More or ULEZ a Good Night

Just over a week ago Rishi Sunak narrowly avoided being the first prime minister since Harold Wilson to suffer three by-election defeats on the same day, so why is it that Labour are on the back foot? It explains a fair bit of British political history that Labour can manage that; a party that can never quite believe it’s on its way to power. Even back in 1996 on the cusp of a landslide Tony Blair would spend sleepless nights fearing a Conservative comeback.

On the face of it, it was a terrible night for the Conservatives. Firstly, in Selby and Ainsty, there was a 24% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, which is the second-highest swing to the main opposition in any government seat since 1945, with only the 1994 landslide in Dudley West (29.1%) being larger. Secondly, in Somerton and Frome the swing was even this larger – 29% – this time towards the Liberal Democrats in an area they will be pumping General Election resources into. The third contest of the day, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, somewhat surprisingly was held by the Conservatives, although the majority was down to just 495 votes, with a swing of just under 7% to Labour.

The latter of those contests has led to criticism of Labour, their leader Keir Starmer, and also the combination of Sadiq Khan and the expansion of ULEZ across the capital. Uxbridge has always been a tough seat for Labour and wasn’t even held by them in the Tony Blair landslide years. It’s a seat with tough demographics for the party – Brexit voting, older, homeowners. It’s worth noting that even if the Uxbridge swing were replicated across the country, it would make Labour the largest party and the Tories would lose more seats than Brown did in 2010. If a swing like Selby’s was replicated, the Tories would be in wipeout territory.

Who Won the Leader’s Debate?

On Friday evening, as sane people went out to the pub, enjoyed the weather, and watched the football, I sat down to watch the Channel 4 Tory Party leader’s debate. I must be a fool, but someone has to do it. Taking part in the debate were Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, and Tom Tugendhat. Heading into the event Sunak was the current ballot leader with MPs, Mordaunt seemed to be the members’ favourite, Truss was vying to be the candidate for the right of the party, and both Badenoch and Tugendhat were there with nothing to lose.

The debate started with the usual opening statements, and the main areas of the discussion focused on trust, the economy and cost of living situation, and the climate crisis, and thankfully steered clear of banging on about Brexit – despite Truss trying to raise it multiple times. One of the more striking moments was when Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked the candidates if Boris Johnson tells the truth: the three candidates with the most to lose gave a mealy answer, Badenoch said ‘sometimes’, and emphatically Tugendhat said no whilst shaking his head. One of the few moments that garnered applause.

The least well-known of the contenders was Badenoch, and she definitely attempted to use the platform to introduce herself. Some people run for leader to be leaders, some for a senior position, and she is definitely in the latter group. Heading into the debate she was being talked about as someone who could ruffle some feathers, command the stage, and have her Nick Clegg moment. To me, she fell flat. She got her zingers in where she could, but ultimately seemed to play it safe – with eyes on a place in the cabinet of the eventual winner.

A Year of Keir

Just over a year ago Keir Starmer was elected the new leader of the Labour Party, taking 56% of the vote, a landslide. It’s fair to say that Starmer’s first year in the role has been unprecedented. Usually, a party leadership victory would ensure front-page headlines, interview spreads, and immense exposure across the various news channel. However, the extraordinary times we were in meant that the leader sat on the backfoot as the country sat in the grip of a pandemic. Where most opposition leaders could stamp their vision, Keir Starmer did not have the opportunity.

This is especially unhelpful when you consider the state of the party he inherited from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. When Starmer became leader last year Labour was roughly 20-25% behind in the polls. His task was an immense one. Slowly but surely however, the Labour leader found his voice, his own vision, and both he and the party began to eat into the lead.

