Labour leadership elections: a brief history

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Since 1922, the Labour Party's main figurehead and candidate for Prime Minister has been the person elected to be Leader of the Labour Party. There have been a total of fifteen Leaders since 1922, as well as four acting Leaders. The current Leader, Keir Starmer, was elected by Labour members, affiliated members and registered supporters in a one-person-one-vote election earlier this year; but not every Labour Leader was elected this way.

In this article I'll take a brief look at the different electoral systems used to elect the Leader of the Labour Party since the position was created in 1922:

• Elected by MPs (1922-1980)

• Elected by delegates and trade unions voting in an Electoral College (1983-1992)

• Elected by members, affiliates and MPs/MEPs voting in an Electoral College (1994-2010)

• One Person, One Vote (2015-present)

Elected by MPs (1922-1980)

Prior to 1983, only Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) could vote in leadership elections. MPs voted using the "exhaustive ballot" system, whereby if one candidate did not win a majority of votes in the first ballot, a second ballot would be held in which the lowest-polling candidate would not be able to stand. If a candidate again failed to win a majority, a third round would be held in which the lowest-polling candidate could not stand, and so on and so forth until somebody won a majority.

Of the 15 Labour Leaders, 8 were elected by Labour MPs, with two Leaders (Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury) elected unopposed. Of the 6 contested leadership elections in 1922-1980, only two elections were vaguely close:

• 1922: Ramsay MacDonald won by a margin of 5 votes (4.2%).

• 1980: Michael Foot won by a margin of 10 votes (3.7%)

Electoral College (1983-1992)

In 1981, Labour Party conference voted to change the system for electing the Leader. Now, instead of being elected by MPs, the Leader would be elected at Labour Party conference by Constituency Labour Party (CLP) delegates, MPs / MEPs and trade unions.

However, instead of all of the votes contributing equally to the result (as they do now), these three groups (unions, CLPs and MPs / MEPs) would make up a particular share of the overall result. Votes cast by trade unions would make up 40% of the result, votes from CLPs would make up 30%, and votes from MPs / MEPs would make up 30% of the result.

If no candidate won a majority of the overall Electoral College result in the first ballot, a second ballot would be held, and a third, and a fourth etc., until somebody won a majority.

The first Leader elected using this system was Neil Kinnock in 1983, who won 73% of the vote with trade unions, 92% of the vote with CLP delegates and 49% of the vote with MPs / MEPs. When the overall result was calculated, Kinnock thus won 71% of the Electoral College result in the first ballot.



The Electoral College system did not produce any particularly unusual results in leadership elections - Kinnock won a clear victory in all three sections of the party in 1983 and 1988, as did John Smith in 1992.

However, the system was also used to elect the Deputy Leader, and the 1981 deputy leadership election is an interesting demonstration of how the electoral system can affect the result.



As the table above shows, when Tony Benn challenged Denis Healey for the deputy leadership in 1981, he won an overwhelming majority amongst CLP delegates. However, the trade unions overwhelmingly backed Healey, as did the PLP. As a result, Benn narrowly lost to Healey in the second ballot in the overall Electoral College result.

Electoral College (1994-2010)

After John Smith became Labour Leader in 1992, Labour Party conference voted to make some changes to the Electoral College system. First, the Leader would no longer be elected at conference, but would instead be elected through a postal ballot of members, members of affiliated trade unions and MPs / MEPs. Second, each section's share of the Electoral College would be equal at 33.33% (instead of unions having 40% and the other two sections having 30%).

The first Leader elected using this system was Tony Blair in 1994. Gordon Brown would have been elected using this system, but as he recieved nominations from over 90% of Labour MPs / MEPs, he was elected unopposed.



The 2010 leadership election was the first time that one section of the party had voted for a different candidate than the other two sections. In this instance, members and MPs / MEPs voted for David Miliband in the final round, but members of affiliated trade unions and other affiliates voted for Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband went on to win in the overall Electoral College result by a margin of 0.7pts.

The 1994-2010 Electoral College was notable as being the first time that a major British political party had allowed individual party members, and members of affiliated trade unions and other affiliates, to vote in a leadership election. In 1994, nearly 1 million people voted in the Labour Party's leadership election, with Tony Blair winning a total of 508,148 individual votes - the most of any person to ever become Labour Leader.

One Person, One Vote (2015-present)

In 2014, a specially organised Labour conference voted to introduce a new system for electing the Labour Party Leader. There were three main changes made.

Firstly, all votes cast in the leadership election would now count equally towards the result, with no weighting. Secondly, members of affiliated unions would now need to specifically register for a vote in the leadership election, instead of being given a vote automatically. Finally, UK voters who were not party members would be able to register for a vote in the leaderhip election by paying a small amount of money and stating that they agreed with the values of the Labour Party.

The first Leader elected using this system was Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. He was succeeded in 2020 by Keir Starmer.



The number of votes cast by party members in 2020 was 401,521 - the most votes cast by party members in any leadership election in British history (although the total turnout across all sections of the party was slightly lower than in the 2016 leadership election).

The graph below shows the turnout amongst Labour party members from 1994-2020.

The rise and fall of the Green Party in 2019

This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Alan Spence, Alex Wilson, Bert Rothkugel, Chloe Hopkins, Harry Jackson, Josuke Higashikata, Scott Folan, sn, Stephen Kaar, Ville Forsman, Vincent Calabrese

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In May 2019, the Green Party shocked the political world. After decades of gaining only a dozen or so councillors in each round of local elections (the most being +20 in 2006) the party won an astounding 265 council seats in a single night – a gain of 194 seats. This was, by any metric, their best result in a local election ever.

A burst of success followed. Within a month, the party had leaped up to an average of 8% in polls, their highest percentage in a monthly poll average in over 30 years. In the unexpected 2019 European elections, the party won 12% of the vote (+5pts) and 7 seats (+4). The pro-Remain Greens seemed to be benefitting enormously from the chaos surrounding Brexit.

