looking in the extreme, regardless of the truth.
Labour may well have to swallow their pride and - to an extent, at least - accept the "lie" of the Tory narrative. It's already too late to change people's minds about what they think what happened. While Labour go on arguing about the facts, the Tories have their "narrative". The average person will believe almost any narrative if it is explained simply and repeated enough: this is the simple (if sad) truth. The extent to which Iain Duncan Smith can still convincingly talk about "welfare reform" is a case in point.
To get to that point in the party, however, will probably involve a prolonged "blood-letting" exercise within the party, like that which existed in 2005 after the Tories lost their third successive election. This is will painful for many after the bitterness of losing an election they thought they had a good chance of "winning" (after some negotiation). Those people will have to simply take in on the chin if the party is to move forward, or look at leaving the party altogether.
But that exercise in "contrition" is only half of the problem...
The "Party Of Britain" no more?
Blair's Britain was the high watermark for the Labour party: winning three successive elections, two of them successive landslides. Whereas the Conservative and Unionist Party at one time represented the nature of the United Kingdom, under Blair, Labour came to represent the modern-day "Party Of Britain", leading in all parts of Great Britain. The Conservatives were reduced (and still are) to being essentially an English party, looking parochial compared to Labour's embrace of the modern, diverse Britain of the 21st century.
Come 2015, and the the UK looks more divided than ever, between the nations and between different segments of society. While Labour still dominates in its Welsh heartlands, Scotland's politics has effectively detached itself from the rest of the country. Meanwhile, England looks politically very similar to what it did twenty or thirty years ago: with Labour dominating the North, the English cities and London, with the Tories having a sea of blue in everything between. England is segments and islands of red in a sea of blue. And under the surface, UKIP is the second party in many places up and down the coast of England.
This leaves Labour in a more difficult situation politically than in 1987, when they last won a similar number of seats in an election. While the Tories' majority is slender (even less than in 1992), Labour - due to the factors mentioned earlier - have their work cut out to claw back the lost ground.
Assuming that the party choose a "modernising figure" (i.e. "Blairite", for want of a better moniker), this will help them win back the Tory marginals.
If Labour is very smart, they will also exploit the (temporary?) collapse of the Lib Dems and try and muscle into contention in places like the South West, where traditionally Labour have struggled against a Tory/ Lib Dem two-horse race. However, even this may be a lost cause, given that the LibDems look keen to get a new leader in quickly. Tim Farron, chairman of the party and a leading left-wing figure, looks to be favourite. Indeed, the LibDems may already have the threat Labour poses on their mind more keenly than Labour does, given Labour's post-election introspection. The irony here is that while it was Labour's failure of introspection post-2010 that resulted in a lurch leftwards and Ed Miliband becoming leader, a surfeit of introspection post-2015 may lead to Labour missing out the opportunity to quickly fill the political space in the centre by the collapse in the LibDems.
Labour made the assumption back in 2010 that a collapse in LibDem support would leave a mass of support flocking to Labour. The 2015 election proved this to be a pipedream. While this effect won them maybe a dozen seats, the same effect won the Tories around double that. It is possible that the transfer of votes in Tory to LibDem is "soft", and therefore malleable to the right kind of Labour message; but it's tall order. The right kind of message from a LibDem leader would see them simply switch back to what they know.
Many Labour figures are talking about a ten-year plan, with no realistic hope of regaining the lost ground needed in time for the next election. Unlike in 1987, Labour's position is precarious because the diversification of the British political scene is mostly to the cost of Labour. If Labour, as necessary, move to the centre to reclaim the middle ground as Blair did, it leaves their left flank exposed. Under Ed Miliband, their positioning was deemed to far to the left to convince enough centrist voters to back them. If Labour move more to the centre as anticipated, it will be more difficult to dissuade the working class against switching to UKIP. As Labour move to the centre, more of their "core voters" will see them as increasingly out-of-touch compared to the straightforward message of UKIP. This may be a risk that Labour will have to take: will the votes they gain from undecided voters in marginals be more than those lost to UKIP?
Regarding the Greens, it is unclear if they had a decisive effect on the Labour vote or not. Apart from in a small number of constituencies, their numbers did not seem big enough to have a decisive effect either way, compared the striking performances of UKIP.