Simply by not being Jeremy, and by coming across as clearly competent, able to lead and so on, he made great strides in the general standing of the party in the country. Add in his performances within PMQ’s, and the governments shoddy handling of the pandemic, and the early period was a success. Starmer was able to put in place a brand-new general secretary of his choice and built a majority on the party’s NEC. The Labour leader also able to show his ruthless side by sacking Rebecca Long Bailey after she failed to conform with his demands following her support of an anti-Semitic quote, and took the whip away from the former leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  

By the end of 2020, the average Conservative poll lead had dropped from 20-25% to just a couple of points, Starmer was enjoying the highest opposition leader ratings since Tony Blair, and he was even ahead of the PM in most ‘Best PM’ polls. Although only the first step had been taken, it had been a great first calendar year in the role.

Local Elections Roundup

May may just be the final nail in May’s coffin. Before the likely bruising at next week’s European elections, the local elections at the start of the month saw the Conservative Party lose control of nearly a third of their councils, their worst result in two decades. The party lost over 1300 seats, and their vote share also plummeted. The PM’s reaction was to downplay the situation and push the narrative towards the right of the party saying that the public wants us to sort Brexit. A simple message to the ERG – vote for my deal or face Labour in government.

Remain voters have been leaving the Tories in droves since the referendum as the party slides towards a Hard Brexit, and it now seems Brexiteers are now following. Although the majority continued to vote for the party in the locals, many are leaving in swathes to support Farage’s Brexit Party in the run-up to the European elections at the end of the month. The simple fact of the matter is that the Conservatives chose the wrong side. Brexiteers in the party was never going to accept any form of the deal with the EU, and May’s failure is leading us towards PM Johnson.

When the governing party loses over a thousand seats, the reality is that the opposition should be making colossal gains if they hope to win the next general election. Labour actually managed to also lose seats, 84 in fact, lose control on 6 councils, and see a significant drop in its projected vote share. The main reason for their performance is their stance on Brexit; sitting on the fence worked in 2017 but we now find ourselves in a different environment. The party’s failure to move towards a public vote has seen members switch allegiances to other remain parties including the Liberal Democrats, Greens, and the newly formed Change UK, and they fail to look like a government in waiting.

One Thing That Unites Us on Brexit, We’re All Losers Here

Quiet weeks in Westminster are now a thing of the past, and the Brexit soap opera rolls on. After securing an extension to Article 50 (dependant on the outcome of particular votes) MPs descended on the Commons this week in the hope to finally agree on something. Alas, they could not.

A series of indicative votes were held on Wednesday to see which Brexit resolutions were the most popular with MPs. These options included no deal, a peoples vote, a customs union, Labour’s plan, and a Common Market 2.0 – in effect the Norway deal. Although none commanded a majority, the real winners were the permanent customs union, and rather surprisingly the Beckett amendment for a peoples vote on the agreed deal which attracted the most ayes.

On Friday Theresa May tried once more to get her deal through parliament, albeit this time just the withdrawal agreement without the political declaration. The vote was much closer but once again fell short leaving us in limbo once more. Next week will see more indicative votes in the hope to reach an impasse, but as it stands, we were due to leave on the 12^th April unless a compromise is found, or May swallows her pride and calls for a long extension – or even possibly a general election.

Since the referendum, I’ve felt a lot of emotion, whether it be anger, sadness, or a sense of loss. But a new feeling hit me this week, one single thought. “Why on earth are we doing this?” Because at the end of the day, we’re all just losers in this madness, and here’s why…

What Changes Now?

If like me you’ve been scrolling through Twitter endlessly today, you might think the government is in the middle of collapsing. After David Davis and Steve Baker’s resignation just before midnight last night, and Boris Johnson following suit this afternoon, it’s easy to see why. After a supposed cabinet agreement was produced at Chequers last week, the two Brexit heavyweights decided that enough was enough, and left in protest to the governments swing towards a softer Brexit.

