Some reflections on a General Election

Since I have neither been on holiday nor gone to a gig/exhibition in a little while I thought I might post a few thoughts on the big event, namely the general election, to keep up the blog. But maybe from a slightly different angle, a few more academic observations from afar, as I don't dabble in politics. Just interested in the country being properly run, in the sense of us being able to lead our lives as we choose.

Turnout
There was a lot of concern that the election had been called mid-winter with fears of bad weather affecting the result and keeping people away. But in the end we got  the bad weather but turnout was pretty much unchanged from the last election. If its important enough people will turn out. Contrast Boxing Day sales. People know there will be another sale, probably next day, so they will stay out of the rain. As they did. Bad luck retailers.

Triangulation
Has no-one else noticed this new word? I only heard it from Labour spokesmen (both left and right) post election, so imagine they must have had some PR person in. Previously I have only heard it used geographically, ie  in the context of triangulation points. It is supposed to mean trying to please left and right. There is a simpler word; compromise. But saying there is no point in triangulation sounds better than there is no point in compromise. The latter makes you sound bad. Ruthless. Sort of "F*** you, it is my way or nothing". Whereas a long word that people don't really understand nicely fudges it. Even though the message is the same.

Exit polls are right
I really quite like election nights, slowly revealing the mood of the nation, with the odd shock result. But exit polls are really quite accurate now. So it is a bit like watching highlights of a football match when you already know the score. You know the result at 10pm now. It was interesting hearing John McDonnell being interviewed just after the exit poll declared, and both he and the interviewer presaged every remark by "If the exit poll results are anything like right..." but said it in a way that both clearly accepted they would be. And within a fairly small margin they were.

Disappointment
Another thing I like about election results is politicians are suddenly willing to go off message, to say what they really think. Sometimes this is because they just can't hide their emotions. Like the fist pumping Nicola Sturgeon being caught celebrating the lost seat of Jo Swinson of the Lib Dems.

But also some politicians will have lost seats, and therefore their jobs, or those of their friends. Gloves come off. So it was interesting contrasting the reactions of a lot of Labour politicians-  raging at the way the leadership had let the country down by letting in the Tories and how this will mean suffering for their poor constituents - with the attitudes of Momentum leaders, notably Corbyn and McDonnell expressing "disappointment". I am disappointed when my football team doesn't win, or the latest Star Wars film is pants. Old Labour types seemed genuinely fearful (rightly or wrongly) as to how their constituents will suffer under the Tories as a result of their huge majority. Momentum types seemed quite relaxed, just "disappointed".They will have another go later, like my team will play again and there will be another Star Wars film. (And another.) If anything suffering electorate would be good because Momentum might be more likely to get power. If they can make suffering worse, that's ok...

Honesty
I listened to Richard Burgon, the Shadow Justice Secretary and Momentum supporter explaining that all he heard on the doorstep was Brexit and that was why Labour lost. It was the Brexit election. Other Labour MPs, such as Jess Phillips said they heard lots of reasons on the doorstep for why people didn't vote Labour,  Brexit, Corbyn, Anti-Semitism, "everything". They can't have been going to such very different doorsteps. Someone is telling pork pies....

Delusion
Burgon was also clear that Labour needed a period of "quiet reflection", but that the problem was not the manifesto, a conclusion which he seemed to be able to come to after instantaneous reflection. He noted that Labour had lost votes to different parties in different parts of the country so they needed to study why.
What was surely obvious is that people were desperately hunting around for somewhere to cast their "anyone but Corbyn" vote. In London that tended to be Lib Dems and Greens, in Northern England the Tories, in Scotland the SNP, but anywhere but Corbyn. The Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think they have come to power on a wave of enthusiasm. If you analyse the results, what mostly happened is not a massive swing from Labour to the Tories, but an evacuation from Labour while the Tories stayed level.

Policies were popular
Burgon, and others, couldn't square that Labour policies were popular, but they fell to their worst defeat since 1935. Brexit was the only possible explanation. Really? I can help. Consider the analogy of the little boy being offered sweeties in the park by a strange old man he doesn't like the look of. He declines the sweeties. This is not because he is against the policy of receiving free sweeties in the park. Actually he loves that policy! A real winner. But he doesn't like the look of the person handing them out. And he is scared that there will be horrible consequences if he takes them. There will be a price to pay, even if the scary old man doesn't tell him what it is. It is just common sense. Obvious to a small child, or indeed an electorate. But not Labour strategists, presumably because obvious truth is unpalatable.

