[JNV] Election Analysis: Blair's Bloody Nose by Milan Rai

[Milan Rai]

Dear friends

I hope you find this useful. A formatted version with tables is on our  
website <www.j-n-v.org>.

Best wishes

Milan Rai


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Blair's Bloody Nose

Britain’s General Election And The Power Of The Anti-War Vote

Milan Rai



INTRODUCTION

One week after the British General Election, the dust is settling, and it  
is clear that the war on Iraq was a major factor in the Labour Party’s  
humbling loss of seats and votes.



BYERS AND THE WAY OUT

The significance of the war was underlined by an intervention by Stephen  
Byers, a former Cabinet Minister still seen as deeply loyal to Tony Blair.



In The Times on 11 May, Byers supported Blair’s stand on the war, but  
wrote,



‘The issue that hung over the election campaign was that of Iraq - not  
just the conflict itself but also the legality of the action taken and the  
manner in which inaccurate intelligence was presented to the public. Both  
these issues then fed into the question of trust.’



His solution? A ‘review of the operation of the royal prerogative’.



At the moment, war is waged in the name of the Queen, and the view of  
Parliament (or the British people) is irrelevant to her constitutional  
‘right’ to order Britain’s armed forces into action.



Byers suggests that Parliament should be given the Attorney General’s  
legal advice on pending conflicts, should be given access to secret  
intelligence (via the Intelligence and Security Committee) and should have  
the final say on whether to authorise military action. Power and  
information would move from the ruler (in fact the Prime Minister), to  
Parliament.



Such reforms ‘would be welcomed by many and demonstrate that the Prime  
Minister has really been listening and learning’, Byers suggested.



Anyone who recalls the long and bitter struggle to secure a Parliamentary  
debate and vote on the war on Iraq, and the even longer struggle to gain  
access to the Attorney General’s secret legal advice, will realize how  
powerful the Iraq issue must be in order to prompt such unpalatable advice  
 from a supporter of the Prime Minister.



There are parallels here between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam, as it was  
in November 1973 that the United States Congress passed the War Powers Act  
requiring congressional authorisation for US military action.



Such a reform, while welcome, does nothing to diminish the scale of the  
crime committed in March 2003, or the disastrous effects of the ongoing  
occupation of Iraq. The anti-war movement will not be bought off with  
constitutional changes, however sensible. The occupation, and the threat  
of future wars, are our central concerns.



THE ELECTION AND THE MOVEMENT

For all its diversity, the British anti-war movement had one major common  
goal in this election. The worst-case scenario for us would have been yet  
another Labour landslide returning a parliamentary majority for Tony Blair  
of over 100 seats in the House of Commons.



This would have been seen as a vindication of his leadership in general,  
and of his decision to invade Iraq in particular. It would have made  
another Bush war more likely.



Instead, the Prime Minister has been dealt what is widely being described  
as a ‘bloody nose’ by the electorate, which has left him severely weakened.



Polly Toynbee, the Guardian columnist who urged anti-war voters to support  
Labour (with pegs on their noses), observed, ‘Those who wanted to give  
Tony Blair a bloody nose over Iraq may feel satisfaction at getting the  
much reduced Labour majority they thought he deserved.’



The Independent remarked as the election results came in: ‘The early  
results showed that many people who voted Labour in 1997 and 2001 had  
deserted the party to give Mr Blair a <bloody nose> over the Iraq war,  
which became the dominant issue in the second half of the election  
campaign.’



For example, ‘Labour suffered a spectacular defeat in Hornsey and Wood  
Green, north London, where the war was a big issue, at the hands of the  
Liberal Democrats, who achieved a huge 14.6 per cent swing.’



‘In a clear sign of an "Iraq effect", Labour performed much worse in the  
capital than other regions. It lost Enfield Southgate, Putney,  
Hammersmith, Ilford North and Wimbledon to the Conservatives.’ (Andrew  
Grice, 6 May)



Robert Shrimsley, a perceptive columnist with the Financial Times, came to  
much the same conclusion: ‘So the British public finally got its say on  
the Iraq war. Tony Blair has been badly bloodied but he is nonetheless  
back in power. He will certainly pause before rushing into George W.  
Bush’s next little project.’ (7 May, p. 19)



The Government suffered a significant political cost linked to the war.  
This has helped to constrain Tony Blair in the immediate future, and to  
deter future governments from launching such wars.



