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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Labour publishes Beckett report into why it lost the election - Politics live

Labour campaigners in Hyde during the general election. Today the party has published its report into why it lost.
Labour campaigners in Hyde during the general election. Today the party has published its report into why it lost. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

  • The Labour party has published its 35-page report into why it lost the election. Drawn up by a committee chaired by Dame Margaret Beckett, it identifies Labour’s lack of economic credibility, its reputation on benefits and welfare and Ed Miliband’s leadership as factors in the defeat. It says the seeds of defeat were sown well before the short election campaign, and claims that the party “certainly did not lose the campaign on the ground”. The report adds little to what has been set out in the many other reports that have been published explaining the election result and is notable for the anodyne tone of any criticisms it makes of Ed Miliband and others leading Labour in the 2010-15 parliament.
  • General Lord Richards, the former head of the armed forces, has said David Cameron involved himself in matters that were “beneath his pay grade” during the intervention in Libya. As the Press Association reports, MPs were told that the prime minister’s demands for frequent meetings with military top brass meant there was a risk the chain of command was being “pulled around” instead of focusing on delivering results. Media pressures and a desire to appear to know more than the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy meant Cameron wanted more detail than would be “normal”, the foreign affairs committee was told. Richards said:

I would say to the Prime Minister, ‘just give us your intent, prime minister, and let us deliver on it’, and he wanted to get more into the detail than would be normal, I felt. But, that said, the relationship was good, there were robust discussions and at the end of the day we all knew what was required of us. So, I think it was a success but we met far too often.

  • Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has said a “concrete proposal” for European Union reform will be tabled within weeks. As the Press Association reports, Tusk said it was “not easy but possible” that agreement could be reached between the other 27 member states at a summit next month. That could open the door to the in/out referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the bloc being held as early as June. Tusk made his comment on Twitter.
  • The sister of a Briton suspected of being a masked jihadi who executed a prisoner in an Islamic State (IS) propaganda film has called for more help for families who are concerned loved ones may be in danger of being radicalised. As the Press Association reports, Konika Dhar told MPs she had no idea who to turn to after reports emerged that her brother Siddhartha Dhar had travelled to Syria to join the terrorist group. Dhar, a former bouncy castle salesman from London who changed his name to Abu Rumaysah, is thought to be the disguised man who appeared in an IS video released online earlier this month. During the video the figure mocked David Cameron, and labelled British security and border agencies “shoddy” before five prisoners were executed. Speaking to the Home Affairs Committee Dhar said she and her family were “left in the dark” over how he came to convert about a decade ago and how he adopted his radical views, but feared he had been “brainwashed” by individuals in the community. She said it would “absolutely” be a good idea to have organisations for families to turn to for advice or share their concerns in confidence.

I think this is one thing that needs to be addressed, because for me personally it was very difficult to know who to turn to. I didn’t know whether to contact the police, whether to go via the media or speak to family members ... it was a bit of a shock.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Dame Margaret Beckett has given an interview to Sky News about her report. She said people had “unrealistic” expectations of how much different it might have been for Labour if David Miliband had been leader.

Cameron speaks to Iranian president

David Cameron has spoken to the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani following the lifting of sanctions. The PM said it was a very good day for international relations and congratulated the Iranians on thesteps they have taken so far.

“It was warm with a real flow of discussions between them, and they talked about it paving the way for stronger economic cooperation,” Cameron’s spokesman said.

The UK re-opened its embassy in Tehran last year, four years after it was shut down as a result of a mob attack. However, the UK still only has a UK chargé d’affaires there and is currently in discussion about raising representation to ambassador level.

In the 20-minute conversation, Cameron raised concerns about some dual UK-Iranian nationals held in Iranian prisons and pressed the president for an Iranian representative to come to the London conference on Syria.

Updated

What the Beckett report says about Ed Miliband's leadership

The Beckett report cites Ed Miliband’s leadership as one of the four reasons given on the doorstep for people not voting Labour. (See 2.43pm.)

