Who’s going to win Britain’s Brexit referendum?, UK in a Changing Europe, 1 December 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Prediction may be a mug’s game but it’s still great fun. And, when it comes to Britain’s vote on Brexit, it’s not even as if we have nothing to go on. There have already been loads of opinion polls on the question. There’s also one heck of a historical precedent – the European referendum of 1975.

UK-EU infographics

And then there’s what we know about referendums more generally. Stir in an added ingredient – the Conservative Party’s latent leadership contest – and we can come up with what passes for an educated guess about who’s going to win: ‘in’ or ‘out’.

For UK pollsters, 2015 was something of an annus horribilis: after all, not a single one of them got the result of May’s general election right. But to discredit what they do on the basis of one admittedly awful call would be ridiculous. True, we need to be careful. Surveys provide different results depending on which company you go to for your polling, and they can only ever provide a snapshot, not a prediction. So while it may be the case (to quote from John Curtice’s poll of polls) that some 45% of people would currently vote to stay in, some 39% would vote to leave, and some 16% don’t know, this clearly has the potential to change. Indeed one thing we know from polling on this issue is that public opinion on it is not only very divided but also very volatile.

UK-EU infographics2

But there are other things emerging from the polling that might potentially help us guess at the outcome. Even a cursory glance at the demographics reveals the tendency of different groups to display very different attitudes to the EU. Age has a big impact. Nearly two-thirds of British 18-24 year olds say, at least at the moment, that they’ll vote to stay, whereas half of those over 65 claim they want to leave.

UK-EU infographics3

Social class matters too: a majority of those in non-manual occupations reckon they will vote to remain, which is far from being the case among those in manual occupations or no occupation at all.

All this matters because differential turnout could be crucial in the referendum, even if, ironically, it might make predicting the outcome more difficult. Well-heeled, well-educated people tend to vote more than those who aren’t so lucky, which should be good for the in campaign. On the other hand, the old vote in far greater numbers than the young (in general elections anyway), which should be good for ‘leave’. It could be that these two trends could cancel each other out but, whatever, it will be worth paying very close attention to how big the turnout looks like being.

If the proportion of those going to the polls comes anywhere near the 64.5% it reached in 1975, most psephologists would be surprised. But there are still plenty of similarities between now and then. Like Harold Wilson, David Cameron is a sceptical prime minister sitting on a narrow Commons majority, presiding over a badly-divided party, carrying out a renegotiation that his opponents routinely (and probably rightly) dismiss as cosmetic. As in 1975, many of those opponents are fairly easily labelled as living on the radical populist fringe of politics. And, as in 1975, the majority of British business – seen by most voters as very much in the mainstream by comparison – is ranged against them.

But it is the differences between now and then that are, perhaps, most striking than the similarities. Cameron’s renegotiation seems to have been going on, if not forever, than at least since his Bloomberg speech in 2013. Not for no reason, then, has his government’s agonisingly gradual revelation of what it actually wants from other member states been labelled by one waggish columnist as ‘the world’s longest striptease’. Sadly, judging at least from the negative press and party reaction to Cameron’s ‘Dear Donald letter’ of November 10, it looks as if the end result could be even more disappointing than those performances usually are in real life. Mr Wilson concluded the 1974/5 renegotiation relative swiftly and relatively successfully. Even if there is a degree of stage management in the helpfully wary reaction from other European governments, things look they will be more than a touch trickier for Mr Cameron.

Wilson also had another advantage over Cameron that’s worth noting. The latter operates in an environment where to be on the populist radical fringe of politics is nowhere near as much a problem as it was back in the mid-seventies. Sure, Nigel Farage puts off a lot of moderate, centrist voters – and therefore presents something of a double-edged sword for the out campaign. But in an era where sticking two fingers up at the despised and disconnected ‘political class’ is deemed perfectly legitimate, even perhaps as a public service, Ukip’s leader is arguably nowhere near as poisonous to the anti-European cause as Enoch Powell or, on the other side of the ideological fence, Tony Benn were to its 1970s equivalent.

Any of our business?

And then there is business. In 1975 its support for staying in was little short of overwhelming: there was barely a company or corporate pressure group which believed there was any alternative for a country widely seen as ‘the sick man of Europe’. Things are very different these days – and not just because, compared to the rest of the continent anyway, the British economy is doing very nicely thank you. Yes, it is probably true that most businesses would on balance prefer to be in than out, but many of them claim their support is contingent on the deal achieved by Cameron and some, especially in the SME sector and the City of London, believe that Britain’s future (and of course their own best interests) would be better served by escaping what they see as the bossy regulators of Brussels – especially if the EU increasingly marches to the tune of its Eurozone core.

This means that the message to the 80% of the population who work in the private sector will be a much more mixed one than it was in the mid-seventies. It also means that the funding gap between the in and out campaigns will be nothing like as big as it was back then – if it exists at all. In 1975, the in campaign amassed the equivalent in today’s money of around £15 million, while its opponents could only call on the equivalent of just 1 million. No one is saying that money can buy a result one way or another, but doesn’t half help.

Business people, of course, are not the only bunch who will be trying to persuade people to vote one way or another. The parties will be trying their hardest. Or will they? Labour under Wilson was, like today’s Tories, split from top to bottom on Europe but he could rely on his Tory opposition (led by Margaret Thatcher before she got religion on the issue) to back staying in the EEC ‘heart and soul’. Can the same really be said of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party? Given the extent to which the (admittedly dwindling) band of loyal partisans take their cue from ‘their’ party’s leadership then Corbyn’s rather lukewarm support for the EU may give a fair few Labour voters – particularly those who see the EU as a malign agent of neoliberalism which has ganged up on their Greek heroes in Syriza – the ‘permission’ they feel they need to vote ‘out’ rather than ‘in’.

A press-ing question

The other pack of persuaders are the press. And when it comes to them, there are huge differences between 1975 and now. Back then, only the Spectator and the communist daily, the Morning Star, backed Brexit. Nowadays, the only sure-fire supporters of stay are theGuardian, the Independent, the FT and (so far anyway) the Mirror – who represent nowhere near as many readers as the Mail, the Telegraph and the Sun.

Of course, papers these days boast much smaller circulations and therefore potentially wield less influence, so this turnaround shouldn’t be overdone. Television is more important, just as it was in 1975. On the other hand, forty years ago there was no such thing as digital and social media, meaning it was far harder than it is nowadays for those who had basically made up their minds to then insulate themselves from alternative points of view that might – just possibly – shake their faith. So, while it is tempting to stress that perhaps around a fifth of voters currently and genuinely don’t know where they stand on Brexit, there are a whole lot more people around now than there were in the 1970s who are immune to the charms of campaigners – and on balance there are probably more phobes than philes in the ranks of the unreachable.

