Kmflett's Blog

Election tumults, heckling & grassroots democracy.

In the Making of the English Working Class, E P Thompson noted that one of the rights that the Freeborn Englishman valued was the tumult at Election times, which certainly involved heckling and might include throwing rotten fruit and even dead cats at unpopular candidates.

Thompson was referring to the period before the 1832 Reform Act when few had the vote. It might be argued, and actually is, that now all have the vote such things are not required or appropriate.

Reports suggest that the turn out on July 4^th will be one of the lowest at least since 1945. Some voters don’t feel politicians are dealing with the basic issues that impact their lives from housing to health and the cost of living. Others may feel that the difference between Sunak and Starmer are too small to make much difference.

In this context any engagement (beyond physical threats- which also have a long electoral history)should be welcomed. Indeed until quite recently they were. Harold Wilson was a master at dealing with political heckling and you can find clips on X. At one large meeting a heckler interrupted Wilson’s speech shouting ‘rubbish’. Wilson replied, ‘I’ll come to your specialist subject in a minute’.

The Times has run a series of letters on the demise of heckling. Bill Rodgers complained he could find no hustings meeting in N6 (Highgate)at which to heckle. Someone tweeted to me that there had indeed been one where heckling was forbidden and policeman was present to enforce it.

These days if someone asks a candidate a question they don’t want to hear, about Gaza for example, its called intimidation. It isn’t, its democracy in action and if it continues to be demonised politicians will only have themselves to blame if unofficial politics from below starts to rival the official Westminster kind

Suella Braverman is set to lose her seat…

Psephology is the practice of opinion polling, often derided. As long ago as 1959 the socialist historian E P Thompson dubbed it Ephology, inserting pre-conceived ideas about who would or should win elections into actual election contests.

Certainly historically some polling organisations, YouGov in particular, were thought to poll a base which had more Tory voters and hence produce results favourable to the Tories.

However we live in a market economy and polling companies make their money via all kinds of polls with commercial applications. If their high profile election polls are accurate this is profitable in the wider context.

In April Survation produced a survey looking at the next UK Election. It uses the same format that correctly predicted the 2015 and 2019 results and some more recent Election results around Europe.

Looking at the database I checked the figures for Suella Bravermen who will be contesting a new 2024 Constituency Fareham and Waterlooville (in Hampshire) based on boundary changes which have abolished her old seat

Fareham and Waterlooville 2024 prediction (percentage of vote)

Tory 37.75

Labour 34.69

LibDem 13.63

Green 4.43

Reform 8.24

Majority 3.05

2019 majority 42.23

Braverman’s Constituency has Wards in three voting areas, Fareham, Havant and Winchester. In Fareham the picture looks mixed. The Tories lost six seats but easily retained control of the Council with the LibDems the main challenger. Labour made significant gains in Havant but not in the three Wards in Braverman’s new Constituency. In Winchester the Tories did lose heavily to the LibDems in both relevant Wards.

The Times (10th June) reported from Braverman’s Constituency and out with the candidate didnt find many of her supporters. It noted:

Boundary changes have put Labour within a few percentage points of winning, according to the latest MRP poll, while the LibDems are only a few more percentage points behind

Braverman has said that the Tories and Reform should join forces (Times 10th June) but post the reappearance of Farage, Reform are also challenging in the seat.

An Electoral Calculus poll (26^th June) suggests that voters may have taken Braverman’s point but not to her personal advantage

Tory 23.3%

Labour 19.7%

LibDem 24.5%

Reform 29.3%

The seat is a four way marginal and while it would great news to see Braverman out it would be heavily qualified if it was just by a co-thinker

Labour Party Leadership 1964-2024

Labour won the 1964 General Election defeating a Tory Party that had been in Office for 13 years but only narrowly so.

Harold Wilson who had come from the Party’s Left became Prime Minister and held Office from 1964-70 (winning another Election in 1966) and 1974-76 (winning two Elections in 1974).