Yet in the 2019 general election, the Greens’ forward progress was halted. The party increased their share of the vote, but only by 1pt, winning just 2.7% of the vote, less than in 2015. Despite forming a “Unite to Remain” alliance with the Lib Dems, in which the two parties stood aside for each other in dozens of seats, the Greens made virtually no progress in their target seats. The closest that the party came to victory outside of Brighton Pavillion was finishing 37pts behind Labour in Bristol West, and in the Isle of Wight (once a major target seat) the party finished third behind Labour once again.

In this article, I’ll discuss the rise and fall of the Greens in 2019, and ask whether the party has a future now that Brexit is complete.

Note: this article focuses solely on the Green Party of England and Wales, as the Scottish Green Party is an independent political party.

Part 1: Embracing Europe, 2016-17

It seems to have become common sense now to associate the Green Party with Remain; the Greens and Europe now go together like bacon and eggs, tea and biscuits, or the Lib Dems and Conservatives. But that wasn’t always the case.

Before the 2016 EU referendum, the Green Party was a vocal advocate for holding a public vote on Britain’s membership of the EU. This was often accompanied by criticism of the European Union and the Single Market. In the party’s 2015 election manifesto, it said:

"we prioritise local self-reliance rather than the EU’s unsustainable economics of free trade and growth. We would not adopt the Euro, which cannot work properly without much deeper political integration, and this would be contrary to our policy of subsidiarity.

"We support the proposal to have an in–out referendum so that the British people can have their say. This is because much has changed since the UK joined the Common Market in 1974. Endless debate on membership is a diversion from more important matters"

Yet just two years later, the Greens had shifted position on the question of Europe, and were demanding yet more endless debate on membership of the EU. In their 2017 manifesto, the party called for a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, despite voters having voted to Leave just 11 months previously.

Part 2: Decline, 2017-18

Initially, the Greens’ swing to the centre did not seem to bear fruit. The party collapsed in the 2017 general election, winning over 5% of the vote in just six constituencies (down from 125 in 2015). The party lost over 500,000 votes in just two years, falling from 3.6% to 1.6%. In Bristol West, which the party had nearly won in 2015, the Greens finished 53pts behind Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire, and in Norwich South (once a major target seat) the party dropped to just 3% of the vote. Overall, the Green Party’s average vote per candidate in 2017 was 2.1%, less than in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

In local elections, the party’s results in 2017 and 2018 were also disappointing. In the May 2017 local elections, the party made a net gain of just 1 seat; in the 2018 elections they made a net gain of just 8 seats

Going into 2019, the Greens were not in a good position. They were not rising above 4% in monthly poll averages, their councillor numbers were unspectacular and the Labour Party was consistently polling at around 40%. All of that was about to change.

Part 3: Success, January-June 2019

As Brexit began to dominate the political agenda in a way that it simply hadn’t done before, the Greens’ support for a second referendum began to finally bear fruit. As the chart below shows, from January-June the Greens’ poll ratings soared – from an average of 3% in January the party rose to 8% by June, their highest vote share in a monthly average of polls since July 1989.

As the party’s poll ratings soared, election results began to reflect this. As stated in the introduction to this article, the Greens won 265 councillors in May 2019 (+194) – their best result, by an enormous margin, that the party has ever achieved. It is interesting to note that these local elections were held using first-past-the-post, the same electoral system as elections to the UK Parliament.

One month later, Britain voted in unexpected European elections, and the Greens performed exceptionally well. Their popular vote total of 1.9 million votes (12%) was second only to their 1989 result, and overall (as they won no seats in 1989) their 2019 result was their best ever result. The party’s share of seats rose from 4% (2014) to 10% (2019).

As June 2019 ended, the Greens had nearly defeated Labour in a UK-wide election (finishing just 2pts behind them in the popular vote); they were firmly established as England’s fourth party in terms of council seats; and they were polling 8% of the vote, with Labour on 22% (the smallest polling gap between the two leftist parties in British history).

But in retrospect, June 2019 was a temporary blip. Within months, the Greens had collapsed back to being a minor party once again.

Part 4: Decline, July-December 2019

After surging from 3% to 8% in just a few months, the Greens’ share of the vote in polls collapsed again in the months after June. By the time that Britain voted in December, the Greens’ average monthly poll total had fallen back to 3% once again.

The Green Party’s over-reliance upon Remain voters, in the end, turned out to be more of a weakness than a strength. Having built up a respectable share of the vote amongst Remainers – 11% by June 2019, just 3pts behind the Conservatives – the Greens’ share of the vote amongst Remainers declined rapidly until the party was polling less with Remainers (3%) than in January. Indeed, its share of the vote amongst Remainers was almost the same as its share of the vote with Leavers (2%).

Having spent three years appealing primarily to a group of voters who had shown themselves willing to switch back and forth between parties in an instant, the party found itself losing voters to Labour and the Lib Dems just as quickly as they had gained them.

All of this preceded a general election result which, once again, was disappointing for the Green Party.

Part 5: Failure

In the 2019 general election, the Greens failed to make any significant gains. They once again won Brighton Pavillion with an increased majority, and increased their share of the popular vote from 1.6% to 2.7%. But on a constituency level, the party is no closer to winning more seats in Parliament than it was in 2015.

Following the 2015 election result, the party had five clear target seats aside in addition to Brighton Pavillion:



In all of these seats, the party won over 10% of the popular vote and finished within 30pts of the winning party. Bristol West was the main target seat (the party lost by 9pts), but Norwich South saw the 3rd-highest Green vote in the entire country (13.9%), closely following by the Isle of Wight (13.4%). Norwich South also had a significant number of Green councillors at the time, with Greens holding 14 of the 29 council seats (48%) in the constituency.

Yet in 2019, despite their successes in the local and European elections, these once-promising target seats proved to be very disappointing for the Greens. The party’s vote share declined from 2015-19 in four of them and rose by just 1.9pts in the Isle of Wight, whilst in Bath the party didn’t even stand in 2019. In Norwich South, the party’s vote share declined from 14% in 2015 to 5% in 2019, and in Bristol West the party lost by a 37pt margin.



Although the party did make gains in other seats, none of them look to be promising target seats. Outside of Brighton Pavillion, the party won over 10% in four seats, but it finished within 40pts of the winner in just one (Bristol West).



