With a few results from the Police and Crime Commissioner polls outstanding, the mammoth 2021 election cycle is drawing to a close, and with it the bloodletting has begun in earnest, with Sir Keir Starmer reshuffling his top team and sacking his Chairman, who also happens to be deputy leader, as well as demoting his Shadow Chancellor.
On the other hand, there were a number of "winners" from this cycle, including from within Starmer's party. So, what can we draw from this double helping of elections, and where do the parties go from here?
Hartlepool exposes the existential crisis in Labour
The most eye-catching result that emerged early on Friday was the by-election result from Hartlepool. Having been a rock solid Labour seat since its creation in 1974, and once the constituency represented by Labour grandee Lord Mandelson, it just about withstood the crumbling of the "red wall" in 2019. In fact, Mike Hill's majority was larger than that his predecessor, Iain Wright, enjoyed in 2015 in the face of a strong challenge from UKIP. When Hill resigned, triggering this by-election, there was speculation that the Conservatives could pose a serious challenge, or indeed win the seat.
In the end, it wasn't even close. The easy answer would be that Brexit Party supporters transferred their allegiance, and there would be some truth in that, although it should also be noted that the Labour vote went down by nearly nine percentage points compared with 2019.
The result confirmed that a chasm remains within Labour in terms of two almost diametrically opposed strands of "Labourism", a chasm which emerged during the Brexit debate and looks set to dominate the machinations of the Labour movement for some time to come. On the one hand there is the "traditional" Labour voter of the provinces, historically blue collar working class, socially fairly conservative. On the other hand is the "metropolitan" Labour voter, typically pro-EU and in favour of a high-tax (of those earning more than them anyway), big government approach to society. The rise to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn exposed this rift, with the metropolitan branch tending to be fanatically behind him while the provincial branch were generally less keen, more so a result of his tendency to be drawn to causes and issues that didn't resonate with them.
Brexit opened up the wounds, the metropolitan branch voting almost exclusively "Remain" while the provincial areas were less clear cut - Labour voters in "Leave" areas said to have still broken in favour of "Remain" but only just. With Brexit came a new attitude towards provincial voters from the metropolitan branch, with a mixture of disbelief, name calling and mocking towards those who dared to vote "Leave" - those silly little uneducated, mostly old, racists in the towns, how dare they express an opinion.
The 2017 Election halted this to an extent - Labour promised to respect the result of the referendum and deliver Brexit, albeit one fashioned in their image. This, coupled with the absolute mangling of the campaign by the Conservatives, ensured the "red wall" not only remained in tact but was solidified to an extent. At the time, there was no "deal" on the table, the Brexit process was in its infancy - Article 50 had been triggered but March 2019 was still nearly two years away, so there was plenty to chew over.
However, by the time 2019 came around, Parliament had been drawn to impasse by warring factions trying to either deliver or frustrate the process. Theresa May saw the writing on the wall and bowed out, leaving the path clear for Boris Johnson to come in and "get Brexit done". He played a blinder in calling for the election, as Labour were backed into a corner. On the one hand did they also promise to deliver Brexit, which would risk them losing their metropolitan support base (and a lot of activist support), or did they promise to thwart the process either by revoking Article 50 or by holding another referendum, which in turn would risk them losing their provincial support base. It was hoped that by going down the latter route of another referendum, plus promising a whole load of new freebies, this would be negated.
It was a disaster. The problem is, not just was the issue of another referendum yet another frustration and expression of mistrust in those who voted "Leave", the promise of "free stuff" was seen as patronising and yet another case of "we know best". Corbyn by now wasn't something of an unknown quantity, and his name was mud on the doorsteps of provincial England. In the end, Labour gained just the ultra-Remain seat of Putney and lost countless others.
