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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » New PB columnist Don Brind looks back two weeks
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » New PB columnist Don Brind looks back two weeks
The Tory annus mirabilis saw John Major confounding the pollsters and trouncing Neil Kinnock with a record 14 million votes. But it swiftly turned into annus horribilis when four months later Black Wednesday saw the pound crash out of the European Exchange rate mechanism in a welter of interest rate hikes.
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Thanks Don, that's a very interesting article.
Social media will be so important in 2020. I wonder who will have the most money to exploit it?
Also has anyone done any systematic number-crunching to see if incumbency and/or double-incumbency applied here? From the general vibe it seemed like it had, but then Andrea posted a bunch of examples without an incumbent that seemed to show Con non-incumbents doing pretty well too.
But I think you are missing the message element: as @SouthamObserver says, the Tories had a clear message that resonated, while @felix notes that Labour's message just didn't connect.
Having a good message and selling it well explains their victory
@Charles - "Excellent article, welcome. Good to have a leftie version of David Herdson."
Indeed.
The levée en masse methods used by Labour on the day of the election itself failed. They will need to rethink.
I think we all know the answer to that one.
You need a lot of chips for all that vinegar.
An excellent article, it will be interesting to see if all parties copy Messina's approach for the next election as it seemed to be effective this time. The question is can that technique still be effective if everyone is doing it?
In reality, such techniques probably only make a difference at the margin. But they might sway 500-1,500 voters in 5-15 key seats (and, crucially, get them to turn out) and that's where the value lies.
That was the difference between the exit poll and the actual result.
http://newstonoone.blogspot.com/2015/05/2020-ukips-choices.html
They seem to me to have the biggest decisions to make of all the parties.
It makes campaign spending limits increasingly pointless: a lot of the work (and hence money) to identify voters can be done before campaign limits kick in.
In any event it is very much in the interests of the likes of Messina to claim remarkable things for the work he did and charged so highly for. I am not saying it didn't help but there were a series of following winds.
I had been predicting on here that the incredible bias that used to exist in favour of Labour in the electoral system would unwind making forecasts that the Tories would lose large number of seats if they were less than 11.4% ahead in England inaccurate. Many of the reasons I gave for this came to pass.
I predicted that the Labour vote would improve in their safe seats from their Brown nadir. They did with very little effect on the number of their seats.
I predicted that the Tory vote would be made more efficient because UKIP would reduce their majorities in their safe seats. They did. In addition it seems some potential tories went to UKIP in Labour safe seats as well. The Tories basically gained centre voters in the marginal for right wing voters in safe seats and no hopers, a very good swop.
I predicted that the Tories would improve their efficiency by gaining Lib Dem seats. I completely underestimated the scale of this but that is because I was stupid enough to believe the polls. I also predicted that the Labour vote would go up in these seats because of the red Liberals to the benefit of the tories, not Labour.
I predicted that the efficiency of the Labour vote would be significantly reduced by results in Scotland. Again this turned out even more than I predicted.
All of these trends may have been augmented by clever online focussed campaigning but the trends themselves probably delivered the majority of their seats.
Labour needs to watch the idea that they lost because they were outspent or done in by some sophisticated campaign techniques. Their problems are far more fundamental than that.
The conclusion to the article is both obvious and brutally simple; if Labour have a recognisable 'leader' who exudes competence, they can win like Blair.
Neither Burnham nor Yvette pass that test
Serious question - are there any decent election gurus on the left of politics? (Not counting Obama's team obviously)
But also (again serious question) have any big lefty parties had any success whatsoever in the past few years? Hollande? (edit: I can only think of ideologues on the left, pragmatic lefties stand a better chance, surely)
For me, the key point of the election campaign was when a BBC audience laughed incredulously at Ed claiming Labour had not overspent. I can barely imagine how much satisfaction that gave Osborne who had been working on shaping that particular message (along with his Long Term Economic Plan) since 2010. It frankly doesn't matter who is right or wrong in that argument. What matters is the Tories had framed the argument in a way that greatly favoured them and Labour had not done the hard work before the campaign started.
It would be interesting to get two stats: the %age of 18-24 and 25-39 who actually voted against expectation and whether more of these favoured the Cons than was forecast.
I presume that more of these are likely to use electronic social media than the older age groups?
During the election campaign, I was quite impressed with the number of young people who were handing out leaflets in the street and were much more cogent in their reasoning when questioned, than may of their fellow older campaigners who often just repeated what was 'on the sheet' parrot fashion. The best young people were with the Greens, whilst they were rarely visible with the LDs and PC.
The parties that did well: Conservatives and SNP had a clear and credible message, with the advantage of good leadership and an economic tailwind.
Compare with the ones that did less well: Labour had poor leadership (not just Ed, most of the shadow cabinet were invisible), confused message (for or against austerity?) and poor presentation. LDs ditto, UKIP ditto.
