Politics

Batley and Spen: Labour is on course for a third successive by-election failure

Keir Starmer’s party is pitting sections of the electorate against each other—instead of finding a unifying message of hope

June 24, 2021
Keir Starmer and Labour Batley and Spen candidate Kim Leadbeater. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Keir Starmer and Labour Batley and Spen candidate Kim Leadbeater. Photo: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

When Hillary Clinton was running against Barack Obama to be the Democrats' presidential candidate in 2008, she hired a strategist called Mark Penn. His book Microtrends argued that politicians should segment the electorate into a mosaic of demographic groups that they can then woo with carefully targeted policies. "Americans overwhelmingly favour small, reasonable ideas over big, grandiose schemes... There is no One America any more, or Two, or Three, or Eight," he wrote. "In fact, there are hundreds of Americas." His approach suggested that charisma and vision were for wimps and leaders must instead tap into voters’ self-interest. When an aide urged Clinton to “show a little bit of humanity,” Penn reportedly declared: “Oh come on, being human is overrated.” It was, of course, a disaster: Obama won the nomination, then swept to power with an inspirational message of hope.

Labour is in danger of falling into the “Microtrends” trap of pitting sections of the electorate against each other and getting bogged down in minutiae, rather than honing a powerful narrative that can appeal to all parts of the country. The party increasingly seems to see electoral strategy as a choice between “red wall” and “blue wall,” north and south, Remain and Leave, working-class and middle-class, white and ethnic minority, when the aim should be to win voters from all these various groups. And it’s not going well.

Keir Starmer has already ordered a clear-out of his top team after his party lost in Hartlepool and then came fourth in the Chesham and Amersham by-election, receiving only 622 votes. Now Labour is said to be heading for another bad result in Batley and Spen, where its candidate is Kim Leadbeater—the sister of Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered in the constituency. George Galloway is threatening to split the left-wing vote. One poll has predicted that Labour will lose the seat.

Of course, by-elections always throw up local peculiarities and political eccentricities. Galloway, who was a vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, made clear who his real target was when he declared in an online video: "I’m standing against Keir Starmer. If Keir Starmer loses this by-election it’s curtains for Keir Starmer. So if, for whatever reason, you think that the current leader of the Labour Party needs to be replaced, I’m your man.” In his campaign posters he is pictured—fists raised—in front of the slogan “Starmer OUT.” One shadow minister says Galloway is being “really shameful, going from mosque to mosque and family to family" peddling his brand of divisive politics.

But, to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose one by-election may be regarded as unfortunate, to lose two looks like carelessness and to lose three would be a real hand-bagging. Starmer needs to lift his eyes from the local crises and realise Labour needs a national shift. The message of Jo Cox’s memorable maiden speech, “we have far more in common than that which divides us,” should be the motto for any party that wants to win. Labour must stop thinking about which narrow group of voters it is trying to appeal to and start deciding what it is for. It should be honing a message that goes down well in Tory shires and northern heartlands.

Peter Mandelson, the former Cabinet minister who helped turn Labour into an election-winning force in the 1990s, tells me: “There are all sorts of ways of segmenting the electorate, we have moved on from traditional class categories. But there are things which unite people across pollsters' divisions: is a leader strong and good in a crisis, are a party and its policies relevant and ready for government, do you trust their instincts on the economy? And do you trust them to secure the country? This is not north or south, it’s universal. It boils down to leadership strength, values and efficacy.”

Labour needs much more clarity in its messaging and its announcement of a long-winded policy review is not the answer. It should dump the Corbyn policy platform that was rejected so clearly by the voters at the last general election—including individually popular policies such as free tuition fees. As Andrew Cooper, David Cameron’s director of strategy at Number 10, used to tell his colleagues when the Tories were trying to “detoxify” their brand: political parties need “10,000-volt” shocks to demonstrate they have changed, and that is what Labour must deliver to the electorate now.

Veering to the left, as Galloway would like, is certainly not the answer, but nor is adopting a phoney flag-waving patriotism that does not ring true. One Labour MP laments “the lack of excitement around Labour, the lack of colour, the sense that Labour hasn’t got a clear understandable reason for being right now. Labour through the ages has reinvented itself for the moment—Cool Britannia, the white heat of technology, post-war, but we haven’t reinvented ourselves for this moment. That’s what everybody is looking to Keir for: what is our vision for a better Britain?”

Starmer needs to show authentically who he is and what he stands for, rather than agonising to square the circle of competing electoral demands. As one Labour strategist says: “a plumber in, say, Harlow or Gravesham has plenty in common with a plumber in Stoke.” Peter Kyle, the shadow schools ministers who won his Hove seat from the Conservatives in 2015, believes the key is to hone a message of aspiration: “Labour has to appeal to everybody who wants to get on and have a little more in the years ahead than they had in the past. That’s what unites Hartlepool and Hove, Chesham and Amersham and Batley and Spen.” 

The Tories are already starting to pay a price for concentrating only on the “red wall” and alienating their traditional “blue wall” supporters. Starmer should start adopting Boris Johnson’s “have your cake and eat it” approach to electoral strategy. To win, Labour will have to bring people together—not choose between different groups.