If there was one thing that characterised the 2015 general election it was how wrong all forecasts were. It seems nothing has been learned. These two comments came from the Telegraph at the times indicated last night:
And here is the result:
So the messaging is still hopelessly wrong.
There are three questions to ask, since the messaging was not just wrong from the Telegraph, but across the media.
The first is was this deliberate?
The second is, alternatively have the media simply lost touch with political reality?
And third, could it be that there is in fact a new reality that is happening which is making it so hard for those with an old mind set to comprehend what is happening beyond Westminster?
I suspect the answer to all three is 'yes' and that this is going to make some major issues, like Brexit both very hard to call and deeply politically unwise for those who thought putting it to the vote a good idea.
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I do not think we can expect truthful reporting from a captured press, run by tax-avoiding billionaires, based abroad so that they pay little money into the society they extract money from. And certainly not from the torygraph or the daily torymail.
Its hardly surprising how out of touch these people are when they are relying on the wishful thinking and pseudo science behaviourism of Cameron’s Nudge Unit which treats people as objects to be nudged in the direction required by the whims of these modern day King Canute’s advisor’s
One piece of advice I would certainly give Labour’s campaign manager in the next General Election is to discount ENTIRELY Lord Ashcroft’s polling, which was, I am sure, deliberately fixed to make it look like we were heading for a hung parliament, and a probable Labour-led Coalition.If Labour had realised what was really happening (though their polling and data collection was truly dismal), they would have run a quite different campaign, hopefully one not containing the ludicrous “Ed-stone”, the only time I ever called into question Ed M’s fitness to be PM.
So I agree on your first point – deliberate, and on the other two as well, because it’s quite clear the “Westminster
bubble” encompasses not just MP’s and Lords, and the Party machines surrounding them, but also the whole “chatterati” class of commentators and pundits and the like, who are so engrossed in admiring the Emperor’s new clothes, they’re deaf to the little boy’s exclamation of the truth.
In another post I likened this to the Augean Stables, in need of a thorough clear out, the first step in which should be to change rge eligibility of MP’s, who should only be allowed to stand if they’ve marked up 10 years of REAL employment or self-employment, and for preferencecI’d like them ALL to have been on the dole for at least 6 months!
I would fail on the last count
But I understand your reasoning
OK, Richard, let’s change that to “have a close relative or friend who has REAL experience of being on Benefits”, who can vouch for the candidate’s understanding and empathy in these matters.
I hope I’m not guilty of special pleading here, as by the time I tried to become a Labour PPC in 1995, at the age of 50, I’d spent a total of 33 months on the dole, and was unemployed for the whole 4 years I was a Councillor on a London Borough, who h is why I had to step down – to find work – which I did, but it still took 5 months after standing down to do so.
The experience was truly searing, and informs the degree and quality of my contempt for the current Government’s demonization of those on Benefits which would never have had legs, and been capable of movement, if more MP’s had experienced that reality.
To make matters worse, I was often quadruply taxed as a Councillor – the Attendance Allowance paid for attending a Council Meeting or Committee Meeting (which I could NOT refuse, and so avoid the problems of payment given below, as in law a Councillor is deemed to have received such payments, even if he/she refuses to take it).
So, I’d have PAYE taken off the £21.00 Council attendance, or £16.00 for Committee attendance (which, like a juror, I was summoned to attend – but jury service is exempt from the strictures against Councillors).
Then I’d lose my JSA for the day on which I attended a Council Meeting = around £12.00. And if I attended more than two such meetings in the week, I’d lose my Income Support AND my NI credit for the week.
So, I’d be taxed at OVER 100%, and was effectively paying the state for doing my civic duty. This experience shaped all my future involvement with the Benefits system, making me extremely wary of claiming any benefit, though I did brave Pension Credit, and was very grateful for it, until Mr Osborne so whittled away the criteria, that I ended up with only 82p per week, which then ceased!
A tax issue I have never heard of before
I am shocked by this Andrew. It needs to be widely publicised – anonymously perhaps.
Hopefully this will throw further light on the shambles our press actually is-even the Grauniad indulged in the Corbyn-bashing-fest hyping up the shameful UKIP campaign that focused on exploiting division and fear. The result is good though I suspect McMahon belongs to the economically illiterate, austerity-lite brigade, hard-working and dedicated though he is, he will , no doubt, subscribe to the ;Government’s a Household’ myth.