The late Tom Nairn wrote a series of articles on the Labour Party in New Left Review. Below is an extract from his assessment of Harold Wilson in 1964:

His domination over the movement became complete. As never before in the (Labour) Party’s history it practically became one man, the faintest whispers of criticism spontaneously obliterated

(Tom Nairn, The Nature of the Labour Party 11. New Left Review 1/28 Nov/Dec 1964)

It sounds rather like Keir Starmer and his My Labour Party. A man who appeared to come from the left and became an authoritarian right-wing leader.

Such comparisons are too easy. Wilson did actually come from the Bevanite left, and he was an experienced and able politician when he became leader. The same can’t be said of Starmer.

However this doesn’t mean a comparison is worthless. There is a structural point. Labour leaders often come or appear to come from the left and then adapt to win Office which if the focus is entirely on a Parliamentary Road to change (socialism being somewhat distant)is a process which if not inevitable is common

Liz Truss has lost her seat to Labour’s Terry Jermy by 640 votes. It was surely the Portillo moment of the 2024 Election

Liz Truss has a majority of 26,000 in her South West Norfolk seat. She has said (Sunday Times 2nd June) that she is focused on winning the seat at the Election on local issues and has no ambition to return to Downing St. That doesnt quite fit with the extensive publicity her political memoir has received where she styles herself as the saviour of Western civilisation.

There are also two other right-wing candidates James Bagge a former Tory standing on an anti-Truss platform, who usually describes himself as the ‘Turnip Taliban’ and Toby McKenzie for Reform. With the potential for a split vote on the right there could be a, very welcome, Labour surprise here. The candidate is on X @CllrTerryJermy

The pointers to the result had been there

26^th June

A new Electoral Calculus poll (based on MRP large scale sampling) published on 26^th June predicts the following outcome:

Labour 38.5%

Reform 34.8%

Tory 15.4%

I remain doubtful about how accurate such polls are but a Labour lead has been suggested by earlier polls by other polling outfits

Earlier Updates

21st June

A well-attended Hustings organised by Friends of the Earth on 20th June saw seven of the eight candidates attend. This missing candidate was Truss. She was watching the football in a pub elsewhere in the Constituency.

Meanwhile Jonathan Freedland reported from the Constituency in the Guardian (22ndJune). Freedland’s point is that while we will rejoice if Truss is defeated, the likely Tory crisis can lead to an opening further right around Farage and Co that a Starmer Government may struggle to head off. That is the start of another discussion

“I’m not voting Conservative, because it’s her,” was how Carrie Batty put it, as she and her husband, Chris, soaked up some long-awaited summer sun on a park bench in the centre of Swaffham earlier this week. “Because of the chaos she’s caused our children with her wonderful budget.” The sarcasm was acid, as Batty, who’s 62 and retired, told me of the mortgage payments her two children were struggling to meet. She’d always voted Tory, “but not now, because I don’t want Liz Truss as an MP. She’s never apologised. She’s never taken responsibility for anything.”

Others confessed astonishment that Truss is even allowed to stand as a Tory candidate, given the damage she’s done. To show me what they’re up against, one senior Norfolk Conservative pinged over an image of a recent Eastern Daily Press front page. Its splash headline: “Truss: ‘I’m not worst PM ever’”.

As elsewhere, some of the disaffected Conservatives of South West Norfolk are moving to Labour, but most are considering two other options: the couch – several told me they’ll stay home on 4 July – or a vote for Reform. By his own admission, its local candidate, Toby McKenzie, a former teacher now involved in education management, is not fighting an all-out war for those votes – he’s a newcomer to politics, with a day job, so most campaigning is confined to weekends – but formerly habitual Tories are coming to him anyway. “They just don’t want to vote Conservative any more,” he says. When Nigel Farage jumped in the race, things took off: 30 new people joined up in a single day and McKenzie suddenly found he had a team of volunteers

25th June

Sky despatched a reporter to see if they could find any evidence of Truss on the campaign trail or anyone prepared to go on record in her support. They could not.