I think it will be a couple of elections before the LDs are a viable force again, and it looks as if UKIP are going to remain Faragist (which means ineffective when campaigning). Labour can revive and win enough seats to form a government by getting the fundamentals right: good disciplined leadership, a credible and consistent platform and a more professional campaign.
What a sad, limited, depressing way to view the role of government.
We certainly won't be using it the way we do now (and indeed social media and a person's overall online presence may have merged to the extent the the term 'social media' is redundant).
But I expect Facebook, in its various guises, to remain one of the biggest players. Not least because they actually make money.
However...
The excuses for the Tories Winning seem to be
1) The Tories frightened people into voting for them
2) The Tories had more money to throw at the election
3) The Tories lied * insert here rant on what you considered they lied about*
I also always find it interesting how the left always accuse others of what they do themselves. The people have finally woken up to the hypocriscy that issued from Labour and still does. Labour are now about to elect Dud 2 as a leader. So sure they will probably get a bad one they want a re vote in 2018.
Meanwhile we were all assured by IOS (recently of this Parish) ....RIP ( resting in posting) that the Labour ground war was storming all other parties. Yet? Yet..... We find after the event Labour kept the poor polls even from their own people. Even from their own senior MPs who then lost their seats.
Forget the three overused excuses above, until Labour recognise that they overspent and face that demon, have a sensible economic policy, dump the unions influence, change their methods , their ideology and quite simply stop thei lies , deceptions and dark arts all of which no longer impress then the longer they will remain in the wilderness.
This though can only be a good thing for the country as a whole and in May this year the electorate agreed as they will again in 2020 and probably 2025 as well.
In fact, they lost because their message did get through, and the electorate didn't like it.
As in 1992, and as with Gordon Brown, Labour's campaign gurus cocked things up a treat, with inane tricks transferred unadapted from America. #Edstone (made worse as @DavidL says by its being inscribed with platitudes rather than policies); in debates, addressing questioners by name (2015's answer to Gordon Brown agreeing with Nick and charging down into the audience). This was made worse, of course, when Miliband mistook the sex of one questioner (perhaps as a result of not wearing his glasses) which reinforced Tory messaging that he was out of his depth. The lectern: 'nuff said.
And there was no positive message. Nothing had been learned from the rise of the SNP and the near-success of its independence campaign.
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/684922/#Comment_684922
Relevant comments:
DCJ's post simply encapsulates the jist of the quote "The people (lawyers) have voted the bastards."
All that class war hatred looses elections for the lefties but they just cannot help them selves which for us that want good governance is a good thing in many ways.
Good piece. Presumably the Ashdown quote refers to the whole of 2015 rather than the short campaign, given spending limits? It's also interesting he didn't raise it during his hat-eating disbelief of the exit poll.
Mr. Dodd (and others), Miliband's problem was *not* being seen as a geek. It was being seen as incompetent, and weird. Geeks are mainstream now (cf all the superhero films and success of fantasy). I don't think it's accurate to equate geekliness with weirdness.
Liz Kendall looks promising so far, so I assume she has no chance.
They are spectacularly inequipped to truly understand why they lost, because that would involve have the self-awareness and perspective to question some of their core messages.
So instead they are shooting the messenger (the voters), the messengers (the press), the message they didn't like (the Tories) and what facilitated distribution of the message (the money) but haven't even started to think about their own message yet.
Except perhaps Liz Kendall.
(They always come crawling back, though).
On such things does the fate of history turn.
Until a losing side accepts that they lost - because they lost =no lessons will be learnt.
Blaming external factors rather than the core product offering, won't fix anything at the necessary fundamental level. It's the Pot Noodle test - many people won't buy another one no matter how much they market it.
Voters had almost 5yrs to look at EdM and Labour's offering - and decided it was a bit too similar to the Pot Noodle they didn't fancy last time either.
Labour chose to lose the election when they chose not to remove him.
A small Tory majority can reasonably be laid at Ed's door. But none of the other candidates the party had (has?) to fall back on would have countered the misgivings of the electorate. For many, many months on here, I had said that Labour had no answer to the great voter misgiving: "Labour - why would you take the risk?" They trashed the economy on a previously unimagined scale, left horrendous youth unemployment, failing schools, open-door immigration, with no chance of a voice on our EU membership. They remained unapologetic on these positions until May 7th. And for the most part, since. And they had no coherent suite of policies to offer as a reason to change a government that had obviously fixed the economy. An economy that they inherited with a note saying "I'm afraid there is no money". Cheers Liam. You could not have left us a more potent, easy-to-understand image to put as a contrast before the voters. Twenty more seats gone, right there.
So the best Labour could hope for was a minority. At which point, they were easy prey for Nicola. And Salmond, writing their budget (ho ho ho it was a joke, honest). Which by happy accident (or more likely well-crafted design) left the SNP bogey-man to terrify us all before bedtime. I reported on here just how toxic that was on the doorstep. Not just with Tory-UKIP waverers, but also LibDems too.