PART I

SEATS, VOTES AND LEGITIMACY



LOSING MY MAJORITY

Tony Blair’s first Governments had massive Parliamentary majorities (see  
table). In 1997 it had 176 more seats than all the other parties put  
together (note - one seat is held by the neutral Speaker of the House). In  
2005, this has been more than halved to a more normal 65 seats.

<Table>


(Note: there were boundary changes eliminating 13 seats between 2001 and  
2005.)



This means the Government is vulnerable to the 50 or so Labour rebels who  
have been re-elected. It would only take 33 of them voting with the  
Opposition to defeat a Government bill.



290 Opposition MPs + 33 Labour rebels = 323 votes against the bill.

355 Labour MPs – 33 Labour rebels = 322 votes in favour.



Tony Blair is going to have to be more of a ‘consensual’ Prime Minister  
than he has been, negotiating with his own party and with the opposition  
parties in order to get legislation passed.



Apparently, ‘Labour strategists had hoped to be able to keep the party's  
majority above 80 - and avoid headlines saying it had been halved.’  
(Telegraph, 6 May)



‘Mr Blair’s allies have been admitting privately for several weeks that he  
would almost certainly have to resign if the Labour majority fell below  
60. In the view of many Blairites, 60 to 70 was a grey area which would  
leave the party leader severely weakened. (Telegraph 6 May)



The Prime Minister is now in ‘the grey area’ – largely because of the  
invasion and occupation of Iraq.



 FROM VOTES TO SEATS

It is a peculiarity of the British ‘first past the post’ system of  
elections that the Labour Party received only 3 per cent more of the vote  
than the runner-up in the election, the Conservatives (35.2 to 32.3 per  
cent), but received nearly twice as many seats as them (355 to 197).



The Liberal Democrats, generally perceived as an ‘anti-war’ party, gained  
22.1 per cent of the votes across the UK, but received only 62 seats in  
the House of Commons. This was an increase in the number of Lib Dem seats  
in Parliament from 52 to 62 (due to boundary changes in Scotland, this  
increase actually required a net gain of 11 new seats).


<Table>


Seats per share of vote



Labour: 35.2 per cent of the vote: 356 seats (10 seats for every 1% of the  
vote)

Conservative: 32.3 per cent : 197 seats (6 seats per percentage point)

Liberal Democrat: 22 per cent : 62 seats (3 seats per percentage point)



How Many Votes Each Party Needed To Get An MP



Labour: 26,900 votes on average per Labour MP.

Conservatives: 44,500 votes on average per Tory MP.

Liberal Democrats: 96,500 votes on average per Lib Dem MP.



The Ratio Of Share Of Power To Share Of Votes



Labour: 55 % of the seats for 36% of the vote 1.5 : 1

Conservatives: 30% of the seats for 33% of the vote 0.9 : 1

Liberal Democrats: 10% of the seats for 22% of the vote 0.5 : 1)



THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE: A HUNG PARLIAMENT

If we had a fairer voting system, then (on the votes cast) Labour would  
not have had a majority at all. They would have had 227 seats out of 646,  
the Conservatives would have got around 209 seats, and the Liberal  
Democrats would have got around 142 seats.



(Admittedly, if the voting system was fairer, people would have cast their  
votes differently.)



The Labour Party gained a smaller number of votes in 2005 (9.5 million)  
than it got in any other post-war election except 1983 (8.5m). (In 1983,  
it was hit by the Falklands Effect, the SDP defection and the  
self-deregistration of large numbers of voters because of the poll tax.)  
Labour had more votes when it was trounced by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.



