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
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188 Responses to “Labour has a working class problem”
vi_sa
You forget the Tories are the only party to offer an EU referendum AND at least they acknowledged and tried to sort out immigration. Education, NHS and welfare reform. Everything Labour avoided doing.
Both UKIP and Conservatives need to unite on policies they agree on – if we don’t come to a seat sharing agreement, Labour scrapes through. Even in Clacton, there is a clear majority for the centre right.
blingmun
“You forget the Tories are the only party to offer an EU referendum”
They’ve been in power since 2010, what are they waiting for?
blingmun
“Just because people think something is true, doesn’t make it true.”
That’s not what he said – he wasn’t talking about facts, he was talking about democratic expression. He said that in a democracy if large numbers of voters think immigration is too high then it is.
Jason Smith
Ok, I’m going to write this down as you just don’t get it.
Me= Family of 5, mother on benefits and now disability.
Eldest brother on disability 3 siblings have struggled with low paying jobs.
Went to a multi-cultural school most friends are not traditional English
heritage. Came into contact with Asylum seekers and their plight. Left
secondary school worked incredibly hard for everything I got, car, to go
travelling before going to a red brick uni. Grew up in Haringey in London btw
so saw a lot of poverty and deprivation. School was filled with poor kids,
middle class lefty families and very diverse.
For all intents I’d say that should make me a ‘compassionate
Labour voter’ poor background seen the plight of others, grew up with
multiculturalism, went to a left leaning uni.
Now I’m going to explain why Labour is not worth voting for.
Issue 1 – You’re hypocrites and you’re incredibly tribal.
Savid gets voted culture secretary the attack is he is rich, because he is self-made
and Asian. Tristiam hunt gets an attack on his privileged you condemn it as low
politics. Eh that’s all I hear about from you guys out of touch Tories.
Solution- Accept that someone’s privileged background is no
more reason to attack them as someone’s unprivileged background. Be willing to
accept a good idea even if it’s from the Tories. That doesn’t mean no scrutiny
but means you don’t trap yourself or slow down good bi partisan bills.
Issue 2 – You have a born to lead mentality. You call
working class your voters. You’re living off a historic “anti Tory
vote” from another generation. You don’t own votes. This can be seen in Rotherham
Haringey and many other places across the country. You have a scandal or mess
up and you don’t resolve it you hark back to you need to vote for us or you get
Tories.
Solution= actually get primaries for candidates and
selections. Don’t shoot rough shot over local CLP’s.
Issue 3 – you’re the economically incompetent but
compassionate party. But you’re not compassionate from my experience. Someone
who was affected by bedroom tax, we can accept the need on it due to housing
pressure and can understand the arguments. We hate its implementation by a
Labour council and have felt like we are under a sustained campaign to evict
us. How many scandals have come out Mid Staffs covered up, Rotherham covered up
“Not rock the multi-cultural boat and my left credentials” McShane. I
can go on.
Solution= Actually start giving a F*ck about the people you
claim to represent. Though will take a long time to get better.
Issue 4 – Your economic incompetence. To put it simply a lot
of the public sector problems in this country come down to PFI Gordon Browns
amazing tactic to have off the book spending. The under investment in
everything meaning it’s costing more as its last minute, like in Hinckley.
Solution – Cost things properly, stop spending the mansion tax
and the bonus tax a gazillion times. Learn something about markets. You damage
the economy or borrow a lot everything else becomes unaffordable. Wouldn’t it
be better to be spending the 6% of GDP interest on loans on welfare? Or have a
Sovereign wealth fund ourselves?
Issue 5 – Ed Milliband really is out of touch, and you’re
all so out of touch to see it. Back to the issues 1 and 2. You attack the
Tories but from my observation they seem to have more working class and self-made
people than labour now. You have too many political families and too many
career politicians. You’re all inter married go to the same dinner parties.
Only you guys would think you’d find your average person at Hampstead heath?
Try Mudchute Park, wood green high street. I saw it at uni the people who
wanted to go to a think tank and SPAD then candidate. Galled at the idea they
should do a decade of work before going in.
Solution – Discourage career politicians; don’t override
local CLPs, primaries
Issue 6 – The Unions. I don’t trust unions; I think the
barons are in it for themselves and to create comfy closed shop arrangements.
And do more damage than good. Look at Grangemouth, a personal pride nearly cost
everyone their jobs. And they did it wrong they used company resources for
their own ends. The problem with union leadership is as bad as Labour the it’s
out for itself. And yet it has a bit too much control and has been forcing
through candidates to thrust its agenda on people. That’s just going to lead to
another assault on unions being backed by the majority of non-unionised
population.
Solution- takes control of the party back. Stop the funny
games with candidate selection happening because the other factions are doing
the same.
Issue 7 – You destroy identity and support networks to
replace it with the state. My brother was encouraged to move out to support
living. Once there he has been left abandoned and I now have to sort out the
issues with debt collectors and bills as he wasn’t given supervision. He’s
weight ballooned because the food support wasn’t there. All against prior
promises. When it was first raised we actually had an insulting letter telling
us not to get in the way (we wouldn’t if he wanted) you have suppressed English
nationalism while spreading Scottish NI and Welsh and now Cornish. That creates
resentment. You went to wholesale immigration without integration. But
Multiculturalism. All the North South
Westminster Tory rubbish and attacks you’ve massively helped segment society.
This has destroyed the Demos. People are willing to support people they
identify with. Hence why working class folks want the welfare bill down,
because it’s not helping them or theirs it’s helping others now.
Solution Scrap multiculturalism and go for integration.
Support the building of a UK identity, even if it will offend some. For the
sake of social fabric needs to be done.
But what do I know I have no power and just my observations.
But I’m out of your comfy North London circuit box.
vi_sa
Would you rather have Labour in power?