Lastly, of course, there is the SNP. Politically, Scotland is now separated from the rest of the UK, leaving Labour without one of its heartlands. The one-time "Party Of Britain" is now looking like a party without a country - in a sense, a "stateless" party. The Tories may have retreated into being "Little Englanders", but at least they have retained their coherence; the diversification of British politics has left the Labour party being ideologically and geographically pulled apart, with little unifying coherence remaining.
Ironically, while the Tories may be a party in hock with The City, Labour cemented its political dominance of London itself in the 2015 election. London remains the most "Blairite" part of the UK, and a Labour citadel. It is the miles of towns and countryside around the rest of England that are largely with the Tory camp. Meanwhile, the Labour supporters in the Welsh and Northern heartlands are politically closer to those supporting the SNP. Trying to keep these differing versions of "Labour" together is becoming a more difficult challenge given the changed landscape
The battle for the political soul of Britain is not over, but the forces that are pulling Britain's politics and identity apart are winning. And time is running out.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
The 2015 General Election: what happened?
Politics is a brutal business, they say; but rarely has an election in modern times been so brutal. The Conservatives were the major beneficiaries to the dramatic collapse in the Lib Dems across the UK, and Labour's Scottish supporters switching en masse to the SNP.
While in the 2010 election, the Conservatives were ahead of Labour by fifty seats, now they are ahead of them by a hundred. However, this must still be put into context. Needing 323 seats for a working majority, David Cameron won 331. This is more than the bare majority that Wilson got in October 1974, but still less than what Major got in 1992 (336). And we know what happened to that "majority" over the course of five years.
In that sense, George Osborne's hope that 2015 would be like 1992 again, we was proved right, in that the Conservatives won a similar result in terms of seats (though around 4% less than 1992 in the popular vote).
However, there the comparisons end. For Labour, the number of seats won (232) was similar to what they won in 1987. But this was not because of collapse in the votes in England. Compared to 2010, they won nearly a million more votes this time around, in spite of the collapse of their support in Scotland. So something very strange - and perverse - must have happened. There were different factors (more on those in a moment) that resulted in Labour doing far worse than they were expecting in England.
Lastly, the poor Liberal Democrats - as many of their party members feared - reaped the whirlwind of working in government with the Tories. After losing nearly fifty seats, Tories seemingly voted tactically to save Nick Clegg's seat where so many other Lib Dems were ousted. This must have felt like a particularly cruel kind of mercy. No wonder that when Clegg gave his speech standing down as leader, he seemed like a broken man. Their cohort of MPs had been reduced to the kind of levels they had in the 1960s.
A perfect storm
For Labour, the election results were a stunning shock.
While the results in Scotland had been feared to an extent (if not quite believed), in reality they were caught in an unexpected "pincer" on both sides of the border.
They had been hoping that the losses they might have had to the SNP would have been offset by gains in English Tory/Labour marginals. Instead, in many marginals, Labour became victim to an unforeseen "UKIP Effect". In places like Bolton and Bury (close to this author's neck of the woods), the Tories unexpectedly won, sometimes by a margin of only hundreds of votes. This was repeated even in places like Wales, and across other towns and small cities in "Middle England". In these constituencies the common denominator was UKIP coming a strong third. What seems to have happened is that, rather than the Tories bleeding votes to UKIP and letting Labour through (as they had hoped might happen), the opposite was happening: Labour was bleeding "working class" votes by their thousands to UKIP.
This was one of the major factors that accounted for UKIP receiving nearly four million votes. And was - without doubt - the reason for Labour's biggest (and most unexpected) casualty of all - Ed Balls.
Of course, this does not explain all the results in the key Tory/Labour marginals, but it was certainly a key factor in a significant number of them. In many marginals, UKIP were the Tories "secret weapon".
The reasons why people chose to vote Conservative and not Labour in those key marginals will not be discussed here. Some of these factors have been discussed by the author before. It was also clear from anecdotal evidence that the SNP "fear factor" was playing on the minds of some key voters.
One more thing about UKIP. As UKIP themselves predicted, they came second in a number of "safe" Labour seats in the party's northern heartlands, and similarly, came second in a number of the Tories' heartland seats in the South-East. So Farage's claim as being the only "working class" party in England, was now beginning to look more and more credible, in spite of the reality.