How could you possibly lose?
Think about this logically. The Tory party are in major disarray after a number of years in Government. It is always hard to stay popular when you actually have to make decisions and deal with real events. They elect a leader widely lampooned as a buffoon, who isn't trusted, is thought to be self-seeking and clearly didn't make a decent fist of it as Foreign Secretary. And the Tories appear to have lurched to the right. One would think almost any Labour leader would have won this election. Almost anyone. But they picked Corbyn. And actually managed to turn certain victory into crushing defeat.
But with Labour having turned into pretty much a Marxist party (and there used to be such parties like the Socialist Workers Party and the Workers Revolutionary Party who regularly stood at elections with just these manifesto policies and vied with the Monster Raving Loony Party for lowest votes), the way was open surely for the middle ground? Both parties lost MPs to the centre, either a new party, or to the Lib Dems (and mostly to the Lib Dems as a second stage after deserting the new party). So the Lib Dems seemed to have a big open field to play in with both main parties just hugging the touchlines. But they failed miserably. A better campaigner than Swinson might have done something, but she was rubbish. No message came out other than they would Remain, and ignore the referendum result on the Europe.
There was also probably a bigger factor. When people are afraid of one extreme, they tend to rush to the other side rather than the middle ground. If Swinson could have convinced voters that the Lib Dems were the new left and Labour had gone off the scale she might have made some headway. But I suspect many folk might have simply seen her as a way of letting in Labour by the backdoor, just as Clegg was seen as letting in the Tories 9 years ago.

Responsibilty
Now this is a favourite of mine. It is a brave person who stands up and takes responsibility for things going wrong. We admire courage. In the old days people ducked responsibility. But now people know they have to accept it. But in ways that make it very clear that it is not their fault in the slightest and it must really be everyone else.
At first Corbyn just said he was proud about the manifesto and had done everything possible. Obviously that was his view, but that is not allowed in the modern world. So he and McDonnell then had to state that they accepted responsibility and resign (albeit very slowly). But at the same time maintaining that the manifesto was wonderful, and not identifying anything whatsoever that they failed to do. Other than unluckily fail to win. Richard Burgon even went for the "We must all accept responsibility" approach, thereby spreading fault so widely that no blame could attach to anyone. Especially not the architects of defeat. So we now have the "I accept full responsibility but none of this was my fault in the slightest" strategy. You see this a lot in public life now, like the apology for things one clearly hasn't done, like the sins of one's ancestors. All the credit for apologising without any of the blame for doing anything wrong.

Demonising by the media.
Having decided that Corbyn is not to blame, despite his obvious unpopularity, it has then been explained that his unpopularity is only because he was demonised by the media. Now this does of course betray the sort of condescension to the working classes that is largely at the root of Momentum's failure at the polls. It assumes people (especially Labour voters) are so stupid that they only read right-wing newspapers or listen to the BBC and so get the wrong idea of Corbyn. That might have some credence if one accepted that Northern working classes were all Daily Mail readers and that Corbyn never gets a word in. But rather Corbyn comes off very unimpressive and charmless whenever he gets to speak. One of his ex MPs described him as unable to string two sentences together without it being written down for him. And it is only a few years since he lost a vote of confidence from his own MPs, ie presumably people who got to deal with him close up rather than through the filter of the media, by about 170 to 40. The trouble with the Far Left is that they only see themselves as they want to see themselves, and no number of times they were told Corbyn was a liability made any difference, however obvious to any sane person. No one could say that Johnson wasn't widely pilloried in the media too. But if you are sitting at one extreme, you think that treatment of the other bloke is justified, and any criticism of your man must be an example of unfair bias.

Luvvies
When will they learn? They really think their views are important. Just why, if you are looking for advice on economics, administration, the environment, the plight of the poor or international affairs, would you want the opinion of an actor, or pop singer, or comedian? Only a staggering degree of your own importance would assume that your views are of national value, or rather any more valuable than any random person in the street, or the pub, or the internet (like me!!).

But actually its worse than that. I can see that they want to make themselves feel better about themselves by taking a stand on behalf of the less well off, but can't they see how patronising it is for them to suggest they are somehow experts in life that mean they should be dishing out advice to the lower orders? Why does a middle class middle aged bloke like Hugh Grant, or woman like Lily Allen, think that they should be listened to? Does it not occur to them that rather, in all probability, they will have exactly the opposite affect on ordinary people, ie put them off? And as for comedians, well why would you think I will take seriously someone who I am only listening to because they make me laugh?