Labour had a higher *share* of the vote when it was beaten by Margaret  
Thatcher in 1979 (36.9 per cent), by Edward Heath in 1970 (43 per cent),  
by Anthony Eden in 1955 (46.4 per cent), or by Churchill in 1951 (48.8 per  
cent), than it did in winning the 2005 election (35.2 per cent).



Labour’s share of the vote (36 per cent) was the smallest share of the  
vote of any winning party in any British General Election. One  
interpretation would be that it was the least legitimate winner of any  
British election.



So when Labour officials, and the Prime Minister, say that ‘the country  
wanted Labour returned to Government with a smaller majority’, that is not  
what the figures say. When he says he will pursue an ‘unremittingly’ New  
Labour agenda, that is not what the figures say the electorate asked for.



Labour had more of a mandate for its manifesto when it was defeated in  
1979 and in 1992.



The expressed view of the country, if transmitted through a fair election  
system, would have resulted in a hung parliament with the Liberal  
Democrats having a decisive if not determining influence on policy.



PART II

THE IRAQ FACTOR



WAS IT THE WAR WOT LOST SEATS?

There are two main questions for the anti-war movement: how did the war in  
Iraq affect the election, and how does the political establishment  
perceive the effect of the war?



On both scores, we’ve heard from the horse’s mouth. Tony Blair himself  
acknowledged immediately after being re-elected that ‘Iraq has been a  
deeply divisive issue in this country.’ ‘That has been very, very clear,’  
he said.



BOTTOM OF THE PRIORITIES?

However, during the election campaign, commentators (and Labour  
politicians) asserted constantly that the war on Iraq was a fringe issue  
with little significance for the election.



One of the main reasons for this was the opinion poll evidence. Pollsters  
asked potential voters what the most important issues were in their voting  
decision.Iraq invariably ranked near the bottom of the expressed  
priorities, with only 3 per cent of respondents saying it was the most  
important issue for them.



For example, the Telegraph, on 24 April, found Iraq last in a list of nine  
possible concerns ranging from ‘health services’ (20 per cent) to law and  
order (13) to education (13) to asylum and immigration (9) to Europe (4).  
Only 3 per cent of people asked said Iraq was the most important issue in  
their decision on how to vote.



These kinds of results were endlessly trumpeted.



On the other hand, there were other polls which did not receive the same  
attention. A Times/ITV News poll carried out at the same time found that  
of voters certain to vote, half of the women asked, and 37 per cent of men  
said that the war in Iraq would be ‘a significant factor’.



61 per cent of women and 49 per cent of men said the war was ‘a mistake  
even if it has produced some benefits for the Iraqi people’.



(The only other option was to say that it had ‘done more good than harm  
even though it involved some serious sacrifices’ - 31 per cent of women  
agreed, and 48 per cent of men).



The poll found that more than half of Liberal Democrat voters (54 per  
cent) said that Iraq would be significant in deciding their votes,  
compared to 35 per cent of Labour supporters. 61 per cent of Lib Dems  
believed the war was a mistake (the only option), compared with 52 per  
cent of Labour voters.



DON’T MENTION THE WAR

The issue of the war was ‘everywhere and nowhere’, as one columnist  
observed.



A Times editorial at the half-way mark in the campaign noted that, ‘This  
has been described as the <don’t mention the war> election’. ‘Tell that to  
candidates, especially Labour ones in about 50 parliamentary  
constituencies (university towns or places with large Muslim  
communities)’: ‘Iraq is the subject of debate in these seats, with those  
who opposed military action making the noise.’ (23 April, p. 23)



A cartoon by Banx showed a voter deterring a Labour canvasser with the  
words, ‘Go away or I’ll mention Iraq’.



WAR AND DISTRUST

One of the last polls conducted by the BBC before the election found that  
hostility to the war was a truly significant issue. (This was after the  
final barrage of damaging leaks, and the publication of the Attorney  
General’s legal advice to the Government had driven Iraq to the front  
pages.)



‘The poll found 23% of people surveyed cited opposition to the war as a  
reason for being reluctant to vote Labour, while 21% said they did not  
trust Mr Blair.’ (21% cited insufficient control of immigration as their  
reason for being reluctant to vote Labour.)



