tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/labour-party-5886/articlesLabour Party – The Conversation2024-03-25T11:07:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2261642024-03-25T11:07:37Z2024-03-25T11:07:37ZLabour’s economic plan is finally taking shape – but will it be enough?<p>Ever since Liz Truss’ fateful <a href="https://theconversation.com/mini-budget-lessons-from-the-uks-long-history-of-economic-crises-191696">mini-budget of October 2022</a>, the Labour party has enjoyed a commanding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/mar/18/uk-general-election-opinion-polls-tracker-latest-labour-tories-starmer-sunak">lead in the polls</a>. Yet for many, its political vision has remained <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/04/the-guardian-view-on-sir-keir-starmer-his-party-remains-a-mystery-to-voters">vague and undefined</a>. </p>
<p>But now a clearer picture is beginning to emerge. In <a href="https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/rachel-reeves-mais-lecture/">a speech</a> to members of the UK’s financial sector in mid-March, the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves outlined a wide-ranging economic plan. </p>
<p>Championing a growth strategy built around stability, Reeves argued that political volatility was a primary cause of Britain’s economic stagnation. In contrast to the policy churn and infighting that has characterised UK politics since the Brexit referendum, she promised a stable government and enhanced powers for the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury.</p>
<p>And plenty of evidence indeed points to post-Brexit volatility having <a href="https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/the-big-brexit/">a chilling effect</a> on investment into the UK. But not all of the country’s economic woes can be traced back to the Conservatives’ internal power struggles. </p>
<p>Reeves also cited geopolitical instability – the rise of China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and the deepening climate crisis – as a further source of economic disruption. </p>
<p>She even highlighted her own party’s past errors. In a striking <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rachel-reeves-speech-new-labour-britain-financial-crash-wtj20x0th">rebuke to New Labour</a>, the shadow chancellor noted that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had failed to tackle longstanding problems such as low productivity growth and regional inequality. Economic discontent, she argued, had fed the rise of the radical right, producing political instability.</p>
<p>Labour’s new answer to these challenges, Reeves continued, would be a modern form of industrial strategy, focused on resilience. Investment in domestic energy generation and infrastructure would help to shield the UK economy from volatility in global oil and gas markets, as well as assist the fight against climate change. Supply chains would also be restructured to reduce the UK’s exposure to geopolitical shocks.</p>
<p>This is what Reeves means when she talks about “securonomics”, which is essentially an interventionist economic agenda of the kind seen recently in the US. </p>
<p>Since taking office, President Biden has significantly increased public spending on infrastructure and financial support for green energy generation. He has also sought to bring important industries, such as microchip manufacturing, back to US shores. </p>
<p>Reeves argues that it is cheaper to build resilience upfront than it is to bail out firms, households and public services when crises hit. And her claim seems plausible given the scale of (over)spending on medical procurement <a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/government-procurement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/">during the pandemic</a>, the cost of subsidies to households and businesses <a href="https://obr.uk/box/an-international-comparison-of-the-cost-of-energy-support-packages/">following spikes in energy prices</a>, and the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/economicinactivity/articles/risingillhealthandeconomicinactivitybecauseoflongtermsicknessuk/2019to2023">increase in economic inactivity</a> that has coincided with <a href="https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/nhs-backlog-data-analysis">lengthening NHS waiting lists</a>.</p>
<p>The shadow chancellor also argued that greater resilience would help to tackle the UK’s productivity problem. There is a <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2023/apr/entrepreneurial-egalitarianism-how-inequality-and-insecurity-stifle-innovation">wealth of evidence</a> to suggest that people who feel economically secure are more likely to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship. Greater economic security can also <a href="https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Flexicurity-and-the-future-of-work.pdf">improve the dynamism of labour markets</a> by giving people the confidence to retrain, move jobs or switch careers.</p>
<p>But questions remain over how Reeves’s agenda will be delivered. Labour has repeatedly said that it will not raise taxes beyond some relatively minor changes, like imposing VAT on private school fees. Reeves is also keen to dispel any suggestion that she will increase borrowing levels (while emphasising that she views <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9191853c-6844-419d-b729-9051f88cc0c3">borrowing for investment</a> as legitimate).</p>
<p>So with minimal extra money on offer, economic security must be achieved by using existing resources differently. Labour’s strategy leans heavily on the power of government to overcome coordination problems in the private sector and persuade businesses to invest collectively.</p>
<p>Governments can certainly do this to good effect, as <a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/the_new_economics_of_ip_080123.pdf">recent research</a> indicates. Countries such as Taiwan and South Korea are often held up as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/422204">exemplars of this approach</a>, helping to channel business investment into high-tech sectors with substantial export potential. </p>
<p>If Reeves’ analysis is correct, securonomics will eventually pay for itself. A more resilient economy will grow faster, provide more tax revenues to invest in industrial strategy and public services, and become more resilient still.</p>
<p>But it is not yet clear how Labour intends to set this virtuous circle in motion.</p>
<h2>Slow and steady?</h2>
<p>“Bidenomics” serves as a model for Labour, as the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7240265e-0157-428b-9c47-fb07c360dfc2">strength of the US economy</a> demonstrates how industrial strategy can deliver growth. </p>
<p>But Biden’s interventions have been far larger in scale than anything the Labour party is proposing. </p>
<p>Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act alone <a href="https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-scores-ira-238-billion-deficit-reduction">cost US$500 billion</a> (£397 billion) in public spending and targeted tax breaks. Labour’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/08/labour-cuts-28bn-green-investment-pledge-by-half">current plans</a> amount to an extra £4.7 billion of green investment per year. </p>
<p>Even after adjusting for the relative size of the UK economy, the difference in ambition is stark.</p>
<p>And despite Biden’s economic success, growth in the US may have come too late in the electoral cycle for the president to enjoy the political benefits. The instability of another Trump term remains a possibility.</p>
<p>The UK differs from the US in many ways, both economically and politically. But the US experience shows how, in an era of insecurity, time is of the essence. Implementing securonomics incrementally may prove to be a risky strategy for Labour – and for the UK economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick O'Donovan is a former Labour party adviser.</span></em></p>‘Securonomics’ examined.Nick O'Donovan, Senior Lecturer, Political Economy and Public Policy, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207982024-03-20T16:35:51Z2024-03-20T16:35:51ZVaughan Gething elected as Wales’ new first minister – but challenges have just begun for Welsh Labour<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-68500807">Vaughan Gething</a> is Wales’ new first minister after winning the Welsh Labour leadership election. Gething narrowly beat his opponent, Jeremy Miles, with 51.7% of the vote, and in so doing becomes the first black leader of any European nation.</p>
<p>Gething was voted in by the Senedd (Welsh parliament) and replaces <a href="https://theconversation.com/mark-drakeford-what-the-resignation-of-wales-first-minister-means-for-the-country-and-the-labour-party-219887">Mark Drakeford</a> who had been first minister since 2018.</p>
<p>The leadership race itself was not one that was lit up by different political visions or ideologically charged debates. Both contenders are solicitors by trade, fairly centrist in terms of their rhetoric and political commitments, and without glaring contrasts in their manifestos. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-68336716">Gething</a> was born in Zambia in 1974, to a Welsh father and Zambian mother. They moved to the UK when he was four, and he attended university in Aberystwyth and Cardiff before pursuing his legal career. He was first elected to the Senedd in 2011, representing the Cardiff South and Penarth constituency, and rose up the ministerial ladder thereafter. </p>
<p>Gething will be the fifth first minister since Welsh devolution in 1999. He inherits a Labour party which, overall, has won every election in Wales <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-63636856">since 1922</a>. There is, nevertheless, a little more to the story, which suggests the future for Welsh Labour may be less straightforward than either Gething or his party would have hoped.</p>
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<p>This is in part due to the problems that Welsh Labour have hit upon towards the end of the tenure of <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/news-opinion/mark-drakeford-departing-first-minister-28812852">Drakeford</a>. There is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n789jv49jo">ongoing controversy</a> over 20mph speed limits in Wales and a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68563949">UK COVID inquiry</a> that has drawn our attention to the enthusiasm of Welsh Labour for avoiding a Wales-specific investigation. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-farmers-up-in-arms-the-view-from-wales-223901">farmers</a> are protesting against the Welsh government’s proposed scheme to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy.</p>
<p>While Drakeford has been subject to the most criticism on these matters, Gething was unable to avoid some of the fallout from the pandemic. He recently had a tough time at the COVID inquiry when he <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68535441#">admitted</a> all his pandemic WhatsApp messages had disappeared after his official phone was wiped. Gething described it as a “matter of real embarrassment”.</p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68590453">leadership bid</a> was also hit by scandal when it emerged that he had taken a £200,000 donation for his campaign from a company run by a man twice convicted of environmental offences. In 2016, he had asked Natural Resources Wales (the government body responsible for environmental issues) to ease restrictions on the company in question. </p>
<p>Both Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives have called on Gething to return the money, but he has so far rejected those calls.</p>
<p>Jeremy Miles also <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68109598">criticised</a> the way Wales’ largest union declared its support for Gething during the leadership contest. Unite had deemed Miles ineligible for its support as he had not been a lay union official. This was seen as a “stitch up” among Miles’ supporters and Gething will have to extend them an olive branch as he takes up his new role.</p>
<p>Assuming Gething is able to negotiate these choppy waters as his leadership sets sail, a victory for Labour in the next Westminster general election is unlikely to ease the pressure. Given Gething’s centrism he is likely to be perceived as a willing party in delivering <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/03/keir-starmer-labour-wont-turn-on-spending-taps-wins-election">Starmer’s agenda</a>. </p>
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<p>There will be other challenges for Gething to negotiate, beyond the immediate need <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/18/vaughan-gething-win-wales-welsh-labour-leader">to placate</a> those on the losing side of the contest. In particular his management of internal Welsh Labour difference will be significant. As with many successful parties, there are elements of a coalition that maintain it and Gething must ensure that balance.</p>
<p>He must contend with the cultural boundaries between the more Anglicised and urban south and east, and the more Welsh-speaking and often more rural areas of the west and north. While the latter areas do not deliver the core vote for Labour, their support in those areas helps to maintain their predominance through the partial proportional representation system of the Senedd.</p>
<p>An additional layer of complexity has emerged in the last five years as <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-wales-future-hold-new-report-maps-options-for-more-devolution-federal-and-independent-futures-221503">independence</a> has become a concrete concern in Welsh politics. Somewhat surprisingly for a unionist party, there is more or less a <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/almost-half-pro-independence-voters-chose-labour-at-senedd-election/">50-50 split</a> among Labour voters on the question. Drakeford was able to play to both sides of the argument. He was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/29/uk-could-break-up-unless-it-is-rebuilt-as-solidarity-union-says-mark-drakeford">clear</a> in his fundamental unionism but also articulated doubts about its longevity. How Gething negotiates the question may be telling.</p>
<p>For now what is beyond doubt is that the Welsh Labour brand has been damaged. Gething’s actions are not in isolation but rather a function of a party culture of permissiveness. With a light having been shone on its inner workings, they are in danger of losing the moral high ground, so often used to persuade Welsh voters to back them to protect them from the Tories. </p>
<p>In many ways a skilled operator, who has been almost laser-like in surmounting significant barriers and achieving his goal, Gething now faces a very different set of challenges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220798/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw L Williams is a member of the Green Party.</span></em></p>Vaughan Gething succeeds Mark Drakeford as Welsh first minister, following a vote in the Senedd.Huw L Williams, Reader in Political Philosophy, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2251182024-03-08T16:20:11Z2024-03-08T16:20:11ZLabour’s Muslim vote: what the data so far says about the election risk of Keir Starmer’s Gaza position<p>According to the 2021 census, 6.5% of the population in England and Wales <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021">identify as Muslim</a>. In <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-religion/">Rochdale</a>, which has just elected George Galloway to be its MP, the proportion of the population identifying as Muslim is far higher – at 30.5%.</p>
<p>As is often the case in byelections, the turnout for the contest that elected Galloway was low. But Galloway received 12,335 votes in a constituency which contains 34,871 Muslims. His campaign focused almost entirely on the war in Gaza rather than local issues, and although we don’t know what proportion of his vote was Muslim, it is a fair assumption that a large percentage of it was.</p>
<p>The question in the wake of Galloway’s election (and one that the new MP is certainly encouraging) is whether this byelection has any implications for Labour in the general election taking place this year?</p>
<p>Keir Starmer has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68446423">argued</a> that Galloway won because the Labour candidate was sacked after repeating a conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Hamas attack on October 7 last year. Galloway, by contrast, argues that his victory is a sign that voters are about to turn away from Labour in their droves because they are angry about its failure to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.</p>
<p>Which of them is right? </p>
<h2>The Muslim vote</h2>
<p>There are 20 constituencies in the UK that have an electorate comprised of more than 30% Muslims. All of them elected a Labour MP in 2019. At the top of the list is Birmingham Hodge Hill, where 62% of the population identifies as Muslim. </p>
<p>In Bradford West 59% of the population is Muslim, in Ilford South, 44%, and in Leicester South, 32%. Rochdale ranks 18th in the list of the 20 constituencies with the largest proportion of Muslim residents. Interestingly enough, just under 19% of the electorate in Holborn and St Pancras, Keir Starmer’s constituency, identifies as Muslim.</p>
<p>There are currently 199 Labour MPs in the House of Commons – a slight reduction from the 202 who were elected in 2019. A bare majority in the House of Commons requires 326 MPs and a working majority more like 346. The party clearly has a mountain to climb to achieve that, even with a lead of around <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/#national-parliament-voting-intention">20% in current polls</a>.</p>
<p>So Starmer will certainly be asking whether Labour can still expect to win seats with a high proportion of Muslim voters in a way that it has done in the past, given what happened in Rochdale. He continues to equivocate over the deaths in Gaza and still follows the government’s line on the conflict, despite it being essentially a colonial war. </p>
<p>Historically, Labour has had a long tradition of anti-colonialism. After the second world war, it was a Labour government that began the process of de-colonisation in the British empire by giving independence to India in 1947.</p>
<h2>When is a safe seat not a safe seat?</h2>
<p>There is an argument that constituencies with a high proportion of Muslims are relatively safe Labour seats. This is evidenced by the fact that they remained in the Labour camp even when the party suffered a heavy defeat in 2019. The implication is that if anger over Gaza is confined to Muslims, then it is not going to affect the number of seats won by Labour very much.</p>
<p>However, concern about Gaza is shared by people other than Muslims. Polling from YouGov conducted last month shows that there has been a distinct shift in British public opinion about the war since it started. More people are calling for a ceasefire and fewer see Israel’s attacks on Gaza as being <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48675-british-attitudes-to-the-israel-gaza-conflict-february-2024-update">justified</a>.</p>
<p>There is clear evidence that younger voters, in particular, feel <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/02/12/4b134/1">more sympathy</a> towards the Palestinian cause than the rest of the population. This is also a group that heavily supported Labour in the 2019 election. While young people in this group are unlikely to switch to voting Conservative over Gaza, the concern for Labour will be that they might <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/search?q=Brexit+Britain">abstain</a> in the next election.</p>
<h2>How different religions vote</h2>
<p>Starmer’s reluctance to call out what is happening in Gaza is a puzzle, since Muslims are overwhelmingly Labour supporters. This can be seen in data from the <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/">British Election Study</a> online panel survey conducted after the 2019 general election. The chart shows the relationship between the religious affiliation of the respondents and their voting behaviour in that election.</p>
<p><strong>Religious Affiliation and Voting in the 2019 General Election:</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that support for Labour is far higher among Muslims than other religions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How religious identity maps onto party preference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Election Study</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Church of England used to be described as the “Tory party at prayer” and it clearly remains so today, since 64% of Church of England identifiers supported the Conservatives compared to just 25% who supported Labour. </p>
<p>In contrast, Roman Catholics were marginally more Labour (42%) than Conservative (41%). Nonconformists were similar to Church of England identifiers with 48% Conservative and 25% Labour. Meanwhile, 43% of atheists and agnostics supported Labour and 34% the Conservatives.</p>
<p>Jewish voters favoured the Conservatives by a margin of 56% to 30% Labour. Finally, Muslim voters favoured Labour by a massive 80% compared with the Conservative’s 13%.</p>
<p>If anger over the Gaza war is confined to Muslims it is not likely to influence the outcome of this year’s election. But it is worth remembering that this is not the first time Labour has been damaged by events in the Middle East. </p>
<p>Support for Tony Blair was greatly weakened by his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 at the request of the then US president, George W. Bush. He has never really lived down the reputation he acquired for this mistake.</p>
<p>There is not yet evidence that Labour’s position on Gaza will cost it a majority in the election but the strength of feeling on this issue is growing and the future is not certain. With hundreds of additional seats needed, Starmer can’t afford to take any for granted. The risk of losing these voters to the Conservatives is marginal but the risk of losing them to apathy and disillusionment should have him reconsidering his position.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC</span></em></p>Labour’s Muslim vote is concentrated in safe seats – but with an electoral mountain to climb, no contest can be taken for granted.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213582024-03-06T17:14:56Z2024-03-06T17:14:56ZHow the 1984 miners’ strike paved the way for devolution in Wales<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577265/original/file-20240222-24-1zfxh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1310&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Miners from different collieries gather in Port Talbot in April 1984.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alandenney/2457055287">Alan Denney/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history">miners’ strike</a>. In Wales, particularly within the south Wales coalfield, it was more than an industrial dispute. This was a major political event that reflected deeper cultural and economic changes. </p>
<p>These changes, alongside discontent at the emphasis of the then-UK prime minister <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/44/2/319/5550923">Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government</a> on free market economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-strikes-how-margaret-thatcher-and-other-leaders-cut-trade-union-powers-over-centuries-186270">stifling trade unions</a> and reducing the size of the state shifted how many Labour heartlands viewed the idea of self-government for Wales. This was due to Thatcher’s actions hitting at the heart of many working-class Labour voters’ existence, leading to threats to livelihoods and communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-thatcher-did-for-wales/">Many started feeling</a> that some of the devastation wreaked by Thatcherism could have been avoided had there been a devolved Welsh government. That government would, in all likelihood, have been Labour controlled, acting as a “protective shield”.</p>
