In light of this week's by-election results, there are a number of observations that can be made.
The first is that, as everyone who has watched the UK political scene for some time will know, by-elections are not good predictors of general election results.
Second, most UK general elections, do not change very much. We have had ten general elections since 1980. Only two resulted in a change in the governing party, although it could also be said that 2015 did result in the rejection of a coalition partner.
Third, in that case, what is clear is that it takes quite a lot for the British public to change their electoral minds, but when they do so, they tend not to regret the new choice for some time. This is why most parties have since 1980 enjoyed at least three consecutive terms in office, with the current government being on its fourth term. No one has enjoyed a fifth in recent history.
So, why do these changes take place? It is another commonly observed fact that UK governments lose power, and oppositions do not win it. In other words, the UK electorate have a tendency to stick with the devil that they know rather than risk change, unless and until the time has come to do so, which is when the party in office has proved itself incompetent.
Recent political events, and most especially reaction to the near disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak all evidence that the UK electorate do think that the Conservatives have now proved themselves to be incompetent. People's reasons for reaching this conclusion will differ. There is, for example, no consensus amongst Conservative voters on the issue of Brexit. But, whatever the reason, the idea that the Conservatives time in office is reaching an end is now so very strongly held that the chance that they will lose the next election not because of anything that Labour, the Lib Dems, Greens, or SNP might do, but solely because of their own inability is now very high indeed.
Returning to the lessons that the by-elections might deliver, it does in that case seem plausible that on this occasion the massive rejection of the Conservatives in Somerset and Yorkshire is indicative of prevailing political sentiment. The fact that the overall swing against the Conservatives when the results of the three elections are aggregated was broadly typical of current opinion poll findings also suggests that this is the case. What, however, is equally clear is that the electorate has yet to be convinced by the opposition.
Of the major political parties that took part in these elections, the Tories have every reason to be frightened.
The Liberal Democrats, returning from near oblivion, have every reason to be pleased.
The Greens came third in every seat, and whilst there are no general election prizes for coming third such is the absurdity of our voting system, they have every reason to be pleased with that. The chance that they might grow the number of Green seats at the next election is high.
But what, then, Labour? That is the real question. There are, as usual, a number of points to note.
Firstly, whilst the result in Selby was obviously encouraging for them, and even historic, it does fit the by-election trend. Such an obviously Conservative seat cannot be relied upon to return a Labour MP at the general election when the likely electorate turns out in full, as it most definitely did not do on this occasion. In fact, what was very clear in this election result was that the Tories did not vote in vast numbers and Labour only managed to increase its vote slightly. There is little comfort for Labour in this. If I was the new MP I would not be banking on a long career in Westminster as yet, however youthful he might be.
More importantly, what voters in Somerset proved was that they now have the ability to pick winners within the first-past-the-post system, and where Labour has only a slight chance of winning they will now transfer their votes to the Liberal Democrats if that helps remove a Tory incumbent. Very large numbers of seats that on the basis of generic swings might look to be possible Labour wins do, on this basis, look to be more likely to fall to the Liberal Democrats next time. This trend may not, of course, be replicated in a general election, but in broad terms, I think electors are now sufficiently savvy for the tendency to be quite apparent whenever the UK votes as a whole.
And then there was Uxbridge. Labour made a total mess of this campaign. Local parties do not like candidates being imposed upon them, especially when they appear completely alien in their views.
Labour also totally misread the situation with regard to ULEZ. What could have been a campaign strength, because the imposition of this charge on Uxbridge was entirely the fault of Tory policy, became a campaign weakness. It takes some considerable inability to achieve that.
But most of all, as I have said before and as I will no doubt say again, the long shadow of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer hung all over this campaign with their refusal to commit Labour to anything that looks remotely like a policy, let alone like a spending commitment that might benefit a community. This, no doubt, contributed massively to Labour's failure in what should have been a foregone win for them.