This afternoon in the commons May was defiant. She talked up her Chequers deal, and in a likely attempt to put an end to any further resignations reminded her party that we would be leaving the single market, customs union, and ending free movement of people into the country. Which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t match the message coined last week. As broken by Kevin Schofield a couple of hours ago, May and her team have also maintained that she will fight on regardless, and will take on any vote of no confidence put forward by the backbenches.

It’s hard to see why that wouldn’t be the case. Sure, the ERG and the backbenches have the numbers to put in their letters to Brady, but I highly doubt they have the numbers to win the vote. Many Tory MPs who currently sit on the fence know that a change in leader would lead to a leader in favour of no deal, and arguably could lead to Corbyn making his way into number 10. May also knows that if she does fend off the vote of no confidence party rules maintain she would be safe for a further 12 months, which would take us well into the transitional period of leaving the EU.

As I put forward in a piece late last year, Theresa May has always been merely a tool for the Tories as long as they need her. Whoever leads throughout the Brexit process will be tainted afterwards, and many leading Tory candidates will want to avoid this. May was, and still likely is, the person that will deliver Brexit, and would then likely resign or be forced out shortly after. Many colleagues would rather hold off and use the ‘Brexit betrayal’ line, and few Conservatives will want May anywhere near another general election after last year’s debacle.

Time for Labour to Lead

It’s hard to be a so-called moderate in the UK these days. Not only do you find both parties veering further towards each wing, you also see that UK politics is now completely devoid of rationality as we hurtle towards Brexit. Alastair Campbell describes Labour’s position as “constructive ambiguity”, I find that to be a kind assessment. Both parties believe the argument is sorted, and both are under the false illusion that a hard Brexit was voted for.

Labour’s policy seems to be to appeal to leavers whilst hoping that their pro-European membership wouldn’t feel compelled to vote for any other party. At some point, this has to give. Mark Carney recently revealed that household incomes are about £900 per household lower than was forecast back in May 2016, and due to Brexit, the economy is roughly 2% lower than it would have been had we voted to remain in the EU two years ago. If Corbyn and McDonnell want to implement their manifesto promises, a hard Brexit is simply out of the question.

In 2017, the ambiguity worked. Leavers felt that Corbyn wanted to leave the EU as much as them, and Remainers saw Labour as the only route to blunt May’s push for hard Brexit. Again, this has to give, and it seems it’s the Remainers who are buckling. In 2017 the party was able to shift the focus onto other issues such as healthcare, but with Brexit day looming that strategy is out of the window. Only 26% think that Labour’s position on Brexit is clear, while 60% believe it’s unclear.

The public overwhelmingly favours the PM’s handling of Brexit, with 32% approval compared to a measly 19% for Corbyn. May is also impressing far more leave voters than Corbyn is remainers, 40% of leavers back May, just 26% of those who voted to remain back Corbyn’s treatment of Brexit. Labour is also losing the support of young people; last year 19% more 18-34-year-olds backed Corbyn over May, now the PM has a 2% lead. As Labour members shift, Corbyn stays rooted.

Plan B Politics

As Stephen Bush’s piece last week highlighted, there are a finite number of messages a political party can run on. Typically, these positions don’t change between elections because they are so simple: “things would work better with us in charge”. 2017, however, was a turning point for both parties.

When Jeremy Corbyn rose to victory in Labour’s leadership election in 2015, he did so on the back of a promise of a new type of politics. Many chose him because he offered something the other three candidates seemingly did not, and that was hope. Corbyn famously asserted he would bring a new straight talking, honest politics into the Labour party, something he really hasn’t done. He was meant to be the politician who could finally energise the dwindling youth vote and bring non-voters out into the voting booths for the first time.

Fast forward to June 2017, and Labour had returned from a near 20-point deficit in the polls to force a hung parliament. A dismal campaign from Theresa May gave Corbyn the wind in his sails, and policies such as the abolishment of tuition fees had on the face of it galvanised the youth to an astonishing spike in turnout. However, as we now know, this wasn’t exactly the case.