I hope your penultimate paragraph is close to the truth, that Corbyn represents a change, a counter-cultural shift that the media bubble cannot deal with and will cause it to reveal itself as the corporately captured sham it is.
I grew up in Manchester, not far from Oldham, and Meacher’s presence as someone who held real social values was always an inspiration and a ray of light in the Thatcher darkness-I’m glad he has been remembered through this result. Meacher also understood that our financial system needed change -not many MP’s get that.
Andrew-another prerequisite for MP’s is that they should take a course in how the banking system works, according to a Positive Money survey, only about 10% of MP’s have any real knowledge of this area. It’s like being allowed to drive without reading the highway code.
Simon, I agree 100% on your last stipulation. I voted for Yvette Cooper in the leadership election, because I would like to see a Labour woman PM, but it was hard to do, given her antediluvian views on economics, which are straight out of the Chicago School textbook.
Andrew – you voted for someone purely on the basis of gender even though you completely disagreed with their views? Bizarre.
“The result is good though I suspect McMahon belongs to the economically illiterate, austerity-lite brigade, hard-working and dedicated though he is, he will , no doubt, subscribe to the ;Government’s a Household’ myth.”
That’s bit presumptuous. He’s a Labour politician, and they are of a type: a social-democrat of sorts, with all that goes with it. But he’s a bright lad, and has been top man on Oldham Council for 4 years I believe. He’s actually my local councillor, and lives about a hundred yards up The Street. He’s quite good when chatting on the doorstep. There – shameless name-dropping, and this early in the day, too.
Simon, my sons were born at Oldham and District general hospital, usually called Boundary Park. When did it receive such a name as the Royal Oldham. Should have been Annie Kenney Infirmary, A worthy local lass. Sorry Mr Murphy, could not resist.
Don’t Call Me Dave-not too presumption given he voted for Liz Kendall- when the Guardian describes someone as ‘pro-business’ (as if deficit spending/capital investment isn’t!) then that alone conveys something.
Whilst what you write and imply is undoubtedly true Richard. This is a solidly Labour seat. One in which the pattern of voting is so ingrained that the state of the candidate/party/leader will have little impact on the outcome. You cannot really use this a bellwether with which to judge Labour under Corbyn. Particularly given that to win an election he will have to succeed in constituencies with very different voting patterns and issues. Basically last night showed that Corbyn’s Labour will still appeal to Labour voters. We cannot extrapolate from this result to say that Corbyn’s Labour is appealing to swing voters in crucial marginal seats. As yet we simply do not know and are unlikely to know until the local elections of next year and if a by-election arises in a more marginal seat.
The only extrapolation I am making us a very broad one
From the Labour right wing and others, and most of the media, the message was Labour would collapse
It did the reverse
I do not think that means Labour will wiping in Esher
But it says a lot of messaging has been very wrong
I have to concede I’m more than a little bemused and confused at this point. Could I outline my current understanding of the point at issue here to check if I’ve got it right?:
– Our free press (sarcasm intended)/Corporate media spends copious column inches and headlines, cheered on no doubt in private by certain factions within the Labour Party and in public in parts of the social media, predicting that a by election in a Northern Constituency will result in a collapse of the Labour vote with a vastly reduced majority as a way of telling us plebs that such a result WILL represent a bellweather judgement of the performance of the current Labour leader.
– Said prediction of the result by these denizens of wisdom and journalistic probity, qulle suprise, turns out to be a pile of poo and the result is in fact an increased majority in percentage terms (but not in overall numbers due to the lower turn out compared to the GE). However, for some reason which escapes me (perhaps because I really am just a silly old bugger) this particular result in no way can be said to be, or represent in any way whatsoever, a bellweather judgement on the performance of the current Labour leader.
Its certainly an interesting and impressive feat of logic operating here. Perhaps its something to do with quantum? Is it a sort of Schrodinger’s cat thing where the wave form only collapses in one direction but never, ever the other?
By gum, these youngsters arn’t half clever.
The swing from Tory to Labour in Oldham was 8.4%.
The percentage of the Tory vote in Oldham has gone down from 23%, to 19%, to 9% in the last three elections.
