In 2015, as the United Kingdom decided whether their prime minister would be David Cameron or Ed Miliband, no one could have imagined what the next two years would bring to British politics. The rise of Jeremy Corbyn, the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, the fall of David Cameron, the rise of Theresa May, Labour’s endless identity crisis, and the collapse of UKIP have all made for a fascinating but highly unstable political reality.
The next step in Britain’s political drama is another general election on June 8, as Tory Prime Minister Theresa May looks to expand her slim majority and receive a personal mandate to continue as leader after just a year in the job. The election announcement was May’s high water mark as prime minister, as polls showed the Tories leading Labour by as many as 25 points at the time (they won by 6.6 points in 2015). The six weeks since have seen Labour rocket up from their previously rock-bottom poll numbers to surpass their 2015 result while the Conservatives flat-lined and then even started dropping.
We discussed previously why May called an election three years before one was due and why the Tories started off with such a massive lead, so let’s now look at the reasons the Tory lead has gone from 20-to-25 points to just 5-to-10 points over the course of the campaign.
A Reversion to Partisan Baselines
Polarization in the United Kingdom isn’t at the level it’s at in the United States, but it’s far stronger than in a place like Germany, where the two main parties will sometimes team up in governing coalitions. In 1983, Labour was reeling from a party split and its manifesto was nicknamed “the longest suicide note in history.” The party still received 28 percent of the vote and over 200 seats. It was always unlikely that Labour would go below that number, despite polls showing them in the mid-20s when the election was called
Millions of people have voted Labour for a very long time. There are Labour politicians across the country who are very popular in their constituencies. It’s easy for a Labour voter unhappy with Corbyn to tell a pollster that he’s not going to vote Labour, but when it comes to election day, is he really going to vote against his local MP because he doesn’t like Corbyn? Or look at The New Statesman, the leading center-left news magazine in the country, which strongly endorsed a Labour vote despite never having supported Corbyn as leader.
Popular Labour Policies—And a Disastrous Tory U-Turn
Jeremy Corbyn has been significantly to the left of recent Labour election manifestos (probably since 1983), so it was an open question how those two strands would be unified in 2017. As it turned out, pretty well! The 2017 Labour manifesto succeeded by keeping the parts of Corbyn’s left-wing philosophy that are popular and ditching the parts that aren’t.
A good example of this is the nationalization of the U.K.’s rail, water, energy, and mail companies. While long seen as controversial and too far left, it’s actually quite popular among the public. The same is true for raising taxes on the wealthy. On the other hand, the manifesto commits to renewing the Trident nuclear submarine system and retaining the NATO 2 percent defense-spending target, both policies that Corbyn has long opposed. Corbyn’s biggest legacy may be proving that left-wing economic policies are no longer unacceptable in British politics.
The Tory manifesto roll-out was ... less successful. The risk with manifesto roll-outs that contain a long list of policies is that one unexpectedly bad policy can take over the whole news cycle. That’s exactly what happened to the Tories, with a plan to change the way home-care visits are paid for turning into “Dementia Tax” headlines across the country. You can read about this disaster in depth here and here, but suffice it to say, a party reliant on older voters should not scare them into thinking they might have to choose between their home or their nurse. Right after this, the Tories stopped holding steady in the polls and started heading down.
Corbyn Impresses, May Disappoints On The Campaign Trail
Corbyn’s supporters will tell you that he’s not at his best at prime minister’s questions. He’s had to learn how to lead a major political party on the fly the past two years. He’s held any number of political positions that are not popular with the general public. But Corbyn has been campaigning for himself and for the causes he believes in for many years and he’s pretty good at that part of the job.
Particularly compared to Theresa May, Corbyn comes off as relatable and confident in his own beliefs. Corbyn has consistently gotten surprisingly positive reviews after major TV appearances during the campaign. May, who has been front and center for the Tories, has had a dreadful campaign, refusing to debate Corbyn, insisting that the U-turn on the Dementia Tax wasn’t a U-turn, reminding everyone she supports fox hunting, and generally being unable to make a case for herself outside of Brexit. People understand what Corbyn and Labour want to do for the country and that’s proven more important than Corbyn’s various controversies from past decades.
UKIP Collapses and the Liberal Democrats Wander in the Wilderness
An unpopular Labour or Conservative party has historically benefited the centrist Liberal Democrats, or in most recent years the right-wing populist U.K. Independence Party (UKIP). The worst-case scenarios for Labour involved shedding voters in all directions to the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, and UKIP. Instead, the opposite has happened as Labour has benefited from the other parties’ problems.
UKIP’s entire stated reason for existence was Brexit, which both major parties now support implementing. So after slightly trending down since the referendum last year, May’s election announcement caused UKIP voters to actually consider if they need to stick with the party anymore. The answer has been a resounding “no.” A sharp drop right after the announcement has been followed by further erosion pushing UKIP to around 5 percent. That’s down from the 13 percent they received in 2015.
While the initial drop benefited the Tories, the erosion in recent weeks have benefited Labour. Many UKIP voters, particularly in northern England, were traditional Labour voters. It was widely believed that UKIP would be a stopover on a journey that would turn these white working-class voters into Tories. And while that has happened, some of these voters have instead returned to Labour, mission accomplished.
The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, believed that the Brexit vote gave them a new reason for being. They were the only party to come out for a second referendum and made it clear that they wanted to stop Brexit if at all possible. Their reasoning was that 48 percent of the U.K. wanted to stay, and that those voters would flock to the one party that stood up for them. But two issues caused this plan to fizzle out. Firstly, Leave voters were much more passionate about their position than Remain voters, who may want to stay in the E.U. but will cast their general election vote based on other issues. Secondly, many Remain voters came to see Brexit as already decided, and that even if they disagreed, the popular vote should be respected.
Without a Brexit backlash, the party has no driving purpose and instead has been mired in questions over its leader’s positions on abortion and homosexuality. The party’s goal now seems to be to beat its dreadful 8.1 percent in 2015 and hold onto its nine seats, which is a far cry from the 23 percent and 57 seats it won in 2010 before it made the toxically unpopular decision to prop up a Conservative-dominated coalition in return for little concessions.
Some Degree of Tory Victory Remains Overwhelmingly Likely
Now all of this has meant a surprisingly good seven weeks for the Labour party, but so far it still doesn’t point toward a victory on June 8. The Tories have led every single poll since the Brexit vote last summer. Labour historically under-performs its polling numbers due to its larger share of unreliable voters. Scotland is still a disaster for Labour (so much so that the Tories may beat Labour for second place). But the fear of an electoral loss so large that it would take Labour a decade to recover has been pretty much eliminated.