The Greens’ targeting strategy proved to be a complete failure. The party fielded a high-profile candidate in Stroud in the form of then-MEP Molly Scott-Cato, and focused a lot of their time and energy on trying to win the seat. Co-Leader Caroline Lucas visited the seat to campaign for Scott-Cato, whilst Scott-Cato argued that “Labour support has collapsed” in Stroud. Scott-Cato was also part of the “Unite to Remain” alliance.

Yet on December 12th, Scott-Cato finished in a dismal third place, winning just 7.5% of the vote, which actually represented a decline of 0.5pts from the combined Green/Lib Dem vote in 2015 (8%). Despite arguing that Labour support had collapsed in Stroud, Scott-Cato received 22,788 fewer votes than the 2nd-placed Labour candidate.

Conclusion: what is the Green Party for?

In an article written in September 2018, I posed the following question:

“what is the Green Party for? In the past, its objective seemed to be to fight austerity (which the Labour leadership in 2010-15 were not doing) but its response to the election of a left-wing, anti-austerity Labour leader was to strongly oppose him and stand against Labour candidates, making a Tory government more likely. I would suggest, then, that specific policies (such as austerity) are not existential questions for the party, in the way that they were, say, for Left Unity, who dissolved after Corbyn’s election…

“If the Green Party continues to exist when faced with a major party that has adopted all of its main priorities, then it has to give an ideological justification for that; instead, it has simply embraced the EU”

Nearly two years later, we still don’t have an answer to this question. With the issue of Brexit now settled for a generation, there is no longer any significant difference between the Green Party’s political priorities and the Labour manifesto of 2019.

In September 2020 the Greens will hold a leadership election. For those of on the left who want a unified, effective left, we can only hope that the party takes this opportunity to look seriously at the failures of 2017 and 2019 and actually start to formulate a plan to work with the Labour Party instead of against it.

If, despite the election of a pro-EU Labour Leader who supports a Green New Deal, the Greens continue to strongly oppose Labour, one is simply drawn to ask the obvious questions: aside from being anti-Brexit, anti-Labour and anti-Corbyn, what is the Green Party’s reason for existing? Who does it represent? What is its ultimate goal? What sort of election result, in a broad sense, would constitute a victory for the Green Party?

These are questions that only the Green Party can answer. But for the sake of those of us who want a unified left to win in 2024, we can only hope that they figure out some answers soon.

2019 was supposed to be the year that the Lib Dems bounced back. What happened?

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“I’m a genuine contender for Prime Minister”. So said Jo Swinson, who at the time was Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on 9th November 2019. Swinson’s confidence in her party’s popularity seemed to be justified: her party had come second in June’s EU elections, and the Liberal Democrats had averaged up to 21% in polls in the weeks afterward, often coming close to outpolling Labour. At one point in June, it looked as if the Lib Dems could win over 50 seats and hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

But on 12th December, the reality was very different. The Lib Dems went backwards, winning just 11 seats (-1) with Swinson losing her own seat – the first time that a Liberal leader had lost their seat since Herbert Asquith in 1918. The party increased its share of the popular vote, but at 12% (+4pts), it was still far short of the 23% that the party won in 2010.

How did this happen? After experiencing depressing results in the 2015 and 2017 general elections, 2019 seemed to be the year that the Lib Dems would finally bounce back. After polling at 10% or less for over six years, the Lib Dems’ popularity rapidly rose in May 2019. From averaging 9% in polls in April, the Lib Dems leapt up to 20% by June (+11pts), almost entirely at the expense of Labour.

The party would have won 53 seats on a universal swing, a gain of 41 seats compared to its 2017 total – this would have been the biggest seat gain achieved by the Liberals since 1923, nearly 100 years ago.

Yet, after average 18-20% in polls for 5 months in a row, the Lib Dems’ support vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Between September 2019 and February 2020, the Liberal Democrats’ support collapsed from 19% back to 9% - exactly what it was in April 2019.

Their estimated seat total, meanwhile, has fallen from an impressive 53 seats to just 8 seats – the same number of seats that they won in 2015. Indeed, within England and Wales, the party would win just 5 seats – fewer than in 2015.

Why did this happen? How did it all go so wrong?

Well, I would say that there were three main reasons for the Lib Dems’ failure in 2019.

Ambiguity

The primary reason was a failure to adequately articulate their main policy: being anti-Brexit. The Lib Dems’ whole campaign was structured around their pledge to revoke Article 50 if they won a majority. But this bold pledge was undermined by two facts.

First, everyone knew that the Lib Dems were never going to win a majority, so this promise was undermined from the start. In November 2019, just 6% of voters thought that a Lib Dem majority could realistically happen. As it was obvious that the Lib Dems were never going to win a majority, the party also promised to support a referendum if they did not win a majority, and to revoke Article 50 if they did win a majority (an outcome that virtually everyone agreed was impossible). So if you wanted an EU referendum, but did not want to revoke Article 50 without a referendum, you would have to vote Lib Dem… but hope that they didn’t win.

Confused yet? I don’t blame you. The Lib Dems’ EU policy thus suffered from the very thing that they had spent 6 months criticising Labour for: ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion.

Second, the Labour Party adopted a clear and unambiguous policy of holding a 2nd referendum on an improved Brexit deal. This polarised the election even further between Labour (promising a 2nd referendum) and the Conservatives (promising Brexit). At the same time, Remain voters actually preferred Labour’s Brexit policy (64% approved) to the Lib Dems’ policy (55% approved). So, since virtually everyone agreed that the Lib Dems could not win, and since Labour’s Brexit policy was slightly more popular amongst Remainers, it would seem to make logical sense for Remainers to support Labour.

And that is exactly what they did. Between September 2019 and the general election, the Lib Dems’ monthly poll average amongst Remainers fell from 34% to 21% (-13pts), with Labour rising from 36% to 49% (+13pts). This led to the Lib Dems falling from an overall poll average of 19% to 12% (-7pts) in the general election.

The Lib Dems’ strategy of winning most Remain voters was thus a complete failure, both due to their opponents’ strategic decisions and the Lib Dems’ own missteps.

