The Botched British Election Outcome

The British General Election of 2017 confounded expectations, in an era when we have become used to having our expectations confounded. When Theresa May announced in April that she planned to hold an early election, she had been in office for a little over eight months. But she was riding high. She had just received the backing of both Houses of Parliament to invoke Article 50 and start the negotiations over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. The Conservatives enjoyed leads in the opinion polls of more than 20 per cent. May herself had very high popularity ratings, and was overwhelmingly regarded as the party leader who would make the best prime minister. The Conservatives were also far ahead of Labour on economic competence. They had just won the Copeland by-election, a northern working-class seat which had been Labour for generations, the first gain for a governing party in a by-election since 1982. May had the enthusiastic support of most British newspapers, and a much better funded and better organised electoral machine than her opponents. Many people in the Conservative Party had been urging her to go the country to give herself a strong personal mandate and to increase her authority in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. In the local government elections held on May 5the Conservatives had an 11 per cent lead over Labour.

The result of the election not being in doubt, the only question was the size of the Conservative majority and the scale of Labour’s defeat. Labour appeared to be facing an even worse defeat than 1983, when it polled 28 per cent of the vote and was reduced to 209 seats. Some predicted that Labour might fall below 200 seats for the first time since the 1930s, and receive less than 25 per cent of the vote. One of the main reasons was Jeremy Corbyn, who had unexpectedly won the leadership after the 2015 election defeat, following a rule change which made party members, not MPs, sovereign. Most of his MPs considered him unelectable as prime minister, because of his left-wing opinions particularly on security and defence, his past associations with authoritarian regimes and supporters of armed struggle, and because of his lack of leadership skills or governing experience. Fewer than twenty of the party’s 230 MPs had voted for him in 2015. Few Labour MPs agreed to serve in his shadow cabinet, and most of those that did resigned after the Brexit referendum in a concerted bid to force Corbyn to resign. He refused, stood for re-election and was triumphantly returned by party members in September 2016. This unprecedented and unresolved feud between the party and the MPs did not become a formal split, as had occurred in 1981, but the party was divided and dysfunctional. Easy prey.

Even more seriously, Labour seemed to be losing its electoral base in the working class, as a result of long-term social and economic trends such as the decline of manufacturing unemployment, falling membership of trade unions, fewer public sector employees, and the erosion of traditional working-class communities. The Brexit referendum was a sharp reminder of the party’s dilemma. Two-thirds of Labour voters in 2015 voted Remain, but two-thirds of Labour constituencies voted Leave. The increasingly metropolitan, cosmopolitan and professional character of Labour MPs disconnected the party from its traditional industrial heartlands in the Midlands, the North of England and Wales. In Scotland, where Labour was used to winning up to 50 seats, the Scottish Nationalists had reduced Labour to a single seat in 2015. Now the same process seemed to be happening in England, with traditional Labour voters either abstaining or voting UKIP.

The loss of industries since the 1980s, the higher rates of unemployment and welfare dependency, the incidence of poverty, and the lack of investment and opportunities made many of these traditional communities appear left behind, ignored by the cosmopolitan professional elites which increasingly dominated the main parties at Westminster. Tony Blair’s New Labour had briefly created a new coalition between Labour’s traditional heartlands and aspirational voters in the South, but when this coalition fell apart after the financial crash in 2008 it seemed impossible to put it back together again in the new circumstances of austerity and recession. After Labour’s second election defeat in 2015 the party seemed to be in decline.

All this received wisdom about the state of British politics was rudely upended by the election result. Instead of a landslide victory the Conservatives actually lost seats and finished the night eight short of a majority. To govern they have had to seek a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the ten MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists. Theresa’s May’s authority has been shattered, and she has been forced to accept the resignation of her two leading aides, who were blamed by many Conservative MPs for running a disastrous campaign. Her ability to remain Prime Minister for long is in doubt, as is her ability to pursue the kind of Brexit she wants or to get her legislative program through Parliament.

The Conservative press has not spared Theresa May, damning her for the predicament she has created for both party and country. Yet the Conservatives won 42 per cent of the vote, almost as high as Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and 1983, and nearly 14 million votes, almost a record in a British election. This should have delivered a landslide, but it did not because of the unexpected surge in Labour support during the campaign. Labour finished with 40 per cent of the vote, only 2.5 per cent behind the Conservatives, although it won fifty-six fewer seats. The election saw a return to the dominance of the two main parties. Third parties in England and Wales were squeezed, and Labour and the Conservatives took 82 per cent of the vote, the first time their combined share had topped 80 per cent since 1979.

The Conservatives have not won a substantial majority in any of the six elections since 1992, and two of the last three elections have resulted in a hung Parliament. The 2017 election appeared to be a golden opportunity to win a majority of at least fifty seats, and perhaps many more. Despite evidence that Labour was improving its position during the campaign, the poll average at the end of the campaign was still showing a 7 to 8 per cent Conservative lead. Lord Ashcroft’s detailed polling suggested that adjusting for turnout the Conservatives could expect a majority between fifty-two and ninety-six. The internal polling of the Conservative Party indicated leads of 10 to 11 per cent. Labour too was braced for defeat.

What went wrong? The Conservatives fought the wrong campaign and a poor campaign, while Labour fought a highly effective one. In the past campaigns have rarely affected the result. But this one did. The Conservatives chose to fight a presidential campaign, contrasting the virtues of Theresa May against the weaknesses of Jeremy Corbyn. It was a largely negative campaign, and one plagued by mistakes. The manifesto failed to offer much to Conservative voters, and in some instances—social care and school meals—took things away. May was a poor and robotic campaigner, repeating soundbites endlessly and refusing to debate in person with opposition leaders. Her ratings plummeted during the campaign while those of Corbyn rose sharply.

