No Jeremy Corbyn does not prove that a more open ballot is a mistake

One of the more controversial pieces of underreported news of the past few months was that the Labour party are apparently not going to release a breakdown of the leadership ballot by membership type. This means that there will be no published details of how full members voted versus the £3 supporters or trade union affiliates.

This is in part to avoid a 2010 situation where is was very clear that Ed Miliband had only triumphed because of overwhelming union support after losing to his brother in both the membership and MPs sections of Labour's now defunct electoral college.

Would it challenge the legitimacy of the new leader if we discovered that they had lost the membership ballot but won because of the £3 supporters and trade union affiliates? I suspect this won't be as Jeremy Corbyn will likely storm all three sections given the massive changes in party membership since 2010 but even if it were the case that the traditional membership voted for Andy Burnham but Jeremy Corbyn was pushed over the top by union affiliates and £3 supporters it wouldn't be an argument for restricting the franchise.


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Thoughts on the London Labour hustings

On Sunday I went to the London Labour hustings to see the various leadership candidates pitch themselves. Confusingly this took place at the same time as the pre-recorded Sunday Politics debate was being broadcast so there was a bit of a let-down that Andrew Neil wouldn't be there.

I went in with a couple of assumptions about Labour and the next few years:

1. Given the boundary changes and Labour's otherwise terrible position the best case scenario for the red team in 2020 is probably largest party in a hung parliament. More realistic aspirations include depriving the Tories of a majority and creating the type of hung parliament we thought would happen this year.
2. Austerity is to the 2010s as trade union law and privatisation were to the 1980s, an issue which splits the Labour party between activists and MPs but where the Conservatives (and much of the public) are broadly united. This makes any opposition an always precarious balance between irreconcilable factions and it is no surprise that Labour didn't re-enter office until the 1990s when one side of the major divisive issue had clearly won and a new consensus been established.

So, to the various candidates


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Some thoughts on the Labour leadership contest

We're a month into the contest to replace Ed Miliband so here are my thoughts on the process rather than individual candidates so far:

1. Whoever wins should pledge to make it easy to remove them
Having been led into two general elections by people the party had very serious doubts about for many years beforehand I suspect the desire to pick a winner will be a bit stronger within the Labour party than in 2007 or 2010 when the comfort zone was an appealing retreat after years of Blairism. However, the fact remains that Labour are picking their 2020 candidate for prime minister nearly five years before that election and circumstances could change enormously between now and then. In 2020 we'll have had a European referendum and possibly another Scottish referendum if England but not Scotland votes to leave the EU. Not to  mention the fact that the state of the economy and foreign affairs will be unpredictable and the Conservatives may have just elected a new leader as well.
I appreciate that nobody wants to run as an interim candidate and the idea of scheduling another leadership contest for 2018 automatically diminishes the authority of the winner in 2015 even though it is superficially appealing. Instead the current candidates should pledge to change the rules to make it easier to challenge an incumbent leader. It may be making a rod for their own back, particularly if they are in trouble in 2018 or so with the new Tory PM enjoying a honeymoon but I suggest it would be seen as a sign of confidence to propose it and will give a boost to whoever suggests it first.


2. The leader and deputy leader contests should be held at different times
Imagine that you want a balanced ticket with a centrist leader and a left wing deputy or the other way around. Let's say that you want a more centrist deputy leader like Angela Eagle if Andy Burnham wins the leadership but a more traditional left winger like Tom Watson to balance out a Liz Kendall leadership. What are you to do?
The 2007 process was hugely flawed (more on this later) as everyone knew the contest for the top job was Gordon Brown running against himself and so everyone knew the situation that the deputy would be working in. In 2010 Harriet Harman was the incumbent and provided the context there but in 2015 both jobs are up for grabs and the winner of one might help determine your choice for who should win the other but this is not possible under the current rules.
One should come before the other and I would suggest that the deputy leadership election should come second. In the US the vice presidential candidate is chosen to complement the strengths and weaknesses of the presidential candidate and something similar would make sense for Labour.


3. The process by which Labour MPs nominate their candidates should be a secret ballot
Back to 2007 again when Gordon Brown was nominated by 313 of the 355 Labour MPs meaning that no other candidate had enough nominations to run. Why did 88% of the PLP nominate Gordon Brown? No doubt many or most thought he was clearly the best candidate but the fact that he was likely to win no doubt played a part and there was nothing to be gained by opposing him. The fact that the nominations had to be public took Brown's victory from 'odds on' to 'bookies paying out before the event' because it became a virtuous (vicious?) circle of nominations and inevitability feeding each other until no other candidate could stand.
Coming back to 2015, the early part of the contest had candidates shocked at how many nominations Andy Burnham had apparently already secured. Again, no doubt much of this is genuine belief in Burnham as a candidate but the perception of him as the likely winner is surely a big factor. Imagine that the nominations were a secret ballot or, better yet, imagine that nominations had been a secret ballot in 2007.
Alternatively, perhaps the minimum should be a maximum? Once the 15% of the PLP have nominated one candidate then no others should be allowed? Given that elected officials no longer constitute 1/3 of the Labour electoral college their individual votes aren't likely to make a huge difference so individual nominations are little more than expressions of support and signalling. If no candidate can receive more than 15% then it would help reduce the risk of other candidates not even making it onto the ballot as in 2007. Jeremy Corbyn's recent entry has helped shake things up a little by potentially giving the Labour left a candidate who is definitely 'of them' but whether he'll make the ballot is unclear despite the fact that I suspect a large proportion of members would vote for him if he did.