‘The war’ was not necessarily a distinct issue from ‘trust’: ‘A government  
minister said the Iraq war and the issue of trust in Mr Blair had tended  
to blur into one another.’ (Guardian, 6 May)



On this reading, somewhere in the region of 40 per cent of voters were  
reluctant to vote Labour because of the war, and because of the stream of  
lies told by the Prime Minister to justify the war.



Even Robin Cook, the only senior Government minister who resigned over the  
war before it took place, had problems with the Iraq effect.



He memorably remarked after being re-elected, ‘Even in Livingston [his  
constituency] I have had a number of people saying to me that they can't  
vote for me because they were against the war in Iraq. Heaven knows what  
more I could have done to convince them that I also was opposed to the  
war.’



However, ‘as the results poured in, Labour MPs claimed Labour high command  
was trying to protect Mr Blair from the reverses by blaming immigration  
rather than Iraq.’ (Guardian, 6 May)



THE IRAQ ELECTION

‘Tony Blair tried to persuade himself that the Iraq war was a chattering  
class obsession, but it was everywhere, even among those who usually pay  
scant attention to foreign policy.’



Polly Toynbee observes that, ‘It became the symbol and the icon for any  
disappointment or grievance with the government over the last eight years.  
It all came down on Tony Blair's head.’



‘At door after door, the voters said: <No, not Tony Blair>. Those who  
never followed the minute details of <who said what when> came to believe  
the war was wrong, the country was cheated and had been wrongly dragged  
against its will to fight George Bush's war on a false prospectus.’



Her conclusion: ‘This was a khaki election.’



This is also the conclusion of her editors: ‘Iraq was not the only reason  
why these voters deserted Labour - immigration, tuition fees and a host of  
other dissatisfactions also played strong parts in one of the most  
heterogeneous elections in memory - but there is little doubt that  
historians will look back on the 2005 election as the Iraq election.’  
(Guardian, 6 May)



The Independent, which took a consistent anti-war line throughout the  
conflict, believes that voters ‘punished the Prime Minister for Iraq’ -  
‘The message was clear: no Prime Minister can treat Parliament and the  
public with such contempt over an issue as serious as waging war.’ (7 May)



In a pro-war newspaper, in The Times, columnist Gerard Baker conceded that  
it was clear ‘what the voters were voting against – the Prime Minister’s  
character, *the war*, Michael Howard’s leadership and, perhaps, through  
another large abstention, the whole slippery political class that runs the  
country.’ (7 May, p. 45, emphasis added)



The FT editorial was more cautious, suggesting that, ‘The Labour vote  
plummeted in seats with high concentrations of students opposed to student  
tuition fees and Muslim voters angry over Tony Blair’s support for the  
US-led invasion of Iraq.’ (7 May, p. 18)



This editorial may have been based on the analysis of Pippa Norris, a  
Harvard academic, who observed in the FT that the most common reason for  
the anti-Labour swing was disillusionment with Labour’s performance in  
office:



‘It remains to be seen whether the source of dissatisfaction represented a  
specific backlash over the Iraqi war, or a more diffuse sense of ennui  
after eight years of Labour government, or even a deeper disenchantment  
with Blair’s leadership and record.’ (FT, 7 May, p. 8)



Lynne Jones, an anti-war Labour MP, remarked after the election, ‘Iraq has  
come to symbolise the disaffection felt by a large section of our core  
vote, usually middle-class people with a social conscience… people  
misjudge the situation if they think Iraq is the only issue that  
disappoints people.’ She mentions anti-terror legislation as another  
source of disappointment. (Guardian, 7 May)



It seems to be accepted widely that the invasion of Iraq was a significant  
factor in Labour’s loss of votes and seats. There is doubt as to whether  
it was the single most decisive factor on the night.



On ‘the left’, there are wider issues that affected people’s reluctance to  
vote Labour, and on ‘the right’ there were fears over immigration and a  
harsh, racist, right-wing agenda was used to attract voters away from Tony  
Blair’s somewhat less harsh, somewhat less racist, right-wing agenda.