Yet the report can hardly bring itself to acknowledge Miliband’s faults directly. In the first chapter, which analyses what happened in the 2010-15 parliament, there are just three paragraphs under the sub-heading “The leader”. This is what they say:

Over the period 2010 – 15, what the polls did consistently show was that, when asked if ‘this man could be Prime Minister’, David Cameron was rated above Ed Miliband. Since he actually was Prime Minister, this response was perhaps less than surprising.

It is the fate of every Labour Leader of the Opposition to be the target of ferocious attack from partisan sections of our media. Tony Blair was called ‘Bambi’, and described as too young and inexperienced to be up to doing the job.

However, Ed Miliband faced an exceptionally vitriolic and personal attack. Even before he courageously took on the public concerns that led to the Leveson enquiry, elements in the news media seemed determined to try to destroy him.

No truly honest report about why Labour lost the election would say as little on this subject as this ...

Labour MPs have been voting on a change to parliamentary Labour party (PLP) rules that would stop Steve Rotheram, a leftwinger and Jeremy Corbyns’ parliamentary private secretary (PPS) sitting on the national executive committee as a representative of backbenchers.

The proposed changed has been passed by a massive majority, the Evening Standard’s Joe Murphy reports.

Here are some interesting points from the chapter in the Beckett report analysing the election results, and what they show.

  • The Beckett report says Labour’s own analysis suggests some voters only made up their mind at the last minute.

The party’s own analysis suggests that, while there was no ‘late swing’, in the sense of a conscious decision to switch parties, a large number of people were uncertain of how to vote. An unusual number then firmed up in the same direction – away from Labour. They may have been swayed by the supposed ‘SNP threat’.

  • It says Ukip damaged the Tories more than Labour.

We believe that, in 2015 Ukip was in net terms more damaging to the Tories than to Labour, though they are a growing presence in local government. Ukip are estimated to have taken many more votes from 2010 Tories (4.6 per cent) than from 2010 Labour (1.7 per cent). It is not possible to identify any seat where the increase in the Ukip vote clearly came more from Labour 2010 voters than from the Conservatives, which means, by definition, that there is no seat which Labour might have won in the absence of Ukip, but did not because of Labour switching. However, it is likely that some of those who voted Tory in 2010, and moved to Ukip in 2015, had voted Labour before 2010.

The academic Philip Cowley says Labour’s other, internal report into the election defeat, which has not been published but which features in his book about the 2015 election, says the opposite. (See 2.51pm.)

  • The Beckett report says Labour did best in cities.

The seats that we took from the Tories are instructive in that they largely reflect the voter groups who moved towards us: four in London, most likely because left leaning Liberal Democrats voted Labour; Dewsbury and Wolverhampton South West which have large multi ethnic communities; the North West has become a Labour stronghold – we won seats from the Tories in Wirral West, Lancaster & Fleetwood and City of Chester. Our best gains in the vote and our best swings from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were almost entirely in City seats. Our worst results were almost entirely in towns and suburbs. Our only gain in a southern town was Hove, where we had a very strong local campaign and probably benefited from tactical voting by Green supporters.

  • It says Labour gained votes “in the wrong places”.

We lost the election decisively, not only because our small gain in votes was insufficient, but also because our votes were in “the wrong places”. Critically, in term of converting votes to seats, we gained votes in seats where we are already strong. We went backwards where we needed to go forwards. Our best results were in our own seats (4.8 per cent swing to Labour) and especially our 100 safest seats (5.7 per cent swing to Labour). In the 100 most marginal Conservative seats we gained only 0.6per cent and the Conservatives gained 2.5 per cent.

  • It says Labour gained more votes from the Lib Dems, but that the Tories gained more seats from them.

There are three reasons why, while Labour gained more votes from the Liberal Democrats, the Tories won more seats:

• The Tories were in second place in 2010 in two thirds of Liberal Democrat seats

• The Tories were clearly targeting Liberal Democrat seats, especially in the South West

• There is some evidence that Liberal Democrat voters supported Labour tactically, or moved to us in Lib/Con marginals, and may have let the Tories in. For example, BES estimates that up to 7 seats were lost in this way. However, the change in the Labour vote suggests that the impact was not so significant, and the Liberal Democrat vote may have fragmented.