King Charles is a flexitarian while Keir Starmer is a pescatarian and both seemed to be catered for in the menu for the State Banquet for the Japanese Emperor on Tuesday evening. Rishi Sunak and Ed Davey were also there

The Menu

Poached Scottish langoustines on a nest of cucumber with basil mousse, chilled tomato consomme

Baked fillet of Cornish turbot with herb butter wrapped in lettuce, sorrel cream sauce and a selection of summer vegetables

Creamed spinach and potato croquette

Salad of green beans and quail eggs

ice-cream bombe with peach sorbet on a bed of compressed peaches

Wine List

Coates and Seely Brute Reserve NV

Kumeu River Hunting Hill

Chardonnay 2016

Chateaux Angludet Margaux 2014

Laurent Perrier Cuvee Rose NV

Remember the cost of living crisis applies selectively

On 30th June 1790 Mr Ellis, Cambridge Uni bet Mr Brinkley 2s6d of strawberries that Sir Gerald Vanneck would win Suffolk in the coming Election. In fact Sir Charles Bunbury won

Betting on Elections: a matter of class?

As a socialist I don’t and never have bet. My late father a Glaswegian Communist drilled into me that betting was not something class conscious workers got involved in. This is a view echoed in Raphael Samuel’s The Lost World of British Communism. As often reality is more complex as the Daily Worker/Morning Star long had the best racing tipster in the business.

When I started work in the late 1970s some of my colleagues bet on the dogs. These of course were small scale bets and depended on there being actual dog tracks for races.

As Ross McKibbin (Past and Present Feb 1979, Working Class Gambling in Britain 1880-1939) has noted from the 1880s onwards small scale working class betting on sport became commonplace. The amounts bet were small and quite often the bookies were informal. Most betting was on sport, primarily football  and the rise of the football pools turned it into a mass pastime. These days the equivalent might be the Lottery or scratchcards.

Betting on horses was something also done by the better off, not least because there might be a financial interest in a particular horse.

Betting on Elections is more niche and not something working class people often indulged in. Laura D Beers, Punting on the Thames, Political Betting in Inter-War Britain (Journal of Contemporary History, April 2010 45/2) details political betting in the first decades of the twentieth century. Much of the betting was done in financial markets. While clearly there was money to be made that wasn’t quite the main purpose. Rather it was to bet on who might win or lose an Election and the impact this might have on the markets. If the impact was negative then a bet could act as an insurance policy on that.

By the 1930s the odds on election had started appearing in the Mail and Express where middle class readers could use them to bet. That remains a world away from the spread betting of recent times

The last Prime Minister with a beard was a Tory, Lord Salisbury in 1902

26th June

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged caution when it comes to voting for a Tory candidate with a beard on July 4th.

The campaigners say that in general its positive that the perpetually clean shaven Tory Party has now embraced beards. However some candidates cannot be supported because they bring the hirsute into disrepute.

These include

Jonathan Gullis, Stoke on Trent North

Richard Holden, Basildon and Billericay

The BLF is however supporting Giles Watling in Clacton as the candidate probably best placed to defeat beard hater Farage

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, our election research team is now focusing on support for hirsute Labour candidates. Again we will be selective

Days after Labour won a landslide Election Victory, England beat Holland  to go through to the Men’s Euros final

For those wanting England Men to win the Euros the Labour victory on July 4^th could be key to it.

The record indicates that England Men only win football finals under a Labour Government

The only time England Men have won the World Cup was in 1966 just months after Harold Wilson had led Labour to a 97 seat majority in the March Election of that year, Wilson noted:

Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour government”

He may well have got the line from comedian Mike Yarwood

Wilson was also privately, and correctly, concerned about the impact England Men’s failure in the 1970 World Cup would have on Labour’s chances in the June General Election of that year. Labour lost. While comment has suggested there is no evidence for the statement neither conversely is their evidence against it. However Tony Benn, who was no great football fan, recorded in his diary for June 1970 the concerns about it.

Keir Starmer will be in Berlin for the Final on Sunday. Pub opening hours have been extended until 1am (a potentially mixed blessing). Will England Men prove Harold Wilson’s 1966 theory correct?