If Labour has anything to learn from this campaign it is that making vague noises about issues is not enough. People want recognisable commitments that will have an impact upon their lives if they are to really believe that Labour can provide them with the alternative Government that they need. Instead, Labour had nothing useful to say on ULEZ, and most significantly could say nothing at all about how they would help those most impacted by it to transition to the environmentally compliant cars that they will now need, and as a result the electorate could not identify with their campaign.
I am well aware that I have been saying for some time that Labour has no ideas and is utterly constrained by its dedication to austerity, but the point has to be made again, and no doubt many more times between now and the next general election. Unless Labour can really decide what it is for then it is not a government in waiting. It is, instead, at best an interim placeholder whilst the Tories regroup for a return by 2029 or 2030. That would be disastrous, not just for Labour, but for the country as a whole. Right now, though, it looks to be exactly where Labour is.
In 1997, Labour said things could only get better. At present it is true to say that Labour can only get better. They are that dire. I think that the electorate has rumbled this. Unless the Labour leadership takes note the UK now faces the prospect of having a failed government with no obviously competent successor available. That may be unprecedented.
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Starmer’s Visionless Authoritarianism isn’t better it’s the same as the country has now under the Tories. We’ll see at the general election how many voters cotton on to this.
Authoritarianism is of course the refusal to recognise the UK state creates money of its own from thin air like the licenced banks and it’s also the insistence that the state must always automatically strive to balance its books.
In response to Mr Schofields valid points I have two links to offer – one confirming the points made & something else to raise spirits – & thus contribute to the erosion of Starmer as something credible:
The laugh: https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1682829375878602753?s=20
The substance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4-npTrVW8
Note that the person was the head of the local Labour party, note how the BBC continues to lie – even when corrected.
A recent reply to another blog quoted, perhaps apocryphally, Einstein, that repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is a sure sign of insanity. A feature of elected governments, particularly those that call themselves liberal democracies (probably without a sense of irony – I read that the central problem with liberalism is that it’s equally illegal for vagrants and billionaires to sleep under bridges!) is incredibly high levels of inequality and poverty, careering towards an ecological abyss, the SUVification of transport, rampant consumption, and the suppression of possible alternative directions because no one can act independently to the system of government – they won’t allow it (just look at the Zapatistas and what they have to do to stay safe against a violent Mexican state). From a different perspective, the problem isn’t that somehow we struggle to get the right people elected, or those that are elected just don’t have the right ideas. The problem from a different perspective is the bizarre and foolish ceding of power (in the UK case) of 45 million adults, to just 650 people, and a much smaller government than even that figure. This process disempowers people individually and collectively. And then, weirdly, having given that power away, people expect government to listen, often whilst knowing the chance of that from experience. Any action that people take that the government disagrees with, force is used against them (if you’re homeless, try living in an unoccupied house, or settling some land). Recent legislation effectively ending the right to protest is a case in point. This point is also reinforced by what is happening to the NHS, austerity, homes unfit to live in, unwanted privatisation, shit dumped into waterways, and so on, that, although most people do not want these things , unfortunately, through electing a government, meaningful power to act in these cases has been ceded (we can’t collectively set up an alternative health care system, or ban SUVs – we’ve given this power away). From a different perspective, the problem is the system itself, and somehow expecting that it can do something different when the evidence, from all across the world over quite a period of time, is that it cannot. A few years ago, in a poll of 17,000 people across the world, on average, 70% of people believed they lived in a broken society (broken isn’t a good verdict), with only small percentages thinking positively about the social system they are compelled to live in. We might point to countries where things are better, but that’s a low bar and “better” is a long way from good.
As you highlight, the Tories are a horror show, Labour are empty, but I doubt that a few more Lib Dems and a couple more Green MPs are going to steer us to a better world. It just means that a few MPs with different coloured brochures will find themselves confronted by irresistible corporate largesse, and so the wheel will turn once more. I wish I was more hopeful, but I doubt a soft landing is possible, as there are too many converging and interacting problems that have never been addressed, and vast resources are available to those who wish to keep us misinformed and distracted, for their own gain.
