Nevertheless, there are some, admittedly thin, but important grounds for optimism
- A significant majority of the country voted for parties that were more or less progressive in their outlook. If you put together the vote of Labour, SNP, LibDems, Welsh and NI progressive nationalists and the Greens you get over 53% of the electorate. If you put together the vote of the Conservatives on 43.6%, Brexit on 2.0% and DUP on 0.8% and UU of 0.3% you get only 46.7%.
- The vote for coherent well organised progressive parties with a clear message and respected leadership went up. SNP gained 0.8%, Greens gained 1.1% (almost as many as the Conservatives) and Alliance also gained.
- Support for the Conservatives is very wobbly and unconvinced. On the streets hundreds of people told me they didn’t trust Johnson but didn’t know what to do because they didn’t think Corbyn was capable of being PM and weren’t impressed by Swinson. The election was a contest between who the public disliked least not an endorsement of Johnson.
- The bulk of those who voted Conservative didn’t want ‘GET BREXIT DONE’ as in please can we become a haven for offshore bankers. They voted ‘PLEASE STOP TALKING ENDLESSLY ABOUT BREXIT AND JUST MAKE IT ALL GO AWAY’. Oh and ‘Can we please have the money for the NHS and the help for the neglected regions delivered quickly, ‘cause we badly need it.”
All of which leads to the obvious question of who people will turn to as this government starts to unravel and the nonsense about looking after everyone in our one nation turns out to be the biggest of all lies.
The answer to that could be pretty ugly. The possibility exists for a strong far right critique. ‘It would all have been so wonderful if only we’d let that nice Mr Farage run the country and get rid of pesky democracy that holds things up so badly’.
That kind of nonsense can only be tackled by strong progressive parties with their roots firmly in the community. It takes decades of work organising local delivery of services that actually help people to build a movement that people trust. Labour gradually came to power at the start of the twentieth century as a result of thousands of very dedicated local politicians who would put hours of work in to build council houses, make health care better or look after the elderly. The communities then wanted to pay them back by voting for people who had genuinely delivered locally.
That sort of trust is what is needed and it takes decades to build. It isn’t created by putting up a new leader or writing a new slogan and organising a better marketing campaign. There is no route back to power now for any political organisation that doesn’t have enough trust to stand up to a vicious social media storm of lies and false accusations. The only weapon progressives have ever had is that they tell it like it is and work on delivering what is needed so that when the wealthy and powerful use the media it simply doesn’t ring true and becomes counterproductive.
None of the parties scores well on that tough criteria. The majority opinion of the great British public is that “They are all the same” and “You can’t trust any of them”.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Johnson got sacked twice for lying. He cheated on his second wife whilst she was being treated for cancer. He was recorded organising for a friend to beat up a journalist. These are not normal character flaws even for the worst kind of politician. What would any of us think of someone we knew in our personal life who behaved like that. Would we like them, or trust them as our boss? So how come this fridge hiding, phone grabbing, mouther of words about our black community possessing watermelon smiles gets viewed as just like all the rest? It is a tough gig but he stands out amongst politicians for the intensity and the frequency of his lies and his lack of concern when they are exposed.
Labour failed to call those character flaws out clearly and simply day after day and to work on the obvious fact that the vast bulk of the nation doesn’t trust Johnson. Instead they went in for complex promises about money and spending that very few voters believed. What did for Corby was not bad policies so much as a flabby ability to launch a fierce enough counter attack and the destruction of his invaluable reputation for honesty as a result of endless dithering nonsense about Brexit. Voters liked him in 2017 because he said what he meant and meant what he said and they understood it. Voters were turned off in 2019 because his line on Brexit had changed more often that Johnson’s mistresses were betrayed and he went into the election with an utterly implausible strategy on the main issue of the day.
Labour now is left with two factions longing to claw each other’s eyes out with more determination than they are prepared to organise a food bank or launch a combined assault on Johnson. They have failed to hit an easy target for the past two years. Does anyone have the confidence that they are going to unite behind one coherent approach now that will make proper inroads into a complacent reaction? Waiting around for them to sort themselves out doesn’t feel like an appealing prospect for anyone.
The LibDems are also in disarray. There was a massive opportunity for them to win seats across a huge stretch of the south from London through to Bath. Remain areas that have a tradition of wanting business friendly government and centre ground social policies should have flocked to them in droves. They didn’t. And that is actually where the election was lost. Labour was always going to lose the likes of Stoke on Trent this time. By contrast the LibDems had a clear and simple message. Yet they didn’t win a single extra seat. They too are now faced with a real battle about what they are as a party. It isn’t possible to be the pro-EU party after we’ve left and can’t get back to where we started. Will they try and fill the gap for a soft Conservative party or for a soft social democratic party and what is their route back after this defeat on top of the reputation destroying coalition legacy? More importantly, is it really a sufficient analysis of what has happened in the last decade or so to say that what we really need to do is to get back to Blair and Cameron style government?
All of which leaves me sticking with the Greens. They have a number of things going for them.
- Twenty years of consistently championing the environment at a time when the truth of the warnings becomes clearer by the day and the issue is starting to genuinely trouble the vast majority of people
- Three competent figureheads who came through the election with enhanced reputations and can give as good as they get on the telly. Jonathon Bartley and Sian Berry did well and in Caroline Lucas the Greens have a genuine vote winning star that people trust.
- The Greens are on the up having done well in local, EU and Parliamentary elections this year.
- Internationally Greens are on the rise. It is entirely possible that the next German government could be a Green led coalition.
- Too many experimental policies that the public doesn’t understand or like. For example, why give a citizen’s income to Mr Rees Mogg?
- Too many spending commitments without good enough explanations of where money they are going to cut wasteful expenditure or why borrowing is justified by infrastructure.
- An inevitable lack of professional organisation that comes with very little money, few full time organisers and little experience in high office or even medium office.
- The distance that has to be travelled in each individual seat between being one of the options and being a winner.
- Voter reluctance to back Greens in a first past the post election.
- Work steadily day to day on championing positive ways of responding to the multiple environmental emergencies that we face. Be there in localities with practical ideas and with solutions
- Strip down policies to a few straightforward necessities and plug away at those.
- Expose the hypocrisies and lies of the Government of the day and keep insisting that science sets the agenda
- Appeal to neglected localities by emphasising the focus that environmentalists have always had on local business, local nature and local organisation. Be the champion of communities
- Work hard on ameliorating the personal and the business costs of the changes that have to be made whilst not compromising on making those changes.
- Avoid being the party that only offers pain and be the party that offers the gain of being the leaders of change.
- Keep being good at collaboration and smile happily when your ideas are knicked and implemented.