How can Labour get its supporters voting?

Hidden in Labour's breakdown of the "selectorate" for its leadership election was an interesting stat. According to the party, around 15 per cent of applicants for a vote in the contest weren't on the electoral register. It's a timely reminder, as Labour prepares for a new leader and a new direction, of one of its problems: many people who support the party are somewhat disconnected from the conventional political process.

While some of those 15 per cent will be joke applications—the three lamas Times columnist Matthew Parris attempted to get a ballot for, for example, were spotted and rooted out on this basis—a party source confirms that the majority are probably genuine would-be selectors who for one reason or another aren't registered to vote in British elections. A member of one Constituency Labour Party tells me that even some full members of his group—pretty politically engaged people, one would think—aren't on the electoral register.

All this reminds me of some research by the British election study, which found last month that many people who said they were going to vote Labour in May probably had something better to do on the day and didn't show up to the ballot box. People who said they'd put a cross next to the Conservatives, by contrast, most likely did so. It's a slightly different problem, but the deeper issue of Labourites' disengagement from the voting system is the same. So what can the next leader do to overcome it?

A large part of this is engaging younger people, who are more likely to support Labour but less likely to be registered to vote or to bother voting once they are. Leadership contender Yvette Cooper, who this morning released a set of political reform proposals aimed at the yoof, reckons part of the answer is to add a Minister for Young People into the shadow cabinet (and, presumably, into the real cabinet if she storms to victory in 2020). Oliver Sidorczuk, a director of the youth voting campaign group Bite the Ballot, thinks it's a positive: "this is a sign that as leader she'd be prepared to grasp the nettle and... begin to reverse the UK's youth democracy crisis," he says. 

But there's an extent to which this goes beyond bullet-point policy prescriptions. "It's less on the policy agenda as such," says Mathew Lawrence of the IPPR think tank, "and more on the institutional reach of the party." Whether a supporter actually goes ahead and votes for the party at an election is partly premised on whether "you feel both connected to something, and you feel substantively that it's a movement that can implement genuine change." Corbyn, says Lawrence, is "the most focused on restoring internal party democracy," but he points out that we can't yet be sure whether he will restore faith in the party beyond a small, already politically engaged minority.

What's clear is that from the very start of the next leader's tenure, they need to present a coherent message to, and foster genuine engagement with, the party's supporters. That will involve thinking as deeply about the Labour movement as Corbyn does, but without excluding voters who aren't well-versed in the issues he cares about. It will mean factoring in policy for young people, ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups at the highest level, as Cooper wants to, but making sure that this isn't just window dressing. And it will require leaders to leave the "Westminster bubble," as Andy Burnham says, but in doing so also leave behind interminable soundbites like "Westminster bubble." Whether they think success lies in winning back Tories or chasing after Greens this is one electoral challenge any leader will need to get to grips with.