UK Labour Party formally review their 2019 defeat
June 19, 2020 4:17 AM   Subscribe

Labour Together Election Review - The UK Labour Party has just published a review, with data and analysis, of their disastrous 2019 defeat.

Some key themes from the (much longer) summary:
- Deep seated long term issues retaining traditional voters, going back to Blair years
- Corbyn's unexpectedly good results in 2017 were based on attracting *new* voters
- Some segments of the 2017 voters had been driven away by 2019
- Corbyn's unpopularity by 2019 (compared to 2017) was a significant problem
- Lack of clarity over Brexit was a problem
- Backing Remain lost them more votes than it gained, especially in their heartlands
- Factional splits severely undermined Labour's credibility despite popular policies
- Factional infighting and bureaucracy undermined a strong ground campaign
- The Tories consolidated the leave vote, Labour lost voters on all sides
- The Tories ran a much more competent online campaign
- Some of the underlying themes, loss of class identity and social forms, rise of culture wars, are impacting other central left parties around the world in similar ways.
posted by Caractacus (36 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oops, typo in the title. *of
posted by Caractacus at 4:26 AM on June 19, 2020


This is great, it's nice to have confirmation of what a lot of us have been talking about. I enjoyed chapter 7, highlighting the tension between the social values of labour's core votes, and... the rest of the country. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Braeburn at 4:46 AM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


Some interesting things:

Labour’s supporters online spent too much of the campaign talking to themselves rather than reaching out to convince swing voters to support Labour.

Matches my experience exactly. Lots of online Labour supporting activity was essentially social, patting each other on the back, very little was effective outreach to wavering voters.

Labour should not be complacent that our vote share can only go up at the next election. There are 58 seats across the country which only require a small swing away from Labour to the Conservatives to be lost. Given the long-term trends set out which are particularly stark in some places, there is no evidence that these trends are abating. This should be of primary concern.

In other words - online triumphalism about narrowing polling gaps during events like Cummingsgate are dangerous distractions. The long term trends are what matters. I see a lot of "now Keir is obviously going to beat Johnson" based on a month of bad polling and three bad PMQs during the greatest crisis since the second world war. Remember to zoom out and really think about the long game.

If Labour does not reverse its fortunes in Scotland in a significant way, it would need to win North East Somerset from Jacob Rees Mogg to form a majority government

Yikes. There was a time when the SNP was derided as "Tartan Tories" which was basically true at the time but the years when it was an odd club of paleo-Scots reconstructionists are now very far behind. The SNP is a credible centre left party, why vote Labour in Scotland? It only makes sense if you're left of centre but pro-union and that just isn't a large group of people in many constituencies.
posted by atrazine at 5:05 AM on June 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


Backing Remain lost them more votes than it gained

But they didn't back remain. They sat on the fence, made no case, provided no opposition as the debate moved from Norway deal to Switzerland deal to Ukraine deal to Turkey deal to Canada deal to possible no deal. Corbyn was clearly pretty relaxed about leaving the EU and kept his actual remainders in check enough that there was no effective voice for remain. So they tarnished their reputation with remainers as well as leavers, quite probably drove some away on both sides.

All they are offering now is 'we're not the tories'.

Even more depressingly, I'm also suspicious the real challenge for Labour is how they get their racists back.
posted by biffa at 5:12 AM on June 19, 2020 [44 favorites]


There's a lot of talk in the report about working on the ground, building up support in local areas. But the people who were really keen for that were, mostly, young Corbyn supporters, who feel utterly betrayed by the leadership, especially after the leaked report on the 2017 election (Jacobin mag link, not sure if there's a better source) proved that there was significant pushback against left-leaning candidates.

Also the next election is going to be fought in the post-Brexit omnishambles, and there's no way that Starmer is going to look good in that arena. He's going to be blamed for every dipshit idea the Tory's had, while at the same time dragging his on-the-ground campaigners to work for him. I would expect a disastrous Tory victory of the most muppet-like MPs, who are ideologically hamstrung and unable to work with their permanent secretaries, after the next election
posted by The River Ivel at 5:29 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


But they didn't back remain

Yeah, I probably didn't summarise that well.