These dynamics mean that the Tories now hold a number of seats that they can only lose through a Liberal Democrats revival, or by Labour coming from 3rd place in 2010 to win in 2020. Though a difficult task, such dramatic shifts have occurred in previous elections.

  • The report says 2015 “showed a recovery for Labour” in terms of number of votes. That claim is based on the fact that it was the first election since 1997 to see the party increasing the number of votes it obtained, as this chart shows.
Change in party vote
Change in party vote Photograph: Labour/labour party

Beckett says shadow cabinet should spend as much time as possible outside Westminster

The Beckett report identifies six “lessons” the party can learn from the election. They are in the report from pages 29 to 35.

Mostly they are remarkably bland but here, for reference, is a summary.

1 - Set out a vision for Britain.

2 - Develop policy for the 2020s.

3 - Have a comprehensive media strategy

4 - Develop the party organisation

5 - Prepare for the election, but delay most candidate selections until the new boundary review is complete

6 - Publish annual reports to track progress

Beckett also says the party leadership needs to spend as much time as possible away from Westminster.

The party leadership, including the shadow cabinet - both individually and collectively - should plan to spend as much time as possible away from Westminster, in order both to keep their finger on the pulse of the electorate, (rather than the Westminster ‘bubble’) and to have the maximum opportunity to communicate more directly with the public.

Interestingly, this is something Jeremy Corbyn is already doing, as he explained in an interview with Red Pepper before Christmas.

Updated

'We have reasons to be positive,' Beckett report says

“We have reasons to be positive,” the Beckett report says.

Here are the reasons the report identifies.

The huge increase in our membership which, in 2015, was at its highest for 15 years, and began to surge in the days immediately after the election, and the excitement that has been generated by the leadership contest, gives us something on which to build. We have new capabilities in digital, and a proven track record in using local organisers.

Labour’s new leadership have already drawn on some of the lessons identified during our review. For example, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign rightly focused on trust in politics, mobilised young people, and engaged more directly with the electorate.

In addition we should remember that the Tories only secured a small majority, despite a favourable global economy and the benefit of incumbency.

2015 defeat nowhere near as bad as 1983, says Beckett

The Beckett report says Labour’s 2015 defeat was not anything like as bad as 1983.

The result was a shock. So much so that some have compared it to the result of 1983, which was the most decisive defeat for Labour since the war. There is no comparison either in nature or scale.

In 1983 there was a 9.3 per cent swing away from Labour, whereas, in 2015, there was a small swing to Labour ...

The standing of the parties after the election also bears no comparison. In 1983 the Tories had an overall majority of 144 (2015:10) and a lead on Labour of 188 (2015:98) seats and a lead in votes of 14.8 percentage points (2015: 6.5 percentage points).

5 explanations for Labour's defeat rejected, or partly rejected, by the Beckett report

The Beckett report identifies five explanations for Labour’s election defeat that it rejects, or at least partly rejects.

As the new leadership plan for 2020, they should approach with caution a number of theories for our defeat that sound plausible but need to be nuanced and substantiated:

• “We had the wrong policies.” In fact our individual polices polled well, the issue was the difficulty in creating a cohesive, consistent narrative and communicating this clearly and simply

• “We were out of tune with the public on deficit reduction.” While trust on the economy and blame for the deficit were major factors, BES analysis suggests that the majority of people thought that the cuts were going too far and preferred higher taxes to further cuts as the route to deficit reduction

• “We were too left wing.” This is not a simple discussion. Many of our most “left wing” polices were the most popular. These were the kind of policies the public expected from Labour. An analysis by BES suggests that some of those who supported us would have been less likely to had they seen us as less left wing. Both the SNP and Greens gained votes in this election and arguably they were seen as to the left of Labour. However, we did fail to convert voters in demographic groups who are traditionally seen as in the centre, we lost voters to UKIP, failed to win back Liberal Democrat voters in sufficient numbers in the right places, and lost a small number of voters to the Tories.

