Oldham West and Royton

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 11:11:27 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Dec 7, 2015 10:57:12 GMT johnsmith said:

Indeed, especially if most of them have been motivated to turn out in support of one particular party.

Imagine what could be achieved if an extra 5% turned out in England, and most of them supported us? It is worth aiming for instead of writing these people off in terms of political calculations.

Other parties and their supporters would rather we dismissed them as inevitable non-voters, because they know their parties will never persuade them and the only ones who can is us. Let's not agree with their assessment and give up on them too.

Oh no, not the 'non-voters fallacy' again. It's been shown to be an electoral blind alley so many times and still it refuses to die, probably because it is a crutch for those who don't have any other way of arguing that their approach is electorally successful. But one more time:

1) Differential turnout does exist but can't be manipulated.
2) Campaigning to raise the turnout expends a great deal of energy for little results.
3) The idea that non-voters are to the left of voters generally is not true.
4) The one thing that does distinguish non-voters from voters is - they don't vote.

The SNP proved these crass assumptions wrong for starters.

There are many out there who are victims of the Thatcherite consensus who gave up on voting or who have never voted. But they feel angry. And anger is a powerful motivator. They just need someone to galvanise them - to give a purpose to their anger - as the SNP did in Scotland.

You will never see that, because your champions - Liz Kendall, David Miliband, et al - will never galvanise them this side of the Second Coming. Indeed, they represent part of what they are angry about!

As for what is or is not electorally successful, New Labour achieved it's success by working hard to win floating voters, even at the expense of taking it's natural voters for granted. Worked very well in purely electoral terms for a while. Didn't work quite so well for private tenants or those in need of council housing, but never mind. However, in the long run many of our natural voters - especially the poorer working classes - gave up on us to such an extent that we find ourselves unable to win an election because of it. We need to be a party that fights for them again, too.

And your wing of the party really does need to move beyond the simplistic notion that the electorate are all "in the centre". On an issue by issue basis they are mostly nowhere near the centre. Yes, in some areas they are very right wing. But there are others in which they swing well to the left. I have said this before but it obviously needs repeating. In a relatively recent polling survey whose results were published in the New Statesman, between two thirds and three quarters of the electorate supported nationalisation of the railways, gas, electricity and water companies. Even Corbyn doesn't go that far! A similar number favoured a top rate of 50p, whilst cutting it to 45p was the least popular thing the Tories have done, at least until the tax credits issue. 58% favour a top rate of 60%, again well to the left of Corbyn. A majority oppose the bedroom tax, those in favour of rent caps outnumber those opposed by a margin of two to one, and a clear majority want much more social housing construction. Two thirds favour a price cap on energy charges. Three quarters favour a mansion tax, etc, etc.

Now I am not saying all that to advocate it as desired policy, but merely to illustrate how well to the left the public are on these issues. But that being the case, on what grounds would you assume such policies to have negative electoral appeal? In fact, Liz Kendal was even hinting at the desirability of cutting the top rate still further to 40p. In view of where the public stand on this, would you care to explain how this approach would enhance our electoral appeal? 

[Davıd Boothroyd]

You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

I'll say it a third time: You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

PS: yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/06/support-radical-left-and-right/

[johnr]

The problem with getting non-voters to vote for us, is that most of them are in Labour-held seats.

[oldwarhorse]

I have probably knocked on the doors of more 'working class' non voters in the last 23 years than anyone on this forum.

They don't vote because they are not interested. It's irrelevant to them (rightly or wrongly). They don't know what left or right wing means. Don't know which parties are out there. Don't engage with current affairs. Often they have chaotic lives focused on a hand to mouth existence. They are far too low down Mazlow's pyramid to be in a position to even think about voting.

They wouldn't know Jeremy Corbyn if you showed them his photo. Actually they wouldn't come to the door in order for you to ask.

Occasionally I also meet some who are relatively well off and don't vote (ever) but they tend to have escaped from poorer homes in their history.

It grieves me that the people who are most affected by cuts are the least likely to vote, given they have the most to win or lose, but there you have it.

[Merseymike]

Dec 7, 2015 7:41:27 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

But the turnout in Scotland last time was 71.1%,only 5% higher than the UK as a whole. 28.9% of the population still didn't vote. If they thought Labour weren't left-wing enough, and nor a SNP on the crest of a wave, who are these people going to vote for?

A 5% increase in the turnout does not explain a 30% swing to the SNP.