From section 3:

"Focusing only on those who had voted Labour in 2017, analysis conducted for this Review by Datapraxis concluded that Labour lost:

1.9 million Remain voters who had voted Labour in 2017
1.8 million Leave voters who had voted Labour in 2017
950,000 who had voted Labour in 2017 but didn’t vote in the 2016 referendum[68]

Because most of Labour’s 2017 voters voted for Remain, these figures reflect a far higher loss rate for Leave voters than Remain voters. "


but they pretty clearly lost voters in all directions, and taking a quasi-Remain stance after projecting indecisiveness for a couple of years didn't help.
posted by Caractacus at 5:30 AM on June 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


- Backing Remain lost them more votes than it gained, especially in their heartlands

This is an actively misleading conclusion because it only focusses on votes lost, rather than the net of votes lost and votes gained

From the CEO of DataPraxis, a research organisation who provided that data:

It’s important to be clearer: Labour actually lost 1.9m of its Remainers and 1.8m of its Leavers between 2017 and 2019. But it also gained around 900,000 Remainers (mostly former Lib Dem, Tory and Green voters), and many fewer Leavers. The NET losses are 1.7m Leave / 1m Remain.
posted by Urtylug at 5:51 AM on June 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


If Labour does not reverse its fortunes in Scotland in a significant way, it would need to win North East Somerset from Jacob Rees Mogg to form a majority government.

Labour seems beholden to the idea that 'only a vote for Labour in Scotland will stop the Conservatives gaining power.' Alternatively, Labour could change it's long standing policy of never supporting anything SNP (including amendments in parliament proposed by the SNP that could have derailed a hard Brexit), and realise that votes for Labour or the SNP are votes against the Conservative party.

I also can't think off the top of my head any recent General Election where more votes for Labour in Scotland would have changed the result.

Also, and perhaps the simplest answer, Richard Leonard, Kezia Dugdale, Jim Murphy, Johann Lamont... it's not a stellar line-up of leaders to try and break out of a wet paper bag.
posted by ewan at 5:52 AM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


Mod note: fixed title typo
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:56 AM on June 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Also the next election is going to be fought in the post-Brexit omnishambles, and there's no way that Starmer is going to look good in that arena. He's going to be blamed for every dipshit idea the Tory's had

I'm not sure I understand why Starmer's going to get the blame for Tory ideas? I guess I'm missing something here?
posted by edd at 6:47 AM on June 19, 2020


Labour’s supporters online spent too much of the campaign talking to themselves rather than reaching out to convince swing voters to support Labour.

Of course building these online communities seemed to help for Corbyn in the 2017 election and Trump in 2016, as well as for Pro-Brexit campaigners.
posted by interogative mood at 7:26 AM on June 19, 2020


Of course building these online communities seemed to help for Corbyn in the 2017 election and Trump in 2016, as well as for Pro-Brexit campaigners.

Did they?

I don't doubt that:
a) these online communities existed
b) Trump won, pro-Brexit won, Corbyn increased the number of MPs in 2017

but I'm not sure that a led to b. Vote Leave targeted almost all of their advertising on people who were not highly politically informed and engaged and hadn't made up their minds until very late. Meanwhile nutters like Farage spent their time speaking to packed rooms of lifelong diehards (a pointless exercise from the point of view of getting votes). Trump
posted by atrazine at 7:45 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


No analysis of why people suddenly held views like Corbyn being a dangerous marxist lunatic or the role of the media in that.

It all just happened in a vacuum.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:53 AM on June 19, 2020 [14 favorites]


Agree Chapter 7 is interesting ... and makes clear the scale of the challenge.