When the contest began to find Corbyn's successor, I surveyed the contestants and, as I usually do, looked at which one I "feared" the most based primarily on their statesmanlike qualities i.e. how would they fare when stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world's leaders. The three leading candidates emerged as Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jess Phillips and Starmer, and I immediately picked the latter as the one to watch. Long-Bailey, from the Corbynite wing of the party, is mockingly referred to as "Wrong Daily" by Conservatives, and from my perspective I considered her to be far too lightweight to be taken seriously - on the world stage she'd be nudged off to the side just to the outside of the Prime Minister of Croatia. I don't doubt Phillips' passion, but I had visions of her losing her temper on the world stage and headbutting Macron. Starmer, on the other hand, is someone with genuine gravitas. My biggest doubt would be that as one of the chief architects of Labour's botched Brexit policy he may have a long way to go to convince the provincial wing of the party that he stood for them while, despite being a Trotskyite in his youth, his position of not being on the hard left may alienate the Corbynite wing of the party. Both seem to be coming true.
To be fair to Starmer, he has been dealt something of a duff hand as the Covid crisis was enveloping the country at the time of his coronation and has been the dominant factor in everything since. And, to his credit, he has tended towards governing for the greater good rather than to score political points, while he has at least made tentative steps towards draining the party of the poison that had developed in recent years especially regarding anti-Semitism. However, there have been stumbles along the way and he appears to have been poorly advised in terms of some of his gestures and gimmicks - for example the advice around flag waving, which was seen through immediately, while the recent stunt around wallpaper exposed that the issue of how Boris Johnson funded the redecoration of his flat was something only meaningful to the Westminster bubble. In the meantime there appears to be very little substance in terms of what he actually stands for and wants to do policy-wise. With Corbyn you knew you were getting an unapologetic Socialist, but what does Starmer actually want to achieve?
For now, Starmer appears rattled, and he needs to lay down what his policy direction actually is, lest the gathering vultures begin to properly circle. Labour has tended to be more loyal to its leaders than the Conservatives, but one senses that could be about to change.
The Dynamics in Scotland and Wales
Well that was Hartlepool, and it took a lot longer to digest than I originally envisaged. Interestingly the dynamics in the assembly elections in Scotland and Wales remain somewhat different.
Firstly Scotland, where the results seemed to be something of a mirror of the 2019 Election where the SNP swept most of the board. Despite the inner turmoil within the party and Nicola Sturgeon's travails which have moved polling back towards "No" in terms of independence, the SNP came agonisingly close to securing an overall majority. That they didn't was partly down to a tactical approach by the unionist parties and their voters. Arguably for the first time since Jim Murphy Labour has an effective Scottish leader in Anas Sarwar, with Douglas Ross too a decent choice by the Conservatives. Independence will remain uppermost in political discourse in Scotland, although it was noted that unionists outpolled nationalists overall.
If Labour are licking their wounds in England and to a lesser extent in Scotland, they at least have some crumbs of comfort in Wales where they came within one seat of securing an overall majority, winning 30 of the 60 seats in the Senedd. This was seen as a vindication of Mark Drakeford's approach where the vaccination programme has been seen as the best of even the fantastic programme across the four constituent parts of the UK. This has seen Drakeford emerge with credit even after one or two idiotic restrictions, such as closing off non-essential goods in supermarkets and allowing pubs to open but not serve alcohol. While the Conservatives have also made very encouraging gains, mainly as a result of UKIP's strong showing last time, Labour can at least point to Wales and say all is not lost.
Mayor Votes Also Encouraging for Labour
I have been heavily involved with the campaign in London, pounding the streets trying to get Shaun Bailey in London and Nicholas Rogers in our assembly seat elected. The former proved to be forlorn, but I'm delighted that we secured a win in the South West seat for Rogers, who will be an excellent member of the London Assembly. Another encouraging sign is that Bailey massively outperformed the polls which suggested Sadiq Khan would likely win on first preference votes alone. Indeed Bailey actually won the first preference vote in two of the assembly constituencies where the Labour candidate was elected, which showed that either Bailey outperformed the party in those seats or that Khan underperformed - or both. I was staggered to read a pre-poll assessment in Private Eye that predicted Bailey would struggle to beat Laurence Fox and Brian Rose.