• “We were too anti-business.” We are, of course, wholehearted supporters of a strong and responsible private sector. As in previous elections, the Tories worked hard to mobilise their big business supporters to attack us. And when people are insecure about jobs and wages, such propaganda fosters uncertainty.

However, polls showed a wish, from voters, for us to be tougher on big business, and policies that were unpopular with many senior business people, such as the energy price freeze and the Mansion Tax, were popular with voters. Moreover, we had a strong and positive agenda for small and medium-sized businesses.

• “We were seen as anti–aspiration.” Few thought this was the case specifically. However we need to be clearer that we are concerned for the prosperity of all and have a clearly articulated strategy for growth.

In general, we believe that these commonly held reasons for defeat should be treated with caution and require deeper analysis. Often they were contributory factors to the broader narrative rather than necessarily significant reasons in their own right.

Philip Cowley, the academic and co-author of the official Nuffield history of the general election, says the Beckett report is less interesting than a second internal Labour report into why they lost, 2015: What happened?

As I have reported before, Cowley and his co-author, Dennis Kavanagh, write about the two reports in their book, The British General Election of 2015.

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.

There is a single paragraph in the report under the heading “Conclusion”. This is what it says.

We were badly beaten. The collapse in Scotland made it impossible for us to be the biggest party and the Liberal Democrat collapse enabled the Tories to gain an overall majority and keep us out of power. We received far fewer votes than were foreseen. And where we did achieve swings against the Tories, these were in safe Labour seats, rather than in the target marginals, in which we worked so hard.

4 reasons for Labour's defeat

It was reported last week that the Beckett report would identify four reasons for Labour’s defeat. This is what it says on that subject.

We have consistently heard four reasons for our defeat both from pollsters and from those on the doorstep:

• Failure to shake off the myth that we were responsible for the financial crash and therefore failure to build trust in the economy

• Inability to deal with the issues of “connection” and, in particular, failing to convince on benefits and immigration

• Despite his surge in 2015, Ed Miliband still wasn’t judged to be as strong a leader as David Cameron

• The fear of the SNP “propping up” a minority Labour government

Of these, the effect of the SNP threat is the most disputed. The Tories played heavily on it at the end of the campaign. The evidence is unclear. Some analysis suggests there was no clear late switching. However, it was heard consistently on the doorstep that this scaremongering raised concerns. It may have reinforced the views of those who had already decided not to vote Labour, and, if so, may have had a decisive impact in a small number of constituencies.

Here is the statement from Dame Margaret Beckett about her report.

The reaction to the 2015 result was inevitably an emotional one for Labour because it was such a surprise. There was certainly no complacency in the Labour ranks, but the polls showed us neck and neck with the Tories, when clearly we weren’t.

There are certainly lessons to learn from defeat. This report has been a key part of recognising areas we need to improve on and building on aspects of our campaign that performed well. Labour gained votes in the 2015 election both in the UK as a whole and in England and Wales. There was a small swing to Labour, 1.5 per cent. This was the first election since 1997 when Labour’s share of the vote went up. However, we know this was not enough to deliver a Labour government.

As part of this reports’ process, we have consulted far and wide. We have had responses from tens of thousands of party members, we have spoken with many political figures and those who were closely involved in the campaign, and we have taken input from pollsters, pundits and academics.

The road to re-election is a marathon, not a sprint. If we learn the lessons of defeat in 2015, we can take the steps needed to rebuild a society in which the common good, and greater prosperity for all go hand in hand, and elect a Labour government.

The Labour party has just published the Margaret Beckett report into why Labour lost the general election. It is available here.

The session is starting.

Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, goes first.

Q: What changed your brother into the man seen on videos talking about extremism?

Konika Dhar says her brother converted some time ago. He used to be fun loving and laid back.

Q: Your family are from the Hindu faith.

That’s right, says Dhar.

Q: And he converted to Islam without people knowing.

Dhar says her family were “left in the dark” by the changes happening.