Good quote from John Denham (previously my MP): "As John Denham, who held a marginal seat for Labour for many years, has observed in the past “Labour does not need to agree with the voters on everything, just that we should not disagree with them on everything”."
posted by paduasoy at 7:54 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


- Deep seated long term issues retaining traditional voters, going back to Blair years
- Lack of clarity over Brexit was a problem
- Backing Remain lost them more votes than it gained, especially in their heartlands
- Some of the underlying themes, loss of class identity and social forms, rise of culture wars, are impacting other central left parties around the world in similar ways.
All of these things are linked really. Not just because The Daily Mail and the Sun consistently whine about the EU and Eastern Europeans coming over for benefits. Corbyn was a nominal remainer but he was still anti-EU. That's not unreasonable since the EU is basically centrist technocratic rule cemented in treaties that will be almost impossible to change and he's a dyed in the wool socialist. But I guess the point is you can't just be against something. You have to give people an alternative.

When Corbyn is up in the heartlands, give them a reason to vote. He's got to have a solid plan forward not just green energy and electric transport. Yes you have to be cosmopolitanly modern for the urbane London crowd to support you but what do these people want? Dignity. The Brexit vote hasn't fucking clued you in on this, Labour? It's not like you've paid attention to this since Blair left. Ten quid a fucking hour? Well aren't you the generous sod, Corbyn. How about ending zero hour contracts? Or at the very least, increase the minimum wage for zero hour workers by 25% if they're under 30 hours a week and 50% if they're under 20 hours a week? Make them pay out the asshole for flexibility. If a company can charge me a convenience fee for using a self-serve payment system they can pay for the flexibility of their workforce.

Secondly, you can't go into an election promising big radical change. Change scares the shit out of people. They want security. That's why we crave negative peace over positive justice unless we're the ones that are facing injustice. Everything you go into an election with you need to make sure there's a clear benefit for people on every policy. Why would you own goal with a plan to renationalizing industries and picking a fight with private schools? Nobody in the heartland gives a flying fuck about this. They don't care if they're working for the government or the private service. They just want to know that whoever they work for they can get a good wage where they can have a comfortable lifestyle and this should be the central aim of every Labour government from now until either the advent of FALGSC or the heat death of the universe.

It's just so disappointing that Labour can't make these policies appeal to their voters. Want heartland people to care about green energy? Support high paying manufacturing jobs, promise paid training, get some opportunity and prosperity back into these regions. Let people get tax deduction subsidies on British made green energy products. Low priced loans for buying British renewable energy. How is this not at the top of these people's lists? Nope, gonna go renationalize BT and make everyone pay by the minute for phone calls again.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:19 AM on June 19, 2020 [4 favorites]


No analysis of why people suddenly held views like Corbyn being a dangerous marxist lunatic or the role of the media in that.

You can't do anything about the media if you're not in power. So Labour has to find a way of winning elections with the media as it is. 1997, 2001 and 2005 show that that's possible. The left complaining about media bias is like sailors complaining about the sea.
posted by matthewr at 8:53 AM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]


seems strangely incomplete: no mention of, "murdoch", "oligarchs", "ratfucking", "security services"

(the latter will be revealed in 50 years, if we have archives, or rule of law or society)
posted by lalochezia at 9:03 AM on June 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


So if Labour does court the media (or Murdoch) everyone hates them for it, and if they don't court the media and get steamrollered by press bias, everyone hates it. In this respect can politicians be as good as we want them to be and still win elections?

It just strikes me that the problem is the press shouldn't be able to be courted, rather than policitians doing something wrong.
posted by Braeburn at 9:11 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


So Labour has to find a way of winning elections with the media as it is

Labour will never win an election again in that case because it is impossible. You have to acknowledge first that 2019 was not normal, was nothing like 1997, 2001 or 2005, all of which were only won because Blair capitulated prematurely to the Sun in the first place.

2017 showed that a leftwing Labour could and almost did win the majority in parliament (shame about the rightwing sabotage from within the party, or it actually would've won).