<p>Instead, by the time of the May 1979 general election (five years before the miners’ strike), Wales was a nation divided. Only weeks earlier, it had overwhelmingly <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP97-113/RP97-113.pdf">rejected</a> the Labour government’s proposal to create a Welsh Assembly, which would have given Wales a certain degree of autonomy from Westminster.</p>
<p>Many Labour MPs, such as Welshman Neil Kinnock, had vehemently opposed devolution and favoured a united British state. However, it was now this state, through a National Coal Board overseen by a Westminster Conservative government, that was aiming to further close Welsh coal mines. </p>
<p>The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was both a political and workplace representative for miners and their communities. For a politician like Kinnock, balancing party and local interests was difficult. </p>
<p>Thatcher’s Conservative party won a large majority at the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m09.pdf">1983 election</a> and the Ebbw Vale MP, Michael Foot, had been Labour leader during its defeat. His left-wing manifesto had been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm">dubbed</a> the “longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, himself a Labour MP. It led to Foot’s resignation and the election of Kinnock as the leader of the opposition. </p>
<p>As a miners’ strike looked more likely, the national context made Labour party support for the strike problematic. Despite his political and personal ties to the NUM, Kinnock <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/509387">disagreed</a> with its leaders, such as Arthur Scargill, and their strategies for the strike. However, the Labour leader supported the right of the miners to defend their livelihood. </p>
<p>In a period of difficult deindustrialisation across nationalised industries, Labour was caught between unstoppable economic restructuring and job losses that affected its traditional voters.</p>
<h2>Thatcherism and Wales</h2>
<p>Gwyn A. Williams, a Marxist historian, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/When_was_Wales/QUJ0QgAACAAJ?hl=en">described</a> Welsh people as “a naked people under an acid rain”. This acidity had two main ingredients: Thatcherism and the “no” vote for a Welsh Assembly in 1979. </p>
<p>According to this analysis, the absence of devolution in Wales had left it exposed to the vagaries of Conservative governance in Westminster. The dangers of this were illuminated during the miners’ strike and in high unemployment rates of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/digest-welsh-historical-statistics-0">nearly 14% in Wales</a> by the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>However, it would be a fallacy to argue that Wales was a no-go zone for the Conservatives, even after the strike. In the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m11.pdf">1987 general election</a>, although their number of MPs dropped from the 1983 high of 14 to eight, they were still attracting 29.5% of the Welsh vote. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of Margaret Thatcher with her hands raised in front of a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Was Margaret Thatcher one of the unwitting architects of Welsh devolution?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/levanrami/43795237465">Levan Ramishvili/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would take several more years of Conservative policies such as the poll tax, the tenure of John Redwood as secretary of state for Wales (1993-95) and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13689889808413006">scandal-riven sagas</a> of the party during the 1990s for them to gain zero seats in Wales in 1997. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the strike, and the febrile atmosphere of the period, had carved out a Welsh distinctiveness to anti-Conservative rhetoric. Several organisations and conferences during the 1980s laid the groundwork that shaped new questions about Welsh nationhood. They contributed to the swing towards a narrow “yes” vote in the 1997 Welsh devolution <a href="https://law.gov.wales/constitution-and-government/constitution-and-devolution/executive-devolution-1998-2007">referendum</a> offered by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which came to power in 1997.</p>
<p>In February 1985, Hywel Francis, a historian and later Labour MP for Aberafan, published an article in the magazine, <a href="https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/february-1985/mining-the-popular-front/">Marxism Today</a>, suggesting that the miners’ strike was not merely an industrial dispute but an anti-Thatcher resistance movement. </p>
<p>Central to his argument was the formation of the <a href="https://archives.library.wales/index.php/wales-congress-in-support-of-mining-communities">Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities</a> the previous autumn, which formalised some of the “unexpected alliances” heralded by the strike. The Congress coordinated the demonstrations and activism of some of the diverse groups that both supported the miners and simultaneously resisted many of the policies of the Thatcher government. These included trade unionists, religious leaders, the women’s peace movement, gay rights campaigners, as well as Labour members and Welsh nationalist activists. According to Francis, the latter two realised that “unless they joined, the world would pass them by”.</p>
<p>The congress aimed to stimulate a coordinated debate about Welsh mining communities, moving the narrative away from picket-line conflict and towards a democratic vision of Wales’s future. </p>
<p>While the strike ended only a month after Francis’s article, and the organisation itself dissolved in 1986, the congress had bridged many chasms in Welsh society. It showed old enemies in Labour and Plaid Cymru that solidarity could reap more benefits than the overt tribalism that had blighted the devolution campaign of the 1970s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large modern building with a large roof that juts out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Senedd in Cardiff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cardiff-wales-united-kingdom-06-17-2335002765">meunierd/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>In 1988, the campaign for a Welsh Assembly was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/29790/chapter-abstract/251892249?redirectedFrom=fulltext">established</a> in Cardiff by Siân Caiach of Plaid Cymru and Jon Owen Jones of Labour. It was a direct descendant of this collaborative ethos, feeding an altogether more mature debate around Welsh devolution than had been seen in the 1970s. </p>
<p>For example, Ron Davies, an arch-devolutionist in 1990s Labour, <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/wp-content/media/2016/03/acceleratinghistory.pdf">had voted “no”</a> in 1979. This was predominantly because he saw devolution as a Trojan horse for Plaid. </p>
<p>However, seeing the consequences of the miners’ strike and Thatcherism on his constituency of Caerffili drove him towards a drastic re-evaluation of devolution as being a protective buffer for the people of Wales. He became leader of Welsh Labour in 1998, eventually joining Plaid in 2010.</p>
<p>Historian Martin Johnes <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-16315966">has described</a> Thatcher as an “unlikely architect of Welsh devolution”. Indeed, her inadvertent <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2013/04/we-voted-labour-but-got-thatcher/">help</a> in orchestrating the Welsh Assembly rested in the forging of Labour and Plaid Cymru cooperation, with the miners’ strike as a watershed movement. </p>
<p>The strike remains a vivid memory in many Welsh communities. It stands as a reminder to 21st-century politicians that today’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) was built on cross-party cooperation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The strike saw different political factions uniting, which eventually led to a more collaborative form of politics in Wales.Mari Wiliam, Lecturer in Modern and Welsh History, Bangor UniversityMarc Collinson, Lecturer in Political History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244632024-02-29T15:53:40Z2024-02-29T15:53:40ZLindsay Hoyle: how the speaker dug himself an even deeper hole by offering and then denying the SNP a fresh Gaza debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578056/original/file-20240226-18-euexk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C131%2C1680%2C1229&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/53504229063/">UK Parliament/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Speakers of the UK House of Commons usually work hard to protect themselves from political controversy. To do the job well usually means to be (and be seen to be) a neutral umpire. </p>
<p>That is why Lindsay Hoyle, the current speaker, is still struggling to recover from the chaos caused by his handling of a debate about supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. An attempt to dampen things – by offering angry Scottish National Party (SNP) MPs the chance to hold a new debate – appears to have added fuel to the fire after he subsequently declined the party’s formal request.</p>
<p>The SNP remains furious about what happened on its <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaker-lindsay-hoyle-sparks-chaos-five-steps-to-understanding-why-mps-stormed-out-of-parliament-during-gaza-vote-224134">opposition day</a> on February 21, when it chose to debate a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The day descended into chaos when Hoyle allowed the Labour party to put forward its own amendment to the SNP motion. This was on top of the more standard amendment from the government.</p>
<p>The result of this action, as well as heated arguments, was that a vote on the SNP motion never went ahead. SNP MPs complained that their opposition day – one of very few granted to the party each year – had been effectively hijacked by Labour. There was a perception, whether fair or not, that the speaker had bent the Commons rules under pressure from Labour.</p>
<p>In response to the anger caused by his decision, the speaker publicly offered the SNP an “SO24” – that is, an emergency debate under <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/business/debates/application-for-emergency-debates/">Commons Standing Order No. 24</a>. These, as the name suggests, are Commons debates scheduled at short notice on an urgent matter. </p>
<p>Unlike most Commons business, which is effectively controlled by the government, emergency debates are entirely within the gift of the speaker, a point Hoyle made directly to the SNP’s Westminster leader. Soon after he issued the proposal, the SNP leadership announced that it would take up the offer. Crucially, though, the party demanded that there should be a meaningful vote at the end of the debate on supporting a ceasefire. </p>
<h2>Why the fresh debate never went ahead</h2>
<p>It was never clear quite how an emergency debate on a Gaza ceasefire would work. There are, broadly speaking, three categories of Commons motion. Some are “neutral”: these do not express an opinion but are essentially just a device to facilitate a debate. </p>
<p>Others are “substantive” and do express an opinion. Almost all opposition day motions fall into this category, including the original SNP motion that was not voted on because of the chaos on February 21. </p>
<p>A third category – which is really a subset of the second – is “binding” motions, which compel some sort of action. These are much rarer and – while not unheard of on opposition days – difficult to envisage on this topic.</p>
<p>Under the House of Commons procedures, emergency debates must be held on a motion that <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmstords/1154/body.htm">“the House has considered the specified matter”</a>. This has traditionally been interpreted to mean a neutral, non-substantive motion. </p>
<p>Such a debate was always unlikely to be acceptable to SNP MPs. After all, they already held a debate on the topic when they put forward their original substantive motion. What they were denied was the chance to vote on it.</p>
<p>It is presumably for this reason that the party let it be known that they wanted a “meaningful vote”. Much has been read into this term, drawing (probably unhelpful) parallels to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-what-does-the-latest-parliamentary-upset-mean-for-theresa-may-109591">fraught Brexit period</a>. </p>
<p>On Brexit, MPs secured the right to formally approve the UK’s EU withdrawal agreement – making the motion binding. In the case of the Gaza motion, it doesn’t appear that the SNP was seeking to make a vote binding but that it was asking for a “substantive” motion – as originally planned on its opposition day – rather than being neutral.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4710/proposals-to-hold-an-emergency-debate-under-standing-order-no-24/">Erskine May</a>, the authoritative guide to procedure, does identify some exceptions to the practice of neutral motions on emergency debates, these are rare and potentially controversial. </p>
<p>Erskine May cites only a handful of examples, all under the speakership of John Bercow. Most are from the Brexit period, when parliament found itself in deadlock again and again over Theresa May’s EU departure deal. </p>
<p>Bercow’s innovative reinterpretations of House of Commons procedures were controversial – and, notably, something Hoyle had positioned his speakership firmly against.</p>
<p>Having publicly offered the SNP an emergency debate, the speaker turned down the party’s application on February 26. The explanation given by Hoyle was that he was required to consider the <a href="https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/section/4677/motions-under-standing-order-no-24">“probability of the matter being brought before the House in time by other means”</a> – words taken from the standing orders. </p>
<p>As Hoyle explained, MPs had already passed a resolution the previous week. The government also planned to make its own statement on the matter. These points, however, make it all the more baffling as to why the offer was first made.</p>
<h2>Now what?</h2>
<p>As a result of the furore, a growing number of MPs have signed an <a href="https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/61908/no-confidence-in-the-speaker">early day motion</a> expressing no confidence in the Speaker – now at almost 100 MPs. They are mainly Conservative and SNP MPS but Plaid Cymru has also joined. The Welsh party’s Westminster leader Liz Saville-Roberts cited <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/28/plaid-cymru-joins-call-lindsay-hoyle-quit/">“the handling of business”</a> in supporting the motion.</p>
<p>While Hoyle’s opponents have no immediate mechanism to bring the motion to a vote, such widespread criticism will be deeply uncomfortable for the speaker. To perform his job, he has to maintain order and enforce sometimes difficult decisions. </p>
<p>This is only possible with the consent and goodwill of the house. For Hoyle to survive beyond the immediate term, he will need to regain these MPs’ trust.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Gover does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The SNP was offered a debate – but what they wanted was a vote.Daniel Gover, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2242212024-02-26T17:19:24Z2024-02-26T17:19:24ZHow do opposition MPs prepare for government? The six key skills that should be on every Labour politician’s mind<p>Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet has now started <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/access-talks-civil-service">“access talks”</a> with the civil service as they prepare for the possibility of government. Being in government is different from being in opposition and Labour has been in opposition in Westminster for a very long time. </p>
<p>New ministers will have to perform their new role from the moment of their appointment, and few in Starmer’s team have any ministerial experience. There’s no manual for the job, though these days some training is available.</p>
<p>Since 2015, former ministers have been telling the Institute for Government (IfG) what makes for an effective minister. I’ve tried below, based on research for my new book, Ministerial Leadership, to distil some of that advice to highlight five skills Labour MPs hopeful of a role in a future government will need to hone. </p>
<h2>1. How to ask stupid questions</h2>
<p>First, ministers have to remember they are politicians and that their value lies in their political judgement. What seems obvious to a politician may be a revelation to a civil servant, who may not have direct experience of how policies play out on the ground.</p>
<p>But ministers aren’t the technical experts, so that also means new ministers mustn’t be afraid to ask the <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/david-laws-ministers-reflect.pdf">stupid questions</a>. Unless they understand something fully, they won’t be able to explain it to their colleagues, let alone the public. </p>
<h2>2. How to move from solo operator to team player</h2>
<p>Incoming government ministers must remember they’re part of a team, both of ministers in their department and a member of a governmental team overall. Everything they do in government depends on teamwork, Labour MP <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/ministers-reflect-teamwork">Margaret Beckett</a> told the IfG. Cabinet structures – committees, the sign-off of policies, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-manual">Cabinet Manual</a> – reinforce that, as does the doctrine of collective responsibility spelt out in the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministerial-code">ministerial code</a>. </p>
<p>This is about more than formalities. It’s also a question of how ministers project themselves as part of a governmental team, advancing the government’s overall narrative. </p>
<p>That means that MPs who become ministers need to ask themselves regularly how what they are doing in their department contributes to the government’s programme, performance and perception. Teamwork isn’t always the most obvious attribute in an ambitious political world, but it’s key in government.</p>
<h2>3. How to make use of (and respect) civil servants</h2>
<p>The civil service is not the enemy of government ministers. Most civil servants want to help ministers get things done in an appropriate way. They have skills, systems and networks. </p>
<p>These can be made to work for a minister’s benefit if the minister can be clear about what they want. Old hands still praise the quality of the civil service – some still call it a Rolls-Royce. But as Conservative peer Michael Heseltine <a href="https://www.civilserviceworld.com/in-depth/article/lord-hennessy-meets-lord-heseltine">says</a>, the minister needs to drive it.</p>
<p>The civil service isn’t perfect. There’s now a consensus on the challenges it faces, including the loss of institutional memory, accentuated by frequent churn as officials move jobs, and a failure to think deeply about future challenges.</p>
<h2>4. How to schedule thinking time</h2>
<p>Protecting space in your diary has been part of ministerial folklore since Gerald Kaufman wrote <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/How_to_be_a_Minister.html?id=pUZ_QgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">How to be a Minister</a> in 1980. Ministers have hectic schedules but everyone needs thinking time to focus on their priorities, sometimes away from the routine of briefings and meetings. </p>
<p>Former Labour minister <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-05/Hilary%20Benn.pdf">Hilary Benn</a> now says: “iIf I had my time again, setting aside time to think [is what I’d do]. Because if you’re in the moment, going from engagement to engagement, box to box, you don’t always get the time to think and you need to do that.”</p>
<p>So ministers need to know whether they are on track. What isn’t working out? What should they or the department stop doing to allow other things to flourish? These are the types of questions a minister must ask themselves to ensure their diary is packed in the right way.</p>
<h2>5. How to find the way back to parliament</h2>
<p>When they become ministers, politicians don’t stop being MPs. They have to continue representing their constituents. The department is not their only job.</p>
<p>In fact, the institutional embrace can be suffocating so, as former Labour minister Jack Straw puts it, time spent in the House of Commons is <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/jack-straw">never time wasted</a>. Parliament gives a minister intelligence on how policies are being received and potential problems that need tackling.</p>
<h2>6. How to deliver</h2>
<p>Having a policy isn’t enough for a minister. They need to know how it is going to be delivered and what the critical stages of that delivery are – as well as how to keep track of them. If legislation is needed, policies can take years to implement. </p>
<p>Ministers need to have a view of the critical path to delivering the policy: its legitimation through a bill in parliament, the drafting of administrative rules for implementation, the actual rollout of the policy in practice. There are many steps along the way which need to be tracked.</p>
<p>My research suggests that ministers have become a lot more conscious of the need to follow a policy through to its delivery and implementation on the ground on the last 25 years. They know that the practicalities of a failed policy on the ground can haunt them and the government for years after.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, successive prime ministers have become more obsessive about delivery since Tony Blair established his <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/26/the-art-of-delivery-the-prime-ministers-delivery-unit-2001-2005/">prime minister’s delivery unit</a> in 2001, so ministers know that the centre is watching. They have developed their own practical steps to check policy implementation. Former Conservative cabinet minister <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-01/Eric%20Pickles.pdf">Eric Pickles</a>, for example, implemented a tracker system in his department to “ruthlessly” monitor progress on the 40 most important items on his to-do list.</p>
<h2>So you’re a government minister now?</h2>
<p>Being a minister demands performance every minute of the day in an environment that is more scrutinised – through social media – than ever. Many feel like an imposter on first arriving. Sometimes the pressures can overwhelm. But it’s all temporary. </p>
<p>The ministerial life is relatively short so it’s not unreasonable for a minister to think about what they will do after they’ve left government. They will be aware that political parties can be particularly brutal to those who no longer have the status they once did. </p>
<p>Those who survive best afterwards are often the ones who maintain external friendships. Knowing how to keep a hinterland is perhaps the most important skill of all. There is a life after politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leighton Andrews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is no manual for a job at the top of government but a few golden rules are largely agreed upon by those who have experienced ministerial life.Leighton Andrews, Professor of Public Service Leadership, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236662024-02-16T11:56:33Z2024-02-16T11:56:33ZWellingborough and Kingswood byelections: it’s never been this bad for the Conservatives, and it could still get worse<p>Writing about Conservative byelection calamities has become something of a standard Friday practice for me. But the party’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-68313404">defeat in Wellingborough</a> in Northamptonshire was particularly brutal. </p>