Very good take on the situation. It doesn’t matter what we vote the power to make changes has been removed from a large number of bodies. The law increasingly only decides in favour of the powerful. Privatisation makes disputes personal about property not about right and wrong, etc. It is also increasingly difficult to just “drop out” from society once someone else owns the land or the sunshine. It still however raises the question of how to make change. It is not possible to do it in elections. I have moved from solid Labour democrat to thinking that only revolutionary change has a chance to make things, even that i think is is, at best, difficult. Socialism or barbarism. Without energy for the former we are reduced to the latter. In the meantime we might argue about whether the greens are better than the lib dems when in fact none of those choices are viable for humanity. The whole lot needs to be torn down.
A struggle for myself is there is nothing to positively vote for with Labour. I cannot think of one single policy which represents progressive change.
You also have to take into account the role of the media which permits debate only in a narrow window, calls policies such as NHS provision for dental work communism when one candidate suggests it and dealing with a crisis when another suggests it.
Its very likely the Conservative will lose the next general election. Its very unlikely however that the policies of the government will change.
I totally agree with your summation.
Labour is in capitulation mode – the capitalist revanchism that we are seeing has gathered speed, and I think that they think they cannot push back on it – the train has no brakes. They are just being pulled along by it like the rest of us.
Except of course, there are brakes. Labour are just sitting there in the guard van though, looking at the handbrake, scratching their heads about how to use it whilst society heads for the buffer stops at some speed.
Since when has an opposition party worked like that?
It is totally bizarre
Starmer’s just a silly and perverse Don Quixote tilting at the wrong windmills (for example government debt)! So no vision for the Little People or the Planet when he becomes king!
It is bizarre.
I can’t think of a single issue that will arise in the next 10 years where I could predict what this Labour Party’s stance is likely to be. The usefulness of AI, likely dry grassland fires in summer, an office for football regulation, the nanny state, it’s just a complete guess. Would Labour believe in doing more to regulate, devolve to local authorities, or in the case of football say ‘not the business of good government’ perhaps.
If a new low CO2 cheap and safe energy source became available, say using something from pitchblende, would Labour embrace it and throw all the other renewables businesses under the bus, or regulate to make sure the new thing took 10 years longer than it needed to deliver benefits to protect the incumbents at cost due to delay to people and planet.
It’s literally a guess.
Bizarre as you said.
That inability to predict what Labour would do is a very useful test
And as you note, it’s nigh on impossible – except for austerity
Today’s phrase: Neoliberalism, economics as if people don’t matter.
@ Linda Evans.
Thanks I like that. Made me think of a another way of putting it:-
Visionless Austerianism – economics as if many people and the planet don’t matter!
Regarding voters staying at home Richard due to the lack of any enthusiasm for the Tories or Labour how do we envisage this playing out in a General Election ?
Which party is likely to be harmed the most by an extremely low turnout of let’s say 30% .
Would it be enough to ensure the Red Wall not all returning to Labour ?
Could those seats that Labour must win in marginal areas also throw up another Tory triumph just on the basis of low turnouts ?
We are in many respects in uncharted territory here although the warning signs for many years have been prevalent .
Interesting idea
We then get bu-election style results
I suspect this would backfire on the Tories
The one hopeful factor is that young people and millennial tend towards progressive parties: ‘generation left’ – pro left, pro European. This gives me hope. (Phil Buton-Cartledge is one of the best and most incisive researchers on this with his book ‘The Party’s Over’ published by Verso coming out soon.)
A party which lets right wing press dictate terms isn’t ready for leadership.
A party which refuses to face reality isn’t ready for leadership.
Labour lost GE19 because of Corbyn. His tepid 2nd ref offer with promise of a Corbyn deal saw millions flee to properly pro 2nd ref parties. It scared off the 20% pro EU vote which voted Conservative.
Conkip only increased it’s vote by 300k. Our perverse electoral system turned that into a big majority. The pro EU 20% was a pool of 2.6m votes which could have been mined. It might not have been enough but it would have further hobbled Conkip and given opposition some control.