You won’t see those figures bounded about much in the media!
Your post is very salient. It is not just in the UK that the opinion polls have been so misleading, and in the GE, they certainly impacted Labour’s campaign and the lack of interest in the Conservative policy proposals.
The media were able to obsess about the make-up of a putative coalition and ignore 12 bn cuts to the welfare budget. Furthermore, the micro-targetting of Conservative and D voters was barely reported. I remember only an academic study indicating that (curiously) the bulk of Conservative funds were targeting safe seats. As Andrew says, ignoring the Ashcroft polls should have been a first step. I imagine that the evident nervousness of Cameron that they might not gain control of a coalition was because the strategy had been radically different, relying on new methods of ‘advertising profiling’. In addition, they relied on bringing in their ‘youth team’ to work on the ground and compensate for their dwindling and ageing local Conservative associations (a decision which is now rebounding on them in scandal).
On a positive note, the constant smearing of Corbyn is perhaps triggering a bit of a backlash. I’ve heard two non-Labour supporters yesterday, saying that they are quite sickened by the media assault, and the Syria vote has certainly served to strengthen support for Jeremy Corbyn amongst the membership. The media and the Westminster bubble may have been ‘bowled over’ by Hilary Benn’s speech but that no longer seems to cut it in a time of social media.
Social media may also be why the MSM is willing to drop any suggestion of objectivity, of course
Syzygysue, you quite rightly say:
As Andrew says, ignoring the Ashcroft polls should have been a first step. I imagine that the evident nervousness of Cameron that they might not gain control of a coalition was because the strategy had been radically different, relying on new methods of ‘advertising profiling’. In addition, they relied on bringing in their ‘youth team’ to work on the ground and compensate for their dwindling and ageing local Conservative associations.
I have in an earlier post on this thread commented on how dismal Labour’s polling and data collection were in the General Election campaign. Now you have referred to the excellent (give them their due, damn it!) Tory campaign, set out in the reference below, which I cited in an extensive essay on the 2015 General Election, done for close political colleagues in the Christian Socialist Movement. Here’s what I said:
The “under the radar” Tory campaign
If you read no other web article than this, of all the articles that I am citing in this essay, this is the one to read. It’s long, but it’s VERY fruitful.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/06/the-computers-that-crashed-and-the-campaign-that-didnt-the-story-of-the-tory-stealth-operation-that-outwitted-labour.html
Please read that article, as it will reveal JUST how well the Tories campaigned, and how poorly Labour did in return – the Tories were Muhammad Ali “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, where Labour were blundering around like an unsuccessful “Raging bull” fighter, and duly getting thoroughly whupped.
PS: referring back to Bamboo in Paw’s comment
“Andrew — you voted for someone purely on the basis of gender even though you completely disagreed with their views? Bizarre.”
I did what many Tory voters in safe Labour seats, and certainly many Labour voters in Tory seats do, namely, scratch my head and decide on the least bad option. (And please don’t tell me you haven’t done the same!)
I’d promised our unsuccessful Labour candidate that this time I’d vote for someone who I thought “electable”, and not, as I did last time, for someone whose politics and personality I liked, namely Ed Milliband (who I still think was the best choice in 2010)
Truth to tell, NONE of the candidates really appealed, and I had real doubts about Jeremy’s electability, though I now feel that he is as electable as any of the other 3, 2 of whom represented warmed-up neo-liberal, “business as usual” politics, with the third, Liz Kendall, representing a decisive retreat from the battlefield – exit, stage right!
And I wanted to vote for Jeremy somewhere on the ballot, and couldn’t put him down as my sole choice at number 2!!, which is where I did place him, as such a choice would have invalidated my ballot.
So, as I’ve said before, “holding my nose”, I voted for Yvette Cooper, but cannot say I’m unhappy with the actual outcome, as, win or lose, Jeremy Corbyn has re-invigorated the debate, allowing ideas and options to be discussed that have long been held to be the intellectual equivalent of “personae non gratae” – ideas to be found in the regions of early maps described as “here be dragons”, where strange beasts and men roamed, beyond the pale of reasonable discourse.
And to the extreme surprise and shock of the chatterati, Jeremy Corbyn has revealed that reasonable people, and valid ideas, are to be found in these “terrae incognitae”, because they are actually well known lands, but unvisited for many years, and now approached from a different compass point, for which I am immensely grateful to him.
