What do Keir Starmer’s statement that he is “a socialist” and Conservative policy announcements including additional pension protection and reintroduction of National Service have in common? The answer is that in both cases, the intention seems more to reassure or shore up core support and motivate an activist base rather than appeal more broadly.
For Keir Starmer this seems to be about keeping the leftwing of the party on board even as Jeremy Corbyn and Dianne Abbot are removed from the party. Starmer doesn’t seem to have to worry too mush about appealing beyond his normal support, even though floating voters are less likely to be drawn to socialist ideology. However, he does need to be careful that he doesn’t take the electorate for granted.
With that in mind, being seen to take on the hard-left probably do little harm to his standing with the general public, especially if he is seen to face down opposition and if, as has been the case, he seems to enjoy a bit of political luck. In this case, it looks like just when the Abbot story was about to run and run that it has been knocked off the front pages by another Tory defection. The risk is that if the story rumbles on it will give the impression of a divided party and divided parties don’t tend to win elections. The other two risks are first that if we gives in to union pressure and allows Abbot to stand then he will be seen as weak. Meanwhile, if his opponents keep the spotlight on the discrepancy between his claim that Abbot’s investigation was ongoing and reports that it was completed several months back then this will damage his reputation for honesty and integrity.
The Conservatives have a different issue. They are more than 20% behind in the polls with the best polling putting them in the mid twenties (26-28%) which would be worse than Major’s Tories polled in 1997 and puts them in Labour 1983 territory, although this would lead to an even worse performance in terms of seats. Suggestions are that they are even struggling to stay ahead of Labour among older votes.
As I mentioned the other day, there may be the belief among some at CCHQ that a Corbyn, 2017 strategy is possible with support coalescing around the Conservatives in order to limit a Lavout landslide. However, where Corbyn’s retail pitch in 2017 was primarily at younger voters, Sunak’s aim seems to stem the haemorrhage amongst pensioners.
Again, despite the differences, there is something in common. Corbyn’s offer to wipe out student debt might have been popular along with his offer in 2019 of free wi-fi. However, it showed little effort to build a case. When it came to the crunch, Corbyn’s Labour declined the case to build an argument for socialism.
Similarly, the Conservatives have decided to hope that enough older voters will return to them from Reform’s embrace to stave of annihilation. However, I would argue that this is an extremely short term approach. A different approach would be to accept that defeat was going to be heavy but to begin the rebuilding now and do something that Conservative leaders have failed to do for a long time, begin to argue the case for their brand of centre-right Conservatism with younger voters.
This would mean a campaign where they consistently explained why it was important to get public finances and inflation under control, to argue for low taxes and to put forward long term solutions to the big challenges society faces. The problem though is that I suspect that they are a long way away from winning back the under 40s or even the under 50s, let alone the under 30s. They have got through every election since 1997 on the same short term approach.
There is a challenge here for churches. It is always possible to find a market to appeal to. Some churches will rely on loud contemporary music and amazing light shows to pull in younger people but it is equally a market approach to offer traditional hymns and 17th century English. Both are a failure to properly cultivate a harvest field, patiently sowing gospel seed and making disciples.
Faithroots 