<p>The Tory vote share was a mere 25% and the Conservative to Labour swing of 28.5% was the second biggest in modern electoral history. Only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Dudley_West_by-election">Dudley West in 1994</a>, with a 29.1% swing, was bigger. That result was the clearest first demonstration that Labour would oust the Conservatives by a huge majority at the 1997 general election. Politics is on repeat. </p>
<p>The loss of Kingswood in South Gloucestershire was on a smaller (16.4%) swing, but is equally ominous for Rishi Sunak. Apart from in 1992, whichever party Kingswood chose over the half-century of its existence (it is about to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-constituency-boundaries-are-being-redrawn-to-make-them-more-equal-but-it-wont-save-the-conservatives-221256">split</a> into other constituencies) also formed the government.</p>
<h2>An unprecedented year of byelections</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have an increasingly unhappy knack of creating unnecessary and unwelcome (for them) contests. Since 2022, the Conservatives have now lost six byelections to Labour, on an average swing of 21%. </p>
<p>Byelections used to be prompted mainly by deaths. During this parliamentary term however, nine contests in Conservative-held seats have been products of resignations, sometimes after behaviour by the resigning MP that could most generously be described as “controversial”. Another was forced by a recall petition and three necessitated by deaths. Eight of the nine byelections following resignations were lost, as was the recall petition contest and one of the three caused by death.</p>
<p>The Kingswood contest was at least precipitated by a resignation on principle. Chris Skidmore <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67895246">resigned</a> as an MP, angered by his government’s issuing of more oil and gas exploration licences.</p>
<p>Wellingborough’s byelection was caused by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-bone-kicked-out-of-parliament-for-violence-and-sexual-misconduct-how-recall-petitions-work-220102">recall petition</a> lodged against Peter Bone under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. Bone, who was found to have bullied and exposed himself to a member of his staff, was suspended from the House of Commons for six weeks, triggering a petition signed by 13% of electors (10% is the threshold needed to hold a byelection). </p>
<p>Electors disillusioned by the Conservatives have had unprecedented opportunities to vent their displeasure. The net effect has been the biggest loss of seats during a parliamentary term since the 1960s. </p>
<h2>Looking towards a general election</h2>
<p>Is there any brighter news for the Conservatives? Amid the wreckage, the party could point to modest turnouts in both byelections, 38% in Wellingborough and 37% in Kingswood. But low byelection turnout is common. And the results are more a consequence of the Conservative vote dropping – Labour is not piling on the votes. </p>
<p>It is a huge leap of faith to assume the stay-at-homes were all Conservative-leaners who will show up at the general election. Conservative optimists could point to their Kingswood vote share being above that obtained in the constituency at general elections during the party’s wilderness years of 1997, 2001 and 2005. But the opposite was true with Thursday’s pitiful performance in Wellingborough.</p>
<p>The lingering Brexit bonus for the Conservatives may be neutered by the entry of Reform UK. Richard’s Tice’s outfit is no Ukip in its heyday or the Brexit Party, both of which offered a clear and popular core aim. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/16/reform-uk-wellingborough-kingswood-by-election-richard-tice/">Reform winning</a> 13% of the vote in Wellingborough and 10% in Kingswood is an achievement worth noting, if unlikely to be replicated come general election day. The Conservatives won three-quarters of the Brexit Leave vote in 2019. Reform UK will act as a repository for disaffected Brexiteer Tories in particular. </p>
<p>No party has ever won an election when trailing its main rival on the economy. Even without Thursday’s news that the UK fell into a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68297420">recession</a> in 2023, the Conservatives are well behind Labour on economic stewardship. </p>
<p>It has been 45 years since the less popular leader of the “big two” won the election (Margaret Thatcher trailed James Callaghan in 1979) and Sunak <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48452-sunak-vs-starmer-2024-how-have-attitudes-changed-since-the-pm-took-office">trails</a> Keir Starmer, albeit not as badly as his party <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48607-voting-intention-con-21-lab-46-7-8-feb-2024">lags behind Labour</a>.</p>
<p>For the Conservatives, the one constant is that further trouble may be imminent. The party has removed the whip from Blackpool South MP, Scott Benton, who is appealing his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/14/blackpool-mp-scott-benton-faces-commons-suspension-over-lobbying-scandal">35-day suspension</a> from the Commons over a lobbying scandal. If Benton loses his appeal, a recall petition will follow, potentially triggering a byelection in a seat classed as marginal, but on all current evidence a seaside stroll for Labour. </p>
<h2>Rochdale embarrassment</h2>
<p>There could be a very brief respite for Sunak – who may now face pointless calls for a new Conservative leader – as we head towards the farce of the Rochdale byelection on February 29, a contest Labour has managed to lose before it really started. The party <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/rochdale-by-election-why-labour-cant-replace-azhar-ali-and-what-happens-if-he-wins-13070586">dropped support</a> for its official candidate, Azhar Ali, after leaked audio revealed Ali’s anti-Israel conspiracy theory comments regarding the October 7 Hamas attack. </p>
<p>Starmer’s initial ill-judged move to shore up Ali was absurd. Rochdale is thus high on the embarrassment scale for Labour, but as an issue affecting the outcome of the general election, it is negligible. </p>
<p>After an exceptional Brexit election in 2019 – no election in the past century has ever been dominated by a single issue to that extent – the 2024 general election will be decided by the economy, cost of living, perceptions of competence and leadership. Normal politics in other words. And on all the dials, Labour appears way ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Disillusioned Conservative voters have had a string of opportunities to make their voices heard.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232832024-02-13T16:08:51Z2024-02-13T16:08:51ZLabour scaling back its £28 billion green pledge will impact UK housing – and public health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575302/original/file-20240213-16-cnaxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-drone-sunrise-view-suburban-houses-1079721062">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK Labour party has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/08/labour-cuts-28bn-green-investment-pledge-by-half#:%7E:text=Labour%20announced%20the%20%C2%A328bn,flood%20defences%20and%20home%20insulation.">announced</a> its intention to reduce <a href="https://theconversation.com/labours-28-billion-green-investment-promise-could-be-watered-down-heres-why-222319">its £28 billion green investment pledge</a> to less than £15 billion if elected this year. The political fallout has been been largely focused on the party’s fiscal credibility and leader of the opposition Keir Starmer’s seeming proclivity for <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-labour-party-uk-election-u-turns/">U-turns</a>. </p>
<p>A crucial question so far overlooked is what impact the cut would have on <a href="https://theconversation.com/healthy-cities-arent-a-question-of-boring-or-exciting-buildings-but-about-creating-better-public-space-220456">public health</a>. The initial pledge included a key home-insulation plan to upgrade 72% – 19m homes – of the UK’s housing stock. </p>
<p>The revised plan, however, replaces that ambitious target with the more ambiguous statement that “millions of homes” will be refurbished. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07352166.2023.2260029">Research</a> has long shown that uninsulated homes have consequences for health, especially for those living in poverty and in poor quality housing. This in turn places <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1070200/full">an extra burden</a> on an already over-stretched health service.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A constructionn site." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575304/original/file-20240213-16-hkrvur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labour plans to build 1.5 million homes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/construction-new-houses-england-ground-1190120185">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Existing government failure</h2>
<p>The wider societal cost of poor-quality housing in the UK is estimated at <a href="https://www.brebookshop.com/details.jsp?id=327671">£18.6 billion a year</a>. Such costs, however, are often ignored when housing policy is being developed and implemented. </p>
<p>Labour promises to deliver 1.5 million homes by “<a href="https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/how-not-if-labour-will-jump-start-planning-to-build-1-5-million-homes-and-save-the-dream-of-homeownership/">blitzing</a>” the planning system, but it has so far ignored the potential consequences for public health.</p>
<p>Of course, the failure to factor in health is by no means unique to Labour policy. It is already embedded in the government’s approach. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2023.2260029">A recent academic review</a> of government housing and transport policy found that health is notably absent, despite well-established evidence that urban spaces are making us ill. This shows that on the occasions where health is included, it is lower in a hierarchy of priorities compared to other agendas such as growing the economy. </p>
<p>For many years, government housing policy has been shaped by the numeric gap between supply and demand, rather than the type or quality of the housing stock. The mechanisms for delivering have been based on land release and planning reform. Successive housing policies have mentioned involving communities and supporting their health, social, and cultural wellbeing. But there have been no clear targets for ensuring house retrofit and house building positively impact public health.</p>
<p>In his 2010 independent review on how to reduce
health inequalities in England, epidemiologist Michael Marmot <a href="https://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review/fair-society-healthy-lives-full-report-pdf.pdf">showed</a> that prioritising health in urban policies, like housing and transport, can have significant health benefits for local populations. </p>
<p><a href="https://truud.ac.uk/briefings/">Our research project has shown</a> that health should be made a central factor in all national policy and guidance that shapes urban spaces. The World Health Organization <a href="https://unhabitat.org/global-report-on-urban-health-equitable-healthier-cities-for-sustainable-development">recommends</a> explicitly including health in housing policy – and tracking its impact with recognised metrics. UK politicians have largely failed to respond.</p>
<h2>Promising developments</h2>
<p>In addition to positive developments in government, such as the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/building-better-building-beautiful-commission">Build Back Beautiful Commission</a>, the opposition also has some promising ambitions. Labour is pledging to deliver a <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Mission-Public-Services.pdf">“prevention-first revolution”</a>, in which it envisions a pro-active role for government in ensuring that everybody has the building blocks for a healthy life. </p>
<p>In its mission document for health policy, Labour says that retrofitting of millions of homes will “keep families warm rather than living in damp, mouldy conditions that give their children asthma”. The fact that the party is making explicit this link between housing and health signal is a potentially very positive step forward. </p>
<p>However, in all the furore about Labour scrapping its £28 billion pledge, this crucial link to public health has been entirely forgotten. Indeed, while Labour’s environmental policy has been carefully updated to revise and remove various targets, the preventative health agenda retains the now defunct promise to “<a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Mission-Public-Services.pdf#page=13">oversee retrofitting of 19 million homes</a>”. This is perhaps indicative of the extent to which policymakers just don’t think about health when they think about housing. </p>
<p>While the Conservative pledges for the next parliament remain unclear, analysis of their existing policies in government <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2023.2260029">has found</a> a failure to think about or measure the way housing and urban development policis impact health. Instead, it is merely assumed that housing policies will have positive health outcomes. Rather than making such assumptions, policymakers should be putting public health considerations at the centre of all their decision making. </p>
<p>To ensure that the impact any given policy has on public health is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhcJN2WKAvo&t=76s">measured</a> and <a href="https://truud.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/D2900_Walton_Truud-report_Health-evidence-in-a-complex-system__v3.pdf">acted upon</a>, health needs to be an explicit urban planning policy outcome. It needs to be clearly defined, measurable, and built into policy implementation and political discourse.</p>
<p>It is also important that different government ministries and relevant stakeholders focused on public health, planning and the environment work together more effectively. Unhealthy homes should be a priority for both the housing minister and the health minister. </p>
<p>Healthier people are more economically productive. They have a smaller financial footprint on the NHS. In the long term, better preventative health is a key part of solving some of the UK’s biggest economic challenges, from labour shortages and sluggish productivity growth to stretched public finances. </p>
<p>Too often government policy is not often designed with the long-term in mind. Instead, short-term economic outcomes and political gains <a href="https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2023/10/24/uk-government-climate-policy-developments-leave-a-health-shaped-gap/">are prioritised</a> – to the detriment of public health. </p>
<p>The best way for the government to protect public health is for every department to consider how their work impacts on it. If political and economic calculations about creating, scrapping and rescaling major projects continue to ignore health, however, politicians are likely to continue coming up with the wrong answers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research comes from the TRUUD project, a research programme based at the University of Bristol, that aims to reduce non-communicable disease (such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, mental ill-health and respiratory illness) and health inequalities linked to the quality of urban planning and development for use in discussions with government and the developer industry.
The TRUUD research project (<a href="https://truud.ac.uk/">https://truud.ac.uk/</a>) is funded by the the UK Prevention Research Partnership (<a href="https://ukprp.org/">https://ukprp.org/</a>).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Bates receives funding as part of the TRUUD research project (<a href="https://truud.ac.uk/">https://truud.ac.uk/</a>), which is funded by the the UK Prevention Research Partnership (<a href="https://ukprp.org/">https://ukprp.org/</a>).</span></em></p>Too often government policy is not designed with the long-term in mind. Instead, short-term economic outcomes and political gains are prioritised - to the detriment of public health.Jack Newman, Research Fellow, School for Policy Studies, University of BristolGeoff Bates, Lecturer in Social Policy, Research Fellow, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223192024-02-02T06:40:02Z2024-02-02T06:40:02ZLabour’s £28 billion green investment promise could be watered down – here’s why<p>Mathematicians will tell you that <a href="https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-is-28-a-perfect-number.html#:%7E:text=The%20number%2028%20is%20a,4%2C%207%2C%20and%2014.">28 is a perfect number</a>; it is not proving quite so perfect for Labour leader Keir Starmer.</p>
<p>Starmer is set to make a “final” decision on whether Labour will commit to <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2024-01-29/labours-28bn-green-pledge-to-be-scrapped-amid-exploitation-by-sunak-campaign">investing £28 billion a year</a> as part of its green prosperity plan. The party hasn’t confirmed whether this figure would be met by the end of the next parliament (fiscal year 2029-30), let alone the middle of it.</p>
<p>Unions, environmentalists and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/business-leader-urges-labour-to-stand-by-28bn-pledge-for-green-economy">investors</a> have given their support to the pledge. Others (some of them Labour Party members including <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/26/keir-starmer-ditch-labour-28bn-green-pledge-ed-balls/">Ed Balls</a>) say such a commitment is a liability. “Starmer the spendthrift” is already a club that the Conservatives and some newspapers have been using to try to close the yawning gap in the polls.</p>
<h2>2021 vision</h2>
<p>The £28 billion a year figure was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/27/labour-promises-spend-28bn-year-tackling-climate-crisis">first announced</a> at Labour party conference by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in September 2021.</p>
<p>Reeves said then that the time for dither and delay was over, and that she wanted to be known as the first green chancellor. She would spend £28 billion each and every year of the next parliament (should Labour take office).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman at a lectern with union jack colours." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reeves has since poured cold water on earlier public spending promises.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/liverpool-united-kingdom-october-09-2023-2374491263">Martin Suker/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A year later more flesh was put on the bones. Labour announced the green prosperity plan which included a state-owned company called <a href="https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-plan-for-gb-energy/">Great British Energy</a> (responsible for investing in technologies less ready for market like tidal power) housing renovations and support for green steelmaking.</p>
<p>These announcements were made during a party conference in which the Labour leadership <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/09/theres-no-green-future-without-public-ownership">refused to allow a motion</a> to discuss public ownership of energy assets (wind turbines, transmission lines, grid-scale batteries).</p>
<p>It was also in the midst of the short-lived Liz Truss premiership. Then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9624/">fiscal statement</a> sent interest rates spiralling, and therein lies the trouble for Starmer and Reeves. When they made the promise two-and-a-half years ago, it was very, very cheap to borrow money. Now, not so much. </p>
<p>But the sums involved, even if borrowed without a windfall tax on energy giants, are <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/labours-28bn-green-spending-pledge-sounds-significant-but-wouldnt-be-enough-to-prevent-overall-public-investment-falling-13044921">expected</a> to hardly increase the national debt.</p>
<h2>The watering down begins</h2>
<p>From the beginning of 2023 Starmer and Reeves were remarkably quiet on the £28-billion figure and the green prosperity plan, which was launched by its main author Ed Miliband in <a href="https://labourlist.org/2023/03/consistent-and-clear-climate-leadership-milibands-speech-to-the-green-alliance/">March 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Labour’s opponents were not so reticent. On June 5, the Daily Mail ran <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12162745/Treasury-analysis-warns-Starmers-28BILLION-net-zero-strategy-drive-mortgage-costs.html">a front-page story</a> claiming families faced a £1,000-a-year bill for <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12162745/Treasury-analysis-warns-Starmers-28BILLION-net-zero-strategy-drive-mortgage-costs.html">“Labour eco plans”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A worker in overalls unrolling insulation foam in the eaves of a house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Renovating homes could make them more energy-efficient – and lower heating bills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/work-composed-mineral-wool-insulation-floor-1017169942">Serhii Krot/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Days later, Reeves announced the first of several backwards steps on her 2021 commitment. She said that £28 billion would not be invested in a Labour government’s first year, but more likely in the second half of the five-year term. Further concessions followed in October, pushing the date back to the end of the parliament and introducing a rule that each pound of public investment would have to attract three from the private sector.</p>
<p>A series of interviews by Starmer in January 2024 threw further doubt on the £28-billion figure, and the Labour Party’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67993311">“campaign bible”</a> – instructions for prospective MPs on slogans to use and policies to quote to voters – was silent on the number.</p>
<p>Then, on Friday January 19, the Sun newspaper ran <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/25422227/labour-ditched-green-spending-target-starmer/">another story</a> quoting an (unnamed) senior Labour figure who said the spending target would be scrapped.</p>
<p>An upcoming meeting may resolve matters one way or another. The date for Labour’s election manifesto to be finalised is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/96f97332-36dd-44e5-8a24-9592965ca4f9">February 8</a>.</p>