The Conservatives had a grand strategic vision. They targeted Labour seats in the Midlands and the North of England where UKIP had polled well in 2015, hoping to persuade UKIP and Labour Leave voters to vote Conservative because only Theresa May would deliver the hard Brexit, meaning control of immigration, which they wanted. Resources were poured into these seats, and many of them received a visit from Theresa May. The manifesto used social democratic rhetoric about the need for government intervention to tackle “burning injustices” and protect citizens. The aim was to make the Conservative Party the natural home for the working class, rather than Labour or UKIP. The strategy did partly succeed. The UKIP vote collapsed, from 13 per cent to 2 per cent. But although half of it was picked up by the Conservatives, a quarter was picked up by Labour, and in seats where UKIP was not standing Labour picked up even more. Labour’s social democratic, populist program rejected austerity and promised greatly increased spending on the NHS and education, an end to the public sector pay freeze, free childcare, abolition of university tuition fees, nationalisation of rail, energy and postal services, and much more, all to be financed from taxes on the richest 5 per cent and on companies. This was combined with a Labour commitment to implement Brexit, including leaving the single market and ending free movement. This populist anti-austerity, anti-business, anti-elite message won enough UKIP voters in the working-class seats which the Conservatives were targeting to ensure that most of them stayed Labour.

The other part of Labour’s surge came from its ability to mobilise young voters and Remain voters. In recent elections the young have been much less likely to vote than the old, but this time they seem to have registered and turned out in much greater numbers. Labour’s command of social media was crucial here. In constituencies with large numbers of students there were big swings. Labour won seats like Canterbury, which had been Conservative since 1918, while losing former mining seats like Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. Labour’s ability to mobilise so many young people was partly due to specific promises, for example to abolish university tuition fees, but it was also because the party persuaded young people that it was offering hope and a positive alternative to austerity and a hard Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn became the focus of Labour’s campaign, and to the surprise of many of his critics succeeded in reaching much larger numbers of voters than just party members with his anti-austerity message.

Yet Labour still lost the election. In terms of seats it had thirty net gains, giving it only slightly more seats than Gordon Brown won in 2010. But because expectations for the party had been so low, it appeared a major advance. Labour’s vote share increased by ten percentage points to 40 per cent, only equalled before by Attlee in 1945. But in a two-party system the crucial statistic is not the overall share of the vote or the number of votes, but the percentage gap between the two main parties. Labour’s achievement in 2017 was to close the gap with the Conservatives, which denied the Conservatives a majority. But the Conservatives are still the largest party. To form a majority government Labour has to win at least sixty-four more seats, double the number it won in 2017. This is still a huge mountain for the party to climb, but it is in a much stronger position after this election than seemed possible before it. Corbyn’s position is now unassailable, and he has the opportunity to unify Labour under his leadership, particularly if he reaches out and appoints a more broad-based shadow cabinet.

The next election, however, may not happen for some time. Theresa May will not be allowed to fight another election. But any new leader will be wary of calling an early election, given the experience of 2017. Contrary to Labour hopes, this Parliament may last a full five years, just as the 1974–79 Parliament did. The risk for the Conservatives is that with no overall majority they will struggle to get legislation through, and with a slowing economy, rising inflation and many spending cuts still to come, as well as the challenges of clinching a Brexit deal which will satisfy both Parliament and public, the government may become very unpopular. Conservative divisions on Europe look like breaking out afresh, while Labour as the main opposition is becoming more united. Finding a strategy to manage the Parliament, deliver Brexit, revive the economy and win the next election will be unusually challenging.

The one really bright spot for the Conservatives in 2017 was their success in Scotland. Without the twelve gains from the SNP the Conservatives would have been unable to remain in government. Unionist parties won 62 per cent of the vote. The SNP’s desire to hold a second independence referendum appears to have backfired, because it has led to the Conservative and Labour advance. But it comes at a price because Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative Leader, backs a softer Brexit and has concerns about too close an alliance between the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionists. The Union is safe at least for this Parliament, but if the Scottish Conservatives vote as a bloc in order to protect the Unionist interest in Scotland, it further complicates the task of party management in the new Parliament.

The dilemma for the Conservatives is that while the election result has killed off “Mayism”, and what Nigel Lawson dubbed its social democratic and Norman Tebbit its anti-Thatcherite manifesto, it has also managed to breathe new life into the Labour Party led by a left-wing insurgent populist, and at the same time reopened divisions in the Conservative Party about Brexit. The party needs a new positive vision of Conservatism and Britain’s place in the world if it is to meet the challenge of Brexit and the new left-wing populism. The election has left it with a leader whose standing and reputation both abroad and at home has plummeted, on the eve of the most complex international negotiations in which Britain has been involved for a generation. Many Conservative Leavers want a liberal Brexit which would prioritise trade before immigration controls. They became increasingly concerned that Theresa May was pursuing an illiberal Brexit which would sacrifice trade and openness in order to ensure much stricter control of borders. These liberal Brexiters advocate the Norway option as the way forward for Britain, at least as an interim solution. Many Conservative Remainers might accept this, but many Conservative Brexiters do not. Resolving these fundamental disputes of interest and principle in the circumstances of a hung Parliament and an emboldened and resurgent Labour Party will test the political skill and authority of whoever is Conservative leader to the utmost.