A "lucky" Prime Minister?
As said at the start, the Conservatives won their seats due to the collapse of the Lib Dems, grabbing almost all the seats that were a toss between the Tories and the Lib Dems. Cameron claimed during the campaign that he only needed twenty more seats to govern, and he got them, from the Lib Dems. However, that presupposed that he didn't lose any seats to Labour, but as we have seen above - again - he was proved right, against all the odds. Thanks to the insurgent effect of UKIP on Labour's base, the "fear factor" of the SNP and worries over the economy on classic swing voters, the Tories emerged from the face-off in the Tory/Labour marginals relatively unscathed. Some seats were lost to Labour, but there were equally other (unexpected) gains from Labour. The losses and gains basically cancelled each other out. It was in these seats that the election was really won.
The switching of many Lib Dem seats to Tory, and the collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland meant that Labour had to rely on the English marginals mostly going their way in order to ensure that the Tories lost enough seats to bring Labour into contention as a serious alternative to form a government. In this way, Labour really were fighting against the tide. Due to the three factors mentioned - the Tories being the biggest recipient of the Lib Dem collapse, the surge of the SNP, and the UKIP "secret weapon" - the Tories really held the best set of cards to allow them to consolidate on their 2010 result.
In hindsight, these three factors should have been more obvious, in spite of all the predictions of a hung parliament and a messy politics to follow.
As things stand now, both Labour and (even more so) the Lib Dems have serious questions to ask themselves about what direction they should take their respective parties. While Labour's result in this election is comparable with 1987, this fails to take into account the loss of so many MPs in Scotland this time around. They cannot expect to gain them back any time soon. So the 1987 comparison is not truly accurate. Labour now are much more an "English" party than they were on Thursday morning.
But the political scene in Westminster is more fractured than ever before, in spjte of the gross injustices that FPTP has brought to UKIP and the Greens (while massively rewarding the SNP). In that sense, the political scene feels, if anything, like that in 1983: a divided opposition allowing the Conservatives to continue ruling from Downing Street.
David Cameron may well have felt he has dodged a bullet in this election, and been rewarded with a political bomb landing in the laps of his opponent, leaving a multitude of political carcasses.
Perhaps he's just "lucky".
While in the 2010 election, the Conservatives were ahead of Labour by fifty seats, now they are ahead of them by a hundred. However, this must still be put into context. Needing 323 seats for a working majority, David Cameron won 331. This is more than the bare majority that Wilson got in October 1974, but still less than what Major got in 1992 (336). And we know what happened to that "majority" over the course of five years.
In that sense, George Osborne's hope that 2015 would be like 1992 again, we was proved right, in that the Conservatives won a similar result in terms of seats (though around 4% less than 1992 in the popular vote).
However, there the comparisons end. For Labour, the number of seats won (232) was similar to what they won in 1987. But this was not because of collapse in the votes in England. Compared to 2010, they won nearly a million more votes this time around, in spite of the collapse of their support in Scotland. So something very strange - and perverse - must have happened. There were different factors (more on those in a moment) that resulted in Labour doing far worse than they were expecting in England.
Lastly, the poor Liberal Democrats - as many of their party members feared - reaped the whirlwind of working in government with the Tories. After losing nearly fifty seats, Tories seemingly voted tactically to save Nick Clegg's seat where so many other Lib Dems were ousted. This must have felt like a particularly cruel kind of mercy. No wonder that when Clegg gave his speech standing down as leader, he seemed like a broken man. Their cohort of MPs had been reduced to the kind of levels they had in the 1960s.
A perfect storm
For Labour, the election results were a stunning shock.
While the results in Scotland had been feared to an extent (if not quite believed), in reality they were caught in an unexpected "pincer" on both sides of the border.
They had been hoping that the losses they might have had to the SNP would have been offset by gains in English Tory/Labour marginals. Instead, in many marginals, Labour became victim to an unforeseen "UKIP Effect". In places like Bolton and Bury (close to this author's neck of the woods), the Tories unexpectedly won, sometimes by a margin of only hundreds of votes. This was repeated even in places like Wales, and across other towns and small cities in "Middle England". In these constituencies the common denominator was UKIP coming a strong third. What seems to have happened is that, rather than the Tories bleeding votes to UKIP and letting Labour through (as they had hoped might happen), the opposite was happening: Labour was bleeding "working class" votes by their thousands to UKIP.