Reeves isn’t competent. She’s there because it’s thought that being ex BoE will give voters confidence. They’re touting first female Cx which is tokenism. She’s a repeater not a thinker. She was taught orthodoxy and she repeats it.
Starmer isn’t a politician. Isn’t a listener. He’s a barrister. Trained to argue a brief. He’s not reading the room. He’s timid. He’s surrounded himself with advisors who are briefing from the Lexit luddite wing.
It is absurd that with polls consistently showing true majority for Rejoin he’s not even willing to look at it.
His refusal to protect democracy by giving us PR is arrogant and stupid in equal measure.
His promise to keep police and cruel borders bills isn’t someone who cares about people and ironically given his profession human rights.
Until Labour gets honest. It will fail. Voters know dishonesty when they see it.
Labour’s GE19 2nd Ref. was the brainchild of Keir Starmer, and foisted on the party in a now well- documented move.
By the time it happened, Corbyn’s position was of a party leader getting well tired of all the shenanigans playing out around him, to which he was temperamentally unsuited, and which his opponents in the party knew too well.
Interestingly, these are the people responsible for, and overseeing Labour’s current situation.
No wonder the future bodes ill.
And why did the Fates decree that the words “cunning” and “clueless” should begin with the same letter?
Starmer is fighting 2019 all over again, rather than dealing with this year’s issues.
He’s terrified of the Media Barons & is rolling around hoping they’ll let him have a go as PM, instead of realising that they’re losing power & influence.
Those oligarchs who own “newspapers” are desperately looking for some big single issue to wave at voters, now that Brexit has been shown up for what it was. Culture wars don’t get people excited. Small boats only work with mindless thugs, and at this point they need a bigger proportion of voters than that. ULEZ won’t work outside London & Oxford, and even there it may not get enough traction – it only just worked in Uxbridge, and only then because the “minor parties” were fighting hard instead of focussing on other seats they stand a chance of winning, as they will in a full scale national election.
As I’m old enough to remember various Immigration Acts and similar act of desperation from Labour governments, I’m not really expecting any better from Starmer & co. But it is worrying that at a time when we need some genuine change of direction from governments everywhere, when we’re seeing the end-game of neo-conservative economics, when many people are going on holiday & will see for themselves the consequences of climate change – we have such a soggy pudding of an opposition.
Starmer seems not to understand money as you have well demonstrated.
Jacky Smith says ‘He’s terrified of the Media Barons’. I agree.
The barons don’t understand money either – they are just addicted to squeezing the government and individuals so that they can have more of it. And they don’t understand that carbon dioxide pollution is ruining all of us – them included – unless it is cut enormously and very, very, rapidly.
So, it looks to me as though ‘they’ pushed Starmer to say ‘and that includes nothing extra for third and subsequent children, doesn’t it?’ … and then they’d got him. Either he commits to spend a bit more OR he has to admit to being open to consider changing his mind.
Richard, I think you and most commenters on this blog are hard on Starmer (which is justified. He is not nearly redistributive enough.)
But I fear that the media barons, the oil barons and the advertisers will be laughing because we are letting them get away with their greed and stupidity. ‘Stupidity’ because civilisation is hurtling towards self-destruction – and *nobody* has a plan for how to manage without … fresh water, a well-managed sewage system, some electricity, security, sufficient food … and fuel for a very few planes and cars.
If … and the way we are going maybe … when … people don’t have enough food for their children, they will steal, then fight … even kill.
Rapid redistribution of wealth might give us enough time to prevent that.
I think the issues are not mutually exclusive.
I am doing a lot if work on wealth taxes right now. I hope to start publishing it soon.
Looking to a wider perspective
https://perspectivemag.co.uk/back-to-the-future/
this new essay on viewing the end of US hegemony, the end of its global domination that has led to gross injustice, insecurity and inequality, as an epochal opportunity as opposed to seeing it as a catastrophe. Politicians in England (not so much the rest of the UK) cannot bring themselves to promote a new vision for these islands, so strong is the narrative of Empire. The US self-constructed identity as world policeman is equally strong and equally finished.