Campaigning

The fact that campaigns actually seem to matter is one of the things that the research on referendums tells us. It also tells us that voters tend to have a bias towards the status quo, particularly if change involves risks that can be made to seem unnecessary or costs that can be made personally tangible – all of which should heavily favour the in campaign, as long, that is, as it doesn’t so overdo the fear factor that voters end up feeling bounced or blackmailed.

Research also tells us that, while referendums can be highly educative (something that may favour ‘in’ because people who are more knowledgeable about the EU tend to be more supportive), they can sometimes see voters answering a different question to the one on the ballot paper. In the past, for instance, we’ve seen referendums on EU treaties revolve around abortion and around Polish plumbers – and of course around the unpopularity of governments in mid-term. Given the importance most voters (and many in the media) attach to the issue, and given the way both Ukip and the Tories have successfully conflated it with Britain’s EU membership, immigration seems bound to play a huge part in the upcoming referendum. Indeed, the success of the out campaign may well hinge upon the extent to which it can, without tipping over into the toxicity that might alienate many moderate voters, make the referendum a plebiscite on how many foreigners this country can afford to take in.

Conservative Party politics

The final factor that we can’t ignore is the temptation that playing a big part in the out campaign presents to some of those hoping to prize George Osborne’s well-manicured fingers from the door handle of Ten Downing Street. It seems a pretty fair bet that a vote to stay in the EU will be quickly followed by (presuming for a moment that it isn’t preceded by) a clear-out of those Cabinet members whom Cameron and Osborne have been putting up with, as opposed to getting on with, for some time. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has good reason to fear that her name is number one on their hit-list. Consequently, she may well conclude that her one and only chance of a decent crack at the leadership is (a) to jump before she is pushed, then (b) help front an ultimately successful out campaign and (c) put herself forward in the event (not, note the certainty) that Cameron and Osborne resign in the wake of defeat in the referendum. Such a move would probably be doomed to failure, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen – or that it wouldn’t persuade more Tory voters than the government would like to plump for in rather than ‘out’.

The real danger, though, is – as perhaps it’s always been – Boris. Were he to pursue a similar course, believing that, unless he does so, Osborne will cruise to victory on the back of Britain voting to stay in the EU and giving him the credit for continued economy recovery, then the man who is still the country’s favourite politician might be persuaded to throw proverbial caution to the winds. He is actually less likely to do this than is frequently forecast – London’s Mayor is more risk-averse (and more willing to bide his time) than many realise. But if he does press the Brexit button, all bets could be off.

Prediction is a mug’s game

Where, then, does this leave us in the mug’s game to end all mug’s games we began with – predicting the result of the referendum itself? Gun-to-head, my best guess is as follows: while there is (ehem) a ‘non-trivial’ risk that the British will vote to leave, they will ultimately vote – albeit by a much narrower margin than they did in 1975 – to remain in the EU, an arrangement to which, in the end, a majority cannot see any clear or pressing alternative. Of one thing, however, we can far more certain: contrary to what many of those who will welcome that result are hoping, it will fail utterly to settle the Europe question ‘once and for all’. As to whether, in a democracy, that kind of never-ending uncertainty is necessarily a bad thing, who knows?

Originally published at http://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/whos-going-to-win-britains-brexit-referendum/ and http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/21/1975-boris-and-all-that-what-psephology-can-teach-us-about-the-eu-referendum/

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‘Margaret Thatcher: the Authorised Biography. Volume Two: Everything She Wants’, Irish Times, 24 October 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Margaret Thatcher has been as lucky with her biographers as she was with her enemies. Her governments returned Britain to levels of unemployment it hadn’t seen since the 1930s and presumed it would never see again, yet she was able to win three elections on the trot – at a canter, even – because her opponents pursued policies and chose leaders, local and national, that rendered them effectively unelectable for more than a decade. She fought and won a risky war thousands of kilometres away, in the south Atlantic, because the Argentinian junta that provoked the conflict ultimately lacked the stomach, the skill and the resources to finish it.

And, much closer to home, she defeated a year-long strike by the National Union of Mineworkers at least in part because the strikers were led by an egotistical ideologue who was too scared to ballot his members, who refused to countenance any deal that involved the closure of a single pit, and who made it crystal clear what he really wanted to do was to bring down Britain’s democratically elected Conservative government.

Thatcher’s biographers are a rather more impressive bunch than Michael Foot, Gen Leopoldo Galtieri and Arthur Scargill. First came the Guardian’s Hugo Young, whose One of Us must rank as one of the sharpest and most sustained critical indictments ever written of a living politician. Then came the rather more dispassionate yet equally impressive The Grocer’s Daughter and The Iron Lady, by John Campbell. And now we haveEverything She Wants, the second part of what its author, Charles Moore,the former Spectator and Telegraph editor, has now decided will be a trilogy.

Everything She Wants picks up from where Moore’s first volume,Not for Turning, left off, in 1982 and takes the reader up to 1987, the year of her third (and, it turned out, final) election victory. It is a big book, in every sense of the word, taking more than 800 closely written, impeccably footnoted pages to cover both domestic and global politics and the relationships that shaped them, and managing to combine the weight of authority with seriously page-turning prose. Its author may claim that his decision to go for three rather than just two volumes at least means that this middle one “will not be too heavy to read in bed”. But on this – and this alone – you cannot trust him: let’s just say that if you’ve not yet considered a Kindle – “other ereaders are available” – now would be very a good time to do so.

Moore could not, of course, have produced such a doorstop all by himself. Indeed, he endearingly takes great pains to stress how fortunate he was not only to be able to speak to anyone and everyone who had a part to play in his tale but also to be able to rely on the services of a team of top-notch researchers to assist in what in any case must have been a Herculean task.

As a result the book triangulates superbly between official sources, first-hand accounts and previously published material, with particularly good use of the often hand-annotated material stored (much of it digitally and free to view on the web) at the Thatcher Archive – a fascinating resource that ended up in Cambridge rather than in Oxford after academics at Lady T’s alma mater upset her more than she would ever admit by famously (some would say pettily) denying her the honorary doctorate that had been awarded as a matter of course to her predecessors.

It is one thing, however, for a biographer to have all the material he or she could possibly need and quite another to weave it into a coherent whole – something Moore achieves by not sticking slavishly to a strictly chronological approach. Instead he devotes chapters or parts thereof to particularly important themes or episodes.