Nevertheless, the BBC poll cited above demonstrates that a quarter of  
those asked why they were reluctant to vote Labour mentioned the invasion  
of Iraq, and a further 21 per cent mentioned the issue of ‘trust’, which  
centres on the war.



The war seems to have acted as a lightning rod for wider disaffection, and  
may have tipped many discontented Labour and Lib Dem voters into refusing  
to vote for Labour, thereby contributing to the humbling of Tony Blair.



PART III

WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE MOVEMENT



TWO CRITERIA

Before the election, I suggested that there were two main criteria by  
which the Establishment might judge the effect of the war.



One indicator would be the number of seats Labour lost in the election.



Another would be the share of votes going to ‘anti-war’ parties.



I put ‘anti-war’ in quotation marks because what matters, from the  
Establishment point of view, is how the parties are perceived. By this  
criterion, the Liberal Democrats are an ‘anti-war’ party, despite their  
inconsistency on the issue of Iraq.



On the first measure, Labour lost 47 seats, a substantial reduction,  
though far from a fatal blow to either the party or its leader. On this  
measure, Labour was punished, though not severely, by the electorate – but  
perhaps not merely over Iraq.



THE ANTI-WAR VOTE

What about the second measure, the proportion of votes going to anti-war  
parties? In what follows, we will leave out the Northern Ireland  
elections, which have an entirely separate identity and dynamic, to  
concentrate on the results in Wales, Scotland and England.



Comparing the votes won by the ‘anti-war’ parties in 2005 with their  
equivalents in the 2001 elections, we find that the number of votes won by  
these parties increased by about 1.2 million, and their share of the votes  
increased (in Scotland, Wales and England) from about 23 per cent to over  
26 per cent of the vote.



So, the number of votes won in the 2001 election by the Liberal Democrats,  
the Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, and parties such as  
the Socialist Alliance seems to have been around 5,800,000.



This constellation of parties (plus the independent anti-war candidates)  
won around 7 million votes in 2005, an increase of 20 per cent, or roughly  
1.2m more votes.



(2005 figures generally from the BBC. For anti-war candidates’ figures, I  
am relying on the Socialist Unity election tracker. All 2001 figures from  
the House of Commons Library.)



As a proportion of the total 2005 vote in Wales, Scotland and England, the  
increase in votes is about 4.4 per cent of the turnout. (Turnout,  
predicted to be lower, was actually higher in 2005, by about 800,000  
votes.)



The ‘anti-war’ share of the vote in Scotland, Wales and England, including  
the Liberal Democrats, was 26.6 per cent of the vote, up from 22.9 per  
cent in 2001.



So the ‘anti-war’ vote increased significantly, by about 3.7 per cent, as  
the Labour share of the vote decreased.



CHANNELLING THROUGH THE LIB DEMS

The increase in the anti-war vote was not uniform. In Scotland and Wales,  
there seems to have been a swing from the nationalist parties to the  
Liberal Democrats and, on a lesser scale, to the Greens.



One way of looking at this is to say that the Lib Dems increased their  
vote by 1.16m more votes, which is almost exactly the increase in the  
anti-war vote. The net gain in votes achieved by the other ‘anti-war’  
parties is virtually zero, despite significant gains by the Greens and by  
Respect.



The Greens almost doubled their votes in Britain as a whole, from 166,500  
to 283,000 (if we include the Scottish Greens). Respect made an impressive  
showing in a small number of constituencies, and managed the astonishing  
feat of taking Bethnal Green, accumulating 68,000 votes in total  
nationwide.



But the strongly anti-war Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties shrank  
drastically, losing 73,000 votes! (This was mostly the SNP, but the party  
still managed to gain two more seats even with a reduced number of votes.)



Looking at the Scottish scene, the Liberal Democrat vote in Scotland  
increased by 150,000, and the Scottish Greens got five times as many votes  
(25,800) as the Greens did in Scotland in 2001 (4,500). But the other  
Scottish anti-war parties lost votes.