<p>Supporters of the commitment are various unions, including the firefighters union, whose members are battling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/public-risk-labour-drops-28bn-green-plan-fire-union-chief-matt-wrack">more floods and fires</a> as a result of climate change. The Labour climate and environment forum, an internal pressure group set up just over a year ago, has released <a href="https://lcef.cdn.prismic.io/lcef/bf737486-79cc-422c-a59b-58a6a483f6ad_LCEF_EssaysCollection_1801_LowRes.pdf">a 17-page report</a> listing the benefits of the proposed spend. Some labour frontbenchers are also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/uk-needs-ambitious-green-plan-keep-up-allies-labour-frontbencher">vocal in their support</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A moorland with smoke rising from it and a fire engine in the foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Firefighters are on the frontline of increasingly extreme weather.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ebbw-vale-wales-march-24-2022-2144761171">Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Within the Labour party there is the familiar argument that you can only implement a policy once you are in government, and so anything that will scare voters or give opponents a stick to beat you with should be discarded. As per the title of an article in the Times by Peter Mandelson: “Few voters will be thrilled by Keir Starmer turning into another Greta Thunberg”.</p>
<h2>Choices have consequences</h2>
<p>There is a scene in the 1987 Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket that those who advocate Labour sticking to its (already watered down) spending commitment should show Starmer.</p>
<p>A marine recruit is quizzed by a ferocious drill sergeant about whether he believes in the Virgin Mary. The recruit, played by Matthew Modine, says he does not. The drill sergeant explodes and threatens the recruit with a beating if he does not change his answer. The recruit says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sir, the private believes that any answer he gives will be wrong and the senior drill instructor will beat him harder if he reverses himself, sir!</p>
</blockquote>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYxEIyNA_mk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The drill instructor respects his guts, and makes him leader of the platoon.</p>
<p>If Starmer sticks to the £28 billion promise he can expect headlines decrying “tax and spend” and “same old Labour”. If he dumps it, he will demoralise door knockers, unions and <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/labour-28bn-green-prosperity-plans-investment-energy-sector-net-zero">investors</a>. He will also not stop the attacks on him from the Conservatives and right-wing newspapers. They will add “flip-flopper” (something they’ve <a href="https://order-order.com/2024/01/30/labour-states-businesses-hate-uncertainty-as-it-flip-flops-on-28-billion-12-times/">already been saying</a>) to the list of his perceived sins. </p>
<p>They will, as the insight of the fictional marine suggests, beat him harder.</p>
<p>Climate change is, as the UK parliament <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126677">agreed in 2019</a>, an emergency. Public support for action is <a href="https://strongmessagehere.substack.com/p/labours-28bn-question">surprisingly robust</a>. Doing so will require credibility that only comes from saying what you are going to do and how much you are going to spend. </p>
<p>Promising (to save) the world, but to do it on the cheap, makes you look silly or shifty – or both.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
<br><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeTop">Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.</a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeBottom">Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Keir Starmer’s flagship climate change pledge has already been cut back significantly since 2021.Marc Hudson, Visiting Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex Business School, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219012024-02-01T12:42:39Z2024-02-01T12:42:39ZSupervised toothbrushing in schools and nurseries is a good idea – it’s proven to reduce tooth decay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572161/original/file-20240130-23-ilrc2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5734%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/little-beautiful-african-girl-brushing-teeth-379214593">didesign021/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly a quarter of five-year-old children in England have tooth decay. In deprived areas of the country the proportion is even higher. And it isn’t just one problematic tooth – children with decay have, on average, three or four <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oral-health-survey-of-5-year-old-children-2022">affected teeth</a>. It’s the <a href="https://www.bda.org/news-and-opinion/news/child-hospital-admissions-caused-by-decay-going-unchallenged/">most common reason</a> why young children aged from five to ten years are admitted to hospital. </p>
<p>When Labour leader Keir Starmer announced the party’s intention to expand <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/keir-starmer-announces-plan-for-supervised-toothbrushing-in-schools">toothbrushing programmes</a> in nurseries and schools, he <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-schools-toothbrush-dentists-b2476479.html">faced criticism</a> for planning to take away responsibility from parents and place further burden on schools. </p>
<p>But supervised toothbrushing for young children already takes place. It has been rolled out <a href="https://www.childsmile.nhs.scot/professionals/childsmile-toothbrushing/">in Scotland</a> and for <a href="https://www.gov.wales/designed-smile-improving-childrens-dental-health">deprived areas in Wales</a> and takes place in some areas in England. It is effective in reducing tooth decay, especially for children in deprived areas. It is not meant to replace brushing teeth at home, but strengthens good oral health practices.</p>
<p>As experts in dental health, we know all too well the impact poor oral health has on the lives of children and families. We are <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/">leading a project</a> to improve toothbrushing programmes in nurseries and schools in England, and have recently developed an <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/">online toolkit</a> to help schools, nurseries and parents as well as the NHS and local government.</p>
<h2>Painful – and preventable</h2>
<p>Tooth decay causes pain and suffering. It affects children’s daily lives, including what they eat, their speech and their self-esteem. It stops them from doing things they enjoy and can cause disrupted sleep. And tooth decay has an impact on school readiness and attendance. Children have to take time off school due to toothache and to attend <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-child-dental-health/health-matters-child-dental-health">dental appointments</a>. </p>
<p>While going to hospital for dental extractions under general anaesthetic reduces the impact of decay on children’s lives, the event itself can be worrying for <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.331">children and their parents</a>. And poor oral health in childhood has lifelong consequences. Children with decay in their primary teeth are four times more likely to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28571506">develop decay</a> in their adult teeth. </p>
<p>In England, treatment of decay in children and teenagers <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hospital-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds-2022/hospital-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds-2022">cost the NHS</a> over £50 million in the financial year 2021-22. </p>
<p>Toothbrushing at school and nursery with a <a href="https://www.cochrane.org/CD007868/ORAL_fluoride-toothpastes-different-strengths-preventing-tooth-decay">fluoride toothpaste</a> for young children is a way to tackle this issue. </p>
<h2>On the curriculum</h2>
<p>Supervised toothbrushing involves children brushing their own teeth as a group during the day, overseen by nursery and preschool staff or teaching assistants. It typically takes between five and ten minutes. </p>
<p>In Scotland, the <a href="https://www.childsmile.nhs.scot/professionals/childsmile-toothbrushing/">Childsmile Toothbrushing Programme</a> is offered to all children aged three and four at nursery and to some younger nursery children as well to some older school children. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022034512470690">Research analysing the programme</a> has found it to be effective in reducing tooth decay, especially in children at greatest risk, such as those living in areas of <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/10/11/e038116.full.pdf">social deprivation</a>. In England, though, uptake of toothbrushing programmes is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-023-6182-1">currently fragmented</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Girl brushes giant model teeth" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Learning about brushing teeth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zoe Marshman</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>What’s more, oral health is already part of children’s learning at nurseries and schools in England. The topic is included in <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62cea352e90e071e789ea9bf/Relationships_Education_RSE_and_Health_Education.pdf">statutory guidance</a> for primary and secondary schools. Similarly, promoting oral health is included in the <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/_files/ugd/b03681_311d9c3dcf6c43de9dbc05336733f105.pdf">statutory framework</a> for early years settings such as nurseries. </p>
<p>Running a supervised toothbrushing scheme is one way early years settings can demonstrate they have met the requirement about oral health. </p>
<p>Supervised toothbrushing in nurseries and schools does not replace toothbrushing at home. It serves to complement home toothbrushing to help young children learn and practice good oral hygiene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Marshman, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a>
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kara Gray-Burrows, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a> The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Day, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a> The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care.</span></em></p>Tooth decay is the most common reason why young children aged from five to ten are admitted to hospital.Zoe Marshman, Professor/Honorary Consultant of Dental Public Health, University of SheffieldKara Gray-Burrows, Lecturer in Behavioural Sciences & Complex Intervention Methodology, University of LeedsPeter Day, Professor of Children's Oral Health and Consultant in Paediatric Dentistry, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216112024-01-30T19:09:51Z2024-01-30T19:09:51ZLabour hasn’t won a UK general election since 2005. Will 2024 be any different?<p>Democracy faces challenges around the globe in 2024: <a href="https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/">at least 64 countries</a> will ask their citizens to elect a government this year. </p>
<p>One of the most keenly observed will be the United Kingdom general election, likely to be held in November. The British Labour party has not won an election since 2005, and has lost the last four elections. At the last election in 2019, it was beaten handsomely.</p>
<p>The 2019 result saw the Conservatives win 365 seats of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, while Labour limped in with 202 seats. At that point, Boris Johnson was an immensely popular political leader, single-handedly delivering the Conservatives a historic win. </p>
<p>Famously, Johnson broke down part of Labour’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/11/keir-starmer-promises-red-wall-voters-the-basics-of-government-done-better">red wall</a>” seats – historically safe Labour seats in parts of Northern England. With Johnson’s emphatic win, and Brexit “done”, one writer predicted a further “decade of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/riding-the-populist-wave/4D4C82C02F8A80A03FD2EC18B5D8CACD">conservative dominance</a>”. </p>
<p>Yet, the decade of conservative dominance did not arrive, and on current reading the Conservatives look destined for opposition. The most recent poll confirms Labour’s long-standing 20-point lead over the Conservatives <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/">(45%-25%)</a>. Since the Brexit Referendum, there has been unprecedented volatility in British politics – not dissimilar to the leadership churn in Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dogs-brexit-johnsons-missteps-about-to-send-weary-voters-to-another-election-as-the-eu-divorce-gets-ugly-123000">A dog's Brexit: Johnson's missteps about to send weary voters to another election as the EU divorce gets ugly</a>
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<p>Since the 2016 referendum, the Conservatives have chewed through five different leaders from David Cameron to Rishi Sunak. Each successive leader has been ensnared in a range of crises, from Theresa May’s record common defeats over Brexit, Johnson’s handling of COVID, Sunak’s problems with inflation, and of course, the blitzkrieg politics of shock and incompetence of Liz Truss. The Conservative party has <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/battles-on-the-backbenches-what-are-the-different-factions-in-the-conservative-party-12964275">fragmented</a> and factionalised, with the hardline right pushing to veto key policies.</p>
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<p>The volatility has led to wider governing instability. Since 2019, there have been five home secretaries, and a remarkable six chancellors (the role of federal treasurer in Australia). This turmoil takes an incalculable toll on effective government, as policy settings continuously change, and the public service are left reeling in the aftermath. For the Johnson government in particular, personal loyalty and factional support trumped appointing competent ministers. </p>
<p>The case of Priti Patel is instructive. She was forced to resign as minister for international development in the May government in 2017 after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/08/priti-patel-forced-to-resign-over-unofficial-meetings-with-israelis">it emerged</a> she had not been candid about unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a lobbyist.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/handling-priti-patel-bullying-inquiry-has-fatally-undermined-ministerial-code">breaching</a> the Ministerial Code of Conduct for allegations of bullying staff, she later became home secretary in Johnson’s government. </p>
<p>The political in-fighting and instability in the Conservative party fuelled volatility, which in turn has lead to voter disaffection. Suella Braverman is the other striking example, initially appointed home secretary under Truss, she also <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/bringing-back-suella-braverman-after-rule-breach-sets-dangerous-precedent-say-mps-12759991">breached the ministerial code</a> by sharing an official document from her personal email address. Sunak later appointed her home secretary, in part to appease the hard right of the party. However, in office, she proved to be a political liability, and was dismissed by Sunak. </p>
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<p>The turbulence has been highly damaging for Sunak. Any political leader needs clean air to reset the agenda, but his government has been mired. He aimed to shape his agenda around five key priorities. One year on, one <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rishi-sunaks-five-pledges-one-year">report card</a> suggests he had only achieved one of these goals, and the critical ones (especially on immigration) are “off track”. </p>
<p>Immigration is the political battlefield the Conservatives will hope will help them, along with an improving economy, to help them retain office. The resonances here with Australian politics are all too familiar, and Sunak will be hoping for a repeat of the Liberals’ emphatic “<a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/David-Marr-and-Marian-Wilkinson-Dark-Victory-9781741144475/">dark victory</a>” at the 2004 election. However, Sunak is widely seen as <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/richer-than-the-king-rishi-sunak-hammered-by-focus-groups-in-swing-english-seats_uk_64c24ed9e4b044bf98f3742f">out of touch</a> with the wider public – his and his wife’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/22/rishi-sunak-rich-730m-fortune-prime-minister">vast wealth</a> has been the subject of much commentary.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-not-adjust-your-sets-with-truss-gone-the-uk-is-about-to-get-yet-another-prime-minister-192931">Do not adjust your sets: with Truss gone, the UK is about to get yet another prime minister</a>
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<p>This year’s election, then, looks increasingly like one Conservatives will lose – but it remains to be seen how well Keir Starmer’s Labour can win it. For some time, Labour has held a solid 20-point lead over the Tories in the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/">polls</a>, yet to take office, Starmer will need a record 12.7% <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britains-labour-would-need-record-vote-swing-win-majority-research-shows-2024-01-16/">swing</a>. Starmer’s team will take inspiration from Anthony Albanese’s 2022 win in Australia, a solid election result off the back of a crumbling centre-right government, but hardly an emphatic victory. The lesson there is that you need to win seats, not necessarily the vote share. </p>
<p>The dilemma for Starmer is that he was elected leader in 2020 <a href="https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf">promising</a> to fulfil much of Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda. However, since that time, he has been seeking to recalibrate and reduce the range of his policy agenda. </p>
<p>Much of his energy has also been used to diminish the influence of the Corbyn-ite left in the party. While there is much long-term ambition in his five “missions”, some are light on detail, and others <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/keir-starmers-five-missions-labour-govern">rely on luck</a>. </p>
<p>Long-term Labour politician and scholar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/keir-starmer-detached-labour-party-jon-cruddas">Jon Cruddas’</a> lament is that Starmer’s vision is detached from Labour’s history. Labour looks set to take office, but it could be off the back of a large scale disaffection from the wider public, with voter <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1050929/voter-turnout-in-the-uk/">turnout</a> likely to decrease for the third election running.</p>
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<p><em>This article has been corrected. It originally stated Labour has not won an election since 2010. That has been changed to 2005.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After years of tumult in the ruling Conservative party, Labour looks set to take office. But it is no sure bet, and could be off the back of a large scale disaffection from the wider public.Rob Manwaring, Associate Professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211912024-01-22T15:07:57Z2024-01-22T15:07:57ZIt’s 100 years since Labour’s first prime minister – but Keir Starmer will want to avoid comparisons with Ramsay MacDonald<p>There was a time when to ridicule – or condemn – the Labour leader of the day, a newspaper cartoonist needed only to append under their subject’s nose a luxuriant moustache. That was all that was necessary to suggest that whoever they were drawing was the “new <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp02872&displayNo=60">Ramsay MacDonald</a>”. </p>
<p>Writers needed only prefix the word “Mac” to the leader’s name with the same in mind. Popular memory is finite, however. “Keir MacStarmer” would be meaningless. </p>
<p>The Labour leader would nevertheless prefer for people not to draw comparisons with Macdonald, tempting though this may be in the year that marks a century since MacDonald became Labour’s first prime minister. There was a reason Starmer’s parents named him Keir, and not Ramsay. </p>
<p>Keir Hardie was the saintly founder of the party, almost too principled for power. Ramsay Macdonald was the man who betrayed the party he helped to found. </p>
<p>The first Labour government didn’t survive 1924, and the next, in 1929, MacDonald crashed after two years by joining the Conservatives in a national government. Economic crisis was his justification. But for many in the <a href="https://socialist.net/great-betrayal-national-government/">party he had abandonded</a>, personal weakness on the part of the man Winston Churchill dubbed the “boneless wonder” was a better explanation.</p>
<h2>History doesn’t repeat but it can rhyme</h2>
<p>One parallel that can be drawn between MacDonald’s Labour and Starmer’s is inexperience. In 1924, only a few Labour ministers – Arthur Henderson and J. R. Clynes – had been in government before, six years previously in the Lloyd George coalition. Those with ministerial experience who may assume office in 2024 – such as Yvette Cooper and Hillary Benn (whose <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw253764/The-Labour-Cabinet-1929?LinkID=mp57991&role=sit&rNo=4">grandfather was in MacDonald’s cabinet</a>) – will have been excluded from power for 14 years.</p>
<p>In the event of a Labour win in 2024, Starmer, like MacDonald, will have being prime minister as his very first experience in government. That is unusual, though less so recently: neither Tony Blair nor David Cameron had held any office before they held the highest of them all.</p>
<p>But Blair and Cameron also left office younger than MacDonald was and Starmer would be on assuming it. Becoming prime minister in their sixties meant that they had a past – the Conservatives aim to tar Starmer with his, as they did with MacDonald a century before. </p>
<p>Ramsay Mac had been <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/parliament-and-the-first-world-war/video-resources/ramsay-macdonald-opposing-entering-ww1/">prominently anti-war</a> during a period of lustful militarism. Though he was not a communist, his opponents found it easy to imply an <a href="https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2022/9/21/the-red-menace-britains-communist-scare-of-the-1920s">association</a> with what was then regarded as an existential threat to the realm.</p>
<p>For those who wish to see it, therein lies peril: Starmer, for all his protestations that his was a working class background is also “Sir Keir”, the metropolitan barrister. Labour lore has it that McDonald all-too gladly accepted the aristocratic embrace when he went into government with the Tories, abandoning the working classes. At the following election Labour was smashed, and out of office – for 14 years.</p>
<p>With little else to hand, the Conservatives will seek to capitalise. No more provocative occupation could be wished for in red wall leafleting than “human rights lawyer”. A deep and raking dive into Starmer’s casework as a lawyer has <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25290381/sir-keir-starmer-free-lawyer-save-baby-murderers/">already begun</a> by today’s tabloids, and an attempt to sow the seeds of a conspiracy theory already made in groundless claims about his role in the CPS decision to drop the case against sex offender <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60213975">Jimmy Savile</a>.</p>
<p>In 1924, the tabloid press sought to do similar with <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/russia/zinoviev/">MacDonald</a>, hoping to thwart his rise to the premiership by <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/russia/zinoviev/">falsely associating</a> him with Bolshevik politician Grigory Zinoviev.</p>
<h2>Different times</h2>
<p>The circumstances around the election that brought Labour to power in 1924 could hardly be more different from those that could do so in 2024, however. Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who had been elevated to the premiership without an election in 1923, did something Theresa May, also elevated to the premiership without an election, emulated in 2017. </p>
