What do the Middleton and Heywood and Clacton by-elections tell us about the Labour vote?
What do the Heywood and Middleton and Clacton by-elections tell us about the Labour vote?
In the Heywood and Middleton by-election Labour has scraped through by a whisker.
While it’s true that the Tory vote has collapsed – from 12,528 in 2010 to 3,496 today – Labour has failed to capitalise on it. In what should be a fairly safe working class Labour seat, Miliband has won with a majority of just 617. Despite needing to show that it is ready for government, Labour has increased its vote share on 2010 by just 0.8 per cent.
More depressing perhaps is the fact that 40 per cent of voters have backed UKIP and another 12 per cent the Tories. That’s a majority for the right whichever way you look at it.
And then there is that other by-election, in Clacton, where UKIP has won its first seat in the House of Commons by winning just short of 60 per cent of the vote – in a working class Essex seat. Labour lost a huge number of votes there too, falling from 10,799 to 3,957.
Predictably the Liberal Democrats were nowhere to be seen in either constituencies, picking up just 483 votes in Clacton and 1,457 in Heywood.
So in sum, a poor night for Labour and the Tories, a disastrous one for the Lib Dems and a happy one for UKIP. But what does it tell us about the ascendance of UKIP and the relative stasis of the Labour vote?
While UKIP still take around three Conservative votes for every one Labour vote, Labour evidently has a working class problem. Ed Miliband often gets the blame for this, being a fully paid up member of the ‘Westminster elite’ and having ‘never had a proper job’, as the saying goes, but this is unfair; the problem goes much deeper and goes all the way back to New Labour.
The left will undoubtedly respond to today’s by-election results by attacking Labour for offering a dearth of ‘hope’ to working class voters. In contrast, the right of the party will either blame Miliband himself or will go after the party for ‘not listening to voter concerns’ on immigration.
Without getting into the Miliband question, both criticisms ring true to some extent, as was aptly summed up earlier this year by Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin in their book Revolt on the Right. The thesis of the book was that, apart from reactionary shire Tories, UKIP was picking up so-called ‘left behind’ voters – that is, working class voters who felt like they and their families were getting a raw deal from globalisation, be it economic or cultural.
The left has some ground it can work with here – part of the fear of globalisation is around job security and wages – comfortable ground for social democrats such as Ed Miliband. The bigger issue is connecting with voters who dislike the other side of globalisation, namely immigration.
However much the left continues to extol the virtues of the working class, there is a growing divide between the views of the largely liberal and metropolitan make-up of the Labour hierarchy and the so-called Labour ‘core vote’.
Here it is worth noting the work of David Goodhart, much disparaged by the left but probably onto something. The liberal left, he says, is today dominated by people whose worldview is “universalistic, suspicious of most kinds of group or national attachment, and individualistic…they don’t “get” what most other people also get – loyalty, authority and the sacred’.
This is in contrast to working class voters, who value family, patriotism and social and economic stability.
In other words, there is a schism between the liberal left and many working class voters; a schism that’s also apparent on issues surrounding welfare – Labour’s core voters are the most enthusiastic proponents of welfare reform, quite at odds with most middle class left-wingers.
The progressive response to working class disillusionment with globalisation has thus far been to focus on economic insecurity and to propose the remedies for that – a living wage, jobs that pay properly and decent housing etc.
What it hasn’t done (with a few exceptions) is grapple with that other source of discontent – immigration.
A large number of people (around 80 per cent according to most polls) consistently want a substantial reduction in immigration. *Some* of this is undoubtedly due to plain old xenophobia, but a lot of it is evidently not – second generation immigrants also want a significant reduction in the number of migrants coming to Britain, for example.
Migrants are good for Britain, both economically and culturally. But when Nigel Farage says he feels ‘uncomfortable’ traveling on a bus or a train where nobody speaks English, despite his poor choice of adjective he is tapping into a real sense of alienation that is fairly widespread – especially in working class communities.
The question for the left – and more importantly for the Labour party – is what it does about this, beyond clinging to the idea that it is really just code for economic concerns or the fault of the tabloids for ‘brainwashing’ voters (but also beyond engaging in myth-making about things like benefit tourism).
A party that considers itself socialist has to be able connect with working class voters at the very best of times. For a party that is relying on a so-called 35 per cent strategy to get into office, it should be absolutely de rigueur.
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The results
Middleton and Heywood
Labour Liz McInnes 11,633
UKIP 11,016
Tories 3,496
Greens 870
Lib Dem 1,457
Clacton
Conservatives 8,709
Greens 688
Labour 3,957
Lib Dem 483
UKIP 21,113
188 Responses to “Labour has a working class problem”
Matthew Blott
You were just being abusive that’s all. I was pointing that out. Do you want a fight?
The_Average_Joe_UK
Really?
Yeh come on fight … fight ….fight…. fight. … my key board versus yours…. CHILD, come on lets have a fight ….
Labour always screw the economy. But 97-2010 was worse you set us on a trajectory that will take years to fix. As labourites dont do economics they wont accept any of this. In 2007, UK public debt was 44.1% of GDP. When he left in 2010, it was 148.1%.