Corbyn was of course already attacked before, but the attacks really stepped up a notch after that election. In 2017 during the election period most of the news media obeyed the requirement to remain neutral and you saw Labour gaining as they were forced to report a least something approaching the truth.

In 2019, this didn't happen. Even the BBC wasn't impartial but took active part in slandering Labour and Corbyn. The media decided it was more tolerable for the country to be destroyed than let the Tory party lose the election and lied and lied and lied until they got their wish.

There is no media strategy in the world, no acceptable candidate you can put forward, who can work against this.

Heck, they mocked Ed Milliband as a hard leftist and for eating a bacon sandwhich a bit awkwardly, then called his father unbritish. If he can be slandered, any Labour candidate can be.

Including saviour of the party/empty suit Keir Starmer. The moment he becomes a nuisance is the moment the UK press will destroy him too.

Saying Labour needs to deal with this is like telling a domestic abuse victim that they should avoid angering their abuser.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:40 AM on June 19, 2020 [5 favorites]


Again: what is your plan for changing the media landscape without being in power?
posted by matthewr at 10:06 AM on June 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


Apart from the three consecutive victories for Labour, two with landslides, it is impossible to win. Right.

Maybe... the British people just aren't that leftwing? They preferred to vote for centrist Labour over the Conservatives a number of times.
posted by atrazine at 10:58 AM on June 19, 2020 [7 favorites]


If there was an original sin in Labour's 2019 strategy it was not deeply embracing the truth that 2017 was a defeat. "We almost won in 2017" led the party to fail to grapple with Corbyn's unpopularity and the sharp decline in support in (vs. 2010 and 2015) of many of the seats that were ultimately lost in 2019.

Aside from that, the left-wing manifesto mixed horribly with Brexit. The manifesto kept remainers voting Tory and Lib Dem, while it did nothing to keep Labour Brexiters from voting Tory.
posted by MattD at 11:20 AM on June 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Comment removed, let's let this stay focused on the UK and put analogies to US politics in a thread where US politics is the topic.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:59 AM on June 19, 2020 [6 favorites]


You can't really say this: "Yes you have to be cosmopolitanly modern for the urbane London crowd to support you but what do these people want? Dignity. The Brexit vote hasn't fucking clued you in on this, Labour? It's not like you've paid attention to this since Blair left. Ten quid a fucking hour? Well aren't you the generous sod, Corbyn. How about ending zero hour contracts? Or at the very least, increase the minimum wage for zero hour workers by 25% if they're under 30 hours a week and 50% if they're under 20 hours a week?"

And then the next para say this: Secondly, you can't go into an election promising big radical change

The above is a big, radical, change.

I think that in terms of broad-brush strokes, many of the challenges that UK labour is facing are the same challenges that labour is facing in Australia, Democrats in the US, the Christian Democrats in germany etc etc.

I think working class people feel that the neoliberal compact embraced by Labourish parties for decades has largely failed them (ie Corbyn accurately diagnosed the disease). Unfortunately, a lot of working class are happy to blame Johnny Foreigner for this, rather than the rich white people in their own countries. I think this works partly because they are afraid and right wings parties excel in exploiting fear, and the media landscape has atomised, making grand narratives harder to promulgate. Labour parties are struggling to grapple with this, hopelessly split on the cure, with half of them saying to be more conservative and half saying to be more radical.

I personally think the re-emerging professionalisation of politics, with elite career politicians and staffers has compounded all this - our democracies are sick and getting sicker.
posted by smoke at 5:57 PM on June 19, 2020 [2 favorites]


One of the really interesting bits of that report, as several people have pointed out, is the analysis in Chapter 7.

This interactive visualisation of their cluster analysis, categorising and breaking down the segments of the UK electorate who might be persuaded to support Labour in the future is particularly useful.

In particular, the relationship between 'core' and 'swing' voters that would be required suggests a huge challenge. The report doesn't overly empahsise it, but at least two of the core groups mostly hate each other's guts especially since the leaked anti-semitism report with its toxic chat logs, that was the subject of a previous Metafilter thread, and since the identification (in this review and elsewhere) of the central role of these factional disputes the 2019 defeat.