I'm sure there are feasibility problems with all of these suggestions and given the institutional inertia of the Labour party none are likely to come to pass but those are my thoughts after watching the first month of this and in anticipation of the three still to come.

Some general election thoughts

So the election is over and the polling industry had a bit of a nightmare. We'll get to that in a few days time as we pore over spreadsheets and come up with explanations and solutions. Our initial statement is here and we'll be putting up a more detailed breakdown later this week..

So here are some more general observations that came into my head as I powered myself through election night and the day after with eye watering quantities of coffee and red bull.


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Despite the hung parliament, who wins the election matters

Another one from "the other place" so, again, apologies about charts not quite fitting. This is about the potential legitimacy crisis that we're heading for if the party that 'loses' the election forms the government. In practice, I suspect that Conservative supporting newspapers will support any arrangement that puts the Conservatives back in office as just and proper while any arrangement that puts Labour in will be a stitch-up or a coup. Similarly for the Labour supporting papers.

Here's the actual post and I've added a few more comments at the end.

Most sensible predictions for the election are that, barring a late swing one way or the other, Britain will elect another hung parliament in May. Whether the Conservatives or Labour are the largest party varies between forecasts but, either way, on May 8th David Cameron and Ed Miliband will be scrambling around trying to put together a deal with the other parties to form a majority in the House of Commons.

In 2010 the fact that the parliamentary arithmetic so favoured a Conservative-Lib Dem deal meant that we didn’t face the issue of the party that ‘won’ the election not forming the government. That is much more of a possibility in 2015 and any government that emerges could face a crisis of legitimacy, regardless of what is constitutionally proper.

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There's a democratic deficit in the EU and Britain's parties don't care

"Unelected bureaucrats", "Brussels Eurocrats" imposing their will on the British people against their wishes. Europe's democratic deficit is well established both academically and in popular culture and it's certainly one of the things that got mentioned most in the study I ran last year when we asked people what they least liked about the EU (alongside immigration).

The idea of "foreign bureaucrats telling us how to run things" is so entrenched that it's a wonder nobody has done anything about it. Why hasn't the European Union decided to do anything so that voters can have their say over what it does?

The answer is that they did. It's just that nobody in Britain seems to care.


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The Europe speech (finally!)

I've been meaning to write something on David Cameron's "game changing" (or maybe not?) speech on Europe in which he promised a renegotiation of Britain's membership followed by a referendum to either ratify the new arrangement or leave the EU entirely.


Bottom line is that the biggest impact will be if Labour decides to match the renegotiate/referendum commitment or whether they stick to their current position of not offering one.

Because while David Cameron says he wants Britain to remain in the EU under more favourable terms, that scenario relies on a huge number of "ifs". By "huge number", I really mean 3:

1. the Conservatives win a majority (currently being offered at 13/8 on Ladbrokes)

2. the other EU leaders are willing to grant any sort of concession to the UK

and of course:

3. the public back whatever settlement is presented to them

I'd say the chances of a Conservative majority, especially after the boundary change was voted down, are fairly slim (though not impossible) and my prediction for 2015 is currently a toss up between narrow Labour majority or a hung Parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party. The referendum promise therefore requires the consent of whoever gives David Cameron the necessary majority in the Commons to remain as PM.

The second also seems very unlikely and this is something that I've talked about before. The "renegotiate then referendum" approach was tried before by Harold Wilson in 1975. He achieved a fairly meaningless renegotiation but it was enough to say that membership was now acceptable and campaign for a "yes" vote.

I expect David Cameron to achieve even less because at least in 1975 there was some good will towards the UK for the tortured process it had to endure when joining (namely the double deGaulle veto and high financial costs imposed that other members thought unfair). The rest of Europe currently sees the UK as carping from the sidelines and using a moment of existential peril for the Eurozone countries as an opportunity to take advantage for itself. A bit like war profiteering. It probably doesn't help that some Eurosceptics talk about the leverage for renegotiation in precisely these terms.

If David Cameron goes in and unilaterally demands better terms for Britain while remaining a full member of the single market, he will be met with frosty glares and awkward silence. His only hope is if Angela Merkel believes Britain is important enough as a liberal (and fiscally conservative) counterweight to protectionist (and fiscally profligate) countries like France that it is worth granting some minor concessions to keep the UK at the table.

This may be why David Cameron's speech tried to make the renegotiation issue less about Britain seeking unique terms of membership than about reforming the whole EU to make it work better for all members (i.e. work better for Britain, the others being a side benefit).