Of course it doesn't, because many existing voters also switched to the SNP

But an increase in turnout from 63.8 in 2010 to 71.1 - almost all for the SNP, it is reasonable to conclude, plus the swing of existing voters, caused the landslide

If Labour could increase the turnout that much and in their favour, plus gain some votes from UKIP, LD and Green, then that would clearly make a significant difference

[Merseymike]

Dec 7, 2015 11:11:27 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Dec 7, 2015 10:57:12 GMT johnsmith said:

Indeed, especially if most of them have been motivated to turn out in support of one particular party.

Imagine what could be achieved if an extra 5% turned out in England, and most of them supported us? It is worth aiming for instead of writing these people off in terms of political calculations.

Other parties and their supporters would rather we dismissed them as inevitable non-voters, because they know their parties will never persuade them and the only ones who can is us. Let's not agree with their assessment and give up on them too.

Oh no, not the 'non-voters fallacy' again. It's been shown to be an electoral blind alley so many times and still it refuses to die, probably because it is a crutch for those who don't have any other way of arguing that their approach is electorally successful. But one more time:

1) Differential turnout does exist but can't be manipulated.
2) Campaigning to raise the turnout expends a great deal of energy for little results.
3) The idea that non-voters are to the left of voters generally is not true.
4) The one thing that does distinguish non-voters from voters is - they don't vote.

You may as well give up on the next election, then, because I think the chances of our gaining many votes from the Tories is nil

[Davıd Boothroyd]

It's definitely nil if we don't even try.

[Merseymike]

If doing so loses us more votes - and party members - than it gains, which it undoubtedly would given that most Tories are getting what they voted for and are quite happy, it would be a clear mistake.

[right]

Dec 7, 2015 14:43:55 GMT Merseymike said:

Dec 7, 2015 11:11:27 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Oh no, not the 'non-voters fallacy' again. It's been shown to be an electoral blind alley so many times and still it refuses to die, probably because it is a crutch for those who don't have any other way of arguing that their approach is electorally successful. But one more time:

1) Differential turnout does exist but can't be manipulated.
2) Campaigning to raise the turnout expends a great deal of energy for little results.
3) The idea that non-voters are to the left of voters generally is not true.
4) The one thing that does distinguish non-voters from voters is - they don't vote.

You may as well give up on the next election, then, because I think the chances of our gaining many votes from the Tories is nil

No more questions m'lud.

[Richard Allen]

A lot of people are also forgetting another big factor. Labour's general election result was only so bad because of Scotland and the Tories only won a majority due to seats gained from the Lib Dems. By and large Labour held their own among Con-Lab swing voters in England (with a number of seats changing hands in both directions). Labour certainly aren't down to their core vote in England and could lose more centrist votes to the Tories if they go too far to the left.

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 16:31:03 GMT Richard Allen said:

A lot of people are also forgetting another big factor. Labour's general election result was only so bad because of Scotland and the Tories only won a majority due to seats gained from the Lib Dems. By and large Labour held their own among Con-Lab swing voters in England (with a number of seats changing hands in both directions). Labour certainly aren't down to their core vote in England and could lose more centrist votes to the Tories if they go too far to the left.

Depends on which issues the Labour party goes left on. On some - as I have pointed out in an earlier post - the public are well to the left even of Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour must stop thinking simplistically re the fabled "centre ground" and have the tactical intelligence to figure out where they can be both radically left wing and popular, and where they definitely cannot, and respond accordingly. And they should cease repeating the Blairite mistake of taking any of those who do support them for granted.

[Deleted]

Dec 7, 2015 16:31:03 GMT Richard Allen said:

A lot of people are also forgetting another big factor. Labour's general election result was only so bad because of Scotland and the Tories only won a majority due to seats gained from the Lib Dems. By and large Labour held their own among Con-Lab swing voters in England (with a number of seats changing hands in both directions). Labour certainly aren't down to their core vote in England and could lose more centrist votes to the Tories if they go too far to the left.

And lose others if they go too far right

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 12:48:22 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

I'll say it a third time: You don't regain the votes of lost working class voters by moving to the left.

That reads as a mantra being clung to, and not a case of mentally engaging with the issues.

Because regaining the lost working classes involves addressing their long ignored concerns re housing and employment primarily. 

And like I have already said, polling evidence suggests that in these and other areas, majority public opinion - including that of the lost working classes - is very much on the left.

I will ask a pertinent question again. How would Liz Kendall's obvious desire to cut the top rate of tax still further appeal to them?