Citing the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005 when “eighteen of the world’s poorest countries had their debts to the IMF and World Bank wiped out, with additional countries qualifying for this assistance in subsequent years … cancellation [that] led to expanded healthcare in Zambia, increased spending on education and healthcare in Ghana, and more secure food supplies in Tanzania, to give just three key examples.
More importantly still, removing the debt burden had a massively beneficial impact in poorer countries in the 2010s. This was the era of “Africa rising”: the continent’s economies grew massively, with huge beneficial knock-on impacts in life expectancies, healthcare and the creation of a rising middle class. The lesson of Gleneagles was that removing unsustainable debt burdens is a clear win for everyone.”
This idea that we are at a turning point requiring an entirely new way of describing possible roles in the world for the UK is a massive challenge when everything is so rigidly aligned to perpetuate national self-delusion of continued global dominance.
Were any aspiring politicians to insist on a new starting point with a new agenda altogether that sidestepped the Empire agenda straightjacket, they might have a chance of bringing people along with them to another place.
Unfortunately, German politicians are saying the exact same thing as Labour:
“Have no leeway for structural additional expenditure that is not counter-financed, says
@c_lindner. We have to increase government revenue through economic #Wachstum [growth]. Otherwise no chance to finance the welfare state, no chance for ecological #Investitionen [investments]. (Google translation)
https://twitter.com/BMF_Bund/status/1682641884433326080
This thinking is dire
addendum
One of the replies to Christian Lindner says:
“A state does NOT “finance” itself through tax revenues, but first makes expenditures that ensure that there can be tax revenues.”
Neat definition of MMT?
Yes
The most concerning aspect about the Uxbridge result was that the Tories won by animating their voters to oppose a proposed measure to reduce air pollution, or Green Crap as the party that represents climate change deniers prefers to call it.
I have a horrible suspicion that come the General Election they will try to rework the Brexit trick.
Only this time with lies about the ordinary patriotic people of this country being swindled out of their birth-right by an evil Liberal elite of experts and work-shy tree-huggers trying to con them into believing that we are all going to fry.
It might seem far-fetched but there is a definite scaremongering pattern and it gets worse every time.
In 1992 it was only some bogus nonsense about a Labour Tax Bombshell.
By 2015 we had the the much more sinister sounding Labour/SNP plot to destroy Britain.
In 2016 it was Brexit which reached levels of lying, deception and dishonesty never previously seen in this country.
In 2024 full-on Climate change denial wrapped us as an Anti-British conspiracy would only be another easy step towards near clinically insane lying.
Much to agree with Richard. A view from “beyond the wall” sees these English by-elections as “foreign news” having only marginal infuence in Scotland: given FPTP and relative population sizes, Scotland’s votes are largely irrelevant to the outcome of UK General Elections – we get the government that England chooses regardless of how we vote. On BBC Radio4’s week in Westminster this morning we were being told that a large swing to Labour is likely in Scotland in the next GE as a result of “the implosion” of the SNP. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Labour gaining some seats here, but the Tories are likely to lose a similar number, so any Labour gains may have little impact on the SNP vote. The public anger here towards the current Tory Gov and its policies appears as great as it was when Thatcher was destroying our heavy industries and people here generally understand the regrettable fact that Labour’s policy proposals largely mirror those of the Tories. As a result, I can’t see a sizeable swing to Labour here; it’s more likely that the SNP will take most of the seats that the Tories lose, especially in the North-east where the farmers and the fishing industry have been massively damaged by Brexit.
Another fact that is almost always overlooked by the English commentariat is that support for independence consistently sits at around 50% regardless of the massive negativity of the media towards the SNP and independence. Support for SNP here has been affected to some degree by its internal issues, but, like them or not, it’s so obviously the only political body that can manage and deliver independence that I can’t see the SNP vote being heavily undermined. In addition people are very aware of the benefits they have as a result of the SNP mitigating so many of Westminter’s adverse policies (for example child benefits aren’t capped at a maximum of 2 children here, so the state has no influence in family size. This is crucial given our declining population).