That isn't to say they are not entitled to opinions, nor that they might not be right, just that a life in the theatre or recording pop songs doesn't qualify you as a political commentator. It just qualifies you to be ridiculously self-important and and over confident...

Age v Class
I think even when I was a lad the tendency was for older people to be more conservative. But there  was a definite class divide - if you were working class you voted Labour (unless you were Alf Garnett). Seeing voting figures broken down by class and age for this election were very interesting. The Tories won convincingly across all classes, including the working class vote (I know I should be talking As Bs and Cs as classes have (rightly) got much more sophisticated these days). But this time Labour got as high a percentage amongst the middle as working classes. Which probably reflects a better match for themselves.What would be interesting is a breakdown by occupation. My feel is that Labour would be much more popular with State sector than private, and especially in Education. Certainly that was my recollection from when I was a member. ie that Labour party members were disproportionately teachers, lecturers or students, even at a time when there were more industrial jobs than there are now.

But the huge disparity comes in age profiles. Young people overwhelmingly supported Labour, pensioners overwhelmingly Conservatives. This should be a waiting game for Labour, ie await the dying off of old Tories to be replaced by thrusting young socialists. One reason for the huge proportion of older Tory voters might be that they are the only ones that remember when there was a Labour Government with largely the  current Labour Manifesto's promises - high tax and spend, the industries Labour wanted to nationalise being in public hands. So they can remember that this was not a paradise but actually the country at its very lowest ebb having to go the IMF for a bail-out like Greece has recently had to do. Not a happy state of affairs.

The problem for Labour is more that the cross-over age when people are more likely to vote Conservative fell from the last election by 5 years to 39. And I don't think it is lack of memory that is the issue so much as lack of experience. Put simply, the more naive you are the more likely one is to vote Labour, or at least Labour as it now stands. We grow more cynical as we age. Best bet for Labour is not reducing the voting age to 16 as they advocate, but down to around 6. It works for people who think that they will have money spent on them and never have to pay it back. Like kids. Those who have been paying off mortgages for a lifetime know how debts work. As I heard someone talking about their personal debt on the radio, one can quickly run up debts by spending, but paying the money back is hard, long and boring. Essentially if history tells us anything it is that all Marxist regimes collapse - or at least collapse into undemocratic and poverty stricken tyrannies - because they run out of money.

A New Kind of Economics
I think this is where Labour really fell down. They asserted they were going for a new kind of economics. But this is like designing a new kind of physics. The laws of gravity may be inconvenient, especially if you want to fly, but they apply. You know this by experiment. Lots of countries have tried this stuff. They have even neatly split countries in two. East and West Germany, North and South Korea, or by region - Eastern and Western Europe, Venezuela and, well anywhere else in South America. The Marxist one always ends up horrible. Similarly if you jump off a diving board you always come down in the water, however much you would like to fly. When faced with 100% failure rate you should kind of understand where the experiment is leading.

Ultimately the Labour manifesto never passed the common sense test. Not even among its supporters. The early part of the campaign had the fiasco of them saying there would be a 4 day week for everyone, but not health professionals as obviously they are in short supply as it is. But then the shadow chancellor said it did apply to them too. Somehow. Just not being workable didn't seem relevant. You say it will work and stick to the lie.

It is a bit like investment scams really. Someone rings you up and tells you that you can have all this wealth at no extra cost and it sounds too good to be true. So most people smell a rat and don't fall for it. But some people always do. Mostly because it would be so nice if it were true. Of course it never is.

Unfortunately elections are reminiscent of getting quotes for building works. Builders always tend to underestimate cost and time. They know that if they were realistic, the customer would probably plump for someone else who offered a cheaper quote. So better to over-promise, get the job and then chip away when halfway through the job. I suspect none of the parties could actually deliver their promises, or if they did, the unmentioned consequences would be awful. I suspect we will find that Boris has promised too much. But Labour were beyond the bounds of credibility, and some degree of credibility probably helps, even if you are a builder.

Balance
Another thing that was a feature of this election was criticism of media balance. Obviously this was a big Corbyn feature; if you know you couldn't possibly be wrong then it must be the media that turned ordinary plebs against the great leader. And while the BBC got in the neck from them, the BBC also got accused (and regularly are accused) of left-wing bias by the Tories. This is probably quite comforting as if you are attacked by both sides of being biased to the other, it might be seen as a sign you are indeed being balanced.