The defining image of the 2015 campaign - up there with "Labour isn't working" in 1979 - was Salmond peering down at a little Ed in his top pocket. What people perhaps haven't commented on here is what that poster targeted. It wasn't so much Labour, directly, although indirectly it had that effect. It was rather, coalition government. A running assumption up until the small hours of the 8th May was that the issue was going to be "who could work with who?". But the voters looked at the myriad permutations - and thought, naaaaah, sod that. Let's kill off coalition government. The biggest loser of that remarkable night.
This is, of course, the same problem that the FN suffers from in France, and which explains why the FN got 1.5% of councillors on a quarter of the first round vote.
And welcome Mr Brind, as long as Labour worry about getting 'the message' across, and not the actual content of the message, the happier I shall be...."The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves......"
More importantly, I'm saying because of the way the election was fought, the government must remember there is not necessarily any great public support for any particular one of its policies.
That he was missing this time really showed in the final result.
Agreed. In LD seats many voters decided that having the LDs involved was not a good outcome. Hence the near wipeout.
But the longer Labour keep blaming the 'advertising' and not the 'product', the longer they'll wait for a solution.
Liz Kendall's '2% on defence' is interesting - imagine the Tory backbenchers 'Why will the PM & Chancellor not commit to the NATO target of 2%?.........
She is a step into the unknown, but when the choice is sticking to failure that is a good option. Stick or twist? I say twist.
Surely very little compared to the incessant droning about gay marriage we've had for the last 5 years?
Our policy was essentially seen as help the NHS (good though query on deliverability), do something about carers (went down very well and wasn't pushed enough), freeze electricity prices (not today's big problem), and diverse smaller stuff that even as a candidate I struggle to remember (what was that about football club management? ). People didn't especially disagree with any of it. They quite liked it. On balance, they liked us more than the Tories, who are still seen as essentially the party of the wealthy.
But the Tory message was much starker. Vote Labour and they'll screw the economy and let the SNP blackmail them. People thought either of these MIGHT be true - not necessarily, but perhaps. And those were big enough threats, for some, to overcome the mild liking. And so, for a small but important swing group (about 3% of the electorate), they swung in the final days, turning a dead heat into a 6% lead.
There will always be scare stories. To counter them, either we need to be so convincing that people discount the scare stories (which Blair was, like him or not) or we need to be so attractive that people think it's worth any perceived risk or, sadly, we need to have bigger scare stories. Microcampaigning a la Messina helps deliver the powerful message, but you need to have it. We did "win" the ground war in terms of people on the ground in my patch, by a country mile. But with 75% turnout nearly everyone was voting anyway, so GOTV wasn't key. Fear was - not for most voters, but for enough.
What a fantastic typo!
If I were a Labour voter (do I have £3 down the back of the sofa....?) I would keep Liz in reserve - but invest a lot in building her credibility with the Labour (and the wider) electorate to make sure she is the real deal when they need to turn to her.
It isn't much, except for the difference between having a majority and not.
Page 1 of the book "How to get Labour back into government" is all about the leader. Elect someone that looks like a potential PM and that's the best start the party could make.
We saw in Ashcroft's post-mortem article [IIRC] that whilst Labour were ahead on the NHS, the Tories weren't miles behind either.
You can't frighten voters on subjects where your bogeymen aren't that scary.
Reliable evidence. This also shows that where the Labour candidate campaigned hard there was little of the "lazy Labour" voting problem.
Hence their entire strategy and lines of attack were utterly wrong - and their leader stupendously inept and unsuitable to be PM.
But Labour MPs and members elected him - and hence must share in the blame.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/liz-kendall-to-punch-uks-last-coal-miner-2015052298524
"LABOUR leadership hopeful Liz Kendall has promised to punch the last surviving British coal miner hard in the face.
The punch, which will take place in front of the media at the site of Woolley Colliery in Barnsley later today, is Kendall’s attempt to outflank her rivals on the right.
Kendall said: “This miner, who lives in a terraced home on benefits and doesn’t even own a car, represents everything that Labour needs to leave behind.
“He worked down the mines for more than 40 years and never invested in the property market, never started his own business, no aspiration whatsoever.
“It will be my pleasure to deck him.”
Once Kendall has punched 62-year-old Roy Hobbs, she will confiscate the instruments of the Woolley Colliery Brass Band and melt them down to make a statue of Alistair Campbell.
Hobbs said: “She’s Labour, so I’m sure it’s for the best.”"
1. Magnifying every little problem of the coalition, molehills into mountains.
2. Not enough positive presentations on what excellent co-operation there was happening. Hence no credit for good stuff.
3. Reinforced the LD trust problem (tuition fees) by speaking in duplicituous term about their partners.