Another factor here arises out of the outcome of North Sea gas and oil extraction. Comparison of the outcomes for Scotland and Norway are colossally revealing. Norway has a vibrant economy (backed by a massive national sovereign wealth fund), good pensions, well-financed public services and a higher standard of living. Scotland fares very badly by comparison, the critical difference being that Norway is a sovereign nation whereas Scotland is governed by a government we generally don’t vote for. The difference comes out in all sorts of ways: an in-law recently went to the Lofoten Islands in Norway’s north to visit friends. The 5-hour ferry journey from the mainland was free-of-charge as their Government views it as an essential service to the island communities. Compare and contrast with the travails of Scotland’s off-shore island communities.
While my in-law was there, there was a “free-electricity day” when residents were encouraged to do their washing etc as so much power had been generated by wind and solar that it exceeded storage capacity. Apparently this happens fairly frequently. Compare and contrast with the UK where energy costs are significantly higher, then compare with Orkney. There, like Shetland, there is no connection to the UK gas grid, so dependence on electricity is massive. However, while Orkney produces more energy from wind, solar and tidal than it can consume, the connector to the UK electric grid is insufficient to carry that surplus to the UK Grid, but they don’t get free-electricity days like they do in Norway. Approval for an update to the connector was finally given in March of this year, but it’s not expected to be functioning until 2027/28.
These comparisons are all inter-related and make it clear that being locked in union with UK with no defined process for leaving it is materially damaging Scotland’s economy and future prospects, hence the population decline as Scots continue to opt for higher standards by living abroad. Put all of the above together, there must come a time when the “foreign news” we are fed daily by the UK media does indeed become foreign news.
Thanks Ken
It seems to me that the starmerites preening themselves over the “historic swing” in the Selby and Ainsty byelection are possibly deluding themselves if they think that this confirms the correctness of their electoral strategy.
In last week’s Selby byelection 16,646 people voted for Labour. In 2017 the figure was 19,149. But we’re not supposed to dredge up that memory-holed statistic. (Full disclosure – in 2019, after the dirtiest general election campaign I can recall in my lifetime, the figure was 13,858.)
The starmerites seem to be banking everything on appealing to the right and the centre, on the basis of being the totally non-threatening Tory B team – just a change of personnel really, but with less whiff of corruption and incompetence about them, and promising nothing radical enough to provoke the establishment into focusing its powerful mass-media ‘death ray’ against them.
Their assumption seems to be that enough left-leaning voters out of the nearly 13 million who voted for Labour in 2017, or the more than 10 million of us who still voted Labour in 2019, will stick with Labour and help get them over the line in 2024, “because we have nowhere else to go” – what might be called the ‘mandelsonian wager’.
They seem to be expecting that we will forgive the shameful betrayals of 2017 and 2019, committed by many of the very same crew who are now counting on our votes in 2024. Well, we’ll see; no doubt some of us will (holding our noses), but many of us won’t.
Thanks
I feel a Forrest Gump moment coming on – “Shifty is as shifty does!”
Jamie Driscoll campaign fundraiser of North East Mayoral elections 2024. Already over £112,00 raised from over 5,200 separate donations. Mostly small and from around the country. Here is a couple of typical comment ‘This (donation) is my L.P. membership fee that was due today’ and ‘You didn’t leave the Labour Party Jamie. The Labour Party left you. And me!’.
People don’t like their vote taken for granted and I’d not be surprised if a few mischievous Conservatives chip in to support any independent Labour candidates.
More comments here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/jamie-driscoll-for-north-east-mayor?member=26933721&sharetype=teams
A wasted weekend. No changes except for the worst.
https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/07/23/no-change-no-hope-starmer-criticised-after-rejecting-calls-for-bolder-policies-at-labour-policy-meeting-amid-union-fury/
He has now upset every union as well as all labour activists.
It seems so