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 14:09:11 GMT oldwarhorse said:

I have probably knocked on the doors of more 'working class' non voters in the last 23 years than anyone on this forum.

They don't vote because they are not interested. It's irrelevant to them (rightly or wrongly). They don't know what left or right wing means. Don't know which parties are out there. Don't engage with current affairs. Often they have chaotic lives focused on a hand to mouth existence. They are far too low down Mazlow's pyramid to be in a position to even think about voting.

They wouldn't know Jeremy Corbyn if you showed them his photo. Actually they wouldn't come to the door in order for you to ask.

Occasionally I also meet some who are relatively well off and don't vote (ever) but they tend to have escaped from poorer homes in their history.

It grieves me that the people who are most affected by cuts are the least likely to vote, given they have the most to win or lose, but there you have it.

We have not had nearly enough to offer them on their key bread and butter issues before. When we have something we can sell them that will make a major difference to their rents and their housing security and employment security, we can hope to persuade some of them. We need the right message with the right relevance. New Labour often looked too similar to the Tories to them and came to be seen as part of the problem. And they are not focussed enough upon current affairs to fully comprehend the change since then.

But again I say, the SNP has proven that some of them can be persuaded if we can truly offer them things that will make a massive difference in terms of their security and financial hand to mouth existence.

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 12:54:31 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

PS: yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/06/support-radical-left-and-right/

Thanks for that David. I am grateful to you for posting that link.

In some ways this reinforces what I have long been saying. The public are often nowhere near the centre on an issue by issue basis. On some issues the public veer well to the right, and on others well to the left. I have listed many of the areas where the public swing left, and your link offers some of the same ones.

But it also does what I haven't done insofar as it spells out examples of where the public swing well to the right. Law and order has long been an area where majority public opinion is very right wing, with a majority in favour of capital punishment, and many of those who are not believing that life should mean life. Generally, the public believes that prison is too easy and sentences way too short. Many sympathise with the hanging and flogging wing of the Tory party.

That people are wary of large sums of money being spent on foreign aid also doesn't surprise me. We have to be far more careful in what we send and to whom to carry the public with us, though the aid issue is seldom a make or break issue for most voters.

That people want to get tough on those out of work whom they feel are opting not to work doesn't surprise me either. It is another area where the public are definitely on the right. They want no easy rides for those they feel are not doing their all. But at the same time they do have much more sympathy with the working poor who obviously are doing the right thing but who need help because of low pay or stupidly high rents. The current government has struggled to understand the difference which is why they nearly came a cropper over the tax credits thing.

And yes, majority opinion is against large scale immigration. But I have always said that a fundamental reason for this is due to the way foreign labour has been systematically exploited to disadvantage the working classes economically to the betterment of their employers. For too long, Labour offered no positive solutions to the resulting issues on pay, employment availability and housing shortages. So UKIP's negative solutions were for a very long time the only show in town. This needs to change.

But far from - as your wing of the party does - simplistically assuming that the centre ground is where the public are at - in spite of the evidence to the contrary in your own link - we need as a party to figure out where we can be radical in a way that can address the forgotten concerns of millions, yet which is also popular, whilst having the wisdom to avoid lurching off to the left in those areas where we cannot bring the public with us. Being more tactically intelligent and nuanced in our thinking will enable us to increase our popularity by offering real radical change - provided that it is the change which people want. And if they want it we should not refrain from doing it on the simplistic and misguided assumption that left always equals unpopular.

Because even the evidence of your own link demonstrates that to be a fallacy. We just need to be careful to identify where we can be popularly left wing and where we definitely can't.

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 14:55:56 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

It's definitely nil if we don't even try.

Same with galvanising the support of the forgotten millions, many of whom ought to be our natural supporters! The very people we as a party exist to champion precisely because nobody else gives a damn about them.

[Robert Waller]

I don't normally wish to get involved in political debates on this forum, but I was mentioned by name in one of the above posts.

I think the reverse of what johnsmith asserts - to an extent. What I mean by this apparently self-coontradictory statement is that there is plenty of evidence that parties outside the 'big two' gain from the oxygen of publicity, as UKIP did before, during, and after the European election campaign. They have been off the radar since the 2015 general election and have approximately halved in support in opinion polls an local byelections most Thursdays. Their policies and personalities have not become more or less obnoxious (or otherwise). I would guess that UKIP will recover when the referendum comes along. If they suffer from some decline before general elections it is not so much because ordinary voters suddenly 'see the light' about their nature but more because the FPTP electoral system and the perceived need to choose a government militate against them.