Even working together though, the 'core' as it presently stands, can't muster the necessary votes without significant numbers of 'swing' voters. The review identifies a number of mostly cultural wedge issues that stand between (most of ) the core and the rest of the UK electorate. The report doesn't say so explicitly, but these potential wedge issues seem to correlate strongly with the normalisation of racism as a political demand within the UK political / media establishment that's taken place over the last decade and in an age of targeted mass media, seem likely to be more effective than ever in denying Labour a clear swing.
posted by Caractacus at 12:35 AM on June 20, 2020 [4 favorites]


Searching for "Jew" in the report... zero mentions. Searching for "EHRC" or "Equality"... zero mentions of the body now investigating Labour for institutionalised antisemitism.

Ten mentions of the weirdly hyphenated and capitalised term "anti-Semitism",* for what it's worth, but all in the context of "the handling of issues like Brexit, party disunity and anti-Semitism" (my emphasis); zero concern for actual antisemitism and, e.g., the Jews chased out of the Party, or the hurt done to Jews and their allies generally. I mean, would a normal human being say that Boris Johnson has handled racism badly? No they would not: they'd say he was a stinking racist.

* The hyphenated term anti-semitism is deprecated by (e.g.) authorities like Deborah Lipstadt because it implies that there is a concept called "semitism" to which antisemites are opposed. The capitalisation is just doubling down on that.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:08 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


I do not think this is a sinister error: my spellcheck is telling me 'antisemitism' is incorrect and 'anti-Semitism' is correct.

It was never clear to me that there was antisemitism, or anti-Semitism, in the Labour Party that was not also present in the Tories, and I always got the sense that it was a cudgel to beat on Jeremy Corbyn and leftists rather than a genuine reckoning. The thug running Israel currently has complicated things. I've noticed there's been a lot of problems on the left keeping the two apart, particularly because Israel-style fascism has a vested interest in using Judaism as a shield.

I think working class people feel that the neoliberal compact embraced by Labourish parties for decades has largely failed them (ie Corbyn accurately diagnosed the disease). Unfortunately, a lot of working class are happy to blame Johnny Foreigner for this, rather than the rich white people in their own countries.

I did find it very interesting that Corbyn was immediately rejected by the UK press as a swivel-eyed loon, and there wasn't much at all in the way of interrogating whether he, or the people who pushed him into power, might have had a point, at least not a lot that managed to filter through to me.
posted by Merus at 4:23 AM on June 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


It was never clear to me that there was antisemitism, or anti-Semitism, in the Labour Party that was not also present in the Tories [...]

It doesn't and never had to be "made clear" to you. It was clear to the Jewish community and their allies; I've never seen such unanimity. 85%, IIRC.

The thug running Israel currently has complicated things. I've noticed there's been a lot of problems on the left keeping the two apart, particularly because Israel-style fascism has a vested interest in using Judaism as a shield.

Oh for goodness' sake. You are the problem.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:34 AM on June 20, 2020


A lot of people on the Labour right seem to think that Starmer will bring back the Blairite glory days, but this review isn't strongly supportive of that point of view.

"Datapraxis analysis for this Labour Together Review found that Labour has been losing “socially conservative, anti-immigration and pro-Brexit voters” for some time. Four in ten of those who voted Labour in 2010 and Leave in 2016 had already been lost by the Party in 2015." p48

"To take one symbolic issue as an example, the share of voters naming “immigration” as one of the most important issues rose from under five per cent in 1997 to peak at over 45 per cent in 2015. " p49

" ... while on economic issues “people on low incomes tend to hold much more left-wing attitudes than people on high incomes” and “there is not much evidence of any long-term change in these values in one direction or another”, on a “liberal-authoritarian axis” there has been a marked shift since 2010, with people on lower incomes now “much more socially authoritarian than they were at the beginning of the new millennium”
p50

It's not obvious how Labour can appeal to the Racist Authoritarians, the Progressive Cosmopolitians and to the Left Greens at the same time, even if (as the report proposes) they can find common ground on "major issues" of an economic nature, on the NHS and so on.

