On Thursday, Eastleigh went to the polls in a by-election to replace disgraced Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne. My two cents below.
But let’s keep perspective. Victory, or even
second place, were never credible or necessary in a place where Labour came
third even in the glory days of 1997 (and in a 1997 by-election in neighbouring
Winchester, Labour got just 1.7% of the vote!). With Labour voters knowing
that, the vote was susceptible to squeezing by both Lib Dems and UKIP, hence
the drop from 19% in that poll in early February to 12% in Ashcroft’s second
poll on the 24th, and from there to just 9.8% on the day. In Corby
last year, a much more straightforward and obviously relevant test, Labour
performed in line with national polling. While the party had hoped to view
Eastleigh as a demonstration of Labour’s southern strength, places where Labour
has historically been able to win but lost ground in 2005 and 2010 are more
logical areas to look at. In Hampshire, for example, this primarily means
Portsmouth and Southampton proper, the latter of which has a fantastic local
Labour team which I am proud to know well, and who threw their hearts into the
effort in Eastleigh.
For these same reasons, people need to stop declaring One Nation dead – if One Nation seriously meant that Labour had to magically do well everywhere, it was clearly never going to succeed as a concept for very long. Admittedly, people claiming it was meant to mean something like that was partly a function of Ed Miliband failing to get across what One Nation is actually meant to mean, which is a much broader issue I will probably blog about down the line. For the time being though, I’ll just say that “relationships are transformative” (Maurice Glasman’s preferred short summary of Blue Labour/One Nation) or “let’s just be like Germany” (my preferred version, which I’d maintain is marginally less opaque still) are both better explanations of what it’s meant to be about than “if Labour can’t all of the sudden win Newton Abbott, that means we’re doomed in 2015, dooooommmmed!”.
For these same reasons, people need to stop declaring One Nation dead – if One Nation seriously meant that Labour had to magically do well everywhere, it was clearly never going to succeed as a concept for very long. Admittedly, people claiming it was meant to mean something like that was partly a function of Ed Miliband failing to get across what One Nation is actually meant to mean, which is a much broader issue I will probably blog about down the line. For the time being though, I’ll just say that “relationships are transformative” (Maurice Glasman’s preferred short summary of Blue Labour/One Nation) or “let’s just be like Germany” (my preferred version, which I’d maintain is marginally less opaque still) are both better explanations of what it’s meant to be about than “if Labour can’t all of the sudden win Newton Abbott, that means we’re doomed in 2015, dooooommmmed!”.
Lib Dems
Additionally, the Lib Dem victory in Eastleigh provides Labour some hope. While contesting the by-election was justifiable in order to give Labour voters in Eastleigh a chance to object to the coalition, in 2015 they will face a choice between a Conservative Party and a Liberal Democrat party which will by then have undergone a divorce, rather than a constrained choice between two slightly different breeds of coalition MP as they originally appeared to have in this one (though Eastleighites bucked that choice by handing UKIP second place). As many have already pointed out, the easiest route to a Tory majority in 2015 relies in part on Lib-Con seats like Eastleigh falling to the Tories because Labour tactical voters refused to prop up the Lib Dems anymore, and as tribalist as some Labour members may be about refusing to say it out loud, this means that Labour has to hope for the Lib Dems to stay strong in such areas.
For the Lib Dems, as already widely said,
it’s the shot in the arm they and Clegg needed, especially after Rennard. Whether
that has an impact on the policies of the coalition in the next two years or makes
the Lib Dems less fearful of an early election will be interesting to see. However,
as Anthony Wells has observed on UK Polling Report,
their 32% showing represented a 14% drop from their 46% share in Eastleigh in
2010, almost exactly in line with their national drop from 23% in 2010 to around
8-9% in many recent polls. In the national case though, this has unambiguously
benefited Labour, while in Eastleigh, Labour’s static showing in percentage
terms and 1,000 vote loss in absolute terms means that some of these voters,
along with the 14% share that swung against Maria Hutchings between 2010 (when
she got 39% of the vote) and 2013 (when she got 25%), must have gone somewhere
else.