<p>He went to the country within a year of taking office, years earlier than he needed to, and lost his majority. May also called an election, narrowly won government again and was out within a couple of years.</p>
<p>Baldwin’s decision has puzzled historians (May’s was merely a mistake). One interpretation is that he most feared his era’s Boris Johnson: David Lloyd George. It was thought that the best way to ‘dish’ the dishonest, dynamic, divisive leader of the Liberals was for Labour to replace his party as the second party of government.</p>
<p>Another interpretation is that Baldwin felt it best to give the working classes a taste of power – to house-train Labour. With the kind of accommodation the British ruling classes usually displayed when faced with potentially uncontrollable threats, they acceded to sharing power – and maintained most of their privileges.</p>
<p>But today, Starmer has the most powerful of all campaigning messages: “time for a change”. Fourteen years of power is usually deemed enough for any party, and that’s without what even the government’s supporters would concede as being the chaos of the latter half of it.</p>
<p>Nevertheless the Labour prospectus of 2024 – to the chagrin of those to the left of the party, and to the fear of those to the right – is characterised by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/keir-starmer-labour-leader-edward-colston-statue">moderation</a>. To reach Downing Street for the first time in 1924, Labour had to overcome the public perception that it was extreme. Imagined though that perception might have been, it was potent. After all, no one knew what a Labour government might be like. </p>
<p>Labour in 2024 has to overcome imagined histories – the idea that Labour governments always lead to crises. The Conservatives, and their print and broadcast proxies, will seek to ensure that voters have a very certain sense of what Labour governments are like. And they may privately maintain what looks like an increasingly overoptimistic hope that no Labour leader named Keir should ever win power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ramsay MacDonald was Labour’s first ever PM but he ended up being booted out of the party he helped found.Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205852024-01-05T15:01:41Z2024-01-05T15:01:41ZShould we believe Rishi Sunak’s hint that the election will be in October? What the evidence tells us<p>So now we know. After weeks of speculation, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67883242">“working on the assumption”</a> that a general election will take place in the second half of this year. That’s just a few months before the latest possible date of January 28 2025. </p>
<p>The choice of an autumn election does make sense for Sunak and the Conservatives. With the polls showing the Labour opposition on a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48017-voting-intention-con-22-lab-45-29-30-nov-2023">stable and substantial lead</a>, it makes sense for the Conservatives to buy some time. The idea would be to try to make inroads into Labour’s lead before setting an election date. </p>
<p>Much rests on the fate of the economy. A year ago, Sunak promised to halve inflation, grow the economy and get debt falling. Independent analysis shows that inflation has halved, but <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rishi-sunaks-five-pledges-one-year">less success on economic growth and falling debt.</a> </p>
<p>Between now and the autumn, Sunak will hope that the economy shows signs of recovery. An autumn election will also give voters time to feel the economic benefits of the tax cuts that are anticipated in the spring, which could potentially provide the Conservatives with a boost in the polls. </p>
<h2>Why ‘autumn’ means ‘October’</h2>
<p>There are other reasons why an autumn 2024 election makes sense. During the post-war period, October has proven to be a popular month for elections – even though the last time an election was held in October was 1974. Although over recent decades, most general elections have taken place in the spring, between 1950 and 1974, four of the nine elections were held in October, with only one taking place in May. </p>
<p>No post-war general election has been held in August, September or November. If an election is held in the autumn, October would seem the most likely month if history is anything to go by. </p>
<p>There is also the British weather to consider. While there isn’t strong evidence to show that voters are less likely to turn out in bad weather, it is very much the received wisdom in the UK that this is the case, and given the decision comes down to Sunak, he may not think it worth risking winter weather. This would imply October over, say, November or December. </p>
<p>Historically, turnout in October elections has been similar to turnout in spring elections – and turnout is a major factor for the Conservatives. Age is now the most significant predictor of voting behaviour in UK general elections and <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#:%7E:text=Overall%2C%20the%20relationship%20between%20age,for%20Labour%20and%20the%20Liberal">age is linked to turnout</a>. </p>
<p>The group most likely to vote for the Conservatives are those aged 65 and over – which is also the group most likely to vote at all. A higher overall turnout should therefore be a strategic goal for the Conservatives. </p>
<p>The 18-24 group is most likely to vote Labour but least likely to vote overall so an October vote is again a sound move. With hundreds of thousands of students returning to universities away from home in the autumn, and potentially not yet registered to vote at their term-time address, there is potential to minimise the younger vote.</p>
<h2>A clash with the US election</h2>
<p>An October election would mean the UK vote would take place just weeks ahead of the US election on November 5. The prospect of two of the world’s leading democracies going to the polls within weeks of each other is an exciting one for election enthusiasts. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there is the prospect of two new administrations coming into power around the same time, needing to find their feet quickly in an unstable geopolitical environment, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/176d4b78-1e9a-45c9-8c3c-a74e758ec22f">following two elections that may be heavily influenced by polarisation and misinformation.</a>.</p>
<p>With the eyes of the world focused on a potentially divisive US election, Sunak may feel that a low-key campaign plays in to his hands, focusing on re-electing the incumbent to ensure stability. </p>
<h2>Don’t rule out a spring election yet</h2>
<p>The date for the election is not yet set in stone, however. Following the repeal of the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06111/">Fixed-term Parliaments Act</a>, the choice of election date lies in the hands of the prime minister. </p>
<p>The rollercoaster of British politics in recent years has shown us that much can change in six months. It would therefore be unwise to rule out a spring election, even after Sunak’s heavy hint.</p>
<p>The Labour opposition has accused Sunak of <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/general-election-sir-keir-starmer-says-rishi-sunak-is-squatting-in-downing-street-13042181#:%7E:text=Sky%20News-,General%20Election%3A%20Sir%20Keir%20Starmer%20says%20Rishi%20Sunak%20is%20'squatting,and%20months%20in%20Downing%20Street.'">“squatting” in Downing Street</a> and claims he is running scared, knowing that the polls show him on course for a loss. Sunak may therefore instead opt to call Labour’s bluff, signalling an autumn election in public but preparing for a May election in private. Sunak’s words do leave the door open for a spring election, as “working assumptions” can easily be changed.</p>
<p>Those who still think <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/uk-heading-for-a-may-general-election-is-the-worst-kept-secret-in-parliament-labour-13038533">May is a possible election month</a> will point to the announcement of an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67826928">earlier than expected spring budget date</a>. Headline-grabbing tax cuts, along with some positive economic forecasts may embolden the prime minister to take a gamble and move sooner rather than later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Loomes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are reasons to hold off until the autumn – but there are other clues that still point towards May.Gemma Loomes, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198872023-12-15T14:54:55Z2023-12-15T14:54:55ZMark Drakeford: what the resignation of Wales’ first minister means for the country and the Labour party<p>This week, Mark Drakeford announced his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67702232">resignation</a> as Wales’ first minister after five years as leader. Back in 2018, Drakeford built his <a href="https://skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/manifesto-english-print.pdf">leadership bid</a> on a platform of “21st-century socialism”. As the manifesto reveals, the mantra was rooted in the ideas of “the radical tradition of Welsh socialism”, which would drive the creation of “a more equal, fair and just society”. </p>
<p>While it’s difficult to assess his legacy so soon, it is worth reflecting on whether these initial aims have been achieved. And what does Drakeford’s departure mean for the future of Wales and the Labour party?</p>
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<p>Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic was the defining feature of Mark Drakeford’s tenure. During this period, Drakeford raised the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/04/covid-crisis-makes-mark-drakeford-most-recognisable-leader-in-22-years-of-welsh-devolution">profile</a> of devolution in Wales to the rest of the UK. His measured and cautious approach to the pandemic was <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/sunday-times-declares-mark-drakeford-comfortably-the-most-popular-uk-leader/">popular</a> and a <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/democracy-uk-voting-reform-votes-28283666">stark contrast</a> to that of Boris Johnson. </p>
<p>This popularity was reinforced when Drakeford led Welsh Labour to a decisive victory in the 2021 Senedd <a href="https://research.senedd.wales/research-articles/election-results-2021-what-s-changed/">election</a>. It further extended the party’s more than 100 years of electoral dominance in Wales.</p>
<p>In June this year, Drakeford <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/more-senedd-members-among-mark-drakefords-top-priorities-for-next-12-months-as-conservatives-blast-out-of-touch-plans-12910448">emphasised</a> Senedd reform as one of his <a href="https://www.gov.wales/senedd-reform">priorities</a>, including increasing the number of Senedd members. That is potentially a hard sell to the public, but Drakeford saw it as a “once in a generation” opportunity.</p>
<p>While the Welsh pandemic response appeared to be popular, Drakeford’s government is certainly not immune to criticism. Serious questions hang over the consequences of certain Welsh government COVID <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/welsh-government-coronavirus-covid-mistakes-21107573">measures</a>. To compound this, the rejection of a Wales-specific COVID inquiry has led to <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/first-minister-urged-to-right-a-wrong-and-commit-to-wales-covid-inquiry/">accusations</a> that Drakeford is shying away from scrutiny.</p>
<p>More recently, the Welsh government has faced significant <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/swansea-20mph-welsh-government-confusing-27941424">backlash</a> over its <a href="https://theconversation.com/wales-residential-speed-limit-is-dropping-to-20mph-heres-how-it-should-affect-accidents-and-journey-times-210989">policy</a> to drop the residential speed limit to 20mph, which appears to have led to <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/discontent-grows-towards-mark-drakeford-28157637">concern</a> even within Labour ranks.</p>
<p>When it comes to achieving 21st-century socialism, five years on and in nearly all measures – health, poverty, education – Wales is struggling. The Welsh government’s ambitions have been hamstrung by a lack of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/written-statement-welsh-government-response-uk-autumn-statement-2023">funding</a>, the confines of Wales’ devolved powers and the extreme circumstances of a global pandemic. And while these constraints cannot be ignored, the rhetoric of 21st-century socialism is not being met in reality.</p>
<h2>Wales and Westminster</h2>
<p>Drakeford’s legacy leads to questions concerning the future relationship between Welsh and UK Labour. Central to Drakeford’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13691481231158296">rhetoric</a> during his tenure was to position Welsh Labour as the <a href="https://policymogul.com/key-updates/31452/mark-drakeford-s-speech-to-the-labour-party-conference">defender</a> of Welsh interests against a harmful Conservative government. </p>
<p>With the potential of Labour governments in both Cardiff and London, this line of argument may soon come under pressure. Starmer has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67608097">clear</a> that the economy is simply not in a position for public spending to be significantly increased. </p>
<p>The Welsh and UK parties are also <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-labour-deputy-leader-says-she-doesnt-want-policing-devolved-to-wales/">at odds</a> when it comes to the future of the union and the UK constitution.</p>
<p>If a Starmer government takes a different view on the constitution, or if the spending taps are not turned on sufficiently, would the new Welsh Labour leader seek to build a closer relationship with Starmer? Or, if competing agendas emerge, will the “<a href="https://sochealth.co.uk/the-socialist-health-association/sha-country-and-branch-organisation/sha-wales/clear-red-water/">clear red water</a>” between Welsh and UK Labour become choppier? Any new Welsh Labour leader will need to deal with these potential issues.</p>
<p>The phrase “clear red water” is a legacy of Drakeford’s that stretches back to before he became first minister. As special advisor to former first minister Rhodri Morgan in 2002, Drakeford coined it to mark the Welsh approach to policy making as distinct to new Labour, based on classic Labour principles and rooted in nationally bounded <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952076712455821?casa_token=5-5e05bH1v4AAAAA%3AZQj1ky-kb3Jk61ha3dZnmfO03wBy0VRDXNRTY0X3aeixkdm3xV_51PRz4HHdnCqlkNF-Ui_pX5iO">politics</a>. </p>
<p>The saying has almost become a cliché by now, but if Labour wins the next general election, Drakeford’s successor will need to take inspiration from its purpose of emphasising the distinctive needs of Wales. </p>
<p>Drakeford made people across the UK take notice of Wales and devolution during the pandemic. Whichever phrase is deployed next – 21st-century socialism, clear red water, the Welsh way – the next Welsh Labour leader will need to fight Wales’ corner within their own party.</p>
<h2>The future of 21st-century socialism</h2>
<p>Drakeford stressed throughout his time as first minister that 21st-century socialism could only be achieved through practical action. His methodical and calm <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/england-chaos-boris-johnson-wales-mark-drayford-wales-legacy">approach</a> to governance has won him supporters both within and beyond the Labour party. </p>
<p>However, whether due to the nature of devolution, the lack of funding, the impact of the pandemic or the limitations of Welsh Labour’s programme for government, the 21st-century socialism Drakeford promised has not materialised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-wales-is-set-to-end-its-experiment-why-we-think-thats-a-mistake-218206">Universal basic income: Wales is set to end its experiment – why we think that’s a mistake</a>
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<p>It is unlikely that the next leader will articulate their vision in the same way as Drakeford, who tried to root himself within Welsh Labour traditions. But if they are serious about pursuing progressive policies, they will need to be bold in tackling the challenges plaguing Wales today. </p>
<p>They will need to be innovative in their approach to public policy and the economy, and forthright in demanding adequate funding from the UK government, no matter which party is in power at Westminster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does the future hold for Wales and Welsh Labour in the wake of Drakeford’s resignation?Nye Davies, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191602023-12-05T16:56:24Z2023-12-05T16:56:24ZWhy did Keir Starmer pen the ‘Margaret Thatcher’ article for the Telegraph? Our research suggests it may yield votes<p>Labour leader Keir Starmer has received <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-tries-to-woo-tory-voters-telling-them-take-a-look-at-labour-again-13021634">some criticism</a> from within his own party for publishing an <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/02/voters-have-been-betrayed-on-brexit-and-immigration/">article</a> in the Telegraph, a famously rightwing newspaper, in which he made a direct appeal to voters who have previously supported the Conservative party.</p>
<p>The choice of this publication and Starmer’s decision to seemingly praise Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who “sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”, has caused dismay among some supporters. But while this response is understandable, Starmer’s strategy is supported by comparative evidence. </p>
<p>In our recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323217231178979">study</a>, we examined election results in 15 democracies, including the UK, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand, over approximately 30 years between 1986 and 2015. There is a striking pattern in the data – namely that when the public perceives a party becoming more right wing, that party subsequently gains more votes. This boost is all the more pronounced during recessions.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to note that this finding does not mean that parties always gain votes when they shift their policies to the right, because the public does not always recognise when parties attempt to change their policies. The public must actually perceive the rightward policy shift.</p>
<p>Our finding holds even when controlling for public opinion shifts. That means it is not an artefact of parties shifting right in response to rightward shifts in the public.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A screenshot of Keir Starmer's article in the Telegraph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Starmer’s decision to write for the Telegraph and to list Margaret Thatcher as one of three change maker prime ministers dismayed some supporters and even many of his party colleaugues but it may have been a strategically sound move.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/02/voters-have-been-betrayed-on-brexit-and-immigration/">The Telegraph</a></span>
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<p>This means that leftwing parties gain votes by moderating their image towards the centre of public opinion, while rightwing parties similarly gain from radicalising their images. This perhaps helps explain Starmer’s decision to write warmly of Thatcher’s legacy. The move will arguably send a credible signal to the public that Labour has committed to a more rightwing position. </p>
<p>Apart from referencing Thatcher, Starmer made several policy-related statements that would associate his party with a rightward position, including criticising the Tories for “raising the tax burden to a record high”, and warning that “difficult choices” will have to be made so that “every penny is accounted for”.</p>
<h2>Perceptions of economic confidence</h2>
<p>So, why do parties gain votes when the public perceives them as shifting right? Some additional findings in our paper address this question. First, the public tends to view parties as being more competent at managing the economy when they perceive the party shifting rightward. That’s why we also find that the vote gains from parties’ perceived rightward shifts are amplified when the economy deteriorates. Economic recessions prompt citizens to prioritise parties’ economic competence.</p>
<p>As has been seen in Labour’s case, changing party leadership potentially shifts public perception – and there is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000047">research</a> supporting that hypothesis. But if citizens are to cast informed votes, parties must be able to successfully change public perceptions of their policy positions too. Although, there is also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00489.x">research</a> that suggests that parties often fail to successfully convey their policy shifts to voters.</p>
<p>So while Starmer’s words and choice of publication may have caused consternation among some Labour voters and colleagues, there is a logic to it. Our key finding is that when the public broadly perceives a party shift to the right, this perceived shift signals the party’s competence to manage the economy. That enhances the party’s image and its ability to win votes in the next election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Data across multiple decades suggests Starmer will benefit from giving the impression that he is shifting to the right.Luca Bernardi, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of LiverpoolLawrence Ezrow, Chair professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170212023-11-08T14:53:17Z2023-11-08T14:53:17ZIsrael, Palestine and the Labour party history that has made Keir Starmer’s position so difficult<blockquote>
<p>I said: “I found the British still very emotional about Palestine. Why?” And he said: “It’s associated, don’t you think with partisanship with one side or the other. I can’t think of any colony or mandate that was as demanding intellectually and emotionally as Palestine.</p>
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<p>These were the words of Harold Beeley, Middle East adviser to Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, as described in an interview with author <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Out_of_Palestine.html?id=1U64cQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Hadara Lazar</a>. </p>
<p>There is a general assumption in British politics that the job of a leader of the Labour party in managing internal divisions over the Israel-Palestine conflict presents a more difficult set of challenges than those confronted by the Conservative leader. </p>
<p>It should not be assumed that the Conservatives are <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-warsi-resigns-over-gaza-tories-vexed-history-on-israel-comes-back-to-haunt-them-30058">entirely immune to divisions</a> on this issue. But insofar as there is something to this proposition, it can largely be explained by the Labour party’s much longer and deeper traditions of competing pro-Zionist and pro-Arab factions.</p>
<p>In August 1917, three months before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#/media/File:Balfour_declaration_unmarked.jpg">Balfour Declaration</a> formally expressed British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Labour party had issued its own statement of support for a Jewish return to a Palestine liberated from Ottoman imperialism.</p>
<p>Party figures like Arthur Henderson, J.R. Clynes, Ramsay MacDonald and George Lansbury, as well as trade union bosses, all made public declarations of support for the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine.</p>