She recalls an article in the Washington Post quoting her brother. She thinks he had been “brainwashed”.

Kinoka Dhar
Konika Dhar Photograph: Parliament TV

Sister of suspect British jihadi questioned by MPs

The Commons home affairs committee is about to start a hearing on counter-terrorism.

The first witness is Konika Dhar, whose brother Siddhartha Dhar (now Abu Rumaysah) is thought to be the jihadi in the recent Islamic State video.

Ben Page, chief executive of the Ipsos MORI polling firm, says the election poll inquiry conclusions broadly match his own company’s inquiry into what went wrong. In a statement he said:

The interim findings of the British Polling Council’s inquiry released today in many respects chime with our own analysis about what went wrong with our polling. We probably sampled too many engaged voters, particularly younger people, who tend to be Labour voters, giving us an over exaggerated share of the vote for Labour.

However, we did not under-represent Conservative voters, instead we did not interview enough non-voters.

We also think we encountered issues with a disproportionate number of Labour voters who said they would vote, but didn’t actually make it to the polling booth.

We’ve already put in place new measures to address these issues and will continue to review our methods, and look forward to the inquiry’s full recommendations in March.

Lunchtime summary

Some have argued that this is a substantial reduction in the powers of the House of Lords. I don’t think it is. I think it is an exchange of one power for another power.

Currently the Lords have the power to veto secondary legislation. But Strathclyde said this power was highly constrained by parliamentary convention and in practice was only used once a decade. Under his plans, the Lords would be able to ask the Commons to think again about secondary legislation (on the basis that the legislation would go through if the Commons insisted on proposing it a second time). Strathclyde said the new power for peers to ask the Commons “Are you sure?” could give them “an important new influence which would be worth having”.

Here is Newsnight’s report on why the polls got the election wrong.

In an article for the Times’s Red Box daily political email Freddie Sayers and Stephan Shakespeare from YouGov think there is a solution to the problem identified by the election polling inquiry report. Here’s an extract.

The headline finding of today’s report chimes with our own internal investigation, namely that the main cause of the error last May was sampling. In other words, the samples of people who were answering surveys from all the different polling companies did not adequately represent the voting public. They may have looked representative in terms of age, gender, income and so on but they had too few Tories in them.

In particular, the groups we were measuring contained too many politically engaged people. For most of our work this is not a concern – if you want to find out what toothpaste people prefer, it makes no difference whether they take an interest in politics or not. But for an election poll, the very fact that they agree to answer a survey may make them more likely to be political ...

No, the future of opinion polling is not going back to door knocking – it must be online, and more specifically mobile. YouGov has an online panel who answer regular surveys in exchange for cash and prizes (600,000 people in the UK) including plenty of non-political people who simply do it for the money. Because we have detailed profile data on all of them we can identify the non-political ones and make sure to include enough of them in future election surveys. Random samples of strangers – telephone or face to face – can never make this adjustment and so are vulnerable to effects they can’t even measure.

The way to get more “normal” young people taking part – a large part of the polling error in 2015 – is surely to build a mobile-based experience that make taking part easier and more social, a more natural part of their online lives. We are already doing this. We need to innovate faster to keep pace, not pretend the internet never happened.

In a post on his PoliticalBetting blog Mike Smithson says Gallup in the US has given up doing state-of-the-party polling, and instead focuses on other indicators that may be more revealing.

After a lacklustre performance with its voting numbers at WH2012 the firm took the strategic decision to drop that aspect for WH2016 and focus on elements that can often give better pointers to election outcomes.

“What do independent voters really think of Trump? Are views of Hillary really on the decline after taking a fair bruising in the first phase of the effort to get the nomination? Could Sanders really have an appeal?”

The key political questioning by Gallup and many other US pollsters is is on perceptions of favourability which I now regard as the best leader rating format.

Andrew Rawnsley made a similar point in his Observer column on Sunday.

I have often argued here that the headline numbers of the polls are not as important as the key details, especially the parties’ ratings for leadership and economic competence. Had I paid more heed to my own advice, I ought to have seen that David Cameron would be back in Downing Street.