One of those singled out for special treatment is the Irish question. Although he might perhaps have done more to explain precisely why it was the case, Moore is right to remark on how extraordinary it was that the IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984 not only failed to derail but failed even to appreciably delay progress towards what became the Anglo-Irish Agreement. And for an avowed unionist he gives what many (perhaps even most) would consider a balanced account of the tortuous negotiations that led to the latter, all without glossing over the obduracy, ignorance and insensitivity that she all too often displayed in her dealings with the Republic. Moreover, his conclusion is both balanced and convincing: Thatcher, it is true, allowed her civil servants to take her further than, in her heart of hearts, she would have wanted to go, but “it would be absurd”, he writes, to argue that she was their prisoner, “and paranoid to suggest that they cheated her. She was too formidable for that. She was reluctant, but not deluded. She felt she had to do something and she allowed herself to be persuaded of the likely benefits of most of it. The subject did not matter to her so much that she was prepared to fight to what would certainly have been a bitter end”.

What mattered to Thatcher much more, clearly, was the UK’s relationship with its most powerful ally, the United States, to which Moore quite rightly devotes a good deal of time and space, choosing (as she herself sometimes did) to view it primarily through the lens of her relationship with her ideological soulmate Ronald Reagan. Moore’s access-all-areas pass to key sources on both sides of the pond allows him to provide the reader with enthralling, blow-by-blow accounts of some of their most controversial moments, most obviously Reagan’s insistence that Thatcher allow the UK to be used as a base for bombing the Gadafy regime in Libya and his decision to go ahead with the invasion of Grenada, a Commonwealth country, without due consultation.

Moore’s gloss on the latter spat, incidentally, strikes what is the only slightly jarring note in his book’s otherwise admirably sensitive attempt to deal head on with the fact that Thatcher was a woman operating in what was then, even more than it is now, a man’s world. She was, he tells us, “as disappointed as a two-timed girlfriend . . . She felt she had been made a fool of. For a proud woman who had a slightly old-fashioned view of the relations between the sexes, this experience was even more mortifying than it would have been for most men.” Really?

A more determinedly feminist reading of the text may find other passages in the book equally problematic, not least those relating to the role that flirtation played in her meetings with other leaders, particularly François Mitterand and Mikhail Gorbachev. In Moore’s defence, however, this was how their interactions were frequently characterised by those who witnessed those meetings first hand, be they politicians, civil servants, advisers or interpreters. And it is those first-hand accounts that enable him to reconstruct some of most vital encounters in 20th-century world history in such gripping fashion, her jousts with Gorbachev being the best but by no means the only example: Moore’s handling of Thatcher’s fierce determination to make the best of a bad hand on Hong Kong, her controversial refusal to go with the flow on sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and her seemingly genuine concern for working miners and their families are no less fascinating. He even manages to make European summits exciting.

For those heavily into British politics the book is, predictably, a beautifully crafted (and for the most part pretty balanced) Tory treasure trove. Moore seamlessly synthesises a huge amount of what we already knew, or suspected we knew, with some genuinely new material.

It is difficult to imagine, for instance, anybody bettering his account of the Westland affair, which eventually cost Thatcher two ministerial resignations (including that of her eventual nemesis, Michael Heseltine) and, Moore confirms, may well have cost her the premiership had her civil servants not fought successfully to ensure that their junior colleague at the heart of the matter, Collette Bowe (to whom Moore managed to speak), was not called to appear at a crucial Commons committee hearing.

Moore’s sometimes hilarious account of the stresses and strains behind the scenes of the Tories’ superficially effortless election victories in 1983 and 1987 likewise adds new nuggets and insights to what, for political junkies anyway, may already be a familiar tale. We knew, for instance, that Thatcher was far more worried than, in hindsight, she needed to have been about the outcomes of those contests, but we didn’t know that she was quite as insecure – indeed, borderline hysterical at one point – as she appears in Moore’s narrative. We also knew that her relationship with Norman Tebbit, something of a Thatcherite icon himself, deteriorated markedly during the 1980s, but we didn’t perhaps know quite how badly or how early the rot set in.

In the end, though, this biography will, like any other, be judged on how well it captures the essence of the woman at the centre of the maelstrom. On these terms alone the book is a triumph. Moore does this cumulatively, building layer upon layer upon layer so that we gradually come to understand Thatcher through her own words and deeds. He does it explicitly, entering the narrative now and then to explain and amplify in the authorial voice what, for example, Thatcherism came to mean to her and the way in which her sometimes simplistic reading of British history drove her to remake the nation’s future.

And he does it by quoting other voices when, notwithstanding his own considerable gifts, they say it better than even he can. David Goodall, one of the civil servants so instrumental in negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement, speaks for many of us, and maybe even for Moore himself, when he says of this most remarkable of politicians – indeed, this most remarkable of women – that he “liked, admired, and was repelled and exasperated by her in about equal measure. In retrospect, however, and on the whole, the admiration predominates.”

Originally published at http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/margaret-thatcher-the-authorised-biography-volume-two-everything-she-wants-1.2403321

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A look back at the 2016 Labour Party Conference, Speri, 9 October 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Labour’s Conference in Brighton wasn’t quite a tale of two nations between whom, to borrow from Disraeli, ‘there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.’  But it wasn’t far off.

You can cut it and call it however you like – left vs right, Corbynistas vs Blairites, whatever.  But the main divide down by the seaside at the end of September was mood. Either you were despairing or you were delusional, with the majority of delegates seemingly in the latter camp.

Certainly the lovely people I was lucky enough to sit next to during the Labour leader’s speech lapped it up, with one of them at the end excitedly comparing the experience to being in a revivalist meeting.

The commentariat – one of Corbyn’s top targets during a stunningly self-indulgent speech – was rather less impressed, as were those Labour MPs who simply couldn’t bear to stay to listen to him and a fair few (maybe even one or two members of the Shadow Cabinet) who did. But for his fans the media’s verdict was simply proof – if proof were needed – of the ongoing neoliberal conspiracy against St Jeremy, a big part of which is maintaining the false consciousness of a working class who would otherwise have been rushing to join the trade union protests at the Conservative Party Conference the following week.

Interestingly, the self-same commentariat turned out to be slightly more taken with the speech given by the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell – and not just because, unlike his boss, he made no pretence that it would be anything other than, in his words, ‘stupefyingly dull’.  Partly as a result, but also because he had a stab at supposedly dialling down the ambition as well as the rhetoric, it could make a fair claim to being interesting.