Overconfidence

The second major reason was that the Lib Dems were massively overconfident. Despite only winning 12 seats and 7% of the vote in 2017, the party set their sights far too high. Even when they were polling over 20%, their estimated seat total barely exceeded 50 seats; their 2015 defeat had been absolutely devastating, and they had somehow managed to lose even more votes in 2017. They needed to rebuild the party and win back seats that they had narrowly lost. Yet at one point, Chuka Ummuna was arguing that the Lib Dems could win up to 200 seats. This would have been the largest seat gain (+112) by the Liberals since the Liberal landslide of 1906, over a century ago.

The idea that they could have made such gains in 2019 is laughable.

Yet in 2019, instead of focusing on winning seats that they had only narrowly lost in 2017, the party focused an enormous amount of time and energy on seats that they simply could not realistically win. As a result, their vote rose significantly in unwinnable seats like Kensington (+9pts), Wokingham (+22pts) and Somerset North East (+14pts) – but their vote share fell in seats that they had actually won in 2017, such as North Norfolk (-18pts), Dunbartonshire East (-4pts) and Eastbourne (-6pts) all of which the party lost.

The failure of the Lib Dems’ targeting strategy is demonstrated by two facts. Firstly, of the eight seats that the Lib Dems won in 2015, the party won just two of them in 2019. Secondly, the Lib Dems underperformed relative to their overall share of the vote. On a universal swing, the Lib Dems would have won 19 seats (+7) after increasing their vote share by 4pts, yet in the general election they only won 11 (-1). This compares to 2017, when they overperformed their overall vote share and won 12 seats (+4) instead of the 5 seats (-3) that they would have won on a universal swing.

In short, the party convinced themselves that they could win enough seats to fill the government benches, and as a result they barely ended up winning enough seats to fill a park bench.

Jo Swinson

The final reason for the Lib Dems’ election failure was the Prime Minister-in-waiting herself: Jo Swinson. Despite the assumptions made by many centrists, who thought that their love of Swinson would be shared by the whole country, the more that voters saw of Swinson, the less they liked her. The party’s decision to run a Presidential-style campaign focused on Jo Swinson, even going as far as to label the party “Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats” proved to be a very poor strategic choice. Between September and December, the percentage of voters who disapproved of her performance rose from 34% to 49% (+15pts), whilst her net approval rating fell from -7pts (September) to -27pts (December).

For comparison, even Jeremy Corbyn’s net approval rating improved between September 2019 (-45pts) and December 2019 (-37pts). But Jo Swinson’s got worse.

Conclusion

With Brexit having happened, and the Lib Dems’ sole policy having thus become redundant, it is difficult to see where the party goes next.

What is the party’s purpose now, if not to be anti-Brexit? Can it move on from the Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition even as it is set to elect another Coalition Minister as its leader?

These questions are for the Lib Dems to answer. But there is one thing that we do know for sure, and that is that ultimately the Lib Dems failed in 2019 because they over-estimated their popularity. If the party wants to return to power, it should recognise a simple truth: most people simply do not like them.

 

Why Long-Bailey is the most electable leadership candidate

This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Alan Spence, Alex Wilson, Bert Rothkugel, Chloe Hopkins, Harry Jackson, Josuke Higashikata, Scott Folan, sn, Stephen Kaar, Ville Forsman, Vincent Calabrese

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In a recent LabourList article, the website’s editor Sienna Rodgers wrote:

"‘Do you want to win the next election or do you want to keep the Labour Party left-wing?’ This is the dividing line being presented in many of the arguments at local party nomination meetings, according to reports"

Rodgers’ summary is correct. At present, many Labour members are presenting the 2020 leadership contest as a choice between pragmatic electability with Keir Starmer or principled policies with Rebecca Long-Bailey. But, as I will explain in this article, this is not the choice that we face. Long-Bailey, far from being an electoral disaster in the making, is in fact the most electable candidate standing for the leadership. Her policies are popular, she alone has the credibility to win back Leave voters, most voters have not yet made up their minds about her, and the ones that do know about her associate her with the popular parts of Corbynism – not the unpopular parts.

Let’s examine each of these arguments in turn.

Our policies are popular

It is often argued that Labour’s policies were unpopular, and that the party lost the 2019 election because it supported ideas like public ownership of public services. But Labour’s policies were popular, and they hardly featured when voters were asked to list their reasons for not voting Labour in 2019.

The table below shows the results of a BMG Research poll, conducted after the general election, which asked voters to express their opinions of some Labour Party policies. As you can see, all of the policies listed are supported by the electorate; even its policies to raise taxes on the rich, increase corporation tax and abolish tuition fees (which were often criticised by some opponents of Corbyn) are popular with the voters.

Labour’s nationalisation policies, meanwhile, are very popular. Even partly nationalising BT to provide free broadband has a net rating of +19pts.

But what about other policies, like the Green New Deal? The most recent polling (from November) shows that voters also support the Green New Deal by a 39pt margin.

According to Labour moderate Lord Andrew Adonis, Labour’s 2019 manifesto was “a Christmas tree of irrelevant and unaffordable commitments, including mass nationalisation and free broadband, which were never taken seriously”. But the manifesto was not the reason for our defeat.

The chart below shows the top reasons given for voting Conservative by voters who supported Labour in 2017 and the Conservatives in 2019. The poll was conducted by YouGov. As you can see, policies are barely mentioned. Even the leadership is only mentioned by 27% of respondents. Instead, the top result is clearly Labour’s Brexit policy – which Starmer was responsible for.

Out of the candidates who have won enough nominations to appear on the ballot, only Rebecca Long-Bailey has committed to continuing all of these popular policies, especially the Green New Deal. To their credit, all the candidates have committed to supporting Labour’s policies of public ownership, which is very good to see. But only Long-Bailey is firmly in favour of all of Labour’s popular policies.

Long-Bailey’s policies of public ownership and a Green New Deal are popular. The only way to guarantee that Labour keeps these popular and electable policies, especially the Green New Deal, is to vote for Rebecca Long-Bailey.