Ahead of the Local Elections in London in 2022, the results were very encouraging that, far from the wipeout predicted in 2018 (which never really materialised), the Conservatives can look ahead to 2022 with optimism. In microcosm, there were two by-elections in Hounslow (including in my ward of Hounslow Heath) which saw large swings from Labour even if they won both seats comfortably. Similar swings next year would bring in to play several wards, including the ward I've been mostly involved with and hope to be standing in next year (Osterley and Spring Grove).
The other two standout contests from a Conservative standpoint were in the north east and the West Midlands, where Ben Houchen and Andy Street held on to their posts, the former with a ridiculous 73% of the vote.
However, there was plenty of encouragement for Labour in winning most of these contests including flipping the likes of the West of England and Peterborough / Cambridgeshire. These contests, even if by largely being "metropolitan" in construct perhaps masking the issues, show that Labour is far from dead just yet.
What Will Make Labour Electable Again?
Looking from the outside in, it's easy to engage in a touch of schadenfreude at the travails of Labour and the ongoing civil war, but also taking a detached view can point to ways in which the party can move back towards being electable. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Move back towards the centre
Under Corbyn, Labour shifted decisively to the left having moved leftwards post-Blair. While moving to the left may have been considered a logical shift, it has contributed to an erosion of support particularly in the provinces. The left wing of the party considers Blair a dirty word mainly a result of his actions in the Middle East, but as Lord Mandelson put it the other day, Labour's election results in recent memory have been "loss, loss, loss, loss, Blair, Blair, Blair, loss, loss, loss, loss". While Blair 2.0 may not be a vote winner in itself, it's clear that when Laura Pidcock last week said in response to the results that the party needs "more Socialism", this was not what the public has actually been saying.
2. Reconcile with, instead of patronising, the provinces
Even now in response to Hartlepool and the local results I have seen people saying or writing about how the people of these places don't know what they're doing, they lack common sense, basically that provincial types are stupid. Memes glorify in showing metropolitan types hurling abuse at provincials only to then express surprise and anger when they don't then get their vote. On the other hand, Boris Johnson has made a point of speaking with (rather than at) people outside urban bubbles and has been making good on promises to bring industry - for example the free ports, the proposed move of Treasury services to Darlington and vaccine factories - to places that might ordinarily have been considered "left behind".
3. Focus on policies, not issues, and stop bashing Britain
Outside metropolitan bubbles, people are more focused on good governance than tackling "issues". The Corbyn leadership devoted a lot of its energy to the latter, and popular causes of the left came to the fore, often at the expense of the party's popularity. People in general would rather see our flag being waved by party members at their conference than the flag of Palestine - and the po-faced reaction of the left of the party in response to the ham-fisted attempt to become more patriotic a few months back is symbolic of why increasingly the party is seen as "anti-Britain" (see Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP's tweet in the immediate aftermath of the Hartlepool result as emblematic of this failure to see the positives of championing the UK). The UK is not perfect, far from it, and there are many reasons to feel negatively - but there are also far more reasons to feel positive feelings, and for many the perception is currently that Labour doesn't have a patriotic side to it. Oh, and the "woke" stuff. Again it may play well in the metropolitan bubble, but the public at large don't really feel positively towards party leaders jumping on bandwagons and being pictured "taking the knee". The causes may be worthy, but they are unlikely to win widespread electoral support.
4. Stop obsessing about the "B" word
Brexit is done. We're out. It's over.
So, in a nutshell it's a good time to be a Conservative, and Labour still has some wounds to lick as it seeks to regain its sense of relevance. I'm sure it will happen at some point - after all it took them three further election defeats after the Michael Foot debacle in 1983 - but for that to happen there needs to be a clear direction of travel that picks up the country as a whole along the way.