This was one of the major factors that accounted for UKIP receiving nearly four million votes. And was - without doubt - the reason for Labour's biggest (and most unexpected) casualty of all - Ed Balls.
Of course, this does not explain all the results in the key Tory/Labour marginals, but it was certainly a key factor in a significant number of them. In many marginals, UKIP were the Tories "secret weapon".
The reasons why people chose to vote Conservative and not Labour in those key marginals will not be discussed here. Some of these factors have been discussed by the author before. It was also clear from anecdotal evidence that the SNP "fear factor" was playing on the minds of some key voters.
One more thing about UKIP. As UKIP themselves predicted, they came second in a number of "safe" Labour seats in the party's northern heartlands, and similarly, came second in a number of the Tories' heartland seats in the South-East. So Farage's claim as being the only "working class" party in England, was now beginning to look more and more credible, in spite of the reality.
A "lucky" Prime Minister?
As said at the start, the Conservatives won their seats due to the collapse of the Lib Dems, grabbing almost all the seats that were a toss between the Tories and the Lib Dems. Cameron claimed during the campaign that he only needed twenty more seats to govern, and he got them, from the Lib Dems. However, that presupposed that he didn't lose any seats to Labour, but as we have seen above - again - he was proved right, against all the odds. Thanks to the insurgent effect of UKIP on Labour's base, the "fear factor" of the SNP and worries over the economy on classic swing voters, the Tories emerged from the face-off in the Tory/Labour marginals relatively unscathed. Some seats were lost to Labour, but there were equally other (unexpected) gains from Labour. The losses and gains basically cancelled each other out. It was in these seats that the election was really won.
The switching of many Lib Dem seats to Tory, and the collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland meant that Labour had to rely on the English marginals mostly going their way in order to ensure that the Tories lost enough seats to bring Labour into contention as a serious alternative to form a government. In this way, Labour really were fighting against the tide. Due to the three factors mentioned - the Tories being the biggest recipient of the Lib Dem collapse, the surge of the SNP, and the UKIP "secret weapon" - the Tories really held the best set of cards to allow them to consolidate on their 2010 result.
In hindsight, these three factors should have been more obvious, in spite of all the predictions of a hung parliament and a messy politics to follow.
As things stand now, both Labour and (even more so) the Lib Dems have serious questions to ask themselves about what direction they should take their respective parties. While Labour's result in this election is comparable with 1987, this fails to take into account the loss of so many MPs in Scotland this time around. They cannot expect to gain them back any time soon. So the 1987 comparison is not truly accurate. Labour now are much more an "English" party than they were on Thursday morning.
But the political scene in Westminster is more fractured than ever before, in spjte of the gross injustices that FPTP has brought to UKIP and the Greens (while massively rewarding the SNP). In that sense, the political scene feels, if anything, like that in 1983: a divided opposition allowing the Conservatives to continue ruling from Downing Street.
David Cameron may well have felt he has dodged a bullet in this election, and been rewarded with a political bomb landing in the laps of his opponent, leaving a multitude of political carcasses.
Perhaps he's just "lucky".
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Conservatives' election strategy and "dirty tricks": how to divide your enemies and threaten people
Q: How do the Conservatives, the party that represent the interests of Britain's rich and powerful, persuade others to vote for them?
There have historically been two strands to this answer, depending on who they are trying to persuade.
To the "middle class", the Conservatives use the double-pronged "threat" of the Labour party as the party that will take away their money through taxation (and destroy the economy), as well as the "threat" that the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral" segments of society pose to the rest.
Married with the psychological "threat" of the alternative is the "opportunity" that the Conservatives say they can bring to the middle class - that they offer the easiest (low tax) route for the the middle class to rise upwards to the golden realms of the elite. The message is fear on one hand, and greed on the other.