Thank you Andrew – that was a very helpful link. It was also pertinent to the current scandal involving Shapps and Feldman. The reference to ‘not bothering with any paperwork’seemed significant in that regard!
The LD MP was ousted in my constituency, and Labour lost by 750 odd votes in the nearest marginal. It was eery how there was little sign of a Tory campaign – no posters or canvasses. Self-evidently, the campaign was under the radar. Needless to say, these techniques are those of targetted advertisers and have little to do with democracy.
WE’re talking about the Bernays/Lippman legacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDoqiae0UpE
The Tory vote collapsed to 9%, which one would have thought should have received a little more attention than it has.
The ‘popular local candidate’ view seems to be prevalent in the media this morning too (almost hilariously in the Guardian) – but it ignores the plain fact that Meacher was just that himself.
Indeed
The PLP, the press, and the BBC have completely misunderstood the nature of Corbyn’s support. That is to be generous, because they are also deliberately trying to undermine his success, in a way that is very disturbing.
As a member of the LP for many years, and I can say quite categorically that I have never experienced such energy amongst ordinary members, and plain relief that we are still represented in the party, after Corbyn’s election. We are not a bunch of terrorist sympathisers, hardline trots, or loudmouthed trolls. I don’t know anybody like that in my neck of the woods, and completely condemn the kind of bullying that has been reported. I suspect some of that alleged bullying may very well be right wing trollery.
I didn’t leave the party when sorely tried and tested in 2002, 2003. But am very clear, that if Corbyn is ousted from the party leadership by foul means, I would not hesitate to leave the party this time. And I believe I would not be alone. I don’t want that to happen, but given the sheer blind hatred that seems to emanate from some in the PLP, I am not confident that they will behave honourably.
If there were to be mass resignation from the party after a coup against Corbyn, it would be the end of the Labour Party as we have ever known it, and it would not be Corbyn’s afault. Those who oppose him would do well to open their eyes and their minds to the party membership.But if Oldham doesn’t help convince them, then I’m not optimistic about the future.
Like you, Helen, I am dismayed by the antics of certain members of the PLP. They seem to be behaving like over indulged teenagers who suddenly find they cannot get their own way and are having an almighty strop.
I also have my suspicions that some of the unpleasant trolling is coming from people who have nothing to do with Labour organisations, and are certainly not friends of Corbyn, quite the opposite in fact.When the wolf dressed up in grandma’s clothes he was still a wolf.
If Corbyn is ousted by the shenanigans of this group within the PLP aided by the corporate media, I will also leave the Labour Party (long term member and foot soldier), and so will both of my sons, who joined because Corbyn was elected leader and they thought he brought a glimmer of hope to the UK.
Open minds and ambition make poor bedfellows.
Just look at Hilary Benn.
Obviously his ambition has grown too large to fit in his head.
What would his dad have thought?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkU-iNy93gk
Ahh..and who is that in the background?
‘If there were to be mass resignation from the party after a coup against Corbyn, it would be the end of the Labour Party as we have ever known it, and it would not be Corbyn’s fault.’
The trouble is that for some ‘Better dead than red’ holds true. Tony Blair and David Cameron for two. There is only leverage on the ‘wreckers’ if they have a committment to saving the LP. However, I’m with you – this is make or break time, and IMO the LP had no future under any of the other candidates (or Hilary Benn). It would have gone the way of Pasok.
Hi richard
The first is was this deliberate?
Yes that is why i was concerned for you in the past and your offer from the selfservatives
Rod
I do not follow your argument
I’m reluctantly forced to accept Labour can’t win.
Over the weekend, as the “good news” of Oldham was added to the increasing understanding that Cameron has lied, no I mean seriously LIED about the supposed 70k moderates in Syria, Tristram Hunt instead chose to take the media to his outrage that Corbyn remains head of “Stop the War”.
No-one in their right mind would describe Hunt as any kind of intellectual, but he is, like so many Blairites, wise in the ways of the media if nothing else.
By deliberately turning what might’ve been a very bad week for the tories into another bout of internecine feuding Tristram made clear that, for him & many MPs, its bettter Labour lose than win with Corbyn.
It does feel that way