By John Pickard, Brentwood and Ongar CLP member
In the coming weeks, we will carry reports from the media and local areas on the progress of the election campaign. By common consent, this is the most unpredictable election for generations and the outcome at this stage is impossible to call. One Polish newspaper summed it up in a headline (according to the BBC), saying, “Unpredictability is the only element of stability in British politics”.
Although the Labour Party is currently behind in the polls, British politics is so volatile that this will almost certainly change. Translating the polls into the language of probabilities, it means that there is a 52 per cent probability of a Tory victory, an 11 per cent probability of a Labour victory and a 37 per cent probability of a hung parliament on Friday 13th of December. (Martin Wolf in Financial Times, November 1). But that will change.
The election is a huge gamble for Boris Johnson. As one grim Tory commented to the Financial Times, “It’s like brewing…you chuck in lots of ingredients but you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. It could blow up in your face.”
Brexit Party to contest every seat?
A key element in the polls will be the vote for the Brexit Party. Nigel Farage’s preference is for a pact with Boris Johnson that would give the Brexit Party guaranteed seats in the south of England, so that the main enemy – Labour – can be challenged in its homelands in the north. The problem with that scenario is that the Tories are not prepared to ditch Boris’s EU deal or to stand aside for Brexit Party candidates – claiming, in effect, that they are the real Brexit Party.
Besides which, there are too many Brexit Party backwoodsmen who don’t like the deal Johnson has reached with the EU. The chair of the ‘Leave means Leave’ group, Brexit Party MEP, John Longworth, advocates running only 20-30 candidates, and thinks that Farage is out of touch with Leave voters.
According to the Financial Times correspondent, “…if Mr Farage follows through on his pledge, pollsters think it will harm the Tories more than anyone else. Chris Curtis, political research manager at YouGov, said it was ‘highly unlikely’ the party would win any seats but their impact could be significant. ‘it’s how it affects marginal seats, especially the Labour/Conservative marginal. For every vote they take from the Labour Party, they’re taking two from the Conservatives, as the Tory vote has a lot more Leavers in it’, he said.” The Brexit Party is currently on 10 per cent in polls, but that may be squeezed by Tory Leave voters as the weeks wear on and it is not completely ruled out that Farage may pull his candidates in the south and focus on Labour seats in the north.
One of the key issues over the next five weeks is the extent to which Labour can achieve a focus on social and economic issues like austerity – the questions that really matter in the day-to-day lives of most of the population – or whether the Tories and their tame press can manage to hold onto Brexit as the main or even the only issue.
Tories have become the English Nationalist Party
In the latter case, the presence of the Brexit Party, as a fourth major party, may lead to the Tories winning some seats with as little as a quarter of the vote. “Over 27 general elections since 1918, seats have been won with an average of 53 per cent of the vote, and there have only been seven occasions when a party won a seat with less than 30 per cent.” (Financial Times, November 2). But some polling models have changed that, with the presence of up to four or five major parties in constituency contests. Some forecast that the median vote for winners in this election will be only 39 per cent, and some forecast “that 15 seats will be won with vote shares of less than 30 per cent.”
Pollsters are currently predicting that the Tories, as they are effectively the Party of English Nationalism, will lose up to 13 of the seats they hold in Scotland, as well as possibly others in Remain-voting seats in the south of England. To make up for that loss, Johnson will need to make gains at Labour’s expense in the East and West Midlands and in the North.
How well he can avoid social and economic issues remains to be seen. The advice coming out of Tory Central Office is clearly aimed at avoiding at all costs the issues most important to voters, and on which the Tories are most vulnerable, particularly the NHS. According to leaks revealed in The Guardian (November 6th).
Labour’s message that Boris Johnson will be Donald Trump’s pet poodle in any future US/UK trade deal and that it would put the NHS in danger is potentially a huge issue and a vote-winner for Labour. The 11-page Tory briefing note, intended as a guide to all candidates, advises them explicitly “against signing up to any pledges”.
Tory candidate instructions…hide what we really think
The briefing notes advise candidates against any pledges “to protect our NHS from trade deals with new legislation which ends privatisation”. There are many other aspects of advice to candidates, but the net result is that the Tory candidates are under strict orders to hide their social and economic policies from the electorate and to focus on “getting Brexit done” with as little possible meaning for that phrase as possible. Supporting shooting, it notes, can be supported, “as an important part of rural life”. It doesn’t say who the Tory faithful would be in favour of shooting.
Interestingly, the advice brochure is vaguely aware of the growing significance of climate change as an issue among younger voters, but it advises candidates “against unrealistic targets that it would be impossible to achieve” – which just about covers everything worth doing. This might well be the first election when climate change becomes a major issue and if it does – as indeed it should be – it will be to Labour’s advantage.
There may be interesting developments in Northern Ireland too, where pro-EU nationalist parties have agreed for the first time in many decades to an election pact where they will not stand against each other. Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party will therefore increase the likelihood of cutting the number of seats held by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Both of these parties have also agreed not to stand against an independent unionist who is defending a 1200-vote majority in North Down, again, to make sure it doesn’t go to the DUP. The deal puts Sinn Fein in the very unusual position, for the first time ever, of supporting a pro-British unionist MP.
Jacob Toff-Mogg insults the victims of Grenfell
It would be far better for workers in Northern Ireland if the Labour Party, in collaboration with the Irish Labour Party in Dublin, were to stand Labour candidates. For too long workers in the North have had a choice only between one sectarian party and another, which is no choice at all. Unfortunately, for the moment, this is likely to continue.
In summary, it has not been an auspicious start for the Tory Party. Jacob Rees-Mogg, blinded as he is with his own superior intelligence and class, has managed to insult the victims and survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire and has been forced to apologise, as has another Tory MP who backed him up. These issues really do matter and they will have a corrosive effect on support for the Tory Party. Likewise, the fact that the Tory Minister for Wales has been forced to resign after being less than honest about his knowledge of his aide’s activities in sabotaging a rape trial some months ago.
In contrast to the Tories’ somewhat stuttering start, during which Boris Johnson was booed out of Addenbrook’s Hospital in Cambridge and Rees-Mogg has been shown up to be the upper-class slime-ball that he is, Jeremy Corbyn has already addressed two enthusiastic meetings of Party members. This election is there to be won for Labour. The more radical its manifesto is – due to published next week – the more that Corbyn can get out among party members and supporters, the more the focus can be taken away from Brexit to the issues that really matter, like low-pay, the NHS, housing, services and climate change – then the better it will be for Labour’s chances. We have five weeks to see.
November 6, 2019