To the "working class", the Conservatives use the similar "threat" of the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral", which is presumably much closer to home to them, married with the message that the Conservatives represent the "party of opportunity", allowing the "hardworking" to rise up to the middle class. Again, it is fear on one hand, and self-interest on the other.
Over the long history of the Tories, they have been adept at masking their recurring incompetence inside an exterior shell of assured self-confidence. This may well also be a metaphor for the state of modern Britain itself: but that's another story.
Divide and rule
George Osborne's use of the "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric is the latest telling of a narrative from the Tories that has been the same for many decades, which has intensified with the coming of Thatcherism.
The psychology of politics is a science in itself, and the psychology of the Conservatives is well worth studying in detail. The author looked at some examples from the Conservative government a few years ago, and came up with some interesting results. But as the only way that the Tories can become the government is by making their enemies hate each other, divide and rule is the best way to achieve it. As said earlier, this is a strategy they've practiced over many years.
This explains why Cameron's election strategy - devised by Lynton Crosby - has been all about the negatives, which reached a particular nadir a few weeks ago. But things have hardly got much better since, and there has been the relentless promotion of the "threat" that the SNP have over a possible Labour government - about the most cast-iron example of a literal "divide and rule" strategy you could witness.
The baseness of psychology required to formulate this strategy is stark, and it tells you much about how many Conservatives view human nature: as a game of winners and losers, where those who "lose out" have done so through their own mistakes, and therefore should be deservedly punished for it. As well as mirroring the thinking of Ayn Rand, it also - alarmingly - mirrors the thinking of one of the most destructive psychological disorders.
The kind of Britain that the Tories espouse is one where the disabled and the unemployed are presumed as probable fraudsters for simply wishing some financial aid from the state. It is a Britain where the unemployed are sometimes forced to work for their benefits (which is not only immoral, but also bad economics). People have literally died as the indirect result of government welfare policy. But under the Tories "divide and rule" strategy, those people that died were not penniless and starving because the government withdrew their benefits, but because of the choices that those people made. They were defined as "undeserving" i.e. they deserved to die.
The use of "divide and rule" provides the most important element of electioneering - creating a "scapegoat". Whether it's the SNP (or Scotland in general), "immigrants", "skivers", or whoever, the electorate - from a psychological point of view - have convincing "hate figures" in order to turn to the Tories as their saviour.
But for a cynical and immoral "divide and rule" strategy to work to its best, you also have to know how to use cynical and immoral "dirty tricks"...
How to use "The Dirty Tricks Handbook"
First and foremost, you have to control the "narrative". This is the "story" of what has happened up to the election. In short, it's propaganda - a lie - that you tell voters. It must be simple to be easily memorable, and repeated regularly.
The Tories' "narrative" about Labour - repeated by Cameron - is that they "broke the banks", and that it was "Labour overspending" that caused the crisis. Only the other day a treasury civil servant said catagorically that this "narrative" was untrue and a historical fallacy. It was a banking crisis (partly caused by lack of government regulation) that created the financial crisis. The "Labour overspending" happened as a result of the crisis; it was not the cause of it. The fact that so many people in the UK have such bad memories that they don't remember this is deeply worrying. The Tories are relying on the notion that if a smart, smooth-talking politician keeps on saying something, people believe it is true. And - horrifyingly - the evidence supports that notion.
Secondly - but probably as important - you have to have the media on your side. In this election, there is convincing evidence (also carried out by Loughborough University) that the media are solidly on the side of the Conservatives. This also seems to extend to the BBC, given the regularly tough questioning given out to Ed Miliband especially, compared to the tame (and sometimes poorly-phrased) questioning given to Cameron and other Tory figures. Given the similar educational backgrounds that many media figures have to many politicians, this shouldn't be so surprising, but it certainly puts paid to any real sense of media "freedom". Also, given that Ed Miliband had effectively declared war on a large segment of the media "establishment" following the events of Leveson, it is even less surprising.
It wasn't always like this, though. Under Tony Blair, the media "establishment" was largely on his side, but again - especially in the case of Rupert Murdoch - it was a case of currying favour in order to gain the support of the media. If the media really wasn't so influential, why did Blair (and Cameron) so obviously want to win them over?