Starmer cannot win back Leave voters

As I have argued in a previous article, Labour lost in 2019 because it lost millions of Leave voters. I won’t repeat the entire article here, but the key facts are:

• There was a 1% swing to Labour amongst Remainers, and an 11% swing to the Tories amongst Leavers.

• Of the 54 seats that Labour lost to the Tories, 52 voted Leave in 2016.

• The more pro-Leave that a Labour seat was, the bigger the swing to the Tories in 2019.

• Even if we win back all of the Remainers that we lost, the Tories will still win a majority.

• Of the 80 seats that the Tories won in 2019 and that Labour must win in 2024, 67 voted Leave.

Amongst Leave voters, Keir Starmer’s policy of a second referendum was overwhelmingly unpopular. 81% of Leave voters told DeltaPollUK in December that they opposed a second EU referendum, whilst 75% of Leave voters told Opinium in January 2020 that they felt negatively about Labour’s Brexit strategy. The idea that Starmer, who wrote Labour’s Brexit policy, can win back Leave voters is simply not believable. His role in writing that second referendum policy, and his endless attempts to turn Labour into a Remain party, will be mentioned every day for the next four years.

But how do we know that voters will even associate Starmer with that policy? The answer is simple: they already do.

In early January, Opinium asked voters to select which leadership candidate they most associated with Labour’s Brexit strategy. Amongst Leave voters, 17% associated Starmer with Labour’s Brexit policy, almost twice as many as those who associated Long-Bailey with that policy (9%).

Whatever Starmer’s merits might be, his association with his failed and unpopular Brexit policy has sadly left him unelectable amongst the very people (Leavers) that we absolutely must win back in 2024. Labour cannot win with a Leader who has spent the last four years trying to overturn the democratic choice that 52% of voters made, and that 48% of voters still support. Labour can only win with a Leader who seeks to appeal to a wide group of working people, whatever their Brexit viewpoint was in 2016.

Voters have not yet made up their minds about the candidates

Many Labour members who prioritise electability have cited Ipsos MORI’s recent poll of voters, in which voters described how favourably they felt towards particular leadership candidates. In that poll, Keir Starmer had a net favourability rating of +5, Lisa Nandy had a net rating of -1, Emily Thornberry had a net rating of -11, and Rebecca Long-Bailey had a net rating of -15.

But these “net” figures are not particularly informative. Starmer’s total approval figure is a mere 23%; for comparison, Jeremy Corbyn’s average approval rating in December was 25%. Yes, Starmer's disapproval rating is low as well (18%) but this simply reflects the fact that most voters have no idea who the leadership candidates are.

As you can see, the most significant result is not the ‘net’ rating, but the fact that a clear majority of voters (60% on average) do not know anything about the candidates.

It would thus be a mistake to draw definitive conclusions from early polls, especially early polls that show that around 60% of voters don’t know anything about the candidates for the leadership. Another such poll was a BMG Research poll conducted in early January; this showed Keir Starmer as the top preference of voters, but Starmer was selected by just 16% of voters. That's not exactly popularity. The top response overall was simply “don’t know” (45%).

Approval ratings change, as the graph below shows. The graph depicts a 10pt rolling average of Jeremy Corbyn’s approval rating from September 2015-December 2019; as you can see, his approval rating went down, then up, then down, then went up slightly again, then went down again, then went up slightly again.

I would therefore argue that voting for a candidate on the basis of what their approval ratings are before they are even elected is somewhat premature. As Jeremy himself once said: things can, and will, change.

Indeed, even the mere fact of winning a leadership election can change a person’s approval ratings. In July 2019, just before Boris Johnson was elected as Conservative Party leader, his net approval rating with YouGov was -27pts (31% favourable, 58% unfavourable). Yet in August 2019, his net approval rating with YouGov had changed to -8pts (36% favourable, 44% unfavourable). If the Conservatives had rejected Boris Johnson on the basis that he had a low approval rating, they would have been rejecting the candidate who would go on to win a landslide majority just a few months later.

In short, voters have not yet made up their minds about the candidates; approval ratings can, and will, change; and Keir Starmer’s positive approval rating is the result of just 23% of voters approving of him (fewer than approved of Corbyn in December). To dismiss Long-Bailey as unelectable on the basis of such numbers would be to misunderstand the statistical evidence.

RLB is associated with the popular aspects of Corbynism

We have already seen that Labour’s policies, and its policies of public ownership in particular, are popular. We have also seen that voters associate Keir Starmer with Labour’s Brexit policy, which was overwhelmingly unpopular amongst Leave voters.

But do voters associate Long-Bailey with the policies that she helped to write? More importantly, do they actually associate her with Jeremy Corbyn?

The graph below shows the results of an Opinium in January which asked voters to select the leadership candidate that they most associated with Corbyn. As you can see, Long-Bailey was selected by the most respondents – but only 25% of respondents selected her, with almost as many selecting her opponents (19%) and far more selecting “don’t know” (41%).

This is a surprisingly low figure, considering that many of RLB’s critics have argued that virtually all voters will see her as the continuity Corbyn candidate. 75% of voters do not see her as the continuity Corbyn candidate, almost as many voters also see her opponents as Corbyn continuity candidates as they do her, and most have yet to make up their minds about her. I do not think that there is statistical evidence to support the idea that most voters see her as the Corbyn continuity candidate. Most of them simply haven’t made up their minds yet.

So what about Labour’s policies and manifesto? The graph below shows the results of an Opinium poll in January which asked voters to select the candidate that they most associated with Labour’s manifesto pledges, as well as who they would associate with Labour’s nationalisation policies. As you can see, Long-Bailey is the top choice for voters in both cases.

So, in short, most voters don’t associate Long-Bailey with Corbyn or with the party’s Brexit policy; but they do associate her with Labour’s popular policies, especially its policies of public ownership. Barely any voters associate Starmer with these popular policies, but they do associate Starmer with Labour’s Brexit policy, which was overwhelmingly unpopular amongst Leave voters.