In a parallel phenomenon in Wales, the Lib Dems there increased their vote  
by 67,000, while Plaid Cymru lost 21,000 votes.



This table shows the share of the vote in this election, and the gain or  
loss since 2001, ordered by percentage change:



Share of vote in 2005 and gain or loss since 2001, ranked by percentage  
change


Lib Dem 22.40 3.80
Green 1.00 0.40
Respect 0.30 0.30
Scottish Green 0.10 0.10
Plaid Cymru 0.70 -0.10
Scottish Socialist 0.20 -0.10
SNP 1.50 -0.30


Pippa Norris, a politics lecturer at Harvard University, has suggested  
that the ‘underlying pattern’ of the election was that, ‘voters switched  
to whichever party was best placed to give Labour a bloody nose in their  
local constituency.’ (FT, 7 May, p. 8) This seems to have benefited the  
Liberal Democrats.



Overall, the share of votes going to anti-war parties and candidates  
increased significantly but not dramatically.



Given the unfair nature of the electoral system, the scale of the anti-war  
vote was not reflected in Parliament.



PART IV

CONCLUSION



THE DANGER OF PERSONALIZATION

Earlier, we noted that Mr Blair's allies were admitting privately before  
the election that he would almost certainly have to resign if the Labour  
majority fell below 60, and that, in the view of many Blairites, ‘60 to 70  
was a grey area which would leave the party leader severely weakened’. The  
same sources suggested that there had been a change in the Prime  
Minister's mood during a difficult campaign: ‘I think he'll go in about 18  
months,’ said one loyal minister earlier in the week. ‘Whatever the  
outcome of the election, he's been badly damaged by the campaign.’



Another Labour strategist admitted that Mr Blair's morale had been badly  
affected by the criticisms he had received from voters on the stump,  
saying, ‘Tony has been shocked by the level of hostility to him personally  
in the run-up to polling day. No one can know what effect that will have.’



Polly Toynbee, who regrets the drop in Labour support in the election,  
concludes that, in the end, ‘the answer lies on the terrible road to  
Baghdad and the hubris of a man who thought he could persuade anyone of  
anything.’

‘At door after door, the voters said: <No, not Tony Blair>.’



There is a danger here for the anti-war movement. It is possible that the  
war on Iraq war will be totally identified - by the mass media, by the  
political establishment and by the general public -with a single person,  
and that when that scapegoat leaves the stage, the Government and the  
state will be absolved from blame.



This is something we must avoid. The invasion and occupation of Iraq flow  
out of and are entirely consistent with British foreign policy over  
decades, and centuries. The so-called ‘war on terror’ flows out of and is  
entirely consistent with the nature of the British state, and those  
institutions which hold power in this country.



It is vitally important for the anti-war movement to explain these facts  
in a persuasive and compelling fashion.





THE FUTURE The anti-war movement increased the vote and the share of the  
vote going to parties seen as ‘anti-war’. The anti-war movement helped to  
prevent another Labour landslide, and helped to sharply reduce the Labour  
majority. The political establishment seems to accept that ‘Iraq’ was a  
major factor in Labour’s loss of votes and seats.



If the electoral system had been fair, the (weakly) ‘anti-war’ Liberal  
Democrats would have had a commanding position within the House of  
Commons, able to block future wars of aggression.



Questions remain, not the least of which is that posed by Gabriel Carlyle  
of Voices in the Wilderness UK: in what tense does the electorate see the  
‘Iraq’ issue? Is it an event that occurred in the past (in March 2003), or  
is it an ongoing war of occupation? Much hangs on this judgement. If this  
was ‘the Iraq election’, was it simply a one-off punishment of an  
unpopular Prime Minister, or was it a marker that from now on the British  
people have determined to resist wars of aggression on a scale never  
before seen?



The question is not an academic one, and the answer lies very much in the  
hands of the anti-war movement.

-- 
Milan Rai
Justice Not Vengeance
landline 0845 458 9571 (UK) +44 1424 428 792 (int)
mobile phone (0)7980 748 555
www.j-n-v.org