Next, and related to the two previous ideas, is how essential it is to control the agenda. The Tories did this with ruthless duplicity. The whole "debate about the debates" was a prime example of the Tories controlling events in order to allow David Cameron to dictate to the media and the other parties precisely on what terms things would be allowed to happen. It was a disgraceful - but horribly effective - strategy.
Fourthly, apart from the "big lie" to control the "narrative", is the use of character assassination. This was alluded to earlier with the negative attacks on Miliband as someone who would "Stab Britain in The Back". In the case of this election, they seem to have been fairly ineffective (even counter-productive), but in the past had a greater chance of success - with the help of the media (see above). Related to this point is using your opponents' comments in an out-of-context manner to try to destroy their reputation.
One of the most interesting - and to your rival party, confounding - tactics is the use of "projection". This is a psychological term more commonly used as a tactic of narcissists to confound those around them when under threat. In political terms, this is when you accuse your rivals of the exact same errors that they accuse you of - "projecting" your own weaknesses onto your opponents. As this is the last thing your rivals are expecting, it leaves them confused and unclear where to go next with their argument.
An example in this campaign is Cameron's claim the other day that the Tories are for "hardworking people" and against the excesses of bankers, unlike Labour (because they bailed them out, and allowed excessive bonuses). This statement is so catagorically opposite to the Conservatives' reality that it beggars belief that Cameron can even convincingly utter it. As anyone with a brain knows, the Conservatives finances are strongly-reliant on groups and individuals in The City and offshore clients.
This kind of statement tells us more about the worrying ease with which David Cameron can spout complete nonsense from his mouth while seeming to believe every word of it. But Cameron has a track record for being a compulsive liar (or - let's be fair - possibly just a complete idiot), as well as a bully; not to mention a coward, and an incompetent.
Lastly, you can always steal the clothes (i.e. policies) of your opponent and claim they were yours all along.
There have historically been two strands to this answer, depending on who they are trying to persuade.
To the "middle class", the Conservatives use the double-pronged "threat" of the Labour party as the party that will take away their money through taxation (and destroy the economy), as well as the "threat" that the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral" segments of society pose to the rest.
Married with the psychological "threat" of the alternative is the "opportunity" that the Conservatives say they can bring to the middle class - that they offer the easiest (low tax) route for the the middle class to rise upwards to the golden realms of the elite. The message is fear on one hand, and greed on the other.
To the "working class", the Conservatives use the similar "threat" of the "feckless/ undeserving/ immoral", which is presumably much closer to home to them, married with the message that the Conservatives represent the "party of opportunity", allowing the "hardworking" to rise up to the middle class. Again, it is fear on one hand, and self-interest on the other.
Over the long history of the Tories, they have been adept at masking their recurring incompetence inside an exterior shell of assured self-confidence. This may well also be a metaphor for the state of modern Britain itself: but that's another story.
Divide and rule
George Osborne's use of the "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric is the latest telling of a narrative from the Tories that has been the same for many decades, which has intensified with the coming of Thatcherism.
The psychology of politics is a science in itself, and the psychology of the Conservatives is well worth studying in detail. The author looked at some examples from the Conservative government a few years ago, and came up with some interesting results. But as the only way that the Tories can become the government is by making their enemies hate each other, divide and rule is the best way to achieve it. As said earlier, this is a strategy they've practiced over many years.
This explains why Cameron's election strategy - devised by Lynton Crosby - has been all about the negatives, which reached a particular nadir a few weeks ago. But things have hardly got much better since, and there has been the relentless promotion of the "threat" that the SNP have over a possible Labour government - about the most cast-iron example of a literal "divide and rule" strategy you could witness.
The baseness of psychology required to formulate this strategy is stark, and it tells you much about how many Conservatives view human nature: as a game of winners and losers, where those who "lose out" have done so through their own mistakes, and therefore should be deservedly punished for it. As well as mirroring the thinking of Ayn Rand, it also - alarmingly - mirrors the thinking of one of the most destructive psychological disorders.
The kind of Britain that the Tories espouse is one where the disabled and the unemployed are presumed as probable fraudsters for simply wishing some financial aid from the state. It is a Britain where the unemployed are sometimes forced to work for their benefits (which is not only immoral, but also bad economics). People have literally died as the indirect result of government welfare policy. But under the Tories "divide and rule" strategy, those people that died were not penniless and starving because the government withdrew their benefits, but because of the choices that those people made. They were defined as "undeserving" i.e. they deserved to die.