UKIP
This of course brings us to UKIP and their improbable 24% gain, although there’s another small element of that surge Labour in particular must be wary of - O’Farrell was visibly falling into fourth and UKIP were felt to be surging, so it’s possible that UKIP came to represent an anti-coalition/anti-Cameron tactical vote of sorts in the eyes of at least some Labour voters, on top of being a vent for any socially conservative views on immigration and Europe. Something like this was observable in the 2012 Bradford West by-election, where the magnitude of the collapse of the Conservative vote suggested that even some usual Tory voters may have counter-intuitively jumped on the Galloway bandwagon in order to rebel against the norm of a Labour MP in the seat, and it’s something Labour should be wary of. It was of course a remarkable night for UKIP and Diane James seemed to be a wise candidate choice, although despite his denials, Farage must regret not standing. Beyond that, however, I will personally hold off on saying anything else nice about their electoral position for the time being. Here's why.
In recent months, I’ve been getting increasingly irritated with our press for implying that UKIP’s remarkable streak of getting-quite-alot-of-votes-but-never-quite-winning meant they had suddenly taken the Lib Dems’ longstanding position in British politics as the ‘third party by-election experts’, overlooking the small distinction that the Lib Dems actually did have to win some of them first in order to achieve that semi-honour. As of yet, UKIP’s substantive electoral achievements are as follows. They are our second party in Europe, a status voters gladly handed them as an oxymoronic representation of how little they care about the European elections - in a classic ‘Kinsley gaffe’, UKIP’s own youth chair was recently sacked in part because he fairly characterised the 2014 Euro elections as an irrelevant “sideshow” in an interview on Radio 4. Out of 21,000 councillors nationally, they have 43 (for comparison, even after taking beatings in the 2011 and 2012 council elections, the Lib Dems still have well over 2,000). And UKIP control Ramsey town council in Cambridgeshire, population 6,060. That’s it.
Meanwhile, stacked against them are their years of woeful showings in council elections elsewhere, which as Eastleigh’s all-Lib Dem council has just perfectly demonstrated can often be a predictor of potential strength at the parliamentary level. To be fair, Nigel Farage does know this and is now stressing the May council elections as a result, but UKIP have been around since 1993 and some of the other minor parties built up strength much earlier. Both the SNP and Plaid Cymru lead councils, the Greens control Brighton and while the BNP threat has now thankfully receded, only a few years ago when they were at the height of their strength they had main-opposition status on some urban councils in northern England and in boroughs such as Barking & Dagenham. Therefore, even if UKIP do well in May, finally getting it together at council level in 2013 means they’re coming a bit late to the party.
This of course brings us to UKIP and their improbable 24% gain, although there’s another small element of that surge Labour in particular must be wary of - O’Farrell was visibly falling into fourth and UKIP were felt to be surging, so it’s possible that UKIP came to represent an anti-coalition/anti-Cameron tactical vote of sorts in the eyes of at least some Labour voters, on top of being a vent for any socially conservative views on immigration and Europe. Something like this was observable in the 2012 Bradford West by-election, where the magnitude of the collapse of the Conservative vote suggested that even some usual Tory voters may have counter-intuitively jumped on the Galloway bandwagon in order to rebel against the norm of a Labour MP in the seat, and it’s something Labour should be wary of. It was of course a remarkable night for UKIP and Diane James seemed to be a wise candidate choice, although despite his denials, Farage must regret not standing. Beyond that, however, I will personally hold off on saying anything else nice about their electoral position for the time being. Here's why.
In recent months, I’ve been getting increasingly irritated with our press for implying that UKIP’s remarkable streak of getting-quite-alot-of-votes-but-never-quite-winning meant they had suddenly taken the Lib Dems’ longstanding position in British politics as the ‘third party by-election experts’, overlooking the small distinction that the Lib Dems actually did have to win some of them first in order to achieve that semi-honour. As of yet, UKIP’s substantive electoral achievements are as follows. They are our second party in Europe, a status voters gladly handed them as an oxymoronic representation of how little they care about the European elections - in a classic ‘Kinsley gaffe’, UKIP’s own youth chair was recently sacked in part because he fairly characterised the 2014 Euro elections as an irrelevant “sideshow” in an interview on Radio 4. Out of 21,000 councillors nationally, they have 43 (for comparison, even after taking beatings in the 2011 and 2012 council elections, the Lib Dems still have well over 2,000). And UKIP control Ramsey town council in Cambridgeshire, population 6,060. That’s it.