But balance is a tricky issue. The BBC did try and do a series of fact checks, which I do think was a good thing, and there should be more of. Unfortunately, but totally understandably, the BBC trend has been to assert balance by giving air-time equally to both sides. This makes perfect sense. But the catch then is who are the two sides? Or in particular, where is the end point for the two sides?

A good example of my point relates to Nigel Farage. There was a point where basically the BBC had decided UKIP were just extremists and so didn't count. Then they did so well at Euro elections that the BBC decided they did count, and so all of a sudden Nigel Farage was on absolutely every broadcast because (as has since become very clear) everyone else in UKIP was a nutter, but they were now a "side" rather than being beyond the Pale. (And some would say Farage is a nutter too, but let's agree that he was best of a bad lot in UKIP.) In any event, the upshot felt like they had gone from one extreme to the other, too little to too much, simply because they made a judgement call as to what the end of the balance should be, and moved it.

But I think this just exacerbates one of the worst elements of modern politics, the adversarial vitriol. Let me take the example of Brexit. After all this time of listening to stuff in the media I have come to the view that I might be the only person in the country who doesn't KNOW whether it is a good or a bad thing. People are split as to whether it is good or bad, but they all seem to know it is one or the other. (OK, you might say Corbyn didn't know either, or that he knew but wasn't telling us, or that he knew, but kept changing his mind as to what he was certain about.)

But my point is the media entirely give the impression that everyone knows whether being a member of the EU is a good or bad thing. They just are split as to which. Now I have a fairly strong view that leaving is a bad idea, but also recognise that there are reasons why it might work out better. But you never hear anyone putting a balanced viewpoint, just unwavering advocates for the two sides. And the problem with this is that you tend to get only extreme views. Pro-Remain assert that the UK will virtually fall apart and that the only reason anyone could vote Leave is because you must be a racist bigot. Pro-Leave asserts that we will get along fine as Europe will have to trade with us as we are so wonderful, and anyone voting Remain is unpatriotic. I suppose what I find worst about the Remain side is that they never seem to suggest that there is anything less than marvellous about the EU. In fact Remain rarely says anything positive about the EU either, just that life would be awful without it. I would just like a bit of honest critique about the EU from someone who is not rabidly against it. Or a view on trade outside the EU from someone who has expertise as an economist but not a vested interest (or is a fantasist).

The other thing I would like to see, or rather not see, is endless coverage of demonstrations. Essentially you only need to find your mob, get them to wander down a street with a few stunts and you get coverage. This distorts views, especially on Brexit. Because a well organised group can  generally get a similar collection of anti-Government protesters out on the streets you can guarantee coverage for your cause. There is another group who don't feel the need to march who then don't seem to count. But that, as surely the election shows, does not reflect the mood of the country. And several thousand people walking is not a news item. Or shouldn't be. Or should not be any more than an opinion poll is. The trouble is demos tend to reflect the views of people with time on their hands, especially young people who are more able to march.

What I would like are some facts. Real ones, not fake ones.

Physician Heal Thyself
Ok, this one  plays just to me. I am sure it had no affect on the election result, but just struck me. One feature of the Corbyn era has been an internal restructuring. The Labour Party has spent a lot more (I believe going into the red) on expanding its staff, especially appointing "Community Organisers". These were supposed to reconnect Labour with its voters in key areas. So that worked really well didn't it?

But let's think about this. Labour spent a lot more money, hiring more staff, to produce the worst outcome since 1935. And these are the same people as want to take over energy, transport and communications? Because they have shown themselves at being really good with their own finances. Any chance that they will spend a lot more money in recruiting many more staff in those industries (into its public sector trade union financial backers) but produce an even worse outcome? Just a little bit suspicious? Maybe look back to when they were running all those industries in the 1970s? How wonderful everyone thought they were run? More employees, but could you get a phone, did the trains (with much fewer passengers) run on time, or even offer a decent sandwich?  Hmm....

Winning the Argument
I have to finish on the most staggering bit of self-delusion that came out of the election, and I am afraid it is the last nail in Corbyn's coffin. It is the claim that Labour may have lost the election, but they won the argument. Could anyone unpack that bit of half-witted arrogance? Won it where, how? Does he even understand the concept of winning? Did he maybe win it inside his own head after years of struggle between his brain cells? I note this concept was even rubbished by the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who obviously has this interesting conundrum of how he stands as the Labour candidate for re-election in a few months time but distances himself from the lunacy and failings of his leader.

This could be the answer for all Mourinho's problems at Tottenham though. He could in future just do a Corbyn, tell everyone to ignore the score and say Spurs won because in his mind they did.