Obsorne says FCA will have duty to cap pension company 'exit charges'

In the Commons in Treasury questions George Osborne has just announced that he will change the law to place a duty on the Financial Conduct Authority to cap the amount of money pension funds can charge if people want to take their money out.

Osborne changed pension rules to enable people to withdraw money from their pension pots, but there have been complaints that savers have been deterred from using this freedom by excessive “exit charges”.

George Osborne
George Osborne Photograph: BBC Parliament

You can read all today’s Guardian politics coverage here.

As for the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories.

And here are three articles I found particularly interesting.

Statutory instruments (SIs) were first introduced at the end of the 1940s as a way of freeing up parliamentary time by allowing procedural changes to laws to be made without a full debate in a vote in the Commons.

Over the years their use has mushroomed from just 1,100 in 1982 to more than 3,000 today. Much of the increase took place after the Coalition came to power in 2010.

But what concerns critics is not just the number of SIs being introduced but the significance of the legislative changes that they are introducing.

Since the 2015 election the SIs that have been introduced by the Government include changes to the electoral register that could result in more than a million people being denied the chance to vote, allow fracking under national parks and heritage sites and withdraw winter fuel payments from British pensioners living abroad.

Use of statutory instruments
Use of statutory instruments Photograph: Independent

David Cameron has been warned that holding an EU referendum in June increases the chances of Conservative defeats in May’s council and London mayoral elections.

Cabinet ministers said that a mid-summer plebiscite would inevitably split local Tory parties and draw campaigners away from the elections the previous month. “Cameron’s been told we could lose London if he goes for June,” said one well-placed figure.

Zac Goldsmith, a Eurosceptic, is particularly vulnerable to a timetable that will ensure the EU dominates political debate during his campaign to replace Boris Johnson in City Hall. “A June referendum doesn’t work for Zac at any level at all,” said one of his advisers.

All politicians understand Yes, No and Undecided. Only the winners understand Don’t Much Care. Mr Cameron communicates crisply because he knows most people only tune in for a few minutes a day. He does not lose himself in marginalia that no swing voter will ever notice. Rousing a nation through force of personality is something leaders do in films: the real art of politics is accepting apathy and bending it to your purposes.

And it all starts with the realisation that apathy is not a type of sickness ...

Apathy is a respectable disposition in a country where, for most people most of the time, life is tolerable-to-good. There are nations with much hotter politics, and they tend to send refugees to tedious old Britain ...

Apathetic Britons are not waiting to be redeemed. They just have lives to get on with. Not only are they apolitical; they rouse themselves to vote every five years precisely to stop hot heads and crusaders from running their country. They like Mr Cameron because he governs well enough to save them having to think about politics. He is prime minister because someone has to be.

Updated

The BMA has suspended next week’s planned junior doctors’ strike.

The Electoral Commission has announced that it has fined two organisations for failing to submit financial information on time. The Better Together campaign has been fined £2,000 for failing to deliver a complete campaign expenditure report for the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. And the BNP has been fined £2,400 for failing to deliver its 2014 accounts by the due date.

ComRes, another polling organisation, has put out this statement about the election poll inquiry.

Opinium, the polling company, has published a blog on the election poll inquiry findings. It concludes: “Bridging the gap between the politically engaged and the unengaged is, we believe, the key challenge for the political polling industry and will be the focus of our efforts going forward.”

Matt Singh, the polling expert who wrote a prophetic blog on polling day saying the pollsters were significantly understating support for the Conservatives, has posted his thoughts on the election poll inquiry findings on his Number Cruncher Politics blog. He says: “The pollsters need more representative samples, by getting better raw samples (if possible) or by better weighting (if necessary). Some work I’ve been doing (some pollsters are looking at using) on this fixes a lot of the problem.”

On the subject of opinion polls, the Press Association has published an analysis of the latest polling figures saying Labour is doing worse at this point in the electoral cycle than at any time since the second world war. This is from the Press Association’s Ian Jones.

Labour has failed to achieve any bounce in the polls since Jeremy Corbyn became leader and the party has not performed this badly in the aftermath of any election since the second world war.