Recently, the British Electoral Survey found that turnout did not increase among 18- to 24-year-olds at the 2017 election, although it did increase in areas with larger numbers of 18- to 24-year-olds. The noteworthy changes were actually found in the 25-44 age group, where turnout increased significantly and swung in great numbers towards Labour. The groups of voters Corbyn aimed to bring out in force did not turn up, and despite a successful campaign, Labour’s Plan A had failed.

What is it that Divides Us?

Jo Cox gave her maiden speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday 3^rd June 2015. Describing her constituency, globalisation, and immigration, Jo inspirationally said that “we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”. After her death just a week before the EU referendum, the hashtag and movement #MoreInCommon went global and ever since has been used as a means of attempting to heal the conflicts and divides in society.

Of course, it’s true in many ways. We are all the same. But there’s no doubt that we should be worried about the growing divisions festering around us all. Traditionally, the big divides were that of political party identification, this has since been replaced by simply: Remain or Leave. It’s understandable why; despite both party leaders playing down the issue, it will define us and our country for generations to come. The referendum formalised a deep cultural divide stemming across many factions. Leavers are pitched against remainers, the young against the old, the affluent against the impoverished, graduates against non-graduates, and towns against cities.

In the past, it was class that was the main predictor of a person’s likely voting behaviour. This has significantly narrowed, with both support for Labour among the middle class and support for the Conservatives among the working class rising by 12 points between 2015 and 2017. The big divide in voting behaviour is now age. At the 2017 general election, the generation gap was the largest since polling records began. Among 18-to-24-year olds Labour led by 35%, but among over 65’s the Tories held a 36-point lead. In the referendum three-quarters of 18-to-24-year-olds voted Remain, but two-thirds of over-65s favoured Brexit.

Education was also a big factor in both votes. In the 2017 election the Tories led by 22% among people with ‘low educational qualifications’, but those with ‘high-level educational qualifications’ plucked for Labour by 17% more. In the referendum, those with GCSE or lower qualifications voted 70:30 to Leave, but those with a degree voted 68:32 in favour of Remain. There’s also another reason for these stark contrasts: the direction and leadership of the two main political parties under current leadership. May’s Conservatives have lurched to the right, and Corbyn’s Labour to the left, and people are being forced to choose a side.

Don’t Hold Your Breath on Another Snap Election

Many are pondering the simple question, when will the next UK general election take place? Due to the chaotic times at hand, many believe another early election is inevitable, and could well be next year. It’s easy to see why. The Tories have the slimmest of majorities being propped up by the DUP, Theresa May’s leadership is as strong and stable as a wet tissue, and she has enemies within her party waiting to pounce and drive her out of Downing Street.

However, I can tell you now there will not be an election in 2018, the reasons of which are plentiful. The first of which is Brexit. This week we moved onto the second stage of negotiations with the EU, which essentially considers the future relationship after we leave. This is where things get tricky, and it will take up most of the remaining 15 months before we leave. Expect very little time to be wasted on domestic policy until then, and there is no definitely no time to waste on another campaign and visit to the polls, no one in Westminster will want to risk it.

Another issue is no one in Westminster particularly is interested in even entertaining the thought of another election just yet. The Tories, first, do not want to risk the slim majority they currently hold, and their leader does not want to risk the house she lives in. The Tories also do not want to take a risk on their leader whom despite still being slightly more popular than Corbyn, would currently lose an election with Labour’s current slender poll lead.

The Tories will first want to find a successor to May, but not whilst she remains a useful tool. On the 2^nd June, May told the 1922 committee “I’ll serve as long as you want me”, and that is quite literal. When the Tories decide it’s time to go, she will go. The party has no other leader ready to step in, and none of the candidates wants to take any of the flak from Brexit. Boris is pushing himself out of the picture, Damian Green might yet have to resign, Davis is beaten from Brexit, Rudd has a very dangerous majority, and Hammond is as out of touch as it comes.