Barely a day goes by without another shattering poll for the Conservative Party – they’re now part of the drumbeat of
British politics: 20 to 25 point deficits with
Labour are entirely normalised. It’s too easy to become inured to the scale of political volatility we’ve seen in a single Parliament. Only four years ago, the Tories were besting Labour by the same margin; the
Brexit realignment continued to canter as Hartlepool fell to
Boris Johnson in a by-election . The speed of such a reversal is near-unprecedented and speaks to a new age of extreme electoral political volatility. This sense of transformation is heightened by the development of so-called “MRP” polling. Without getting too technical, MRP (Multi-level regression and post-stratification) is a sophisticated form of modelling which allows you to use national polling data and translate to small geographic areas – i.e. individual constituency contests. Over the past few
election cycles, they have proven quite accurate. It was an MRP poll which first predicted, to much derision at the time, that
Theresa May would lose her majority. It is these sorts of polls that are now regularly, almost daily, setting
Social Media alight and front pages ablaze with predictions of near-complete Conservative wipe out, or Labour majorities running at above 200. There is perhaps no greater collection of Eyeores anywhere in the Western world than the assembled ranks of the Labour Party; no group of people is more confidently able to see triumph and disaster and treat them just the same . I am reluctant therefore to add to this paean of permanent pessimism but if I were a Labour strategist, I would be worried about all of this. Such precise polling projections are a newish innovation and in terms of their effect on politics do more harm for the party than good. The soft edge of the blade first: projections of winning 400+ seats can hardly be a bad thing. They destabilise the Tories, dispirit their MPs, they inculcate panic on the Government benches, they make the probability of a challenge against Rishi Sunak all the greater, adding to the sense of chaos on which much of the Labour rise has been fuelled. But this isn’t cost free. Principally, MRPs undermine one of the biggest but under-appreciated components of the Keir Starmer hegemony: the bet that Starmer made at the start of his leadership which has held ever since – that the left has nowhere else to go. The seeds for a politics of dissent on the left in a future Starmer government are already being sown. There is unhappiness among key components of the Labour coalition, especially with young and Muslim voters over the party’s policy towards
Gaza and retreat from left-wing policies. Right now this isn’t a problem, both because Labour’s lead with voters overall is so large and because enough of these voters are probably willing to hold their nose simply to get the Tories out. But if the sense in the media, buttressed by these polls, sustains for long enough that a Labour victory is guaranteed, then some of these voters may feel it’s already safe to register their discontent and vote Green, SNP or whatever it happens to be. Left-wing journalist Owen Jones left Labour last month and is working with a campaign group to make precisely this argument and weaken Starmer from the get-go. Read Next The Tory big beasts set to lose seats as new poll predicts election wipeout Why does this matter? Because people forget the sheer scale of the task which confronts Starmer. Labour needs a bigger swing than at any election since 1945 just to win a majority of one. It must reverse the 2019 losses to Johnson and win seats which even eluded Tony Blair in 1997. It must wipe the floor in
England because its prospects in
Scotland remain uncertain. And there are other problems too. Party management becomes harder; as a result of MRPs more no-hope Labour candidates believe their seats are winnable and become less willing to campaign with their local members to target other seats. And when the polls tighten, which they almost certainly will, that data will be fed into these models, give Sunak a lift and when the majority is smaller than predicted, it’ll all seem a bit flat. And even for the fatalistic Labour Party, it is hard not to infuse its troops and its MPs with the one word Starmer’s strategists are most afraid – complacency. That complacency can take many forms and perhaps the most damaging one isn’t among the troops on the doorstep – it’s at the very top of the party. Some Shadow Cabinet ministers whisper darkly that the effect of such large leads has a deadening effect on policy formation. Many worry abut the sheer scale of the task ahead, and that the party, despite so many years in opposition, hasn’t done the thinking it needs to match the task. But with a prediction of a 200 majority, why rock the boat? There is no impetus to think radically or profoundly. That might work for the election. But it won’t when a Labour government, buffeted by events and a toxic inheritance, runs against the rocks. There is a strange sense in British politics right now – almost as if Labour has already won, the election has happened already. Consequently people in my trade become obsessed with the models and data, about who might win where, before a single ballot has been cast. We’ve seen the cost of that in
elections past. In 2015 we barely discussed the Conservative promise to hold a
referendum on EU membership because the polls told us a hung parliament was inevitable. As polling becomes more sophisticated, the pressure to subordinate the actual contestation of issues to endless analysis about the horse race becomes ever greater. This has implications for Labour but more importantly, for the rest of us as well. Lewis Goodall is journalist, broadcaster and host of the podcast The News Agents