Every time they try, they're going to get absolutely hammered with targeted cultural wedge issues in both traditional and social media, as we've already seen under Corbyn's leadership.

Having the Guardian onside this time, probably isn't going to help as much as they'd think.
posted by Caractacus at 6:15 AM on June 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


Having read the report - thank you weekend - I see it very commendably seizes on the failure to learn the right lessons from 2017.
posted by MattD at 6:15 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


Labour, for reasons of strategy never comes out and says they will, but if they won a plurality victory but not a majority they would certainly form a coalition with the SNP.

Keir's position on devolution is that he's in favour of a federalist system. The SNP might be willing to live with that as their price to join a coalition with a party that otherwise shares many positions - of course they would see it as a way station on the way to full de jure1 independence. It would be a titanic revolution in UK governance since it would require a legally binding agreement that constrained the power of the Westminster parliament. At the moment, the whole machinery of devolved Scotland has no more legal independence than Swindon Borough Council just more powers devolved to it. Federalism would change that and require a written constitution.

(1) I'm a big believer that geography, demography, and economics drive de facto independence and that is usually much more circumscribed than de jure sovereignty. The UK is independent... to the degree it can negotiate how it will interact with the US, the EU, and other powers. Canada can "independently" decide how much to give in to American pressure. An independent Scotland could "independently" decide which concessions England would force them into.
posted by atrazine at 7:08 AM on June 20, 2020


there has been a marked shift since 2010, with people on lower incomes now “much more socially authoritarian than they were at the beginning of the new millennium

That's actually terrifying - and I suspect holds true here in Australia as well. It honestly baffles me as the authoritarians have, all of them, proved to be utterly incompetent and their many promises are never delivered.
posted by smoke at 5:38 PM on June 20, 2020 [4 favorites]


The 'meeting the challenge' chapter at the end is interesting. It imagines a municipalist / communitarian strategy which actually sounds great, but also sounds impossible to implement in the kind of Labour Party we actually have.

I could sort of imagine something like that working as the basis for a Left-Party-of-the-regions sort of deal perhaps.
posted by Caractacus at 5:05 AM on June 22, 2020


On a related note, this new Labour List article in response to the review’s data and analysis is calling for a re-engagement with “patriotism and national identity”, specifically English national identity, against the values of the educated urban Left.

https://labourlist.org/2020/06/labour-must-shape-a-positive-and-inclusive-national-story-for-england/

* I’m pretty sure they mean something quite different by “communitarianism” ...
posted by Caractacus at 8:57 AM on June 22, 2020


calling for a re-engagement with “patriotism and national identity”, specifically English national identity

I don't think the author (Joe Jarvis, who is the “coordinator of the English Labour Network”) means the same thing by “patriotism” as I do when he says
Labour does not get to choose the non-negotiable foundations of patriotism – strong on security, defence and crime and a willingness to fight Britain’s corner on the global stage.
Since he distinguishes “security” and “defence” I suspect he's talking about internal security, i.e. monitoring brown people. And when he says “strong on … crime” he probably doesn't mean the financial crimes that have immiserated so many millions, but street crime.

I mean, Labour probably shouldn't give the Tories room to say that street crime would increase under a Labour government, but (a) that would be a remarkably tone-deaf thing to be worrying about right now; and (b) we actually have good models overseas of how community policing can work. It turns out that it's the sort of thing that works pretty darn well with the social policies advocated by the “liberal, individualist, rights-focused graduates who are so influential in the Labour Party”; it may not be as viscerally satisfying as the thought of Mr Plod putting the boot in to a bad ’un down in the cells, but it seems to be rather more effective in the long run.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:41 PM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]


Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" threaded that needle among different Labour supporters quite well, I thought.
posted by atrazine at 2:18 AM on June 23, 2020


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