However I said 'to some extent' because UKIP struggle to extend their appeal beyond a section of anti-party and anti-politics electors who feel unrepresented by more traditional parties; oddly to some, a very similar group to those who swung to the Lib Dems in midterms before the latter destroyed these credentials by joining the Coalition in 2010-15. UKIP may therefore return to the mid and high teens in polls, under prevailing circumstances (which may of course change).
Where I think the main difference n our debate lies is the question of how large the essential level of Labour support is. When asked in the more sophisticated type of survey, it has long been clear that this figure (as for committed Conservatives) has dropped dramatically since, say, the 1950s. The Labour core vote, the strong identifiers, may not be more than about 20%.
Most voters do not think like members of this forum, who are articulate and place policy and ideology high in their priorities. Normal people spend their time getting on with their lives!
Research internationally suggests that strongly political individuals conventionally classed towards the ends of the left to right spectrum tend to over-estimate the number of people who think like they do. See for example the extreme Republicans who think that there are only half a dozen members of Congress who are 'true Americans'.
For these reasons, core vote strategies are highly unlikely to work. Much more sophisticated analysis, taking into account the very unsophistication of the electorate, is needed.

[Sibboleth]

Of course a major problem with most political 'research' is that it continues to be dominated by the sort of uncritical quantitative methods that have largely (and quite rightly) been discredited in other areas of social research.

[johnsmith]

Dec 7, 2015 18:53:34 GMT Robert Waller said:

Research internationally suggests that strongly political individuals conventionally classed towards the ends of the left to right spectrum tend to over-estimate the number of people who think like they do. See for example the extreme Republicans who think that there are only half a dozen members of Congress who are 'true Americans'.
For these reasons, core vote strategies are highly unlikely to work. Much more sophisticated analysis, taking into account the very unsophistication of the electorate, is needed.

I agree with this to an extent. As politically knowledgable and ideologically motivated and enthused political anoraks we are not really representative of the public at large. Many only have the vaguest ideas of what the parties stand for, put a large emphasis on personality which the media panders to, and some are way too unduly influenced by the tabloid of their choice. And a tendency to assume that the way we think and feel about things is automatically the mainstream of opinion is something we are all potentially vulnerable to and need to guard against. I certainly see it in evidence with many other forum members here, and perhaps many of them do with me.

But insofar as myself is concerned, I think you mistake my position for a "core vote strategy". Yes I recognise the need to address the concerns of those left behind, particularly the poor working classes, many of whom once would have been typical core Labour supporters. But I am well aware that Labour cannot win with their support alone. We cannot seek to govern exclusively for them, and them alone. Saying that we should not ignore them anymore - the Labour party exists to champion the downtrodden, after all - is not the same thing as saying we should ignore everyone else except them.

And I myself have long argued that a simplistic "hug the centre" approach to all policy areas will fail my party and fail the British people, and will no longer deliver electoral victory. We need a much more sophisticated analysis, it is true - one which achieves a greater understanding of where majority opinion lies on a broad range of issues. As a party of the left such as we are, Labour needs to understand where left wing positions are popular and go with them, and where left wing positions are not popular. Here is where we need to stay closer to the centre. But we also need to understand that whilst people arrive at strong left or right positions on this or that issue, they are doing so on merit through the prism of their own lives and the lives of those around them, and rarely thinking in terms of left or right at all. They often don't really understand what right and left really means, or else they simply have a tabloid-inspired misconception of it. They don't think in terms of right or left at all but of right or wrong as they see it. They may well hate certain aspects of society, whether it be landlords, welfare claimants, immigrants, jobcentre staff, the local council, or whatever. But they seldom attach party labels or party ideology to any of it. 

In recognition of this, if the Labour party is wise it will avoid spouting the language of socialist dogma or Marxism, or engage in tiresome philosophical debates in public about the nature of capitalism versus socialism and the class structure and things like that, and instead simply speak about each issue in everyday language, invoking simple concepts of fairness and social justice, and simply explaining how this or that policy will directly address this or that concern to make peoples' lives better.

And yet the very fact that people do often take what are recognisably very left wing stances on some issues and very right wing ones on others - even if they themselves don't think in such terms - is something that parties need to understand by a more sophisticated analysis than my party certainly has deployed in the past. We can carry more people with us then whilst being more true to our values.