Meanwhile, stacked against them are their years of woeful showings in council elections elsewhere, which as Eastleigh’s all-Lib Dem council has just perfectly demonstrated can often be a predictor of potential strength at the parliamentary level. To be fair, Nigel Farage does know this and is now stressing the May council elections as a result, but UKIP have been around since 1993 and some of the other minor parties built up strength much earlier. Both the SNP and Plaid Cymru lead councils, the Greens control Brighton and while the BNP threat has now thankfully receded, only a few years ago when they were at the height of their strength they had main-opposition status on some urban councils in northern England and in boroughs such as Barking & Dagenham. Therefore, even if UKIP do well in May, finally getting it together at council level in 2013 means they’re coming a bit late to the party.
Moreover, although in the 2010 general
election UKIP were Britain’s fourth party in popular vote terms and polled
almost a million votes, not only did they fail to win Buckingham (where Farage
himself stood) or any other parliamentary seats, they also didn’t even come
second anywhere and only placed third in four seats (Buckingham, North Cornwall, North
Devon and Torridge & West Devon). To put that in further context, I’ll add
this. At the very same time, the English Greens polled a quarter of a million
votes, placing them seventh nationally. Nevertheless, they netted their first
parliamentary seat when they took Brighton.
This difference is of course due to the Greens doing a better job of targeting Brighton and concentrating their vote there, as is necessary for them to do under FPTP, but nevertheless UKIP could have been expected to have managed this too. Indeed, while Brighton’s reputation as Britain’s own artsy, drug-addled, counter-culture-for-basically-the-sake-of-it mini-San Francisco made it a uniquely hospitable environment for the Green message, it is in all likelihood the only place they could get in, while given the national mood it would’ve seemed there should have been at least one place where the UKIP message could have caught on properly. If you’d have been asked at the beginning of 2010 to put money on one of the two getting in somewhere that May, would you really have bet your hard-earned cash that in England the idealistic, sandal-wearing, green tax-loving Guardianistas led by the ex-CND granola girl would somehow turn out to be more successful and more organised than the moneyed, middle-class professional, Brussels-bashing Daily Mail readers with the charmingly Clarkson-esque former city broker at the helm? Probably not, and yet had you gone with the seemingly more obvious choice, UKIP’s inability to grasp political organising would have cost you dearly.
This difference is of course due to the Greens doing a better job of targeting Brighton and concentrating their vote there, as is necessary for them to do under FPTP, but nevertheless UKIP could have been expected to have managed this too. Indeed, while Brighton’s reputation as Britain’s own artsy, drug-addled, counter-culture-for-basically-the-sake-of-it mini-San Francisco made it a uniquely hospitable environment for the Green message, it is in all likelihood the only place they could get in, while given the national mood it would’ve seemed there should have been at least one place where the UKIP message could have caught on properly. If you’d have been asked at the beginning of 2010 to put money on one of the two getting in somewhere that May, would you really have bet your hard-earned cash that in England the idealistic, sandal-wearing, green tax-loving Guardianistas led by the ex-CND granola girl would somehow turn out to be more successful and more organised than the moneyed, middle-class professional, Brussels-bashing Daily Mail readers with the charmingly Clarkson-esque former city broker at the helm? Probably not, and yet had you gone with the seemingly more obvious choice, UKIP’s inability to grasp political organising would have cost you dearly.
