Politics: fantasy elections

By Richard North - July 16, 2023

It is hard to credit the degree of technical illiteracy of some journalists when you come across this gem: “Dark smoke used to waft out of the cooling towers at Drax power plant”.

This is not some sad provincial rag but the prestigious Sunday Times, the piece written by Tom Calver taking as his theme the fate of the Labour leader, headed: “Can Keir Starmer pass the test with three by-election victories?”

Of himself, Calver writes: “My main interest is data-led stories on consumer issues but I also have a soft spot for football and politics”. He also claims to have been recently awarded Gold at MHP’s “30 young journalists to watch” awards.

If this is “one to watch” then we are really in trouble, but then the lad is probably of an age where he has been influenced by endless media pictures showing the “pollution” from thermal power stations – although you might have thought the term “cooling towers” would have given young Calver a clue as to what was going on.

Even a technical ignoramus, though, can make some useful points, one of which is that results of by-elections are hard to predict as turnouts are usually so low, something I think we all know – and a point which I recall making – but worth restating.

Calver, however, has managed to get hold of some data from pollsters JL Partners which give us some better insight as to what the result might be in the Selby and Ainsty constituency. These not only give Labour a 12-point lead but also suggest that Labour backers are more likely to vote than those who voted Tory in 2019.

If that is an accurate projection, then we could be seeing on a smaller scale that happened in reverse in the 2019 general election, when Labour voters stayed at home, so handing the odious Johnson his victory.

But we’ve seen this sort of thing since, in December 2022 in the Chester by-election, the result hailed by the Guardian as a “brutal” ending to Sunak’s first electoral test.

In absolute terms though, Labour, which polled 17,309 votes in the by-election, lost out heavily when then incumbent, Labour’s Chris Matheson, took the seat in 2019 with 27,082 votes, down from his personal best in 2017 when he gained 32,023 votes.

Against the drop in turnout, in this case 41.2 percent as opposed to 71.7 percent in 2019, Labour’s voting share held up, but the Conservative vote declined, in absolute terms dropping to 6,335 compared with 20,082 in 2019, and from a 38.3 percent share of the vote to 22.2 percent.

As a result of this, I made the somewhat rash – and as yet untested – prediction. It virtually mattered not what Labour did, I wrote. The Chester result points the way, with Tory voters staying at home while the rump of Labour steals a victory on the back of a reduced turnout.

Whether this holds for the general election only time will tell, but there certainly seems to be a chance of it this dynamic affecting the votes in this week’s by-elections.

The key factor, I suppose, is whether the indifference to Starmer also holds down the Labour vote. Calver cites local voter, Terry Peters, who thinks it might. At the tender age of 79, he doesn’t think Starmer’s got it in him. He predicts a narrow Tory win, dismissing Starmer as “too soft and easily led, basically”.

Predictably, the Observer doesn’t rely on the opinions of mere voters but offers up its pages to the great man himself. Fresh from a visit to Selby, no doubt having staunched the nosebleed, he tells of a young couple with a baby on a housing estate who complain that they have seen the dream of buying their family home turn to dust because of the Tory mortgage bombshell.

That, apparently single encounter (for he refers to no other), Starmer tells us, “sticks with me”. This is his vision of a Tory world: “Good people, working hard, saving, bettering themselves – then seeing it cruelly snatched away through no fault of their own”. The sheer unfairness of it, he adds, is hard to stomach.

Just to reinforce his point, he extrapolated to the “millions of people in Britain today” who “are already in this boat or about to be stranded on it”. And no, he is not referring to the Dover boating club. In an article just shy of a thousand words, he doesn’t mention immigrants once, neither legal nor illegal.

The closest he gets to this subject is when he concedes that people “are right to feel angry with a government and a country that is letting them down, that no longer seems to work”. Everywhere you look things are broken, he says, from the cost-of-living crisis to the NHS or the asylum system.

As with Calver, I wonder if anyone edited Starmer’s work because in the very next paragraph, the Labour leaders want us to believe that all these “broken things” happen because the Tories have lost control of the economy. Like the dinghy people are rushing to launch their boats from Calais because they see how the Tories have lost control of the economy.

Incidentally, Parris in his piece on stopping the boats offered a convincing explanation as to why the asylum system is such a mess.

It is not bad planning or official unawareness, he says, that has given us year-long waiting lists for tribunal hearings, uncomfortable accommodation while applicants wait, and a prohibition on their getting regular employment.

It is, he asserts, undeclared policy that, relayed back on the grapevine to migrants’ relatives – who commonly finance the trips – will be tales of a miserable reception, lousy food, no money and no work.

The last thing, says Parris, any home office, Conservative or Labour, would want those relatives to hear is that you land on the beach and are at once comfortably housed and fed, your asylum application heard (and decided in your favour) within weeks, after which you find work and can begin sending back money.

Reading that against the Starmer nostrums, it is difficult not to feel deeply cynical. The mess we’re in is symptomatic of a broader failure that spans the past 13 years, he says, offering as his solution “sweeping away the entire, failed Tory approach”, so that we can then “rebuild our country”.

From the broader context of his article, it seems that this is enough to win over the electorate. He writes of “the hope that comes with the promise of a fresh start and a new way of doing things” and then dismisses “pointing at problems and promising vast sums of money to fix them”.

This, he says, has too often been the comfort zone of Labour oppositions – and, inevitably, their final resting place, not apparently realising that the Tories have been calling this policy their own for some time.

But this is not for Starmer. Economic stability must come first, meaning making tough choices, and having iron-clad fiscal rules – until Labour are elected, of course, when the spending will continue unabated.

This is to do with the five missions (not pledges) Starmer has launched – on growth, clean energy, an NHS fit for the future, safe streets and shattering the class ceiling – would reimagine Britain, its potential and its possibilities.

It is a mistake, The Great Leader says, to believe that being responsible about spending somehow dampens how bold we can be. On the contrary, demonstrating our prudence allows us to be more radical with our plans to transform the country.

And tucked away in those “radical” plans is the commitment to “deliver clean electricity by 2030 and secure the highest sustained growth in the G7, alongside plans for higher skills, a proper industrial strategy and regional innovation will give Britain the electric jolt it needs to shake it out of its Tory-induced torpor”.

This, of course, is net-zero with a vengeance, just what we need finally to impoverish Britain. Never mind though, Keir will fix it.

Sometimes one dreams of the fantasy election when all the politicians line up to be selected, and no one turns up for the vote. That might indeed be a fantasy, but no more than what is already on offer.