September 27, 2010
Some lessons for Ed
The idea that it was “the Sun wot won it” for the Conservatives in 1992 is common. But it’s almost certainly false. Most political scientists believe that whilst newspapers are very good at telling voters what to think about, they do not exercise a decisive influence in telling people what, exactly, to think.
And the decline of the print media means the influence of newspapers is likely to be decreasing further. Although The Sun crowed that by backing Cameron in 2010 it was making a game-changing intervention, it’s far more likely that widespread dislike of Gordon Brown and a build-up of resentments against New Labour sealed the electoral fate.
With this in mind, Ed Miliband should look to his own recent election experience and draw some valuable lessons. Except for the basically irrelevant The People, not a single national newspaper backed Ed over David. Whilst New Statesman magazine picked the younger Miliband , The Guardian, Observer, Mirror, Economist and Times all came out for his brother.
Now, you can complain that David actually “won” on first preference votes, and that the electoral college system rewarded Ed in a way that could not be replicated in a First Past the Post (or even AV) British general election. There may be some merit in that argument. But consider also this.
If newspapers have a significant influence on how, exactly, voters cast their ballots (as opposed to what sort of things they’re likely to be thinking about in the run up to an election) then why did the Lib Dems fail to take Islington South last May? Labour was defending a majority of just 484 in Guardianista Islington. And yet it held the seat despite The Guardian coming out strongly for the Lib Dems.
Of course one case study is not enough to be decisive. But if anywhere has a strong claim for being the ideal test-case for whether or not a newspaper endorsement can influence key swing voters Islington South was surely it. And yet the impact there was non-existent.
***
The New Labour years were characterised by an obsession with newspaper – and especially tabloid – headlines. By the belief that if desirable headlines could be secured then voters could be mechanically manipulated as a function of media control. But it seems this simplistic view is just false.
It remains that newspapers can tell people what to think about. So the media (obviously) can’t be ignored. But what the past 15 years have shown is that on many traditionally “right wing” issues – crime, immigration, defence – the right-wing press will not jump to a government tune, no matter how reactionary. Newspapers will not be conveniently controlled, and will instead pump-out dogmatic mantras regardless. Mantras happily used to attack a Labour government if that’s what sells copy.
This is one reason why New Labour attempts to outflank the Tories on the right did not work, and just ceded ground to a right-wing agenda where the Tories could always hit harder.
***
Ed Miliband and his “new generation” should draw some basic lessons. Firstly, that newspapers don’t decide elections. The Labour party need not cower in fear of Murdoch headlines. Secondly, that even if newspapers shape what people think about, the way to deal with that is not by attempting to manipulate headlines (which ultimately doesn’t work anyway).
It’s far better to engage with people at a grass-roots level, find out what the specifics of their concerns are (rather than those of Daily Express subeditors or lunatics hanging around in the Westminster village), and work out local solutions to those concerns. If Labour builds viable grass-root engagement and concrete problem-solving mechanisms, the content of the latest Mail editorial will become even more of an increasing irrelevance than it already is.
Tim Worstall said,
September 27, 2010 at 9:02 am
“Most political scientists believe that whilst newspapers are very good at telling voters what to think about, they do not exercise a decisive influence in telling people what, exactly, to think.”
The academic evidence I’ve seen (what little I have seen of it) is that newspapers actively chase the prejudices of their readers so as to reflect them. It is the readers who shape the papers through the trial and error of the editors floating trial balloons and the readers buying or not the product.
Somewhat bad news for liberals of all kinds given the prejudices of the Brits which the various tabloids seem to reflect.
Thrasymachus said,
September 27, 2010 at 11:26 am
“Now, you can complain that David actually “won” on first preference votes, and that the electoral college system rewarded Ed in a way that could not be replicated in a First Past the Post (or even AV) British general election. There may be some merit in that argument. But consider also this.”
I’m not well-read enough on representation theory and stuff to comment on the meat of the post, but this caught my eye:
I don’t think the whole ‘union plant’ story is going to work that well: Ed won a fair chunk of the votes from all sections of the party, even if the unions tipped him over the edge. My worry is this – it seems historically anachronistic for the labour party to give such influence to the unions. Lefty parties should be sympathetic to organized labour, but giving the unions such a say seems a bit antidemocratic.If labour wants to call a broad church, it can’t be seen to be the political wing of the unions (we complain about the power big party donors have in influencing policy – this surely applies here). I’m glad Ed won, but the structure of the election leaves a bit of a sour taste.
Ed said,
September 27, 2010 at 2:31 pm
In reference to the above comment Polly Tonybee said she spoke to an MP who had 12 votes in the contest because they belonged to so many groups. That is pretty fucked.
Ronald Collinson said,
September 27, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I know that Glenys and Neil Kinnock had, collectively, ‘twelve votes’; I don’t know enough about the Labour constitution to know whether that’s realistically possible for an individual.
I agree with what you say in general, but I think the Islington South result isn’t a very good example; in addition to the more-or-less uniform electoral benefit that accrued to Labour incumbents, Emily Thornberry was an extremely popular local MP, whose reputation had risen substantially in the wake of the expenses scandal – she was well-known to have been extremely frugal in her expenditure.
NB – there’s a very pro-Ed article on the Critical Reaction blog.
Shuggy said,
September 27, 2010 at 11:26 pm
I recall some polling evidence showing that Sun readers voting preferences were roughly representative of the electorate as a whole. There’s also the fact that there’s a considerable proportion of readers who are actually unaware of the political position of their chosen newspaper. One of the reasons for misunderstanding on this issue is that Guardian readers assume people read newspapers for the same reason they do. Scotland provides pretty clear evidence of the non-influence of the media. The Sun went through a short phase of supporting nationalism some time ago but basically the SNP have formed a government without any explicit support from any newspaper.
Ed and Ideas « Bad Conscience said,
September 28, 2010 at 7:31 am
[...] on this blog, several people expressed their distaste with Labour’s electoral college system; that some Labour members could have up to 12 votes [...]