Politics: the final phase

By Richard North - June 23, 2024

And still the opinion polls roll in. One of the most recent is from Opinium prepared for the Observer. It has Labour on 40 percent, the Conservatives on 20, Reform on 16, the Lib-Dems on 12, Greens 9 and the SNP on 3 percent.

The newspaper sports the headline: “Tory stumbles drive Labour to near-record 20-point poll lead”, while the sub-heading offers the detail that: “Latest Opinium survey shows gap with Labour widening after another week of Conservative gaffes, while Reform rises two points to 16%”.

The report tells us that, “Unusually for an incumbent governing party, the Tories have actually gone backwards during the campaign, rather than narrowed the gap. On 24 May, two days after Sunak called the election, Labour’s lead with Opinium was just 14%”.

Another poll comes from Savanta, this one for the Sunday Telegraph gives Labour 42 percent, the Conservatives on 19, Reform 16, Lib-Dems 9, the Greens 5 and the SNP 3. Others (presumably PC and Northern Ireland parties) get 6 percent.

If you don’t like these results, there are others. If you dig deep enough, you will probably be able to find one more to your liking, especially when it comes to the Reform ranking. In the two polls cited, though, the “insurgents” are firmly in third place.

Oddly enough, the people who seem to be the keenest that you don’t believe these polls are Labour Party activists. That, at least, is the narrative they have sold the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, who writes a lengthy article explaining why.

At the core of the scepticism, it seems, is a private memo from Labour’s campaign chief, Pat McFadden, which was sent to candidates on Friday, saying “up to a quarter of voters are yet to make up their minds”. This is a figure which substantially exceeds most polling estimates when they report on undecided voters, usually put at around five million people.

To be on the safe side, though, Labour is taking into consideration not just the “undecideds” but also, the “uncertains”, which could make up another three million. These are people who, if asked, tell pollsters that they have chosen which party to back, but when asked how sure they are about their choice, they swither.

To “swither” is not a term I’ve met before. Depending on who you consult, it is either Old English, or of Scottish origin – pr even both. Broadly, it means to be uncertain or perplexed about what to do or choose; doubt; hesitate; dither.

With the addition of the switherers, by the time you factor in turnout, Labour HQ estimates that there are around seven million or so voters who have not yet made their minds up. The final decisions of that huge number of people will clearly have a massive impact on the eventual outcome, we are told.

All that seems fair comment and there is some elaboration in a similar piece in the Observer headed: “No way is Britain’s general election a done deal. Polls disguise huge uncertainty”.

This is Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, telling us that the Tories want people to assume the outcome is decided, then for him to convey his view that that only way to remove this government is to vote them out.

Echoing the BBC piece, we are told that up to 20 percent of voters taking part in opinion polls say they have yet to make their minds up or are uncertain how to vote. This, says McFadden, could easily be four to five thousand people in each constituency. No wonder one MRP this week said there are 175 seats which are too close to call.

No one should assume anything is decided, he warns. There are dozens of seats which turn on just a few hundred votes. Tories are talking down their prospects in order to try to persuade swing voters that they either don’t need to vote or to persuade voters they can afford to vote for one of the minor parties where the seat is a Labour/Tory battle.

What McFadden doesn’t pick up on is a piece in the Telegraph which headlines: “Muslim vote may be decisive in most marginal wards, says think tank”, with the sub-head telling us: “Islam largest minority religion in 129 off 220 swing seats, Henry Jackson Society reveals”.

The Muslim vote, as I have been writing for some time, adds a further – and possibly substantial level off uncertainty to the election and, from the Telegraph’s headline is looks as if the paper is beginning to get the message.

However, the actual findings, as represented by the paper, are pretty generic, typified by a comment from Martin Baxter, chief executive of Electoral Calculus. He is cited saying that the results of their most recent MRP poll with Savanta found that religion was a “significant factor” in how people vote.

“It is not the biggest factor in voting patterns”, Baxter says, “but there is a measurable correlation between someone’s religion and the way they vote. It is one of the several things that influence people’s vote”.

While that is undoubtedly true, it really isn’t the point. The real issue is that, for this election, attempts are being made to organise the Muslim vote, specifically to attack Labour for its stance on Gaza.

Yet the paper cites Alan Mendoza, executive director of Henry Jackson Society, who says: “The first thing to note is that we cannot assume by any means that all members of a particular religion will vote in the same way. All of our religions are very diverse communities with very different backgrounds”.

He points to the Muslim Vote organisation, though, and notes that its activities could hail the beginning of a dangerous sectarianism in British politics. “In the local elections”, he adds, “it was clear that in Labour-held seats with large Muslim populations, the Labour vote fell substantially.”

Then we get Fiyaz Mughal, founder of the (government funded) charity Tell Mama which works with the police to record anti-Muslim “hate crime”. While he asserts that the Muslim Vote website is “highly divisive”, he claims that there is no “block voting” along religious lines in the UK, although he conceded that a “handful” of seats could be affected by the Muslim vote.

It is interesting to see this man trying to play down the potential impact of the vote, but it is fair to say that, without a track record to assess, there is no-one at this stage who can confidently predict the outcome of Muslim interventions in specific constituencies.

That apart, not everything is going to plan for the Muslim vote. In Blackburn, for instance, 5Pillars reports that the anti-Labour vote there has “turned toxic” as a a bitter feud has erupted, pitting three pro-Palestine candidates against each other.

One of those, Craig Murray, representing the Workers Party, is frustrated by the inability of the rival candidates to agree a single candidate to take on Labour, where Muslim Vote has endorsed independent, Adam Hussain.

Elsewhere, as in Leicester South, the anti-Labour campaign seems to be doing much better, as TMV-favoured Shockat Adam seems poised to make serious dents in the votes for incumbent Jon Ashworth, even though he has a 22,675 majority in 2019.

Certainly, Ashworth seems to be having a hard time on the streets ((pictured), making this another of those bellwether seats which could give some indication of things to come.

As things stand at the moment, it looks as if TMV will be influential but there are signs that internecine squabbles and differences within communities will prevent it achieving a clean sweep. Nevertheless, the media and polling companies are still, self-evidently, understating the “Gaza effect”.

Reform, meanwhile, seems to be gathering strength, although some say that Farage’s comments to the BBC on Russia and Ukraine will damage the party. There are mixed views on this, but Pete provides a useful analysis.

Well past halfway, with less than two weeks to go to polling day, there remains everything to play for – despite the apparent certainty in the polls – and this final stage of the campaign may prove decisive.