But was it really?  As predicted, Labour has jumped – and jumped joyfully – into George Osborne’s elephant traps on spending and welfare. Academic economists may be celebrating McDonnell’s news that he’ll be taking advice from a number of their colleagues.  But the rest of his announcements were things we’d already heard before – shaking the magic money tree that is corporate tax avoidance, bringing in a ‘Robin Hood’ tax, and leaning on the Bank of England to introduce ‘the people’s QE’.

These are wish-lists unlikely ever to be fulfilled in the real world.  But, for the moment anyway, the latter isn’t something Labour – especially its delusional faction – seems to be worrying too much about.

Originally published at http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2015/10/09/the-lib-dem-labour-conservative-conferences-2015-a-look-back/

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Notes from the Tory fringe, where everyone is playing nicely – for now, The Conversation, 6 October 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Welcome to the Tory Party conference in Manchester – as ever a curious mix of the nerdy, the nutty, the nasty, and the nice and normal.

The latter (apologies to anti-austerity protesters everywhere but it’s true) are in the majority. That’s of course if you don’t count the lobbyists and the exhibitors – the paid smoochers and sponsors. There are more of these, some grumble, than there are actual delegates.

But whatever else this is, it’s clearly the annual gathering of what seems well on the way to becoming Britain’s (or at least England’s) natural party of government once again.

The Conservatives collected here – be they councillors or cabinet ministers – are not only comfortable with power, they see it as the natural order of things. They’re also enjoying being back with a majority so much that most of them, faced with the choice between what Matthew Parris recently referred to as unleashing their inner Genghis Khan or else making a pitch for the centre ground, seem surprisingly keen to do the latter.

Even on Europe, things don’t seem to be boiling over – not yet at least. There are certainly an awful lot of fringe events on it, including one (Boo! Hiss!) sponsored by the European Commission, but right now the referendum is serving as much as a safety valve as a civil war zone. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of both sides keeping their powder dry while they move their artillery into place for the battle to come.

That’s not to say that there won’t be the odd piece of ammunition fired off here and there. Immigration is always a heat-seeking missile, exposing, as it does, the chronic contradiction between the Conservatives’ enthusiasm for free and open markets on the one hand, and national and cultural sovereignty on the other.

Playing to the crowd. Reuters/Phil Noble

Home secretary Theresa May certainly pushed the populist button in herspeech to delegates on this issue, claiming she’s as determined as ever to beat back the hordes from abroad. She won plenty of applause from the floor, but will have enjoyed rather less, I suspect, from some of her colleagues.

Place your bets

May’s speech was just one intervention in what promises to be the longest latent leadership contest since Blair vs Brown.

For the moment hats are being tried on for size rather than thrown into the ring but everybody’s thinking about the impending tussle – and not just the big, medium and mini-beasts who dream of taking a shot at the top spot. The delegates, whether they’re sitting in one of the record number of fringe events or in the main hall, clearly can’t help wondering whether whoever appears to be in the running really has what it takes to do the top job.

Boris Johnson is of course the man to watch, breaking cover (but only partially) by mumbling coded concerns about his main rival George Osborne’s insistence on sticking to his planned cuts to tax credits. That might help him if Osborne eventually has to compromise, but it won’t be enough to put him back in pole position.

I’m beginning to think that crunch time is rapidly approaching for the soon-to-be-ex-mayor. His best – and perhaps his only – chance of denying Osborne his inheritance may be to campaign to leave the EU, hoping the British people follow his lead, and maybe forcing George and Dave (presuming they both recommend staying in) to resign after a referendum defeat.

But that’s for the future. For the moment, the Tories are celebrating, but trying hard to avoid looking like they’re celebrating – and trying equally hard not to fall out over Europe.

Pretending they’re not already obsessing about who comes after Cameron, however, looks to be proving the biggest ask of all.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/notes-from-the-tory-fringe-where-everyone-is-playing-nicely-for-now-48717

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He has a beef with David Cameron, but who is Lord Ashcroft?, The Conversation, 23 September 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Britain is still reeling from the allegations that surfaced about the university antics of its prime minister, David Cameron. The claims, made in a forthcoming unauthorised biography of the PM, are the work of Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

Ashcroft has said he has a “beef” with Cameron, after being passed over for a cabinet position, but he denies the book is his form of revenge. So who is this troublesome Lord? And why do his claims hold so much sway?

Ashcroft is not just some rich guy who has it in for David Cameron. He has a long history in the Conservative Party and can claim, with some justification, to have had a significant influence on the direction it has taken for more than two decades.

Margaret’s man

Ashcroft, like many self-made business people, was an enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher – so enthusiastic that when she was eventually cast aside by her parliamentary colleagues in 1990, he was among a number of Tory donors who expressed their dismay by threatening to withdraw their financial backing.

Ashcroft: Conservative Party treasurer in 2000. Reuters

By 1998, however, he had been persuaded back into the fold. William Hague, a creation of Thatcher if ever there was one, had been elected leader of the Conservative Party after its catastrophic defeat to Tony Blair’s New Labour a year earlier. After the slow-motion car crash the party suffered between 1992 and 1997, the party’s organisational and financial position was almost as dire as its electoral position, and it was crying out for help.

Ashcroft answered the call by becoming party treasurer – a traditionally thankless task which involved him having to drum up cash, through loans or gifts, in order to make up for years during which the Tories had lived well beyond their means. As part of the Hague regime, however, Ashcroft was seen as fair game by those in the media who were, to say the least, unimpressed by the new leader and some of the company he kept. The autumn of 1999 saw The Times launch a blistering attack on Ashcroft, his business dealings in Belize and his political influence.

Holding the purse strings

Ashcroft, as he details in his eye-opening first book, Dirty Politics, Dirty Times, fought back through the courts and was awarded a peerage in the spring of 2000 – an appointment that provided yet more ammunition to those who argue that there is a long-established connection between giving money to political parties and eventual elevation to the Lords.

As treasurer, Ashcroft’s parting gift to Hague was the securing of an enormous one-off donation of £5m to the Conservatives by oil tycoon John-Paul Getty. Typically of Ashcroft, however, he did not leave things there. His time as the party’s chief fundraiser, and his own experience in business, led him to form an acute critique of Tory organisation – particularly its internal communication and its allocation of resources – that, characteristically, he was unafraid to articulate publicly.

Ashcroft the interventionist

But it was criticism of a more direct and personal kind which saw Ashcroft make perhaps his biggest mark on Conservative politics thus far. By the autumn of 2003 desperation among Tory MPs about Iain Duncan Smith, who had succeeded Hague as leader, was becoming acute. But it took a group of the party’s biggest donors to make it clear that he would have to go before his colleagues finally made their move.