It is currently trailing the Conservatives by an average of eight points.

This is the biggest poll deficit recorded by Labour eight months after an election defeat since regular opinion polls began in Britain in the late 1940s, analysis by the Press Association shows.

At this stage in the last parliament, the party was ahead of the Tories by an average of five points.

And eight months after losing the 1992 election, Labour had opened up a lead of 10 points.

The last time the party was still polling behind the Conservatives this long after an election defeat was in 1988, when it trailed by five points.

But it is impossible to find any record since the Second World War of a gap bigger than eight points at this stage in any electoral cycle.

To add to Labour’s woes, the party has failed to come first in any opinion poll published since the Tories won the general election in May 2015.

Some pollsters have warned that Labour’s current ratings may even be too high.

Commenting on the latest poll from ICM, which shows the Tories on 40% and Labour on 35%, ICM director Martin Boon said: “This may be overstating Labour strength. 35% is probably too high. We can see in the small print of this poll that we’ve still got too many respondents who recall voting Labour.”

ICM has adjusted its methods since the general election in an attempt to better reflect the views of people who decline to reveal their intention.

Labour’s current poll deficit of eight points is not the biggest the party has experienced while in opposition. The Tories enjoyed a 10-point lead just 12 months after winning the 1959 election, for example.

A gap of eight points has never opened up this quickly, however.

My colleague Tom Clark has also been tweeting about the ICM poll commissioned for the Guardian.

Updated

Prof John Curtice, the psephologist who is president of the British Polling Council, was on BBC News earlier talking about the election poll inquiry. He explained that one of the problems was that Labour supporters are easier to find, and that Conservative supporters are more reluctant to answer questions from pollsters.

So does that mean polls are a waste of time, he was asked. No, he replied.

Can I just point you to the experience of the Oldham West byelection last autumn, which was an opinion poll free contest. And we had constant speculation during that about how Ukip were coming up close behind Labour, it was going to be a really bad result for Jeremy Corbyn etc etc. And we ended up discovering the Labour vote went up by 10 percentage points and they were way ahead of Ukip. So the absence of opinion polls does not necessarily produce better media reporting or better coverage of the campaign.

The truth is, the answer is to try and improve the way opinion polls are done. And there is no doubt, given that the problem is an issue of sampling, that will not necessarily be easy to solve. But it is certainly worthwhile trying to solve that problem and [better] than simply relying on the prognostications of politicians and journalists as to where the election stands.

Prof John Curtice
Prof John Curtice Photograph: BBC News

Inflation nudges up to 0.2% in December

Inflation has nudged slightly up. This is from the Press Association.

Inflation edged up to its highest level for nearly a year last month as a sharp rise in air fares over the Christmas holidays offset falling food and clothing prices.

But official figures showed inflation remaining at a historic low, with the consumer price index (CPI) falling to zero over the whole of 2015 - the lowest annual reading since records began in 1950.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said CPI rose to 0.2% in December, up from 0.1% in November and the highest reading since January 2015.

Air fares soared by 46% between November and December due to the seasonal rise in flight costs over the festive season, marking the biggest leap for 13 years, with long-haul flights in particular impacted - although the ONS said inflation readings for flights can be volatile.

Prices on the forecourts continued to fall, with petrol down by 3.4p a litre, although this was less than the 6.1p drop seen a year earlier.

James Tucker, head of CPI at the ONS, said: “Today’s small rise in CPI was mainly down to air fares and motor fuels, partially offset by falls in alcohol and food prices.

“While this modest rise takes CPI to its highest level for 11 months, it is still at historically low levels.”

David Mundell, the Scotland secretary, has said there is a “strong case” for staging the EU referendum this June - assuming Cameron wins the right deal for the UK in Brussels.

Mundell told reporters in Edinburgh on Tuesday that Scotland’s experience with a long, drawn-out independence referendum – which began in early 2012 and end with a vote in September 2014, made it clear that a quick, short campaign was preferable. That was an “inordinate length of time,” Mundell said.