<p>But if the loudest anti-Zionist voices in British politics in the 1920s tended to come from the right of the Conservative party and newspapers like the Daily Express and Daily Mail, there was also opposition on the left. Labour figures like James Maxton regurgitated Soviet denunciations of Zionism as the enemy of the "Arab national revolutionary movement”. </p>
<p>Beatrice Webb, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, characterised the conflict as one between Arab “natives” and Jewish exploiters possessed of “superior wealth”. She also lapsed into <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/albion/article/abs/isaac-kramnick-and-barry-sheerman-harold-laski-a-life-on-the-left-new-york-allen-lane-the-penguin-press-1993-pp-xii-669-3500-isbn-0713991062/78E0E4650A5D894FB252A61F8059CEA8">cruder antisemitic fantasies</a> about reversing the process by which the Holy Land had been handed over “to the representatives of those who crucified Jesus of Nazareth and … deny that he is the Son of God!”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, by the 1940s, influential figures in the Labour movement, including Nye Bevan, Hugh Dalton, Richard Crossman and Michael Foot, had brought a discernibly pro-Zionist influence to bear. Labour’s Palestine policy, Crossman declared, “was the result of a profound conviction that the establishment of the national home is an important part of the Socialist creed”. </p>
<p>Foot went so far as to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7359721/Michael-Foot.html">inform</a> the House of Commons in July 1946: “If I were a Jew and lived in Palestine, I should certainly be a member of the [Jewish paramilitary organisation] Haganah.”</p>
<p>This did not, however, translate into support for the establishment of Israel in 1948 – thanks largely to Bevin. His abandonment of Labour’s pro-Zionist conference resolutions so angered party chairman Harold Laski that he denounced Bevin as “an outrageous blot on the whole Labour movement”.</p>
<p>It is, therefore, a simplification to speak of a pro-Zionist consensus in the Labour party in the decades either side of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The party did nevertheless remain a welcoming home for Zionist socialists.</p>
<p>A crucial shift occurred after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39960461">1967 six-day war</a>. This was when Christopher Mayhew (Bevin’s former protégé at the Foreign Office in the 1940s) established the Labour Middle East Council to lobby for Arab causes within the party. </p>
<p>A decade after that, a new generation of leftwing activists came to the fore. Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn and others launched a successful challenge to the party’s right wing and its traditional control of the party’s anti-Zionist networks. Mayhew, a staunch anti-communist, found himself out of sync with the zeitgeist and abandoned Labour for the Liberal Party.</p>
<h2>Internal rivalries</h2>
<p>There has thus been a powerful tendency for the antagonisms of the Arab-Israeli conflict to map onto Labour’s own internal rivalries and the factional battle for control over the party. Between 1945 and 1967, this usually manifested itself as a clash between a pro-Zionist left and an anti-Zionist right. By the 1980s, the battle lines had been redrawn.</p>
<p>At this point, the Conservative party woke up to the fact that Labour’s wrangling presented it with some interesting political and electoral advantages. Labour’s traditional stronghold of support among the <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780198274360/Jewish-Community-British-Politics-Alderman-019827436X/plp">British Jewish community</a> eroded, partly as a result of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379419300721">longer-term socio-economic factors</a>, but also because of the visibility of the anti-Zionist left.</p>
<p>Margaret Thatcher, sharply attuned to Jewish sensitivities within her Finchley constituency, and an early patron of the Conservative Friends of Israel group, was too astute an electoral tactician to pass up the opportunity. It was no coincidence that Labour modernisers like Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, in their bid to revive the party’s electoral credibility, took very deliberate steps to distance themselves from the anti-Zionist far left.</p>
<h2>Starmer’s predicament</h2>
<p>The extreme <a href="https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/edcoll/9781789906417/9781789906417.00023.xml">factional antagonisms</a> of the 2015-2019 period of Corbyn’s leadership clearly, therefore, had deep political and emotional roots in the history of Labour’s engagement with the Middle East.</p>
<p>Keir Starmer’s political positioning on the 2023 Gaza conflict is shaped by his experience of the more recent chapters of that history. He has sought to rebuild trust with the British Jewish community and distance the party from what many see as the toxic image it acquired under Corbyn.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-there-is-an-important-difference-between-a-humanitarian-pause-and-a-ceasefire-217157">Israel-Hamas war: there is an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire</a>
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<p>Starmer is now all too aware that Conservative strategists seeking to tar him with the brush of Corbynism will use any faltering in his position to argue that nothing has changed and that British Jews should not switch back to Labour.</p>
<p>On the other hand, he will also be aware of the risk that senior Labour party figures, sensitive to the costs of alienating Muslim voters, might break ranks – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67353019">as several of them</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67238594">already have</a>. This is on top of the wider dangers that stem from a political polarisation manifesting along ethnic lines, and which is already facilitating disturbing upsurges in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/antisemitic-islamophobic-offences-soar-london-after-israel-attacks-2023-10-20/">antisemitic and Islamophobic</a> activity. </p>
<p>These are all pressures and dangers that can be expected to grow as the Gaza conflict intensifies and its human costs mount. The question for Labour is whether Starmer will emerge from it looking like a prime minister in waiting or merely the beleaguered patriarch of a house divided against itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Vaughan is affiliated with the Jewish Labour Movement</span></em></p>Labour frontbencher Imran Hussain has resigned over the party’s failure to support a ceasefire in Gaza.James Vaughan, Lecturer in International History, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2160262023-10-20T12:23:37Z2023-10-20T12:23:37ZAstounding byelection losses are about more than Tory MPs’ conduct – the party has a big general election problem<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/71d1d0b8-a134-4d83-8de6-8b6d197abb1c">Byelection results</a> in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire represent new lows for a Conservative government that will soon be obliged to confront its mortality. </p>
<p>Even allowing for the capacity of byelections to produce startling results, the scale of collapse was jaw-dropping. The swing of 23.9% in Tamworth was the second largest Conservative-to-Labour shift we have seen, as a 19,634 majority was removed. Only 53 seats were safer for the Conservatives than Tamworth at the 2019 general election. </p>
<p>With a 20.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, Mid Bedfordshire was not far behind in the “wow” stakes. It lay among the Conservatives’ 100 safest seats, a constituency held by the Tories since 1931. </p>
<p>These reverses are part of a sustained pattern. Since June 2021, there have been four Conservative byelection losses to Labour on an average 19.8% swing, accompanied by four Conservative defeats to the Liberal Democrats, on even bigger swings, averaging 29.5%. </p>
<p>Combined, these eight Conservative byelection losses represent the second largest total ever seen in a period of less than two-and-a-half years. </p>
<p>Only the period that saw 13 byelection reverses for Harold Wilson’s Labour government between September 1967 and December 1969 offered a more concentrated session of defeats – and Labour duly lost the 1970 general election.</p>
<p>The circumstances triggering some recent byelections did not help the Conservatives. Tamworth was the seat vacated by Chris Pincher, the former Conservative MP who resigned over sexual misconduct and whose downfall also <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-resignation-how-the-prime-ministers-tumultuous-week-played-out-186607">triggered the end of Boris Johnson’s term as prime minister</a>. </p>
<p>Mid Bedfordshire was up for grabs after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/14/nadine-dorries-failure-to-resign-officially-as-mp-frustrates-sunaks-attempt-to-reset-tories">Nadine Dorries’s repeated threats to resign</a> finally came to fruition amid increasing vocal complaints from her constituents that she was failing to represent them. </p>
<p>But these individual circumstance don’t explain it all. The fact is that Conservatives electoral problems are more general. </p>
<p>What about the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, it might fairly be asked? The Conservatives indeed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66264317">held that seat</a> last July. Yet local circumstances pertained in a way they will not in a national contest. </p>
<p>In any case, even the Uxbridge win came at the cost of 6.7% swing to Labour. A repeat of that at the national level would probably see the Conservatives, friendless beyond their own ranks at Westminster, removed from government.</p>
<h2>When is a byelection not ‘just a byelection’?</h2>
<p>But these are merely byelections, it might be contended. Yes, but it is beginning to feel like 1996 again, the year before Labour last swept to power. </p>
<p>That year, the old South East Staffordshire constituency (which became Tamworth in 1997) saw a very similar Conservative to Labour swing (22%). We knew what was coming in the general election.</p>
<p>The Conservatives could until recently hold onto the view that they were still very much in the game. Local election leads for Labour (five points in 2022, nine in 2023) were far less than those in opinion polls. But those big leads have now materialised in byelections. </p>
<p>Equally as ominously, Keir Starmer’s lead over Rishi Sunak as preferred prime minister <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/710316/prime-minister-voting-intention-in-great-britain/#:%7E:text=Prime%20Minister%20preference%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom%202020%2D2023&text=Approximately%2020%20percent%20of%20people,leader%20of%20the%20Labour%20party.">has expanded</a>. Remember that the less preferred candidate has not prevailed since Margaret Thatcher beat Jim Callaghan way back in 1979.</p>
<p>Conservative hopes for a conference bounce have not materialised. When your biggest conference announcement is what you are cancelling – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-decision-to-curtail-hs2-and-embrace-cars-means-for-the-uks-cities-214873">in this case HS2</a> – it’s not a great look. Stopping trains and boats will not win elections. </p>
<p>It is not true that the mood at the Conservatives’ gathering in Manchester was gloomy. It was far livelier than might have been anticipated given the polling gloom – but in a “the band played on” type of way. </p>
<p>Labour’s conference in Liverpool was, perhaps unsurprisingly, buoyant. The party stopped issuing passes at 18,500, with capacity reached and was turning away would-be exhibitors. A palpable sense of expectation was evident, unusual in a party which has managed to lose seven of the last ten general elections. </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats’ conference in Bournemouth focused on converting their 91 second places in 2019 into victories. Realisation of such ambitions will overwhelmingly hit the Conservatives given 80 of those second places lie in Tory seats.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps the most important domestic political event during conference season took place away from the throbbing halls. Labour’s byelection capture from the Scottish National Party of Rutherglen and Hamilton West offered Keir Starmer a much clearer route to an overall majority via Scottish gains than had hitherto been the case in the years of nationalist impregnability.</p>
<p>Although pencilled in for next September in Liverpool, Labour might not be needing another conference. October 10 2024 looks the <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-october-2024-lord-hayward-inflation-drop-rishi-sunak-b1083290.html">likeliest election date</a> for a variety of reasons, in which case the campaign will be well underway. </p>
<p>Much can happen in the meantime of course but Labour is relentlessly closing off opportunities for Conservative attacks. Almost all the evidence suggests the electorate is, to adjust a recent conference slogan, likely to take a long-term decision for a rather different future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The results represent more than just dissatisfaction with local MPs – the national picture has shifted.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153202023-10-10T16:15:48Z2023-10-10T16:15:48ZKeir Starmer’s chance to sparkle: Labour leader finally puts his working class credentials to work for him<p>Starmer’s challenge in his speech to the Labour party conference was to present himself as a prime minister in waiting. To achieve this, he had to embody both authority and authenticity, credibility as a leader but also sympathy with the experiences of ordinary Britons. </p>
<p>He also had to present his own origins, as well as a direction of travel. He effectively needed to turn his story into strategy. As <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/authenticity-is-great-but-so-is-strategy-a6669596.html">one journalist</a> wrote about Jeremy Corbyn: “Authenticity is great, but so is strategy.”</p>
<p>Stories provide insight into leadership and substantiate claims of authenticity, a quality that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/newe.12259?saml_referrer">“has become a key battleground in contemporary politics”</a>. Donald Trump was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/12/11/who-is-the-authenticity-candidate-of-2016-yup-its-donald-trump/">portrayed as the “authenticity candidate”</a> ahead of the 2016, for example.</p>
<p>With more attention than ever on his speech, this was an unparalleled chance to deploy a resource hitherto ignored by Starmer and weaponised by his opponents: his <a href="https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/research/the-respect-agenda/">personal life</a>. A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742715005049348?casa_token=asoLnWdDEuUAAAAA:gEfuUTnr5dRlVJwLDt8_cTKsRwUGnmyJTBtCAmzS19xRFJLLb4m1Hdrp-GMWvp9rKlLfomuKMEc&journalCode=leaa">leader’s life story</a> is an important tool for influencing potential followers. </p>
<p>As Robert Shrimsley, chief political commentator at the Financial Times, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/819182e1-59ea-4ffd-951e-ea99cc1a9e3d">has argued:</a> “If the Labour leader’s character is to be the central issue at the next election, Starmer must settle that question to his advantage before the Conservatives answer it for him.”</p>
<p>Starmer made some progress on this matter, incorporating references to his own life. He spoke of holidays to the Lake District with his wife, and of going there every year with his parents. He referenced his childhood in Surrey when discussing the green belt, and snobbery towards his father’s vocational skills on the topic of working-class university aspirations.</p>
<h2>‘I grew up working class’</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have capitalised on Starmer’s knighthood and turned what should be credentials into a weakness. They repeat the word “Sir” over and over when referring to Starmer in order to imply that he is upper class rather than working class – his actual background. </p>
<p>Starmer addressed this head-on – finally – at the conference. Alongside references to his sister, who is a careworker, he stated clearly that he “grew up working class” and had been fighting all his life: “I’ve felt the anxiety of a cost of living crisis before. And until your family can see the way out, I will fight for you.”</p>
<p>The Tory line of attack is partially explained by the fact that Starmer embodies many virtues that Tories traditionally lay claim to. A knighthood reflects public service and dedication. In some cases, including Starmer’s, it shows someone has worked their way up from humble beginnings. </p>
<p>Crucially, Starmer was knighted for “services to law and criminal justice” – territory that Conservatives would traditionally claim as their own. This explains attempts to turn Starmer’s achievements against him.</p>
<p>His tactic of emphasising the need for Labour to be a “party of service” and of painting the Conservatives as unable to understand the lives and challenges of the working people is his response. “Why Labour?” he asked the conference. “Because we serve your interests.”</p>
<h2>A chance to seize the narrative</h2>
<p>As Labour leader, Starmer has been private and distant. His deputy, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/angela-rayner-i-overshare-keir-starmer-undershares-nwvxx97xh">Angela Rayner</a>, has remarked that his greatest weakness is that he “undershares”. This is a problem for a political leader in an age of personalised politics, as is reflected in numerous criticisms levelled at Starmer, such as that he lacks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/06/keir-starmer-tony-blair-reform-new-labour-90s">personal charisma</a>.</p>
<p>Starmer has a great deal of authenticity to draw upon. As the son of an NHS nurse with Still’s disease, he spent much of his childhood experiencing the NHS as the relative of a worker and a patient. </p>
<p>So it is surely not a coincidence that he announced that money saved from clamping down on non-domiciled tax status would pay for the regeneration of the NHS. That, after all, was the tax arrangement <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-non-dom-an-expert-answers-our-questions-about-the-tax-status-claimed-by-rishi-sunaks-wife-and-other-wealthy-people-180928">enjoyed by Sunak’s wife for so long</a>. This was Starmer turning the personal-narrative-as-strategy back on his opponent.</p>
<p>Today was Starmer’s big chance to reinforce his working-class credentials, and more broadly his claims of authenticity. This was perhaps the last big chance before an election next year. </p>
<p>It was also chance to capture attention and discussion on his own terms (even if a <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-10/we-are-the-healers-keir-starmer-to-promise-decade-of-national-renewal">glitter-wielding protester</a> had other plans). In the end, we saw Starmer realise the value of turning a personal story into strategy. He strengthened his vision of the future by looking inwards at his personal life, and backwards at his origins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The need for the Labour leader to reclaim his personal narrative had become urgent – so did he succeed?Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank UniversityClara Eroukhmanoff, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, London South Bank UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149202023-10-09T12:07:51Z2023-10-09T12:07:51ZWhy Labour’s plan to ‘rewrite Brexit’ might not be as politically risky as it sounds<p>Labour leader Keir Starmer has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bdc4e88-c2ed-44ad-aa7d-c70bc358e027">committed</a> to rewriting the UK’s Brexit deal with the European Union when it comes up for review in 2025, if his party is elected to government. He has said he wants a closer trading relationship and better terms than former prime minister Boris Johnson negotiated and has argued this is a necessary step for future national growth. </p>
<p>Labour is certainly not proposing to rejoin the EU, but this nevertheless seems a risky topic for the leader of a party that has so often been on the back foot of Brexit. But is it? Much has changed since the fraught years that followed the 2016 vote to leave the EU – and even since the 2019 election, which was fought and won on a Brexit campaign. </p>
<p>Unlike the years between 2016 and 2019, the Labour leader’s position is now more aligned with that of the public. A majority of people now <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45152-which-leave-voters-have-turned-against-brexit">believe</a> it was wrong to leave the EU, with just a third saying it was the right decision. </p>
<p>Even among those who voted to leave, just over a quarter now think it was the wrong decision or are no longer sure. A combination of new voters entering the electorate since 2016 and some Leave voters changing their mind has meant that the public voice on the issue is markedly different than it was then and in 2019.</p>
<p>However, this is not the only factor Starmer will have to consider as he shapes his position on the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Another development in recent years is that Brexit is no longer seen as <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country">an important issue</a> – and it is not even close to being one. </p>
<p>As of October 2, just 16% of people rated leaving the EU as one of the most important issues facing the country. That is far below the economy, crime, immigration, health and the environment. </p>
<p>Belief in its importance is even lower amongst those who voted Leave (9%) – the people most likely to see renegotiating the current terms with Europe as a risk. This has two implications – one good and one bad for Starmer. </p>
<p>The first is that, simply put, people may just not care if he rewrites the Brexit deal. They have more urgent matters on their minds. However, they might equally feel that in reopening the discussions, the Labour leader would be focusing on issues that they have <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/keir-starmer-labour-brexit-deal-public-opinion">had enough of</a> when the country faces substantial social and economic challenges.</p>
<p>So, there are opportunities and risks for Starmer. Much like when the EU issue became almost <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/01/05/how-immigration-became-a-eurosceptic-issue/#:%7E:text=EU%2520immigration%2520takes%2520off%2520with,five%2520years%2520of%2520EU%2520membership.">synonymous with immigration</a>, how much the Brexit issue cuts through to the public, and the effect it has, may depend on which issues it becomes associated with, if any. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bdc4e88-c2ed-44ad-aa7d-c70bc358e027">suggestion</a> from Starmer that he is attempting to link the negotiations with the the economy and cost of living generally (by far the most important issues), as well as a vision for a more hopeful future. This may prove successful since a third of the public, and nearly half of Labour voters, <a href="https://www.ukonward.com/reports/hotting-up/">already think</a> Brexit has had a role to play in the cost of living crisis.</p>
<h2>Minds on other things</h2>
<p>Overall, the issue is not likely to be a live one, drowned out by much more urgent problems. Starmer may see this as a positive, meaning he can negotiate outside of the public eye. Or he may attempt to tie the negotiations, even loosely, to a broader programme to heal the country’s economy and society.</p>