Lord Ashcroft and Boris Johnson in 2012. PA/Stefan Rousseau

Ashcroft played a prominent part, telling the BBC that he and other donors could hardly be expected to carry on giving to “a gaggle of squabbling losers” but adding that the money would flow again once “unity of purpose” was regained – something that that occurred almost immediately once Michael Howard was drafted in as a consensus candidate by Tory MPs after they suddenly mustered the courage to ditch Duncan Smith via a no-confidence vote.

Number-cruncher

None of this meant that Ashcroft was impressed by what happened next. So unimpressed was he with the Conservatives’ formal target seats exercise that he set up a parallel operation of his own.

And after the election he published (as Smell the Coffee) a research-driven analysis of the party’s 2005 defeat which – in line with the analysis of both Tory modernisers (some of whom had actually worked on The Times when it had gone after Ashcroft) and academics – argued that the party had to undertake a huge exercise in brand decontamination if it was to stand any chance of victory in the near future.

However ironic it seems now in the light of their well-publicised estrangement, Ashcroft, then, played a huge part in persuading the Conservative Party that it should choose a change-candidate to succeed Howard and therefore in making the case for David Cameron. He also played a big part – this time from the inside and notwithstanding pre-election revelations about his non-domiciled tax status – in a well-funded target seats operation that may have helped Cameron to his narrow election win in 2010.

Mischief-maker

By then, however, Ashcroft had decided that, rather than use his stupendous wealth to simply bankroll the Tories, he would instead make politics more interesting (and life more difficult for David Cameron and other party leaders) by commissioning huge amounts of superbly presented opinion research, supporting the influential (and marvellously well-informed) ConservativeHome website, and part-owning Biteback – now one of the country’s best known political publishers.

A long-term political meddler. Reuters

So the noble Lord can well afford to sit back and relax. On past form, however, that’s unlikely. He has too many friends – and Cameron too many enemies and rivals – for the current brouhaha to do him much harm in the long-term.

In any case, politics needs a bit of mischief-making now and then. From what we’ve seen so far, Call Me Dave would certainly seem to fit that particular bill. But it would also seem to have a deeply serious side. All in all, then, very Michael Ashcroft.

Originally published at https://theconversation.com/he-has-a-beef-with-david-cameron-but-who-is-lord-ashcroft-48061

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A look ahead to the 2016 Labour Party Conference, Speri, 17 September 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Ever since the BBC’s and LSE’s Bob McKenzie published his seminal work on British political parties back in 1955, we’ve known that Labour isn’t quite as democratic as it looks. Its leader, and those around him, has rather more say over the direction the party takes than implied by a constitution that stresses the sanctity and ultimate sovereignty of Conference.

For all that, it’s hard to imagine that Jeremy Corbyn, elected as Labour’s new leader only a fortnight before the party meets in Brighton, is going to be able to use the occasion to secure a virtually overnight change in its economic policies – even if, as may well be the case, many of the grassroots resolutions debated beside the seaside will actually chime pretty well with his way of thinking.

That said, Corbyn – supported by his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell – is bound to want to lay down a marker or two, not least to signal to all those who supported his successful bid for the top job that he really does intend to break from the supposedly ‘neoliberal’ policies that Tony Blair (‘Boo! Hiss!’) and Gordon Brown slavishly followed during their time in charge.

Most immediately, ‘New Old Labour’, as we may as well call it, will be nailing its anti-austerity colours to the mast by condemning just about every cut and cap proposed by the government, especially in the welfare field. Whether or not this is right in economic terms – and there is a good argument to be made that it is, given the negative impact on demand and the so-far patchy evidence on incentives to employment – this will of course place the party exactly where George Osborne wants it, namely on the wrong side of public opinion and prejudice.

Of course, Corbyn will focus in particular on those Tory welfare measures that many voters are uneasy about – most obviously, the bedroom tax and anything hurting disabled people. He will focus, too, on suggestions they may support – a higher minimum wage, rent controls, cutting private sector involvement in healthcare, reform of university fees, tougher regulation of the banking sector and energy markets. He will also flirt with renationalisation of the railways and talk about rebalancing the economy back toward manufacturing (the latter apparently being morally superior to services). And he’ll suggest that the public finances can be brought back into balance, not by raising taxes on the majority, but by cracking down harder on those at the top, as well as on corporate and individual tax avoidance and evasion.

The trouble is: Ed Miliband did all that, and look how far that got him.

The only really novel ideas canvassed so far by Team Jezza are (i) the suggestion that a new National Investment Bank be created to fund infrastructure projects using debt created by the Bank of England and (ii) some sort of ‘maximum wage’.

Quite why ‘People’s QE’ makes more sense than the government itself borrowing to do the self-same thing while interest rates remain at or near zero isn’t altogether clear. Nor is how any administration concerned about attracting investment and talent into the UK would go about preventing companies paying the going rate.

Cynics will argue, of course, that none of this matters. After all, Corbyn is never going to be PM. It may be worth remembering, however, that they said the same about his becoming leader of the Labour Party. Careful what you don’t wish for….

Originally published at http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2015/09/17/political-party-conferences-a-look-ahead/

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Labour has moved outside the ‘zone of acceptability’, Prospect, 14 September 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by tpbale

Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has to be seen not only as a major advance for a Labour left that once looked entirely moribund. More worryingly for some, it also presents a huge opportunity to influence mainstream politics for much a harder, previously non-Labour left whose adherents, until this summer anyway, seemed destined to end their days fighting each other and trying to leverage widespread public misgivings over Britain’s overseas military adventures into significant support for a radical alternative on domestic and foreign policy, the last gasp of which looked like being George Galloway’s Respect.

The power of populism

Corbyn’s victory can also be set in an international context. Most obviously parallels can be drawn, both ideologically and in terms of their respective capacities to inspire new and previously disconnected people into electoral politics, with hybrid movement/parties such as Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos.

But there are also less comfortable comparisons that can be made with parties supposedly located on the other side of the ideological fence—the radical right parties that have been shaking up politics-as-usual for some time in France, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, to name just a few of the countries in which they’ve made their mark.

What both sides of the divide share, of course, is populism: their pitch to the electorate is essentially a claim to represent “the people” and to sweep aside “the elites” who have sold them out—be it to “neoliberalism” (if they’re on the left) or “cosmopolitanism” (if they’re on the right). The same populist message is currently being pumped out across the Atlantic too, be it from the so-called socialist Bernie Sanders or the hyper-capitalist Donald Trump.

Lessons of the past

Whether that approach can actually work for a mainstream political party is less obvious—it would be a surprise if, in the end, the Democrats go for Sanders or the Republicans for Trump. But, for good or ill, we have something of a domestic case study here in Britain.