Conclusion

Electability is a difficult word to define. After all, most definitions effectively boil down to a tautology: people often tell me that the electable candidate is the candidate who is most likely to be elected. And when I ask them why their candidate is most likely to be elected, they say it’s because they’re electable! So I’ll try and define it here.

To me, an electable candidate is a candidate that can win an election – not one who definitely will, because we can’t see the future, but one who would not make it impossible for Labour to win.

Rebecca Long-Bailey is that person. She is not associated with the unpopular parts of Corbynism, but she is associated with the popular parts. Voters have not yet made up their minds about her, which gives her the chance to make a good first impression. And she is not associated with a Brexit policy that was overwhelmingly unpopular with the voters that we need to win (Leave voters).

Keir Starmer seems like a reasonably progressive politician. But his association with our Brexit policy and Brexit strategy sadly makes him entirely unelectable in 2024. If we want to win back the 52 pro-Leave seats that we lost in 2019, as well as dozens of pro-Leave seats that the Conservatives won, we simply cannot elect a Leader that Leave voters associate with Remain.

Winning in 2024 requires a Leader that is competent, smart, capable and supportive of Labour’s socialist policies. It requires a Leader that Leave voters will not automatically associate with a Brexit policy that they overwhelmingly dislike. And it requires a Leader who will look forward to the 2020s, not backwards to the failed centre-left politics of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband (who failed to win in 2010 or 2015).

That electable leader is not Keir Starmer. It is Rebecca Long-Bailey.

If we elect a Remainer as Labour Leader, we will lose in 2024

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One of the most widespread myths about the 2019 general election is that the Labour Party lost because it lost far more Remain voters than Leave voters. Commentators frequently point to the 8pt decline in Labour’s popular vote share, and the 6pt rise in the combined vote share for the Lib Dems, SNP and Green Party, and draw the conclusion that most of Labour’s lost votes went to parties that were unambiguously pro-EU. Therefore, they say, Labour should become a party that supports re-joining the EU.

This would be entirely the wrong lesson to learn from an election in which, as I will argue, Labour’s lost Leave voters were the main reason for its defeat. It is true, yes, that Labour’s vote share declined by 8pts from 2017-19, and that the Lib Dems, SNP and Greens saw their combined vote share rise by 6pts. But these headline figures do not tell us the whole story: beneath the surface, the Tories lost Remain voters to the Lib Dems but gained Leave voters from Labour, whilst Labour lost some of its 2017 Remain voters but lost far more Leave voters. In this article I will demonstrate that Labour lost far more Leave voters in 2019 than Remain voters, and I will conclude that any Labour leader who embraces the cause of re-joining the EU would be unelectable in 2024.

Part 1: Correlation is not proof of causation 

In the 2019 general election, the net changes in vote share within Great Britain were as follows:

Con: +1.2pts
Lab: -8.1pts
LD: +4.2pts
SNP: +0.8pts
Grn: +1.1pts
BXP: +2.1pts 

At first glance, the cause of Labour’s landslide defeat would appear to be simple. Labour’s vote fell; the combined vote of the pro-EU parties rose. Labour’s neutral position on Brexit would seem, therefore, to have cost it the votes of millions of Remainers, and thus the party lost seats – even in areas that voted Leave – as a result of losing Remain voters. The solution to this, some Remainers say, is for Labour to elect a passionate Remainer as Leader who should then oppose Brexit at every opportunity and argue for Britain to re-join the EU once we have left.

But, as with most simplistic interpretations of election results, this interpretation of the 2019 result fails the most basic statistical rule: correlation is not proof of causation. Just because Labour’s vote fell by 8pts and the Remain parties’ vote rose by 6pts, that does not mean that Labour mostly lost votes to Remain parties. Rather, the opposite occurred.

The graphs below show the results of polls by Lord Ashcroft that looked at how different demographics voted in the 2017 and 2019 elections. As you can see, amongst Remain and Leave voters, the changes were as follows:

[Remain voters]
Con: -5pts
Lab: -4pts
LD: +7pts
Oth: +2pts

[Leave voters]
Con: +13pts
Lab: -9pts
BXP: +4pts
Oth: -5pts

As you can see, amongst Leavers, there was a net swing to the Conservatives of 11%, with Labour’s vote declining by 9pts and the Tories’ vote rising by 13pts. Amongst Remainers, however, the Conservatives declined by 5pts, whilst Labour declined by 4pts. The net effect was that Labour’s lead over the Conservatives (29pts) was larger in 2019 than it was in 2017 (28pts). There was a 1% swing to Labour amongst Remain voters.

But what does all of this mean in terms of overall vote share? Well, as Lord Ashcroft provided detailed data tables, we can analyse his data and see how many Remain and Leave voters were lost in net terms by each party.

The graphs below show the political composition of the Labour vote and the Tory vote in 2017 and 2019.

 

These figures were calculated by looking at many Remainers/Leavers voted for a particular party (e.g. 51% of Remain voters supported Labour), and seeing what percentage of the overall total those voters were. For example, Remain voters were 49% of Lord Ashcroft's sample in 2017, therefore Labour voters who voted Remain thus made up 26% of all voters. Thus we can conclude that out of Labour’s 41pt total vote share in 2017, 26pts came from Remain voters.

As you can see from the graphs, the Tories did lose Remain voters – 3pts’ worth of Remain voters, in fact – but they also gained 4pts’ worth of Leave voters, meaning that they made a net gain of +1pt.

Labour, meanwhile, lost 3pts’ worth of Remainers, gained 1pt from those who did not vote, but lost 6pts’ worth of Leavers, for a net loss of 8pts.

Thus, whilst on the surface it appears as if Labour lost votes entirely to the Lib Dems and other parties, in fact the Conservatives lost votes amongst Remainers but gained votes amongst Leavers; Labour, meanwhile, made a net loss of around 935,000 Remain voters (3% of all voters), but made a net loss of 1.9 million Leave voters (6% of all voters).

In short, Labour lost far, far more Leavers than Remainers. And because Labour’s lost Leave voters switched their vote directly to the Tories, in Tory/Labour marginals these lost Leave voters had twice the impact of losing Remain voters to the Lib Dems.