<p>Much could also still change. As of June, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/05/31/5f827/1">44% of people had no idea</a> what Starmer’s position on the EU was, and <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/which-political-party-would-be-the-best-at-handling-brexit">just 19% think</a> Labour is the best party to handle Brexit (tied with “none”, and below “don’t know” at 25%). </p>
<p>Where there is ambiguity, there is possibility for change. Which direction that is likely depends on which issues the negotiation becomes associated with, and how Labour is perceived on those issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Devine receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). </span></em></p>Once upon a time, questioning the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU was effectively taboo. But times have changed and the public might be more on board than before.Daniel Devine, Fellow in Politics, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2145922023-09-29T12:54:25Z2023-09-29T12:54:25ZLabour set to win Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection – but only a thumping majority will herald big Scottish gains next year<p>More than three years after the COVID law-breaking that cost the SNP’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65671806">Margaret Ferrier</a> her job as MP, voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be summoned to the polls on October 5 for a byelection to choose her successor. Why is Labour’s Michael Shanks very widely expected to win? And what would a Labour gain here mean?</p>
<p>The first thing to say is that this is one of Scotland’s friendlier seats for Labour. Since the independence referendum in 2014, the party has been frozen out of 52 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies, including many of its former strongholds in Glasgow and the central belt. Rutherglen is one of the few seats that it has won in that period – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherglen_and_Hamilton_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s">albeit just once and very narrowly</a>, during the SNP’s dip in 2017. Clearly the party can win there, given a little bit of national tailwind.</p>
<p>How favourable are those winds these days? The <a href="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_VI_Scotland_September2023_W.pdf">most recent Scotland-wide poll</a> gives the SNP almost the same lead over Labour (38% to 27%) as it had in that 2017 general election (37% to 27%). But the poll before had the parties tied on 35%, and generally the SNP lead has been well down in single digits for months, so the <a href="https://pollingreport.uk/articles/snp-extend-lead-by-7-points-casting-doubt-on-labours-rutherglen-lead">national picture points to a Labour gain</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, national polling can be an unreliable guide to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457289.2023.2169446">byelections</a>, which typically have much lower turnout and often see outbreaks of tactical or protest voting. What is happening or what has happened locally is also far more important in a byelection than a general election, when voters always have one eye on the national picture. </p>
<p>What should make Labour so well fancied in Rutherglen is that most of these things point in its favour, too.</p>
<p>Since the SNP supplanted Labour as the most popular party among <a href="https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/news/low-income-voters-in-scotland/">working-class Scots</a>, it also supplanted Labour as the party that suffers more from low turnout. That victory in Rutherglen camp; Hamilton West in 2017 was owed not to Labour gains, but a <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-scottish-labour-shouldnt-fear-an-snp-resurgence/">collapse in the SNP vote driven largely by abstention</a>. The unionist vote in Scotland looks more reliable; it is the <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18101471.general-election-2019-turnout-won-snp/">nationalist vote that waxes and wanes</a>, along with enthusiasm about independence.</p>
<h2>SNP struggles</h2>
<p>Insofar as this byelection is to be a protest vote, Labour looks well placed, being in opposition at both Westminster and Holyrood and being the challenger party in this seat. Anger has probably subsided since Ferrier was first found to have travelled from London to Scotland by train despite knowingly having COVID in September 2020, but the circumstances that led to the byelection can hardly help her successor in the yellow rosette, Katy Loudon. More recently, of course, a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/arrests-a-luxury-motorhome-and-a-power-couples-fall-the-inside-story-of-snp-police-probe-12877182">motorhome</a> rolled over SNP hopes of presenting themselves as an outsider or anti-establishment protest option.</p>
<p>On the tactical front, there remains a problem for Labour in this and many Scottish seats. The unionist vote is split while the SNP tends to monopolise the pro-independence vote. However, while Alex Salmond’s Alba Party is <a href="https://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2023/08/my-verdict-on-albas-decision-to-sit-out.html">standing aside</a>, the Scottish Greens are contesting the seat for the first time and, while this is hardly a Green hotspot (one of many points made in the <a href="https://ballotbox.scot/preview-rhw/">excellent Ballot Box Scotland preview</a> of this byelection), even a couple of percentage points off the SNP vote would make an unlikely victory even harder.</p>
<p>There is also plenty of scope for Labour, unambiguously the challenger here, to gain from a further tactical squeeze on the anti-independence side. Scottish Conservative voters have a recent record of swinging behind Labour and even the party’s politicians have <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23709145.tories-urge-people-rutherglen-not-vote-tactically-by-election/">wavered in their condemnation of the idea</a>.</p>
<p>All of this means that Labour is rightly the warm favourite and so, whatever the various parties’ spinners say following the result, a Labour gain would not signal much new. If Keir Starmer’s majority depends on winning a lot of Scottish seats, he will need to harvest higher-hanging fruit than Rutherglen (as the seat is to be renamed after the boundary changes). A thumping Labour win would hint at such gains, however.</p>
<p>In particular, it would signal that currently the key swing voters in Scotland – that is, those on the left torn between expressing their support for independence and kicking the Tories out – are giving a higher priority to the latter. This is a precondition for Labour progress in Scotland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Johns is part of the team conducting the Scottish Election Study, a project funded by the Economic & Social Research Council.</span></em></p>The SNP are set to lose a seat in a vote triggered by a COVID scandal. But this is not one of their safer seats at the best of times.Rob Johns, Professor of Politics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2136992023-09-20T23:08:15Z2023-09-20T23:08:15ZAge, not class, is now the biggest divide in British politics, new research confirms<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548881/original/file-20230918-19-xze1xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=143%2C71%2C5160%2C2385&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Hyejin Kang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Class is the basis of British politics; all else is embellishment and detail.” So wrote <a href="https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/memoriam-peter-pulzer-1929-2023">Peter Pulzer</a>, the former Gladstone professor of politics at the University of Oxford in the 1960s. Nowadays, however, it is age, not social class, that is the biggest demographic division in Britain’s electoral politics.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/">British Election Study</a>, at the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won the support of 56% of those aged 55 and over, but only 24% of those under 35. Conversely, Labour was backed by 54% of those under-35s who cast a vote, but by just 22% of those aged 55 and over. </p>
<p>In contrast, support for Britain’s two main parties among those in working class occupations was little different from that among those in professional and managerial jobs.</p>
<p>But what underpins this age divide? We typically think of Labour as a party that is more “left wing”, more concerned than the Conservatives about inequality and more supportive of “big government”. So does young people’s greater willingness to support Labour mean they are more left wing than their older counterparts? </p>
<p>Are they more concerned about inequality and more inclined to believe that government should be acting to reduce it? And are they more inclined than older voters to want the government to spend and tax more? </p>
<p>These questions are addressed in a chapter in the latest <a href="https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-40-age-differences">British Social Attitudes report</a>, published by the <a href="https://natcen.ac.uk/">National Centre for Social Research</a>. Based on the 40 years of data the annual BSA survey has collected since it began in 1983, the chapter reveals that while younger people have become more concerned about inequality in recent years, this is not accompanied by greater enthusiasm for more tax and spend.</p>
<p>Since 1986, nearly every BSA survey has regularly presented its respondents with a set of propositions designed to measure how “left” or “right wing” they are on the issue of inequality. People are, for example, asked whether they agree or disagree that “there is one law for the rich and one for the poor”, and “government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well-off”. </p>
<p>Their answers to these and similar statements can be summarised into a scale measure that runs from 0 to 100, where 0 means that someone is very left wing and 100 indicates that they are very right wing.</p>
<h2>Young people shift left</h2>
<p>When the scale was first administered in 1986, there was no difference between the average score of those aged under 35 and those aged 55 or over. Both had a score of 37. </p>
<p>Equally, 30 years later, in 2016, younger people’s average score of 38 was little different from that of 37 among older people. The growth in Labour’s support among younger people that was already in evidence by then was not underpinned by a more left-wing point of view.</p>
<p>However, a gap has emerged during the last three or four years. In the latest BSA survey, conducted towards the end of 2022, young people scored 28 – ten points below the equivalent figure in 2016. In contrast, at 36, the outlook of older people has barely changed at all.</p>
<p>Yet this does not mean that younger people want more taxation and spending. Every year since 1983 BSA has asked people what the government should do if it has to choose between increased taxation and spending on “health, education and social benefits”, reduced taxation and spending, or keeping things as they are. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, younger people were typically more likely than older people to say that taxation and spending should be increased. In 1984, for example, 42% of those aged under 35 expressed that view, compared with just 33% of those over 55.</p>
<p>But since the mid-90s the opposite has been the case. By 2015, 41% of younger people wanted more taxation and spending compared with 49% of older people.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the gap has since widened further. Whereas support for increased taxation and spending has risen to 67% among older people – the highest it has been in the last 40 years – among younger people it is still no more than 43%.</p>
<h2>Lost faith</h2>
<p>So why might have younger people become more concerned about inequality, yet at the same time less supportive of more spending? The answer may well lie in the distinctive economic position in which those in today’s youngest generation find themselves. </p>
<p>The ageing of Britain’s population means that a larger proportion of government spending goes on health and social care from which older people primarily benefit. Meanwhile, while older people are in receipt of relatively generous pensions that have been protected by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-fix-the-pensions-triple-lock-but-still-protect-pensioners-from-high-inflation-186611">triple lock</a>, younger people who have been to university find themselves in effect paying a higher level of “income tax” in order to pay off their <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/376423/uk-student-loan-debt/">student loans</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A young woman looking sadly at a receipt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548906/original/file-20230918-23-d9v13p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For many young people, monthly bills add up to lost hope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/upset-person-holding-receipt-big-price-2015415119">Shutterstock/Goodstudio</a></span>
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<p>Meanwhile, although the pandemic posed a greater threat to the health of older people, it was younger people who were more likely to find their educational and economic <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-peoples-mental-health-deteriorated-the-most-during-the-pandemic-study-finds-143326">lives disrupted</a>, and to have found themselves having to endure lockdown in lower quality accommodation. At the same time, home ownership has become more difficult, not least because so many are spending a significant proportion of their income on rent.</p>
<p>There is, then, good reason why younger people have become more concerned about inequality but seem at the same time to doubt that increased taxation and spending would help them. </p>
<p>The challenge to the parties at the forthcoming election could well be to convince these voters that the next government will offer them a brighter future, rather than add to their woes. But to do that they may well need to be willing to think outside the traditional mindsets associated with the terms “left” and the “right”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Curtice receives funding from UKRI-ESRC </span></em></p>The latest findings from the British Social Attitudes survey suggest younger voters appear to have little faith that public spending will be directed their way.John Curtice, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Social Research, and Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127412023-09-05T15:15:03Z2023-09-05T15:15:03ZPoverty in Britain is firmly linked to the country’s mountain of private wealth – Labour must address this growing inequality<p>Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66634187">has said</a> that a Labour government would not raises taxes on wealth, capital gains or higher incomes. She does not, she says, see “the way to prosperity as being through taxation.” </p>
<p>Britain is asset rich. National wealth – a mix of property, business, financial and state assets – stands at almost <a href="https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/">seven times</a> the size of the economy. That is double the level of the 1970s. </p>
<p>This has not come about as a result of investment and productivity growth. Instead, much of this private-wealth mountain is <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">unearned</a> – the product of windfall gains, resulting from state-driven <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-missing-billions/">asset inflation</a>, the mass sell-off of former public and commonly held assets (from land to industries) and the exploitation of corporate power. As philosopher and civil servant John Stuart Mill quipped during the Industrial Revolution, it’s “getting rich while asleep”.</p>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p><em>The Conversation is partnering with <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, which returns to Kenwood House in London on September 23-24. On Saturday 23, we will host a discussion on how to restructure society for <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">the common good</a>. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss getting <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using the code CONVO23</a></em></p>
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<p>This has widened the wealth gap. The top tenth of Britons now holds nearly half of the UK’s <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2018tomarch2020">private wealth</a>. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006">poorest half’s share</a>, meanwhile, has never exceeded one-tenth. </p>
<p>As a former US supreme court justice <a href="https://www.newgeography.com/content/004253-concentrated-wealth-or-democracy-not-both">Louis Brandeis</a> famously declared – a century ago – it was possible, in the US, to have either democracy or great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few – but not both. </p>
<p>Britain today badly fails Brandeis’s democracy test. Yet, the Labour party’s leaders have <a href="https://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-first-conference-speech-as-labour-leader-was-a-serious-affair-heres-what-you-need-to-know-168788">no declared plans</a> – at least, as yet – to close this gap.</p>
<h2>Radical thinking</h2>
<p>In its early history, Labour drew on a number of radical, egalitarian thinkers to develop the case for a greater level of equality including via <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-enclosure-how-land-commissions-can-lead-the-fight-against-urban-land-grabs-167817">common ownership</a> of assets. As Britain’s first professor of sociology, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/hobhouse-liberalism-and-other-writings/introduction/DE180F13230FC78763861C9804E41EC4">Leonard Hobhouse</a> put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some forms of wealth are substantially the creation of society and it is only through the misfeasance of government that such wealth has been allowed to fall into private hands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Historian and Christian socialist <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/tawney-richard-h">Richard Henry Tawney</a>, meanwhile, warned that assets used simply to extract payments from others, and not to perform a positive role, allowed “property without function”.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/attlee00kenn">Clement Attlee</a>, who became prime minister immediately after the second world war, accepted that poverty was essentially due to inequality and excessive private ownership. He set out to reduce wealth inequality through a mix of higher taxes, nationalisation of key industries and a commitment to collectivism. </p>
<p>The course of poverty and inequality is ultimately the outcome of the conflict over the spoils of economic activity. It also traces the interplay between rich elites, governments and societal pressure. </p>
<p>Largely <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-post-war-drive-for-a-more-equal-society-help-with-todays-cost-of-living-crisis-185743">as a result</a> of Attlee’s policies, Britain achieved <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-uk">peak income and wealth equality</a> and a low point for (relative) poverty in the late 1970s. This period turned out to be the high water mark of egalitarianism. </p>
<p>Since then, these gains have been overturned, amid a return to the <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">high-inequality politics</a> of the pre-war era. Child-poverty levels <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-for-financial-years-ending-1995-to-2020/households-below-average-income-an-analysis-of-the-income-distribution-fye-1995-to-fye-2020">have doubled</a>. A small financial and corporate elite has seized a growing share of economic gains.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/london-is-a-major-reason-for-the-uks-inequality-problem-unfortunately-city-leaders-dont-want-to-talk-about-it-212762">London is a major reason for the UK's inequality problem. Unfortunately, City leaders don't want to talk about it</a>
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<p>Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s governing philosophy of a private “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/05/thatcher-property-revolution-undone-plunging-home-ownership/">property-owning democracy</a>” brought a shift from collectively to individually owned wealth. It ushered in a string of policies, from the discounted sale of council homes to the sale of cut-price shares through rolling privatisation. </p>
<p>Yet the key outcome of that philosophy has been an erosion of Britain’s common wealth base. A towering <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">nine-tenths</a> of the national asset pool is now privately-owned while the share that is in public ownership has fallen from around 30% in the 1970s to one-tenth today. </p>
<h2>Rising inequality</h2>
<p>The property-owning dream is bypassing the current generation. The number of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/housingandhomeownershipintheuk/2015-01-22">first-time home-buyers</a> now stands at less than half its mid-1990s rate. </p>
<p>The public’s ownership of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">corporate Britain</a> has shrunk and is largely confined to the rich and affluent. More than a half of shares in the nation’s quoted companies are owned overseas <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">up from 8% 60 years ago</a> – largely by giant US asset management companies and sovereign wealth funds. They are displacing the share once held by UK pension and insurance funds.</p>
<p>Labour today remains largely silent on the critical distinction between new wealth creation that contributes to the common good, and extraction that serves the powerful few. In 1896, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/manual-of-political-economy-9780199607952?cc=gb&lang=en&">defined</a> economic activity as either the “production or transformation of economic goods” or “the appropriation of goods produced by others.” </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-economic-growth-alone-will-not-make-british-society-fairer-or-more-equal-202388">appropriation</a> or extraction was widespread in the Victorian era but less prevalent in the post-war decades. Today, it is once again common practice. </p>
<p>Wealth surges that are not linked to new value creation have a malign socioeconomic impact, including upward redistribution from those without to those with assets. Many large companies have been turned into <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">cash cows</a> for executives and shareholders. House price rises benefit existing property owners, at the expense of all renters. </p>
<p>Taxation is one way of rebalancing – if only marginally at current rates – these gains and losses. However, Labour has been eroding its historic mission of greater equality. </p>
<p>As Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair’s ambitious commitment to cut poverty ultimately failed because Britain’s model of extractive capitalism was allowed to continue unchecked. </p>
<p>On the day of Thatcher’s death in 2013, he <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-22073434">said</a> he’d always aimed to build on her achievements, not reverse them. He bought into the argument that surging rewards at the top were deserved and that poverty had nothing to do with the process of wealth accumulation. </p>
<p>History cannot be clearer, though. Poverty levels soared during the 1980s because of the sharp rise in the share of national income accruing to the rich, a trend that left less for everyone else. </p>