My prediction is that Angela Merkel and the other EU leaders will offer David Cameron some minor, fairly meaningless concession on an area unrelated to the single market but that even if this is not offered, Cameron will present the result of "renegotiation" as success and campaign in a referendum for it to be accepted.
He will be joined by Labour, the Lib Dems and most of the business community and the public will vote to remain an EU member under the "new" terms.

However, as mentioned, all this depends on either a Conservative majority in 2015 or whichever party props up a Conservative led coalition acceding to his European policy. The odds of which seem slim at the moment.

Therefore the interesting thing is whether Labour will offer a referendum or not. Tony Blair agreed to a referendum on the European Constitution to stop Michael Howard using it against him and the Conservatives, and Eurosceptic press, are already hitting Ed Miliband for his refusal to offer one on Britain's membership.

But despite the coverage it gets, Europe is still nowhere near the most important issue for the public and elections are decided on the state of the economy and the competence of the potential government. Labour are still blamed for the state the economy was in two years ago but with a potential triple-dip recession, the Conservatives advantage on this issue may disappear and Labour may end up in government despite taking a beating on Europe throughout the campaign.

However, if Labour does promise a referendum on the topic then, as I've also blogged about before, EU exit becomes more likely as the defeated Conservatives will likely lurch to the right and unite in favour of withdrawal. The in/out referendum then becomes (unpopular) Labour government against the media and a united right making withdrawal much more likely.

Eurosceptics therefore may find themselves facing a strange situation in which a Labour victory is more likely to lead to Britain leaving the EU than a Conservative one.

Obligatory "2012 in review" post

So it's that time of year when newspapers and websites fill the gap in actual news over Christmas by reminding us all of what happened in the year we're about to finish.

This is my (mini) attempt at something similar from a political polling perspective and for me 2012 (compared to this time in 2011) has really been about two things:

1. Ed Miliband has gone from being "that guys brother who accidentally became Labour leader" to possibly the most secure of the major party leaders.
While David Cameron and Nick Clegg both have to worry about "kings across the water" in the forms of Boris Johnson and Vince Cable, rumblings about Miliband's leadership have quietened down as his performances at PMQs improve and his lack of close ties with the Murdoch empire saw him immunised against the revelations of the Leveson Inquiry.
As the government (and David Cameron) have seen their ratings decline, Miliband's rise is more a case of looking good by comparison than any consequential achievements on his part. But after setbacks in 2011, Labour have performed the role of opposition effectively with by-election and local election victories as well as Miliband's well received "One Nation Labour" speech and other signs that the party is trying to put together a serious answer to the question "what would you do differently?"
This is also related to the more general point that since the Budget, Labour have opened up a traditional mid-term opposition lead of about 10 points. While Labour people should be a little nervous that their lead is only 10 points in a time of double dip recession and government screw-ups, it is at least an improvement on 2011 when the two main parties were much closer and, in the wake of David Cameron's EU veto in December 2011, the Tories actually pulled ahead briefly.
(There's a useful chart illustrating the change in approval ratings that I'll be adding as soon as I finish compiling it but the voting intention chart is here)

2. The (polling) rise of UKIP.
As the voting intention chart shows, UKIP started 2012 on something like 7% but they end it on just over twice that with 15% in the latest Opinium/Observer poll.

UKIP is an odd one. On the one hand they came in second in the 2009 European Parliament elections (and may come first in the 2014 round) with 16.5% of the vote, beating Labour and the Lib Dems into 3rd and 4th place respectively. Yet in the general election a year later, they were back down to 3% of the vote, no MPs and Nigel Farage failed to win Buckingham despite it being almost tailor made for a UKIP breakthrough.

It's tempting to think of the current UKIP surge as being fuelled by former Conservative voters disillusioned with the government's performance on Europe and other issues. The chart shows some correlation between the drop in the blue line and the rise in the purple one but while 2010 Conservative voters make up a large block of current UKIP supporters, they are not the majority.
Another explanation comes from (Lord) Michael Ashcroft. Say what you will about Lord Ashcroft, he does produce a lot of (sometimes useful) polling data and has conducted another of his super-sized jumbo polls on UKIP's threat to the Conservative party. The results suggest that UKIP considerers, from all parties, are driven by more than just the EU and are more generally dissatisfied with modern Britain in general.
Particular topics that come up tend to be immigration and political correctness as well as Europe with 80% of UKIP "considerers" agreeing with the statement that "UKIP seem to want to take Britain back to a time when things were done more sensibly".
With gay marriage set to become law and the census revealing that Britain is getting less religious and less white, UKIP seem to be turning into the vehicle for resisting these changes and this is probably quite a natural response given that the three main parties are all lead by metropolitan (social) liberals.

We'll have to wait and see whether UKIP have reached a natural peak or whether this surge will continue. With the EU likely to be in the news A LOT in 32013, my money is on the latter.

I tend to be a bit of a grinch when it comes to new year's eve (overcrowded bars and lots of spilt drinks made even worse by the fact that they cost twice as much as usual) so my evening is going to be spent with a can of Fosters and possibly crisps in a bowl if I really want to celebrate.
2012 has been a fairly decent year for me personally so here's hoping 2013 will be pretty decent as well.

Happy new year.