There is always more unemployment after a labour government
Mid staffs
Failure in Wales
The Rotherham Sex scandal
Explosion in expensive and wasteful Quango’s
politicisation of the third sector
The devastating impact of Labour’s raid on pensions: The tax grab has cost workers £118bn since 1997. (Office for Budget Responsibility).
Up to 50 thousand ‘excess’ deaths were recorded at hospitals during the last Labour Goverment. (Research by Sir Brian Jarman of Imperial College).
Council Tax doubled under Labour – 105% increase in England, 146% Wales. (The Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy: 26/03/09).
In 2012/13 Labour councils employed nearly 23,000 people on zero-hour contracts.
When Labour came to power in 1997, spending on NHS managers was less than £190m. By 2010 this had increased by 450% to over £1bn per year.
Labour wasted £11bn of taxpayers money on a failed IT project which was eventually scrapped by the NHS in 2013.
Labour lumbered the NHS with vast PFI repayments – £50 billion worth of loans which are costing £300 billion in repayments.
It was the Labour Party who awarded the DWP Medical Services Contract to ATOS on the 15th March 2005.
Labour started the privatisation of the NHS. They brought in the 2006 NHS Act that introduced competition into the NHS.
Labour introduced competition into the NHS: Competition Act 1998, Enterprise Act 2002 & Public Sector Procurement Regulations 2006.
Youth unemployment rose by more than 40% during Labour’s 13 years in office.
British manufacturing grew by 28% between 1980 and 1997. Then, under Labour, it shrank by 6%: falling from 20% of GDP to just 11%.
Labour left a deficit of £156 billion, PFI liability of £301 billion, EU Rebate loss £9.3 billion, Sold the Gold loss £6 billion.
The last Labour government spent so much money on Labour cronies that it had a 5% structural deficit at the height of the boom.
Only 6,330 council houses were completed from 1998 to 2010 under Labour, compared with 17,710 in 1990 alone – Lady Thatcher’s final year as PM.
Tony Blair gave away a chunk of the UK’s EU rebate estimated now to have cost the UK £9.3 billion between 2007-2013. He got NOTHING in return
In 2010 Gordon Brown branded Rochdale voter Gillian Duffy “a bigoted woman” for daring to voice her concern about uncontrolled immigration.
Labour are now complaining about gambling. But they were the ones who wanted to build Super Casinos in some of the poorest areas in Britain and carpeted our high streets with betting shops.
Labour closed more mines in 5 years than Thatcher did in 11 years.. 211 mines closed under Wilson 1965-70.. 154 under Thatcher 1979-90.
Under Labour zero hour contracts increased by 74% between 2004 – 2009.
Since Labour liberalised the law in 2000 to allow postal voting on demand, the number of postal voting fraud in Labour areas has soared.
Labour signed the Lisbon Treaty which gave away powers to the EU and reduced UK sovereignty and the power of our Westminster Parliament.
Labour were responsible for the rise in payday lenders. Now they are campaigning against them.
Labour presided over the slowest growth in 50 years and produced the fastest decline in British manufacturing since manufacturing began.
Labour destroyed our border controls then with the help of the BBC denounced anybody who voiced concerns about mass immigration as racists.
Labour councils are the biggest users of zero contracts.
The last Labour government doubled the rate of income tax on the lowest paid.
Labour claims to be the party of the working man, but they have absolutely destroyed the working class through mass immigration.
Labour MPs to remember: Denis MacShane (jailed), David Chaytor (jailed), Eric Illsley (jailed), Elliot Morley (jailed), Jim Devine (jailed).
Blair invaded Iraq and Brown invaded the Treasury, both actions crippled us.
Labour opposes democracy in Britain by denying the British people a referendum on EU membership.
Labour Party Manifesto Pledge 2001: ‘We will not introduce top-up fees’.
One of the reasons for high energy prices is EU driven ‘Green Taxes’ brought in by the last Labour government.
It was Labour under Blair who handed control of British food regulation to the EU, (Regulation EC no 178/2002).
The Labour Party paid only £14,000 in tax last year on total income of £33.3 million. (The Spectator, 30/07/2014).
If Ed Miliband can easily stab his own brother in the back, imagine what he will do to us if he ever becomes Prime Minister.
Come on then your turn……… Lets see what you’ve got Blotty
BTW, what you called me…. is useful….. unlike a Labour politician.
MountainousIpswich
Cameron was more elected than Gordon Brown ever was.
blarg1987
Have the trouble is lack of trust in our industries. When employers tell staff that times are tough and they have to make salary sacrifices, and have wage freezes / cuts, but then tell shareholders that they have made more profits this year and can pay out larger share dividends, something stinks.
Industry has to try harder to earn employees trust that means being honest and not telling them one thing and shareholders something else.
Germany has the right example of having a Union Rep on the board as they see the inside accounts etc and tell the shop floor exactly how it is, not what the board want them to hear.
A.Melongangster
The replies to this comment are absolutely hilarious. I know it’s difficult to keep up frothing indignation against perceived slights when you perceive them everywhere, but I do hope you give it a bash. Watching you amuses me.
PS: I’m not a Labour party member. I’m not even a Labour party supporter.