<p>Current Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that the fight against poverty requires more than “<a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/why-sir-keir-starmer-wants-to-smash-through-the-class-ceiling-with-vision-for-scotland-4254496">tinkering at the edges</a>.” A successful strategy would require a new set of embedded pro-equality measures. Yet, like Blair, he appears to be downgrading the anti-inequality goal. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>’s theme for London 2023 is <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/the-big-ideas">Dangers, Desire and Destiny</a>. The two-day festival on September 23-24 covers everything from politics, science, philosophy and the arts and attracts a host of speakers including Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer prize-winners, political activists and world leading thinkers.</em></p>
<p><em>Alongside the Conversation’s curated event <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">The Common Good</a>, expect to see Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Ruby Wax, Michio Kaku, David Baddiel, Carol Gilligan, Martin Wolf and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss out on <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using code CONVO23</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Lansley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK Labour Party used to radically advocate for common ownership. But as private wealth in Britain benefits from ever greater tax breaks, anti-inequality sentiment is waning.Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow, School of Policy Studies, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112142023-08-31T14:43:51Z2023-08-31T14:43:51ZWhat a Labour government would mean for the right to roam<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545746/original/file-20230831-29-6u0s12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hiker-crossing-stile-on-hadrians-wall-290157914">Duncan Andison/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Labour Party has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/18/labour-scottish-style-right-to-roam-law-england">promised</a> to introduce a Scottish-style right to roam over the English and Welsh countryside if elected to government. How might that change your ability to enjoy the great outdoors and what lessons does Scotland offer?</p>
<p>The debate over public access to the British countryside received fresh publicity in 2023 after a landowner in Dartmoor, a moorland in the county of Devon in southwest England, brought a legal challenge to the rights of wild campers to stay on his 1,619 hectare estate. While the landowner <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/wild-camping-dartmoor-court-appeal">lost on appeal</a> and the right to camp was restored, the right to camp still applies only to <a href="https://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/living-and-working/farming/the-commons">common land</a> in Dartmoor National Park.</p>
<p>Most visitors to the countryside in England and Wales have very limited rights of access. We have a right to walk on footpaths and a “right to roam” over mountains and open countryside, but this is usually restricted to walking and does not include higher rights of access such as camping, swimming or paddling. </p>
<p>In fact, a visitor who exceeds the rights provided by the existing law would become a trespasser and a landowner is entitled to use “reasonable force” to eject them. Campaigners estimate that this right to roam covers <a href="https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/#:%7E:text=In%202000%2C%20the%20Countryside%20%26%20Rights,coastlines">just 8%</a> of English land.</p>
<p>A Scottish-style right to roam would provide better access to the countryside than these existing rights and is likely to include a right to walk over a much wider range of farmland, including grazing land, and the right to wild camp, <a href="https://www.britishcanoeing.org.uk/news/2023/labour-would-pass-right-to-roam-act-and-open-up-waterways">swim or paddle a boat</a> across rivers and and other waterways.</p>
<h2>Labour and the right to roam</h2>
<p>It should come as no surprise that the Labour Party has thrown its weight behind the campaign for wider access to the countryside. The history of the Labour Party and the right to roam are heavily entwined. </p>
<p>Many of the most vocal rambling activists from the early 20th century were members of left-wing Clarion Clubs, which demanded greater rights for walkers and cyclists in the English countryside. Some form of wider access to land has been promised in every Labour Party general election manifesto published since 1950.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1629040415235080192"}"></div></p>
<p>If Labour was to win a majority of seats at the next general election, comparisons will inevitably be drawn with Tony Blair’s landslide 1997 victory for New Labour. His government introduced a new right to roam under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CRoW Act). People in England and Wales gained the right to walk on mountains over 600 metres and over moorland, heathland and downland – land traditionally used by landowners for shooting game birds such as grouse and for grazing sheep.</p>
<p>The CRoW Act balanced a limited right of access on foot with significant powers for landowners to close their land temporarily. These compromises weakened the new right to roam, which was not extended to more accessible lowland areas, other farmland or woodland.</p>
<p>Opponents to a wider right to roam often cite the risk to the environment, farming and the privacy of landowners. The parliamentary debate on the CRoW Act included several contributions from members of the House of Lords who were concerned about walkers causing damage to their land. </p>
<p>There is some evidence that wider access since 2000, combined with a lack of investment in rangers and bins, has led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/littering-epidemic-england-countryside-code">an increase in littering</a>. Even Scottish rights of access have been limited due to concerns over fire lighting and wild camping in more accessible beauty spots such as <a href="https://www.lochlomond-trossachs.org/things-to-do/camping/campingbyelaws/#:%7E:text=The%20byelaws%20create%20Camping%20Management,or%20with%20a%20camping%20permit.">Loch Lomond</a>. </p>
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<img alt="A pair of grouse flying over heather behind a barbed wire fence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545759/original/file-20230831-25-g8c84b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Landowners kill native predators to maintain grouse moors for shooting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pair-red-grouse-flying-low-over-1841238313">Richard P Long/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Supporters of wider access to the countryside can cite several examples of landowner misfeasance to demonstrate that farming and hunting are also damaging for wild and beautiful places. Recent mass trespasses of private land by campaigners have frequently included time spent picking up <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/people-are-right-to-trespass-in-fight-for-right-to-roam-in-england-says-green-mp-caroline-lucas">existing litter</a>. </p>
<h2>What can be learned from Scotland?</h2>
<p>For a short time during the early 21st century, the laws on access were more generous in England and Wales than in Scotland, at least on paper. This was until the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 introduced a generous and sweeping right to roam. </p>
<p>Scottish rights of access are based on a small number of exceptions which tell people where they cannot go, such as private gardens or crop fields, rather than the English and Welsh model which allows access on specified types of land only. This simplifies access rights and removes the need for complex signage and maps full of dead ends and no-go areas.</p>
<p>The Scottish Land Reform Act makes an explicit connection between wider access and cultural heritage. And in truth, the people of Scotland have always enjoyed more generous rights of access through traditions and practice. Even before the act was introduced, it was common for people to enjoy walks across open Scottish countryside without needing to follow specific footpaths. In this way, new laws simply codified an existing freedom that few landowners would have challenged. </p>
<p>This might suggest the key to a successful right to roam is cooperation between walkers and landowners, and the discovery of common ground. Instead of conflict between enemies, there should be agreement between different types of land users who share a common goal in the protection of the countryside.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Mayfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labour has promised to extend access rights enjoyed in Scotland to the rest of Britain.Ben Mayfield, Lecturer in Law, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107462023-08-01T14:53:38Z2023-08-01T14:53:38ZThe UK’s top financial influencers skew Conservative – which helps explain why Keir Starmer’s Labour is so anxious about uncosted spending pledges<p>It has become a common complaint among some Labour supporters that Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves are being too cautious about their spending commitments in preparing for a future Labour government. At a recent national policy forum, the leadership clashed with the party’s left, which argued against “fiscal conservativism”. Starmer’s reply was that he doesn’t mind being <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-government-spending-b2376121.html">described in these terms</a>.</p>
<p>At the forum, a majority of the participants were on his side in rejecting proposals for “unfunded” spending commitments <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-defeats-left-wing-critics-to-win-backing-for-costed-election-plans_uk_64bd7207e4b0229eb5652557">made by the Unite union</a>. Unite’s position on spending was not shared by other trade unions, notably the GMB, which supported Starmer’s economic strategy.</p>
<p>There is a logic to the criticism levelled at Starmer. If the party does not separate itself from the Conservatives’ austerity policies, then it could falter in the election campaign next year. If potential Labour supporters are not enthused by an alternative vision for the future, they may not vote at all. </p>
<p>However, those opposed to Labour’s economic plans, would be well advised to listen to the comment made by James Carville, Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist. He <a href="https://policyexchange.org.uk/blogs/beware-the-bond-markets/">said</a>: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”</p>
<p>Carville recognised that any politician who loses the confidence of influential financial players soon finds themselves in trouble. For example, one need only look at the financial crash which occurred following former prime minister Liz Truss’s ill-advised budget proposals. </p>
<p>Financial markets reacted very badly to her unfunded proposals for tax cuts and this affected <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-26/uk-financial-markets-rebuke-liz-truss-and-her-mini-budget?leadSource=uverify%20wall">interest rates and the costs of mortgages</a>. The markets were powerful enough to trigger her resignation. </p>
<h2>Who are Britain’s financial players?</h2>
<p>For a potential Labour prime minister, there is even more to worry about, as can be seen using data from two sources. </p>
<p>The first is a detailed classification scheme of occupations originally created by the International Labour Organization – the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/">International Standard Classification of Occupations</a>. This includes more than 350 different occupations from “legislators and senior officials” to “doorkeepers and watchpersons”. </p>
<p>Among these are people who work as managers, traders and investment advisers in the finance industry. They are the financial decision-makers in Britain. They give advice on loans, mortgages and finances to the public. Those who work in banks make decisions about who can have a credit card and, as the recent row about Nigel Farage’s bank account shows, they even decide who can have a bank account.</p>
<p>The second source is the European Social Survey, a cross-national collaboration of researchers examining the political and social attitudes and behaviour of Europeans <a href="https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/">over a period of more than 20 years</a>. Conveniently, it contains questions needed to identify occupations in the ILO scheme. </p>
<p>We can look at the voting records of individuals working as financial decision-makers in Britain. The country has participated in all ten survey rounds over the last 20 years. </p>
<p>So if we bundle these together there are close to 21,000 respondents and 254 of them are financial decision-makers. That makes it possible to chart their voting behaviour in comparison with people working in other occupational groups over the period of the surveys.</p>
<h2>How do financial players vote and why does it matter?</h2>
<p>Data from these two sources combined tell us that the people who influence the British financial sector skew more Conservative than the rest of the population. The chart below shows the voting behaviour of the 254 financial decision-makers over the whole period (in blue), compared with the rest of the population (in red). </p>
<p>It turns out that 41% of them voted Conservative compared with 32% of the rest of the population. Labour have a right to be nervous because only 32% of them voted Labour compared with 41% of the rest of the population. One is a mirror image of the other. </p>
<p><strong>Voting behaviour of financial decision-makers and others in Britain 2002 to 2020</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that financial influencers vote Conservative more commonly than the rest of the population" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Percentage of financial decision makers who vote for each party compared to the percentage of the wider population who vote for each party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">P Whiteley</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be fair, these people are unlikely to make financial decisions based on their party preferences. They are much more likely to try to maximise returns for themselves and their clients, whatever the political context of the time. Their adverse reaction to Truss’s budget shows this to be true since if their Conservative leanings were what mattered they would not have reacted so badly to her economic plans. </p>
<p>That said, it probably means they are more likely to react even more badly to Labour making unfunded spending promises than the Conservatives, since their political leanings are likely to encourage them to be more wary of a Labour government than a Conservative government. </p>
<p>This helps explain Starmer’s caution about announcing spending plans ahead of the election. If he promises large-scale spending without showing where the money would come from to pay for it, then a Labour win in the next general election could cause a financial crash and a run on the pound. </p>
<p>The prudent strategy for Starmer is to repeat what Tony Blair promised to do before the 1997 election. He committed the Labour government to stick with Conservative <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1997/jan/21/economy.uk">spending plans for the initial years in power</a>. This neutralised concerns by the financial decision-makers about Labour winning power at that time.</p>
<p>Starmer’s critics have to recognise that it would be a serious blow to Labour’s chances if the party spooked the markets. If they started a new term in power with a financial crash it would derail Labour’s plans to change the current government’s economic strategy.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the prudent strategy produces a serious dilemma for the party. If promising pretty much the same as the Conservatives on spending, they risk not being able to encourage potential supporters to vote for them in the general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC </span></em></p>The opposition is divided over whether it will win over voters by promising more public investment or by proving it is economically restrained.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2094582023-07-17T09:29:44Z2023-07-17T09:29:44ZPlaid Cymru’s new leader faces tough challenges ahead of next elections<p><em>You can read the Welsh version of this article <a href="https://theconversation.com/yr-heriaun-wynebu-rhun-ap-iorwerth-cyn-yr-etholiadau-nesaf-209462">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://senedd.wales/people/rhun-ap-iorwerth-ms/">Rhun ap Iorwerth</a> was appointed as Plaid Cymru’s new leader mid-June 2023. He replaced Adam Price, who stood down in response to a damaging <a href="https://www.partyof.wales/prosiect_pawb">report</a> which found evidence of a culture of sexual harassment, bullying and misogyny in the party.</p>
<p>An immediate priority for ap Iorwerth is to implement the report’s 82 recommendations. These include introducing new policies on sexual harassment, improving how the party manages staff welfare and complaints, and reviewing its governance structures. This is a major undertaking for any political party, but particularly for an organisation which is not large, or especially well-resourced. </p>
<p>Plaid Cymru will have to implement these changes while preparing for the UK general election next year and the Senedd election in 2026. But doing well in those elections requires more than just organisational reform and preparedness. </p>
<p>The party must also consider its electoral strategy – it has failed to make any significant electoral advance in recent years. This is a trend confirmed by its performance in the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results/wales">2019 general election</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57026094">2021 Senedd election</a>. </p>
<p>And there are no signs of electoral resurgence anytime soon. <a href="https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-17-18-june-2023/">Opinion polls</a> suggest the party will make minimal gains in the next general election. Improving on that in the Senedd election two years later will be difficult. </p>
<h2>Welsh independence</h2>
<p>In the 2021 Senedd election, Plaid Cymru put its call for Welsh independence front and centre of its campaign and promised to hold a referendum within five years if it became the party of government. </p>
<p>In this respect, it adopted the same strategy as many other pro-independence parties and movements across Europe. <a href="https://cwps.aber.ac.uk/imajine/independence/">Our research</a> analysed the kinds of constitutional claims made by such organisations in documents such as manifestos, policy papers and press releases. We found that calls for independence had increased over the last decade, with a greater emphasis on making the positive case for creating a new state. </p>
<p>But such a strategy misjudged the priorities of Welsh voters at the time, which was recovery from the COVID pandemic, rather than major constitutional change. COVID-related challenges are less likely to be so dominant next time round. Welsh independence is still only <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/new-poll-shows-40-people-27290676">supported</a> by a minority of voters. Constitutional reform remains very low on the list of issues that are important to people. </p>
<h2>Scotland’s example</h2>
<p>The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/supreme-court-judgment-on-scottish-independence-referendum/">failed efforts</a> to secure the legal right to hold another independence referendum have also shown that there is no easy way forward for those who want to leave the UK. With the SNP <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/25/humza-yousaf-leaves-the-snp-faithful-confused-about-his-strategy-for-independence">struggling to set out a credible strategy</a> for how to achieve independence, there’s little prospect that Plaid Cymru will find many new votes by making this its central electoral offering.</p>
<p>Many of those who do <a href="https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-17-18-june-2023/">support</a> Welsh independence, are also Labour voters. And there is no sign that they are willing to ditch their allegiance and switch to supporting Plaid Cymru instead. </p>
<p>On the contrary, <a href="https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/welsh-westminster-senedd-independence-referendum-voting-intention-17-18-june-2023/">opinion polls</a> suggest Welsh Labour is likely to increase its share of the vote in the 2024 general election and remain the largest party in the Senedd when it is re-elected. This is in spite of the difficulties that the Welsh Labour-led Welsh government is facing in the areas it is responsible for, such as the <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/welsh-nhs-knees-who-put-26918450">NHS</a>. </p>
<p>There is much that can (and will likely) change between now, next year and 2026. Plaid Cymru – like other pro-independence parties, including the SNP – has always had to strike a balance between advancing its long-term constitutional goal and focusing on more pressing challenges. </p>
<p>And voters may yet lose faith in Welsh Labour and its track record in government. It’s also expected that Welsh Labour will contest the next election under a new leader. First minister Mark Drakeford has already <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-interview-first-minister-25808177">confirmed his intention</a> to stand down. Plus the elections will take place for a much larger Senedd (which will see the number of members rise from 60 to 96), and under a new electoral system. </p>
<p>Changing how the Senedd is elected was one of the commitments in the <a href="https://www.gov.wales/co-operation-agreement-2021">co-operation agreement</a> signed between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru in 2021. The parties agreed to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-64649656">work together on a range of policy areas</a>, without Plaid having to formally enter government as part of a coalition. </p>
<p>Plaid Cymru will hope that other policy changes achieved as a result of that agreement will show voters it can be trusted to govern for Wales and deliver radical change. These have included extending free school meals to children in primary schools and new measures to tackle the often negative impact of second homes on communities, especially in coastal and rural areas.</p>
<p>In the changed Welsh political context of 2026, there could be opportunities for Plaid Cymru to reposition itself as the party of Wales. It has major organisational and strategic challenges to address before it can do so, and it has to move quickly to tackle them. </p>
<p>But even if it resolves those, it’s not clear that Welsh voters will be persuaded that it is time to end the electoral hegemony of Welsh Labour, who have been in power since 1999. In having to compete against such an opponent, Rhun ap Iorwerth’s Plaid Cymru faces an electoral challenge that is unique among Europe’s pro-independence parties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anwen Elias receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elin Royles receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the WISERD Civil Society Research Project. The basis of the research informing this article was EU Horizon 2020 funding.</span></em></p>Rhun ap Iorwerth replaced Adam Price as Plaid Cymru leader.Anwen Elias, Reader in Politics, Aberystwyth UniversityElin Royles, Senior lecturer in politics, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.