Hinting he had advised Cameron to hold the referendum quickly, Mundell added: “Most people engaged with the referendum really in those final four, six weeks of it when it was imminent, I think there’s isn’t an argument against having it in June. I think, in fact, that there’s a strong argument to have it in June.”

One factor which may also have heavily influenced Mundell’s thinking is that the long time period for the Scottish referendum enabled the pro-independence campaign to substantially gain ground, closing the gap with the pro-UK vote from 20 points to 10 points.

Polls on EU membership show the vote in England is neck and neck, with some giving the Brexit vote a lead, while in Scotland, there is a clear majority in favour of remaining in.

The Scottish secretary denied that a referendum so close to the Scottish parliament elections on 5 May, when Welsh assembly and English council elections also take place, would exhaust the political parties and prevent full debate on the EU in Scotland.

With dates in September and October also under scrutiny, Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, warned last week against a June poll, fearing that was not long enough to give Cameron and the pro-EU campaign enough time to make the case.

Humza Yousaf, the Scottish government’s Europe minister, indicated a June poll would be resisted by ministers in Edinburgh.

“Both the Scottish parliament elections and the EU referendum are vitally important events for Scotland - and neither campaign should be drowned out by the other,” Yousaf said.

“As the first minister made clear last week a June referendum restricts the opportunity to make the case for remaining in the EU and shows disrespect to the elections taking place in Scotland, Wales and London in May.”

David Mundell
David Mundell Photograph: Rob Stothard/Getty Images

Much of the reporting of the general election last year was shaped by opinion polls suggesting that Labour and the Conservatives were neck and neck and that a hung parliament was inevitable. As we now know, those assumptions were wrong. The polling industry commissioned an inquiry into what went wrong and the results are out today.

My colleague Tom Clark has written an overnight story on its conclusions. Here it is.

And here is how it starts.

The long-awaited postmortem into what wrong with the opinion polls in last year’s general election is published on Tuesday, and it points the finger at the pollsters’ failure to reach enough Conservative voters.

Patrick Sturgis, a professor of research methodology at Southampton University, who has headed a team of nine experts undertaking an independent review for the British Polling Council, said that “the emerging upshot is that the companies are going to have to be more imaginative and proactive in making contact with – and giving additional weight to – those sorts of respondents that they failed to reach in adequate numbers in 2015.”

But it is not all hopeless for the pollsters. On the Today programme Prof Sturgis was asked if we were looking at the death of polling. Emphatically not, he replied.

No, I strongly suspect not because although the result was wrong, and that always is the worst thing to get wrong, actually the polls were pretty bang on in terms of the smaller parties. They got the Greens, they got the SNP surge, they got the collapse of the Lib Dems - those were all exactly right. You could look at it in some ways and say it was a bit unfortunate that they were three points over on Labour, three points under on the Conservatives. And that was a bit of a perfect storm for them.

The fact is that the polls are far and away the best way of trying to figure out what the election is going to be. We probably need to recognise that they are not infallible. Even if we moved to the most expensive random survey you could possible imagine, there would still be a chance that would get it wrong.

I will be posting more on this throughout the day.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Inflation figures are released.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics releases a house price study.

9.40am: Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative former leader of the Lords, gives evidence to the Commons public administration committee about his plans to stop the Lords blocking secondary legislation.

10.30am: Liam Fox, the Conservative former defence secretary, and William Hague, the Conservative former foreign secretary, give evidence to the foreign affairs committee about Libya.

11.30am: Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, announces plans to tackle extremism in schools.

12pm: Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, gives a speech.

2pm: The results of the independent inquiry into the accuracy of the election polls is formally published.

2pm: Konika Dhar, whose brother Siddhartha Dhar (now Abu Rumaysah) is thought to be the jihadi in the recent Islamic State video, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee. David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, is also giving evidence.

2.45pm: Lord Richards, the former chief of the defence staff, gives evidence to the foreign affairs committee on Libya.

As usual, I will also be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow. But you’ll have trouble at the moment; Twitter seems to have crashed.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.

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