This leads us into the next part of the article – Labour’s lost seats.

Part 2: Labour lost seats in Leave areas, not Remain areas

In 2017 - not including Chorley, which is now the Speaker's seat - Labour won 254 seats within England and Wales. 157 of these seats (62%) voted Leave in 2016, whilst 97 voted Remain (38%).

In 2019, Labour won 201 seats within England and Wales (-53). Labour lost a total of 54 seats to the Conservatives, and of these 54 seats, 52 of them voted to Leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. In other words, Labour lost 54 of its 157 Leave seats (33%) but just 2 of its 97 Remain seats (2%).

The average Leave vote in the 54 seats that Labour lost to the Tories was 60.1% - 8pts higher than the national Leave % in 2016. It is an irrefutable fact that Labour lost the election because it lost votes in Leave areas, and as we have seen, Labour lost more Leavers than Remainers overall. The fact that Labour lost more Leavers than Remainers in net terms thus had a greater impact in these seats, as the % of Leave voters in these seats was higher than in the rest of the country.

The table below lists these 54 seats, along with the changes in vote share for each party.

The graph below shows the average swing to the Conservatives in constituencies that Labour won in 2017, grouped by the size of the Leave vote in 2016. As you can see, the higher that the Leave vote was in a constituency that Labour won, the larger the swing to the Conservatives.

Losing Leave seats was always a risk for the Labour Party if we alienated Leave voters, as the overwhelming majority of Labour’s most marginal seats voted Leave in 2016. Of the 90 seats in England and Wales that Labour won in 2017 by a margin of 20pts or less, 73 of them (81%) voted Leave in 2016. The average Leave vote was 55.9%. The table below lists these seats

For comparison, the 165 seats in England and Wales that Labour won in 2017 by a margin of 20pts or more were far more evenly split: 85 of them voted Leave in 2016 (52%), whilst 80 voted Remain (48%). The average Leave vote was 48.8%. The table below lists these seats.


Losing a Leave voter to the Tories in Great Grimsby (where 71% of voters voted Leave in 2016, and where Labour had a majority of 2,565 votes) thus had far more of an impact than losing a Remain voter to the Greens in Bristol West (where 79% of voters voted Remain in 2016, and where Labour had a majority of 33,215 votes).

In short, the seats that Labour lost to the Tories were more pro-Leave (with an average Leave vote of 60.1%) than the country as a whole, and Labour's most marginal seats were more pro-Leave (with an average Leave vote of 56%) than its relatively more safe seats (with an average Leave vote of 49%).

Losing more Leave voters than Remain voters thus had a magnified effect in these marginal seats.

Part 3: is a Remainer really electable in 2024?

As we saw in Part 1 of this article, Labour cannot win over 40% of the vote without winning at least 25% of Leave voters, which means that we need to win back the 1.9 million Leave voters that we lost in 2019. And as we saw in Part 2, nearly all of the seats that we lost to the Tories voted Leave, with the average Leave vote in our lost seats being 8pts higher than the country as a whole. Despite this, many commentators argue that Labour will only win the next general election by becoming a party that supports re-joining the EU, and by winning back lost Remain voters.

But the numbers simply aren’t there for this strategy to have any hope of succeeding. To become the largest party in 2024, Labour needs to gain around 80 seats from the Conservatives in England and Wales. But of the 80 most-marginal Labour target seats won by the Tories in 2019, 67 of them (84%) voted Leave. The table below lists these seats.

Not only that, but the Remain voters that Labour lost in 2019 did not vote for the Conservatives; as we saw in Part 1, the Tories also declined amongst Remainers. Focusing on Remain voters will not reduce the Conservatives’ share of the popular vote, which in 2019 was a historic 45% of the vote.

Even if the next Leader wins back Labour’s lost Remain voters, Labour would still only win 36% of the popular vote (+3pts) and 218 seats (+16). Because Labour did not lose Remain voters to the Tories, gaining Remain voters does not reduce the Tory vote share by a single vote; the Tories would still win by a 9pt margin, and would win a majority of 50 seats.

By contrast, if Labour won back its lost Leave voters, Labour would win 39% of the popular vote (+6pts), winning 266 seats (+64). Because Labour would be gaining Leave voters directly from the Tories, the Tory vote share would fall to 39% (-6pts), leading to a hung parliament in which Labour would be able to form a minority government.

The only way to actually win the next general election is by winning back the support of the Leave voters that we lost in 2019, and winning new Leave voters directly from the Conservatives. Alienating Leave voters further by seeking to overturn the democratic choice that they made in 2016, and focusing on winning the support of an increasingly small group of quixotic Remainers, is not a route to victory. It is a recipe for defeat.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let’s review the facts:

• We lost twice as many Leave voters (-6pts) as Remain voters (-3pts) in 2019

• 52 of the 54 seats that we lost to the Tories in 2019 voted Leave in 2016

• Winning back the Remain voters that we lost in 2019 will still result in a defeat

• 84% of the seats that Labour needs to gain from the Tories voted Leave in 2016

It is difficult to conclude, in light of this evidence, that electing a Remainer or a re-joiner as our Leader will lead to victory in 2024. Rather, for Labour to focus on winning the support of a small group of enthusiastic Remainers will simply have the effect of leading us to another defeat

By 2024, the question of whether we are going to Leave the EU or not will have been definitively settled. The debate will be over. It would be a mistake for Labour to elect a Leader who will try (and fail) to re-open that debate; and it would also be a mistake to elect a Leader whose major contribution to the 2019 election was a 2nd referendum policy that led to us losing 1.9 million Leave voters (and thus losing the election).

As much as many Labour members might want to stay in the EU, it is very clear now – after Leave won a referendum, a general election, a European Parliament election and another general election – that the country does not. It is time that we finally respected that democratic decision, allowed the country to move on, and articulated a vision for a progressive future outside of the EU.

How accurate were the polls in the 2019 election?

This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Vincent Calabrese, Scott Folan, Josuke Higashikata, Chloe Hopkins, Harry Jackson, Stephen Kaar, Bert Rothkugel, sn, Alan Spence, Alex Wilson

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British opinion polls have had a difficult few years. On average, they predicted the wrong outcome in the 2015 general election, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election. It was probably unsurprising, therefore, that many commentators - myself included - expected the election result to be surprising in one way or another.

