Politics: a different sort of pain

By Richard North - June 29, 2024

It is an interesting reflection of the times that soon-to-be ex-prime minister Sunak decided he was “hurt” and “angry” at being called a “f****** p***” but made no response to being described as “f****** useless”. One might surmise that this in part reflected the fact that the first epithet was untrue, while the other was more accurate than he would care to admit – and certainly more damaging.

However, now is clearly not the time to expect rationality, otherwise both major parties would be in some trouble. Starmer, for instance, has the temerity to whinge about Farage, declaring that his failure to deal with racists in Reform “shows his weakness as leader”.

Yet this is the man who has failed to make any public statement about the overt racism of his own party’s candidate in Clacton, Javon Owusu-Nepau, and although it is too soon to expect him to respond to this, he needs to explain why one of his party workers in Birmingham Ladywood made reference to “f****** p*kis”.

In alienating the Moslem voters in the city, this anonymous young lady also seems to have the enthusiastic assistance of Khalid Mahmood, Labour incumbent for the adjoining seat of Birmingham Perry Barr, who grandly pronounced in the local mosque that his audience was “ignorant”. The big problem with our community is illiteracy, he snapped, “because they’re not able to read what’s in front of them”.

But even if Labour manages to offend the entire east Asian population of the UK – estimated at 4 million – that is probably the least of Starmer’s problems. He is also doing his level best to alienate the 51 percent of the electorate comprising natural born women.

This feat has been achieved with rare skill by the expedient of promising to protect women’s spaces, assuring his audiences that such spaces will be reserved exclusively for women, only then to declare that some men are women who will, therefore, be allowed in women’s spaces – even though they’re really men.

He is hardly helped by the waffle of his deputy, Angela Rayner, who stoutly asserts that “transgender women’s rights are women’s rights”, thereby saying much the same thing.

With that in mind, I really do not understand how such a small band of perverts and mentally-ill fetishists have been able to exert such a tight grip on the Labour Party, to the extent that Starmer is prepared to sacrifice what could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of votes to keep them on-side.

Nevertheless, I really don’t know how much of this is going to impact on ordinary voters, but if the responses we’ve been hearing are taken as a guide to the duplicitous nature of Labour politicians, their entire support should evaporate on 4 July. As it is, I suspect that it is going to do far more damage than has been forecast by the pollsters.

Speaking of polls, some of the latest seem to have transcended the bounds of reality and are now dwelling in the realms of the batshit crazy. One, from Whitestone Insight gives Labour 38 percent with Reform coming second on 21 percent, three points ahead of the Conservative Party on 18 percent. The Lib-Dems get 11 percent and the Greens seven.

Translated into seats, one projection – using a strong transition model – suggests 461 for Labour, 74 for Reform, 69 for the Lib-Dems, four for the Greens and a mere three for the Conservatives, thus making Farage the official leader of the opposition.

By way of comparison, the latest Deltapoll survey has Labour on 42 percent, the Tories on 20 percent, Reform on 17 percent and the Lib-Dems on 11. Clearly, at least one of those polls is wrong – especially in relation to Reform. Possibly, both are.

Another poll, of a somewhat different nature, is also of interest. This is the latest YouGov poll dealing with the voting intentions of ethnic minorities.

The broad-brush findings from a poll of 1,001 ethnic minority Britons has 53 percent go to Labour, 14 percent to the Tories, the same to the Greens, 7 percent to Reform, the Lib-Dems 6 and “other” on 5 percent.

More significant, perhaps, are the ethnic breakdowns. Although the groupings are by ethnicity rather than religion, the Pakistani/Bangladeshi group can be taken to be overwhelmingly Muslim. Here, from 80 percent in 2019, the support for Labour drops to 44 percent, the Tories are on 7 percent, the Greens on 29, Lib-Dems 7, Reform 3 and “other” at 10 percent.

As to the accuracy of this poll, there are five ethnicity groups, which means that, from the total of just over 1,000 respondents, the number for each group will average around 200. Given that not even these groups are homogenous, it is likely that the error rate is extremely high.

Furthermore, YouGov concedes that polling those of ethnic minority backgrounds is “challenging”, and that there are “barriers related to language and reaching those who have recently moved to the country”. Given also that YouGov use an online panel, there are also going to be a number of inherent biases which militate against recruiting representative samples.

This may be of special significance when the polls attempt to measure the importance of various issues to ethnic minorities. For the Pakistani/Bangladeshi group, cost of living is put at the number one issue, the NHS and health come second, and only in third place comes “the situation in Gaza and Israel”.

I am not sure that that latter finding is right. I would have put it higher, but there are probably also differences between Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and between age band within the groupings. Generally, it seems that the younger members of the group are more likely to rate Gaza highest in their lists of concerns and are less likely to vote for Labour.

This may be even more the case with the Bangladesh community after hostile comments from Starmer about returning Bangladeshi immigrants to their own country.

In terms of the overall support for Labour, I would put the figure at much lower than 44 percent. Probably, the Greens are also over-rated while I would expect to see much stronger support for the “other” category, which includes Galloway’s Workers Party and the independents endorsed by TMV.

If the outcomes are difficult to read, and more so with the interaction of the Reform vote, the Guardian points to another factor which could influence the overall vote.

A piece written by Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, says that highly organised and efficient tactical voting to defeat incumbent Conservatives by those on the left appears to be happening at a scale not seen in Britain since 1997.

At the same time, she writes, the vote on the right is splitting in a way that is especially damaging under first past the post. Together these could lead to electoral devastation for the Conservatives.

Sunak, for one, appears to be aware of this threat and is turning his fire on Reform, coordinating his cabinet to mount personal attacks on Farage and his party. Some, according to The Times, disagree with this new direction, arguing that it is counterproductive. Farage simply feeds off the attention.

As we now enter the final weekend of the campaign, with only five days left of this seemingly interminable soap opera before votes are cast, at least we can see light at the end of the tunnel. The pain will soon be over, except that it will be replaced by a different sort of pain.