Is there anything new to say about the general election? Surprisingly, yes.
Since 1945 every general election has been followed by the publication of an academic account of what happened released as part of what is known as the Nuffield series (because originally the authors were based at Nuffield College, Oxford). The latest, The British General Election of 2015 by Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, came out last week.
We know how the story ends, and Cowley and Kavanagh haven’t managed to discover an alternative election that will make people rethink their understanding of the events leading up to 7 May 2015. But that doesn’t stop this being a very good book. They interviewed more than 300 of the key people (many of them on an unattributable basis) and the book contains plenty of high-grade anecdote, as well as much sound analysis, some sharp writing and all the election data you could reasonably want. Even if you spent much of the year immersed in the election, dip into this and you’ll learn something new.
Reporters have already been picking over it like hyenas. My colleague Patrick Wintour wrote a story about the revelation that Lord Feldman, the Tory co-chairman, claimed President Obama sent his pollster Jim Messina to help the Tories with his blessing and a message to stop Ed Miliband winning the general election.
Patrick’s story also says the book discloses that Russell Brand had decided and told the Labour campaign that he would back Ed Miliband before he interviewed the Labour leader. The Mail on Sunday published a spread based on what they described as a “bombshell book”, and the Huffington Post has written up a claim that Labour’s election coordinator, Douglas Alexander, accused an MP worried about the threat from Ukip of being racist.
That’s not all. But, sadly, it doesn’t come cheap.
@philipjcowley @PeterMannionMP £26.99 for a paperback?! Get fucked
— Daniel W (@damawa42) December 19, 2015
And so, for Daniel W and everyone else, here are 10 more revelations from the book.
1 - Labour’s internal election reviews concluded leadership and economic credibility were key factors in the party’s defeat.
Much of this disappointment was reflected in a frank internal party post-mortem for Labour’s senior officials ‘2015: What Happened?’. It noted tactfully: ‘Anecdotally, canvassers found it difficult to navigate issues surrounding the popularity of the leader and the impact of a potential coalition with the SNP.’ The view at Brewer’s Green [Labour HQ] was replicated in the campaign feedback to CCHQ. Campaigners also struggled to convince voters of the manifesto’s economic responsibility because ‘the rhetoric used in the first half of the parliament shaped public and media perceptions of our final policy offer’. The report, again diplomatically, noted: ‘This mismatch between our policy and its perception made it difficult to overcome two key challenges’ - convincing voters that Labour could be trusted with the public finances and winning over swing voters with measures that could benefit them and their families ....
The interim Labour leader Harriet Harman quickly commissioned an inquiry led by Margaret Beckett called ‘Learning the Lessons’, and largely written by Alan Buckle from KPMG. It was not published. Nor was the other, more empirical, internal report entitled ‘2015: What Happened?’ The Conservatives conducted a happier exercise but their report, ‘How the Conservatives Won. Myths and Realites’ also remained off limits to all but a handful of insiders. Transparency did not extend outside of party headquarters. Although the reports differed on details, they largely came to the same broad conclusion: Labour lost not because of things it did in the six weeks of the election campaign or because of events in the year or so before, but because it failed on fundamentals about the economy, spending and immigration.
2 - At one stage before the general election the Lib Dem’s floated the idea of letting a fly-on-the-wall documentary team film the ‘Quad’ - the four-strong inner cabinet that settled key coalition decisions. “The Conservatives, unsurprisingly, were not keen,” the book says.
3 - Lynton Crosby, the strategist running the Conservative election campaign, persuaded Cameron to stop talking about “the global race”. “Crosby dumped talk of the global race. ‘Talk of meeting global competition alienated the Ukip voters we needed. They are already losing from globalisation and are looking for security’, according to a Cameron aide.”
4 - Ed Miliband’s “Hell, yes” line in his Jeremy Paxman interview was ad-libbed - even though it sounded rehearsed. “Ironically, given how much Labour had prepared and practised for the various broadcasts, the one most memorable line of Miliband’s performance - ‘Am I tough enough? Hell yes, I am tough enough’ - was ad-libbed. ‘It is fair to say’, said one of his advisers, ‘that if anyone had suggested he was about [to] say “Hell, yes” in the interview I would have run across the room to stop him.’”
5 - Labour had an attack ad ready to run before the last PMQs of the parliament, highlighting Cameron’s refusal to rule out a VAT increase, but the film had to be dropped after Cameron surprised MPs at PMQs by replying to a Miliband challenge on this by announcing he could rule out a VAT increase.
6 - The Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems provisionally agreed to jointly hire a venue in London for election press conferences - only to drop the idea when they realised they would hardly ever hold them.
7 - George Osborne spent election day texting Nick Clegg proposing another coalition.
8 - Several Labour press officers tried to get the ‘Ed Stone’ destroyed the weekend after the election, but failed because they could not get permission.
9 - Natalie Bennett, the Green leader, was described by a colleague as someone who would make “a brilliant chief executive” - but, by implication, not a brilliant leader. “[Bennett] is good at much of the behind-the-scenes work needed in a political party, building up local parties, inspiring activists and engaging with students. ‘She’s be a brilliant chief executive’, said one of the Green team in what was a deliberately double-edged comment.”
10 - Miliband once responded to a briefing from Stan Greenberg about Labour’s internal polling by saying: “Do you have to be so negative?”