As it turned out, the most surprising thing of all happened: the polls were actually right.

On average, the polls in the final week of the election (9th-12th December) showed the following results:

Tories 43%, Labour 34%, Lib Dems 12%, SNP 4%, Greens 3%, Brexit Party 3%

And on December 12th, the actual election result within Great Britain was:

Tories 45%, Labour 33%, Lib Dems 12%, SNP 4%, Greens 3%, Brexit Party 2%

The average polling error for the three major parties in the final week was plus or minus 1.03pts, the lowest average polling error since 1955 - so, in other words, the polls were more accurate in 2019 than in any election for over 60 years. That's impressive. But what was even more impressive were some of the results for individual pollsters. Let's go through the results for individual pollsters and see how accurate they were.

Opinium was the most accurate

Many people were surprised by the large Conservative leads that Opinium was showing throughout the campaign, but in the end, they were proven right - exactly right. As you can see in the graph below, Opinium's final poll predicted 45% for the Tories, 33% for Labour and 12% for the Lib Dems. They estimated that the Tories would win by 12pts; the Tories won by 12pts.

Opinium's average error for the top 3 parties was therefore just plus or minus 0.2pts, the lowest average polling error of any pollster in 2019.

The table below shows the final poll from each pollster, and the average error for the top 3 parties. Note that I have calculated the average error for Qriously by comparing it to the UK-wide result, as unlike other pollsters, Qriously polled the whole of the UK.

Opinium, Ipsos MORI, Number Cruncher Politics and Kantar Public all had average errors of less than 1%. All pollsters estimated that the Conservatives would win - the only difference between the pollsters was in how big the Tory margin of victory was estimated to be.

Overall, the pollsters performed very very well, and the average of polls overall was more accurate than in any election since 1955.

Polling round-up: the 2019 general election, week 4

This article was made possible by our Patreon supporters! Special thanks in particular go to our amazing $5 supporters: Vincent Calabrese, Scott Folan, Josuke Higashikata, Chloe Hopkins, Harry Jackson, Stephen Kaar, Bert Rothkugel, sn, Alan Spence, Alex Wilson

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The 2019 general election is nearly over. Just 9 days remain until Britain will vote in its 3rd election in just 4 years, continuing a journey that began with the unexpected 2015 election result and was followed by the unexpected 2016 referendum result, which itself was followed by the unexpected 2017 election result. In all three cases, most opinion polls completely failed to predict the actual result: the polls predicted a hung parliament in 2015, a victory for Remain in 2016, and a Tory majority in 2017. None of those things happened.

Week 4 of the 2019 election campaign just ended, and Labour clearly did well last week. After only increasing their vote share by 1pt in Week 2 and Week 3, Labour's average vote share in polls rose by 3pts last week. It is now averaging 33% - exactly the same as in Week 4 of the 2017 election campaign. The Tories, meanwhile, appear to have finally peaked at 43%, and are doing worse than at this point in 2017 (when they were averaging 46%).

So, without further ado, let's look at the numbers.

What the polls looked like in Week 4 (25th November-1st December)

In the week of 25th-1st December, the average of polls was (changes since the previous week): 

Tories 43% (-), Labour 33% (+3), Lib Dems 13% (-2), Brexit 4% (-), SNP 4% (-), Greens 3% (-)

According to my seat estimate, the seat result would be (changes since the previous week):

Tories 348 (-12), Labour 219 (+13), SNP 41 (-), Lib Dems 19 (-1), Others 23 (-) 

The Tories' estimated majority, which last week was 70 seats, has now fallen to 46 seats. Labour have increased their vote share and estimated seat total (the only party to do so).

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have collapsed further, falling to just 13% in the polls and 19 seats in my seat estimate. It is worth bearing in mind that, 7 months ago, the Lib Dems' estimated seat total was 60 seats. It is now just 19 (-41). Amongst Remain voters, the Lib Dems have collapsed still further, whilst Labour is winning the support of almost 50% of Remainers.

Amongst Remain voters, voting intention in Week 4 of the campaign was:

Labour 48% (+4), Lib Dems 23% (-3), Tories 18% (-), SNP 5% (-), Green 3% (-1), Brexit 1% (+1)

Labour's share of the vote amongst Remainers (48%) is the party's highest in a weekly average since the week of 28th February-3rd March, whilst the Lib Dems' share of the vote (23%) is their lowest in a weekly average since 20th-26th May.

Amongst Leave voters, voting intention in Week 4 of the campaign was:

Tories 70% (+1), Labour 16% (+2), Brexit 7% (-1), Lib Dems 3% (-1), Grn 2% (+1, SNP 1% (-1)

How is Labour doing compared to this point in 2017?

MPs voted to hold the 2017 general election on 19th April 2017, so the period of time most comparable to Week 4 of the 2019 campaign was the week of 15th-21st May 2017.

At this point in 2017, Labour was averaging 33%. The Tories’ average poll lead was 13pts, and their estimated majority was 76 seats. By comparison, the Tories’ average poll lead this week was 10pts, and their estimated majority was 46 seats.

Over the following two weeks, Labour support rose steadily until the party was averaging 37%, as shown in the chart below. Labour then outperformed these polls and won 41% within Great Britain in the 2017 election.

Whilst the 2017 campaign was 1 week longer than the 2019 campaign, the final week did not make any difference to the polls; in fact, Labour's average vote share in the final week (36%) was 1pt lower than in Week 6 of the 2017 campaign (37%).

Thus far in 2019, Labour's vote share week-to-week has exactly matched its vote share week-to-week in 2017, as shown in the graph below. If this trend continues, then we should be averaging 35% by the end of this week, and 37% by 12th December. Even if the Tory vote share does not change, this should put us within 6pts of the Conservatives by election day. This would almost certainly result in a hung parliament, with the possibility of Labour becoming the largest party if the polls are slightly wrong (as they were in 2015, 2016 and 2017).