Between 1997 and 2005, the Conservative Party spent much of its time trying to press all sorts of populist buttons—to no great effect, electorally speaking. Its experience is worth thinking about for anyone interested in how Labour might fare over the next five years.

To do that, it helps to conceive of politics as a combination of ideas, institutions, interests, and individuals. A party is successful when all four factors play positively together, but it hits rock bottom when they all point in the wrong direction—which was what happened to the Tories when they played with populism over a decade ago and looks like happening to Labour now.

The zone of acceptability

Like the Tories during their wilderness years, Labour looks as if it’s about to strand itself outside the so-called “zone of acceptability”—a policy range stretching from centre-right to centre-left, not too conservative but not too liberal. Without being located there or thereabouts a party is unlikely to be given the benefit of the doubt by sufficient voters to win a majority.

Unfortunately, Labour’s new leader and those around him hold views on the economy, on migration and multiculturalism, on welfare, defence and foreign policy that are nowhere near those of the average voter. Worse, they believe that voters only think the way they do because they’ve been duped into some sort of false consciousness by a media whose narrative previous leaders have been far too timid to challenge, thereby allowing the country’s ideological centre of gravity to be dragged in the wrong direction. That’s apparently all going to change now: the truth is out there, the public can be made to see it, and anyone in the party who thinks differently needs to realise that they’re no longer in control.

A top-down institution

The Labour Party might still possess a modicum of democracy when it comes to decision- and policy-making. However, it is, like the Conservative Party, fundamentally a top-down organisation whose direction and day-to-day positioning is largely determined by the leadership.

There are, of course, some differences. Strictly speaking, the PLP can make things more awkward for a Labour leader than the 1922 Committee can make them for his Conservative counterpart, while Conference is supposedly sovereign rather than simply advisory.

Still, just how many dissidents at Westminster will actually speak up rather than sit back and give Corbyn enough rope to hang himself? As for Conference, a bunch of Labour activists gathered together for a few days are no more likely than their Tory equivalents to insist that their leadership cleaves to the pragmatic centre rather than heading for the ideological hills.

Moreover, whereas the Tory press, after comprehensively undermining John Major, only encouraged William Hague, IDS and Michael Howard to be more Thatcherite than Thatcher, the papers that tend to back Labour—principally The Mirror and The Guardian—are more likely to urge caution and what the party’s moderates would see as sanity.

Vested interests

To say that Labour exists to fight the trade unions’ corner, while the Conservatives exist to protect the interests of property and capital is clearly simplistic—but not that simplistic when it comes to thinking about how the two parties are funded.

And in the end, money does talk. Iain Duncan Smith, who was the Conservative Party leader from September 2001 to November 2003, was ultimately undermined by his own MPs but they didn’t act until the party’s biggest donors decided that he would have to go and used the media to get their message across. Corbyn, on the other hand, currently seems quids-in with the leaders of Labour’s biggest unions, some of whose views either match his own or are even further to the left.

There have been times, in the past at least, when the unions acted as a restraining force; but this doesn’t look like one of them. Although we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility that, should the party begin to poll a vote share in or around 20-25 per cent, those trade union leaders might change their minds, deciding they’d prefer at least the chance of a Labour government.

The big problem for Labour, however, is that it’s relatively difficult to dump its leader—if the party’s rulebook is followed to the letter. Unlike their Conservative opposite numbers at Westminster, Labour MPs can’t simply collect enough signatures to trigger a vote of no confidence. That means that whoever is in the post often stays there, irrespective of how badly he’s doing—just look at previous leaders who have led the party to significant election defeats such as Michael Foot, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.

The cult of personality

Which brings us to the last of the four factors. A big reason the Tories spent a decade-and-a-half in the wilderness from the mid-90s to the early-00s was that those they chose to lead them weren’t up to the job: they were all ideologically blinkered, and only Howard was really capable of setting and sticking to a course (albeit the wrong one). IDS fared particularly badly because he wasn’t regarded as clever enough, or as a good enough performer in the Commons, to make up for the fact that his own record as a parliamentary rebel made it impossible for him to convince his own troops to observe the most basic discipline on the airwaves, in print, and in parliament. IDS lasted just 777 days in the job. But even that was long enough to pretty much ensure the next election was lost. Can Corbyn do any better? I doubt it.

Originally published at http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/other/labour-has-moved-outside-the-zone-of-acceptability

 

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‘Just who are these Labour Party members who will be choosing the new leader?’ (with Paul Webb), Independent, 23 July 2015

Posted on August 19, 2015 by tpbale

Most of the coverage of Labour’s leadership contest has focused on the candidates. But what about the people who will be choosing between Corbyn, Burnham, Cooper and Kendall? In May 2015, we surveyed 1,180 Labour Party members as part of a wider research project into party membership in the UK funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Here’s some of what we found.

1 They don’t necessarily live where Labour support is strongest

True, getting on for a fifth of Labour Party members live in its London stronghold, but nearly a third of them live in southern England outside the capital.

2 Men outnumber women – but not by much

The ratio – six men for every four women – is exactly the same as it is in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

3 There aren’t many horny-handed sons (or daughters) of toil among them

Just over two-thirds of Labour Party members can be categorised as ABC1, with just under a third being what marketers call C2DEs. Well over half of them (56%) are graduates. Some 44% of Labour members work in the public sector – over twice as many as in the electorate as a whole.

4 Ethnic minorities are slightly underrepresented at the grassroots

Around 13% of the UK population is from an ethnic minority – compared 9% of Labour Party members.

5 Younger people tend to support the Labour Party but its members are by no means all spring chickens

The average Labour Party member is 51 years old – only a little younger than the average Tory member, incidentally – with only 14% of the membership younger than thirty. The average member has been in the party for 18 years.

6 A sizable minority of members don’t do anything for the party other than pay their subs

Around a third of members fall into this category, and even during the five weeks of the election campaign around a quarter of Labour’s grassroots did nothing other than, presumably, cheer it on from the side-lines. Even those who did make the effort tended to prefer the less demanding stuff: just over half displayed posters or liked things on Facebook, whereas only a third claimed to have done any phone or face-to-face canvassing.

7 On balance, Labour’s grassroots are pretty positive about their experience of membership

True, around a third of members feel the leadership doesn’t pay them much attention and a quarter even go so far as to say that it doesn’t respect them. Around a third confess that doing stuff for the party can be pretty boring at times and over half worry about it taking time away from family. But nearly nine out of ten members think that working together with other party members can make a real difference, and two-thirds see membership as a good way of meeting interesting people. And three-quarters of members say that membership has lived up to their expectations.