Hence, I will reserve my judgement on the
full extent of the UKIP phenomena and how much I really have to be worried about
it until May. In the meantime, the fact that UKIP’s stance on immigration
helped thwart Labour in Eastleigh has reportedly
prompted Labour’s leadership to launch a new effort in the coming week to
clarify the party’s stance on immigration, which is a welcome effort. Labour
does need an answer to the concerns of the public, including many current or
potential Labour voters, about immigration and the socio-economic impact of the
coming Eastern European wave. In Eastleigh, I did see canvassers come up
against this issue. Moreover, just this morning I was out campaigning in my
home ward in Southwark when an ex-Labour voter told me he’d left us over it. The
vague reply I was able to muster (that we should enforce the minimum wage to
prevent undercutting and have better entry controls) didn’t seem to have much
impact, and it occurs to me that on macro scale, this is essentially the same
awkward conversation the political class is having with the public at large. A
clear and effective stance can’t come soon enough from Ed Miliband.
The Tories
Finally, the Conservatives. I really don’t have much to add here, so I’ll just state the obvious, I suppose. Third, behind both the Lib Dems and UKIP, combining both the results Cameron needed to avoid. Maria Hutchings being shielded from the press by campaign staff to prevent further gaffes, a la Sarah Palin. The failure of Cameron’s referendum pledge to thwart UKIP, which provides further proof of the often-stated theory that there’s more to UKIP’s heightened profile than Europe alone (Stephen Bush recently quipped in Progress that voting UKIP is often better understood as “simply the closest thing to writing ‘It’s all gone to pot!’ on the ballot paper”).
Most interestingly of all, the circumstances of the loss do leave an open question on strategy. The Tory right will want Cameron to steer further in their direction to see off UKIP, which will of course put further pressure on the coalition and blow apart the Cameron modernisation strategy, which continues to be important if the Tories are to capture young, female and minority voters and avoid the long-term demographic conundrum their Republican counterparts in America face. However, it’s also observable that Hutchings ran what some have called a “UKIP-lite” campaign, not only in terms of stressing gay marriage, immigration, welfare and ‘better off out’, but even up to the point of replacing her initial Tory blue ‘David Cameron & Maria Hutchings - on your side’ leaflets with ones that were purple and yellow (UKIP’s colours), featured nary a mention of Cameron and stressed Marta Andreasen’s support instead. Point is, the logical right-wing strategy was deployed in Eastleigh and didn’t work, giving the Cameroons some ammunition of their own and complicating the split.
Finally, the Conservatives. I really don’t have much to add here, so I’ll just state the obvious, I suppose. Third, behind both the Lib Dems and UKIP, combining both the results Cameron needed to avoid. Maria Hutchings being shielded from the press by campaign staff to prevent further gaffes, a la Sarah Palin. The failure of Cameron’s referendum pledge to thwart UKIP, which provides further proof of the often-stated theory that there’s more to UKIP’s heightened profile than Europe alone (Stephen Bush recently quipped in Progress that voting UKIP is often better understood as “simply the closest thing to writing ‘It’s all gone to pot!’ on the ballot paper”).
Most interestingly of all, the circumstances of the loss do leave an open question on strategy. The Tory right will want Cameron to steer further in their direction to see off UKIP, which will of course put further pressure on the coalition and blow apart the Cameron modernisation strategy, which continues to be important if the Tories are to capture young, female and minority voters and avoid the long-term demographic conundrum their Republican counterparts in America face. However, it’s also observable that Hutchings ran what some have called a “UKIP-lite” campaign, not only in terms of stressing gay marriage, immigration, welfare and ‘better off out’, but even up to the point of replacing her initial Tory blue ‘David Cameron & Maria Hutchings - on your side’ leaflets with ones that were purple and yellow (UKIP’s colours), featured nary a mention of Cameron and stressed Marta Andreasen’s support instead. Point is, the logical right-wing strategy was deployed in Eastleigh and didn’t work, giving the Cameroons some ammunition of their own and complicating the split.
Conclusions
All in all, a very interesting by-election, but I’ll toss in a additional caveat about half of what I’ve just said by drawing attention to this very incisive quote from the editor of the New Statesman, Rafael Behr - "The commentator's paradox: the more interested you are in Eastleigh result, the less equipped you are to see politics as most people see it".
All in all, a very interesting by-election, but I’ll toss in a additional caveat about half of what I’ve just said by drawing attention to this very incisive quote from the editor of the New Statesman, Rafael Behr - "The commentator's paradox: the more interested you are in Eastleigh result, the less equipped you are to see politics as most people see it".
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