The use of "divide and rule" provides the most important element of electioneering - creating a "scapegoat". Whether it's the SNP (or Scotland in general), "immigrants", "skivers", or whoever, the electorate - from a psychological point of view - have convincing "hate figures" in order to turn to the Tories as their saviour.
But for a cynical and immoral "divide and rule" strategy to work to its best, you also have to know how to use cynical and immoral "dirty tricks"...
How to use "The Dirty Tricks Handbook"
First and foremost, you have to control the "narrative". This is the "story" of what has happened up to the election. In short, it's propaganda - a lie - that you tell voters. It must be simple to be easily memorable, and repeated regularly.
The Tories' "narrative" about Labour - repeated by Cameron - is that they "broke the banks", and that it was "Labour overspending" that caused the crisis. Only the other day a treasury civil servant said catagorically that this "narrative" was untrue and a historical fallacy. It was a banking crisis (partly caused by lack of government regulation) that created the financial crisis. The "Labour overspending" happened as a result of the crisis; it was not the cause of it. The fact that so many people in the UK have such bad memories that they don't remember this is deeply worrying. The Tories are relying on the notion that if a smart, smooth-talking politician keeps on saying something, people believe it is true. And - horrifyingly - the evidence supports that notion.
Secondly - but probably as important - you have to have the media on your side. In this election, there is convincing evidence (also carried out by Loughborough University) that the media are solidly on the side of the Conservatives. This also seems to extend to the BBC, given the regularly tough questioning given out to Ed Miliband especially, compared to the tame (and sometimes poorly-phrased) questioning given to Cameron and other Tory figures. Given the similar educational backgrounds that many media figures have to many politicians, this shouldn't be so surprising, but it certainly puts paid to any real sense of media "freedom". Also, given that Ed Miliband had effectively declared war on a large segment of the media "establishment" following the events of Leveson, it is even less surprising.
It wasn't always like this, though. Under Tony Blair, the media "establishment" was largely on his side, but again - especially in the case of Rupert Murdoch - it was a case of currying favour in order to gain the support of the media. If the media really wasn't so influential, why did Blair (and Cameron) so obviously want to win them over?
Next, and related to the two previous ideas, is how essential it is to control the agenda. The Tories did this with ruthless duplicity. The whole "debate about the debates" was a prime example of the Tories controlling events in order to allow David Cameron to dictate to the media and the other parties precisely on what terms things would be allowed to happen. It was a disgraceful - but horribly effective - strategy.
Fourthly, apart from the "big lie" to control the "narrative", is the use of character assassination. This was alluded to earlier with the negative attacks on Miliband as someone who would "Stab Britain in The Back". In the case of this election, they seem to have been fairly ineffective (even counter-productive), but in the past had a greater chance of success - with the help of the media (see above). Related to this point is using your opponents' comments in an out-of-context manner to try to destroy their reputation.
One of the most interesting - and to your rival party, confounding - tactics is the use of "projection". This is a psychological term more commonly used as a tactic of narcissists to confound those around them when under threat. In political terms, this is when you accuse your rivals of the exact same errors that they accuse you of - "projecting" your own weaknesses onto your opponents. As this is the last thing your rivals are expecting, it leaves them confused and unclear where to go next with their argument.
An example in this campaign is Cameron's claim the other day that the Tories are for "hardworking people" and against the excesses of bankers, unlike Labour (because they bailed them out, and allowed excessive bonuses). This statement is so catagorically opposite to the Conservatives' reality that it beggars belief that Cameron can even convincingly utter it. As anyone with a brain knows, the Conservatives finances are strongly-reliant on groups and individuals in The City and offshore clients.
This kind of statement tells us more about the worrying ease with which David Cameron can spout complete nonsense from his mouth while seeming to believe every word of it. But Cameron has a track record for being a compulsive liar (or - let's be fair - possibly just a complete idiot), as well as a bully; not to mention a coward, and an incompetent.
Lastly, you can always steal the clothes (i.e. policies) of your opponent and claim they were yours all along.
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