8 Labour Party members are really pretty left wing

When we asked grassroots members to place themselves on a left-right spectrum running from zero (“very left wing”) to ten (“very right wing”), the average score was 2.39 – interestingly, slightly to the left of the average SNP member and only just to the right of the average member of the Greens; Lib Dem members placed themselves considerably closer towards the centre. On specific issues, just over 90% of Labour members think cuts to public spending have gone too far. About the same proportion want to see government redistributing income from the better-off to the less well-off. Just over 80% think that management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance. So, although only two out of our 1200 Labour Party members wrote down Jeremy Corbyn’s name when we asked them to tell us who should replace Ed Miliband, no-one should be too surprised if he attracts more support than some in the Party hoped would be the case.

9 Labour Party members are, by and large, liberal cosmopolitans

Only one in 10 would countenance the death penalty and only one in five think we need to censor films and magazines to preserve this country’s morals. On Europe, 85 per cent of Labour Party members intend to vote to stay in the EU irrespective of the package Cameron renegotiates with other member states prior to the referendum. Eight out of ten think that immigration is good for the economy, with the same number believing that it enriches Britain’s cultural life.

10 And finally…Labour isn’t the only organisation they belong to

Trade union leaders reckon they’ve persuaded lots of their members to join the Party since the election in the hope of influencing its choice of leader. When we surveyed Party members, however, only four out of ten of them belonged to a union. Still, that’s a higher proportion than in the UK as a whole, where just one in four employees now belongs to a union – 14% in the private sector and 55% in the public sector. And Labour Party members are much more likely to belong to unions than any other organisation. Just one in five said they belonged to the National Trust – and even that was twice as many as said they belonged to English Heritage and the RSPB respectively. Only one per cent of Labour members, incidentally, said they belonged to Weight Watchers – precisely the same proportion who are in the WI.

Originally published here.

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‘The UK general election, 2015: Surprise! Or maybe not….’, Report for German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG), July 2015

Posted on July 22, 2015 by tpbale

One  does  not  need  to  be  a  political  scientist,  let  alone  a  rocket scientist,  to  know  why,  broadly  speaking,  the opposition  Labour  Party  lost  the election and why its rival, the Conservative Party, won a second term in office –this time without having to govern alongside the Liberal Democrats, with whom it governed the country in coalition between 2010 and 2015.

Opinion  polls  failed  to  predict  the  fact  that  the  Conservatives  would emerge not just as the largest contingent at Westminster but end up with a slim overall  majority  of  twelve  seats  (based  on  37%  of  the  national  vote)  in  a parliament  of  650.    As  a  result pollsters  and  the  newspapers  which  so  eagerly commissioned their work have been the subject of much criticism since May 7th.  However,  a  handful  of  surveys  taken  of  the  electorate  in  the  immediate aftermath  probably  give  us  enough  to  go  on  in  order  to  hazard  an  educated guess as to what happened.

The Conservatives clearly benefited from the fact that a sizable majority of  voters  was  persuaded  that  the  economy  was  at  last  going  great  guns.  The same polls suggested that the Tories’ relentless trashing of Labour’s record in office prior to 2010 had hit home. Partly as a result, and partly because Labour’s leader,  Ed  Miliband, and  its  main  economic  and  finance  spokesman,  Ed  Balls, failed  to  come  up  with  a  convincing  counter-narrative,  voters  simply  did  not trust them to not to spend and borrow too  much. As a result, the Conservative managed  to  build  up  a  huge  (and  in  the  event  unassailable)  lead  as  the  party rated best able to handle the issue.

This  lead  on  the  economy  helped  the  Conservatives  neutralise  Labour’s strongest trump card, namely the idea that they couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s  National  Health  Service  (the  NHS) –the  free-at-the-point-of-need system  funded  by  general  taxation  which  has  been  hugely  popular  (and, according to myriad studies, very good value for money) since its establishment back in 1948. By promising not just to protect it but to provide it with additional funding,  the  Conservatives  could  then  turn  the  argument  back  toward  which party  was  must  trusted  to  achieve  the  economic  growth  to  generate  the necessary extra revenue. The Tories were probably helped, too, by the fact that a concerned public was in the end prepared to give the benefit of the doubt on the  NHS  to  David  Cameron,  who  has  always  made  a  great  deal  of  his  own family’s use of the service and his personal commitment to it.

The  benefit  of  the  doubt  was  not  something  which  many  voters  were prepared  to  extend  to  his  main  challenger,  Ed  Miliband.  Indeed,  given  what some  argue  is  the  increasing  importance  of  leadership evaluations  in  deciding elections,  the  Labour  leader’s  woefully  low  ratings  may  well  have  been  a significant  influence  on  the  eventual  result.  Not only did he come across  to focus group participants as ‘weak’ and ‘weird’, he clearly failed to convince people more generally that he was up to the top job in British politics.

This  is  not  always  an  impediment  to  victory:  it  is  easy  to  forget,  for instance,  that  Margaret  Thatcher  failed  to  impress  large  numbers  of  voters before she became prime minister for eleven years.  However, the low opinion in  which  the  leader  of  the  opposition  was  widely  held  was  even  more  of  a problem  this  time  round.  This  was  because  it  was  evident  to  everybody  that Labour’s only realistic chance of forming a government relied on being granted permission  to  do  so  by  the  Scottish  Nationalist  Party  (SNP)  who  polls  were predicting  (quite  rightly  it  turned  out)  were  going  to  take  almost  all  the  seats north  of  the  border –most of them at Labour’s expense. Had the party had a more credible leader, voters may have been prepared to discount Conservative accusations  that  such  an  arrangement  would  cause  chaos  and  see  English interests sacrificed to keep the Scots on board.  As it turned out, they were not.  Large  numbers  of  voters  in  marginal  seats  south  of  the  border  seem  to  have voted Tory to deny Scotland’s first minister, the highly-able SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, any say in the government of the UK.

Labour wasn’t the only party to suffer in this respect.  What turned out to be  widespread  concern  about  the  Scottish  tail  wagging  the  English  dog  may well  have  helped  turn  an  inevitable  defeat  for  the  self-styled  centrists,  the Liberal  Democrats, into  an  absolute disaster,  ensuring they  were  reduced from 57 seats in 2010 to just eight in 2015. That said, the party’s fate was probably already  sealed  from  the  moment  its  leader  Nick  Clegg,  after  fighting  the  2010  election on a platform which seemed much closer to Labour’s than the Tories’, decided on a counter-intuitive coalition with the Conservatives. Some Lib Dem voters  turned  away  (and  to  Labour  and  the  Greens)  in  disgust.  Others simply couldn’t see the point of Clegg and his colleagues anymore and switched to the Conservatives,   who   were   more   than   happy   to   cannibalise   their   coalition partner’s vote.  Meanwhile,  the  fact  that  some  Labour  voters  who  had  voted tactically for the Lib Dems in 2010 refused to do so in 2015 may have helped the Tories in a few Lib-Con marginals. Labour also suffered at the hands of the radical right-wing populist party, UKIP   and   its   anti-immigration,   anti-‘political  correctness’,  and  anti-EU platform which seems to appeal so strongly to older voters with little education and  highly  traditional  views  who  feel  left  behind  by  the  modern,  globalised, multicultural world. In Labour’s northern heartlands this was unsettling (UKIP achieved large numbers of second places) but not catastrophic. But in marginal seats in the Midlands and in the South of England the fact that some potential Labour  voters  switched  to  UKIP  may  have  helped the  Conservative  candidate win contests they otherwise might have lost.

The eventual result, then, came as a surprise –but only because so many pundits [and academic observers like me!] had allowed themselves to become bewitched by polls which pointed to another ‘hung parliament’ and by a  campaign  which  appeared  at  times  to  be going better for Ed Miliband than it did for David Cameron. In fact, most of the fundamentals had been in place for a Conservative victory for some time. The only  reason  perhaps  that  the  margin  of  that  victory,  at least  in  parliamentary terms,  turned  out  to  be  so  slim  was  that  the  Tories  have  still  not  managed  to convince  the  public  that  their  supposed  competence  is  balanced  by  sufficient compassion and a sense they are on the side of ordinary people rather than those who are doing spectacularly well.

If David Cameron decides to use his victory wisely, he may be able to fix this  ongoing  problem,  especially  while  Labour  is  so  obviously  struggling  to come up with a convincing alternative (and a convincing leader). Certainly, the electoral  arithmetic  looks  favourable –and  will  be  made  more  favourable  still by  changes  in  parliamentary boundaries  and  the  franchise. However,  Cameron may  find  it  harder  to  complete  the  decontamination  of  the  Conservative  brand than many ‘modernisers’ hope. Many  of  his  colleagues  remain  determined  to slash  spending –particularly  welfare  spending –on  a  scale  which  is  bound  to call into question their assurances that ‘we are all in this together’. And then, of course, there is the upcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. If the early signs mean anything, Cameron’s party looks like it may go back to the  future  by  descending  into  the  internal  faction-fighting  that  helped  alienate voters back in the 1990s, ushering in thirteen years of Labour government.

Originally published here

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‘Who will win the Labour leadership election? It’s a little early to tell’ (with Paul Webb) New Statesman, 22 June 2015

Posted on July 4, 2015 by tpbale

It’s doubtful that voters are paying that much attention to Labour’s leadership contest, but that hasn’t prevented pollsters from beginning to ask them who they think the party should pick. First out of the traps was Ipsos MORI.  Its poll last week suggested that no-one has yet established themselves as the clear favourite in the eyes of the public, with Andy Burnham on 15 per cent, Yvette Cooper on 14 per cent, Liz Kendall on 11 per cent and Jeremy Corbyn on 5 per cent.  Some 18 per cent of respondents claimed not to like any of the choices on offer and 34 per cent said they didn’t know.

Labour supporters, according to the same poll, were rather more likely to have an opinion – and less likely to be negative about the whole thing: although 24 per cent of them still don’t know, only 7 per cent said they didn’t like any of those standing.  Among those expressing a preference, Andy Burnham once again had a narrow 23 per cent-20 per cent lead over Yvette Cooper, with Liz Kendall on 11 per cent and token leftie, Jeremy Corbyn not far behind her on 9 per cent.

In the end, though, it’s not voters, or even that part of the electorate which reckons it will vote Labour, who will decide the contest.  And this time round it won’t be MPs or trade unionists either.  Yes, they’ll have a vote but, in contrast to 2010, it won’t be worth any more than that of any other ordinary member or affiliated supporter of the party.  So while it’s fascinating to see which MPs are declaring for which candidate it’s only by moving away from Westminster and asking grassroots members what they think that we can say anything worthwhile about the state of play at this stage.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done.  As part of a study into the demographics, motivations, opinions and activities of ordinary members funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, some of the fieldwork for which is being conducted by YouGov, we asked nearly 1200 Labour Party members in May who they’d like to see as their next leader.  Since we didn’t know at the time who would make it on to the ballot, and since we didn’t want to restrict their choices in case there were any dark horses out there that no one had noticed, we asked members to write in who they wanted rather than present them with a pre-cooked list of possible runners and riders.  Their answers suggest that there is, indeed, all to play for.

True, Andy Burnham was – yet again – the front-runner.  But he was only the choice of 18 per cent of members – not that far ahead of Chuka Umunna (who hadn’t yet dropped out when we started surveying) on 12 per cent.  Next came Yvette Cooper on 8.5 per cent (ahead of Dan Jarvis, who hadn’t yet ruled himself out when we began) on 5 per cent.  Liz Kendall, almost certainly because she was far less well-known, even by Labour Party members, than most of the others, was named by just 2 per cent – the same figure, incidentally, as the much better-known prince across the pond, David Miliband.  Jeremy Corbyn, by the way, was put forward by just two respondents.*

Still, the most striking thing was that nearly four out of ten grassroots members (37.5 per cent to be precise) said they didn’t yet know who they wanted to succeed Ed Miliband. Add that to the 34 per cent who named somebody outside of the four candidates who eventually made it onto the ballot, and it’s obvious that an awful of a lot of ordinary members’ votes  are still very much up for grabs.

We didn’t, though, just stop at asking the grassroots who they’d like to see leading the party.  We also asked them – and indeed the members of other parties – to rank the qualities they most valued in a leader.  Labour members, it turned out, were much less likely than Tory members to rank strength and authority number one, and much more likely to put having strong beliefs first.  Interestingly, less than 10 per cent of Labour’s grassroots put the ability to unite the party top of their list.  Indeed, being able to unite the nation, being in touch with ordinary people, being a good communicator and appealing to the average voter all came higher, each of them being ranked first by around 15 per cent of members.

Food for thought for all the candidates in a contest that, clearly, is still wide open.  Whatever the pundits or the bookies say, nobody has this thing sewn up – not yet at least.  It could be an interesting summer after all.

* In the original post, we said Mr Corbyn’s name hadn’t been suggested as a replacement for Ed Miliband by any of the 1180 Labour members we surveyed.  We have since recounted the datafile and found two people had named him. Apologies for the error.

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