Ch-ch-ch-changes
Is everything now Hunky Dory? How long before Starmer is Under Pressure? Are we entering our Golden Years? Or is it a Moonage Daydream? Okay, that's enough.
Wow, what a lot has happened since last week.
I got some nice notes, comments and shares of last week’s newsletter, thank you for those. I lost a couple of subscribers immediately off the back of it, but have made those back and added some more in the meantime.
I don’t often write in a very personal way, so I appreciate it isn’t what everyone signed up for - thank you for indulging me. And for voting.
Anyway, we now have - as was expected - a new government.
Sometimes a close-run 1-0 can be more interesting to watch than a one-sided thrashing, but this election was interesting despite the runaway Labour victory.
The First Past the Post system means the overall numbers of MPs only tell part of the story.
Labour’s vote share this time was smaller than it was in 2017 - when Theresa May ended up with a hung Parliament instead of a mandate - and only a couple of percentage points higher than it was in 2019, when Corbyn’s party took 202 seats.
So, Labour went from 32% to 34% of the overall vote, and doubled their number of seats, winning the biggest majority since Blair in 1997.
You can account for the difference in a few different ways.
Tory collapse - obviously when your main opposition at the polls absolutely tanks, and spends a campaign hammering the ball into their own net, that helps.
Targeting - Labour’s vote share went where it mattered, and they were very methodical about achieving that.
Tactical voting - there was plenty of talk of tactical voting in the run up, with 1 in 5 saying they’d lend their votes in various directions to get the overall outcome they wanted. This will have favoured the Lib Dems as they took a load of seats off the Tories.
Aaaaand…the rise of smaller parties - this is clearly the one which made the biggest difference. Reform to a big chunk off the Tories, and the Greens also made big, big strides. This is also where our electoral system gets really silly, as the BBC graphic below shows.
So, 34% of the vote (actually 33.7%) translated to 63% of the seats for Labour, that’s 411 MPs, but 14% of the vote share only gave Reform 5 seats. The Lib Dem’s 12% of the vote gave them 72 MPs, or 11% of the seats. If the Greens had their 7% translated proportionally, they’d have 45 MPs.
It’s a funny system, but it’s what we’ve got, and I think overall we’ve got a fairly sensible set of results which reflect where polls have been for literally years.
In the North East, every seat went to Labour apart from the newly created Stockton West, which was essentially held by Matt Vickers, who has represented most of the constituency when it was the now defunct Stockton South.
That included the two Tories in Nortumberland, as Joe Morris beat Guy Opperman in Hexham, and David Smith beat Anne-Marie Trevelyan in North Northumberland.
To give you a sense of just how Tory the seat of North Northumberland is, the last time the was a constituency with that name was in 1885. It was a two member constituency, and had two Conservative MPs: the Earl (Henry) Percy, later His Grace the 7th Duke of Northumberland; and, Sir Matthew White Ridley, 5th Baronet, later the 1st Viscount Ridley.
Both those titles remain fairly significant ones in our region’s political, cultural and economic landscape.
Reform finished second, sometimes a very strong second, in a good number of the North East seats. When Farage said as the results rolled in that he was coming for Labour, that's what he meant - they think they'll be in position to take some of those sorts of seats next time. For what it's worth, I think the Tories will stabilise and Reform will drop back.
Anyway, that's next time, and this is this time. The theme of Labour’s campaign was CHANGE. So, here’s some appropriate music.
How do you do ‘change’?
Some of you may have seen my election day column in The QT last week.
I wrote about how, even with the expected (now actual) large majority, Labour would not necessarily have a big mandate or capacity for change.
There are electoral arguments for that - and we'll hear plenty of them…slim seat wins, low turnout, low vote share, how we need proportional representation, blah blah blah.
I'm more concerned with the understanding and mechanics of change.
The nature of this General Election campaign was it was mostly about competence, and change in the abstract.
I don't think the public were in the frame of mind to engage with specific policy proposals, it was more about having a clear out of the Commons benches.
Labour had plenty of specific policies in its manifesto, and while some they'll just crack on with, others will need groundwork.
Trust is low, the public are risk averse after a punishing few years of pandemic and high inflation, and the machinery of public services is creaking and rattling.
That means we're more likely to.get slow, incremental change - “brick by brick”, Starmer said outside No. 10 - than rapid, revolutionary change.
People will need to be convinced of the change that's coming, both those using public services and those delivering them on the front line.
Announcing what you're going to do is the easy part, and one of the big failings of the last 14 years has been a conflation of announcement and delivery. Policy change is hard, unglamorous work.
There are early signs of a new tone…see the ditching of the ‘levelling up’ part of the department which looks after housing and local government and stuff. DLUHC no more, now HCLG (Housing, Communities and Local Government).
In The QT, I wrote that I think a big part of delivering change is through collaboration, and an increased commitment to devolution.
The regional mayors were all in London yesterday, looking at how TfL do buses, and meeting with the Prime Minister and Angela Rayner, Deputy PM and the Secretary of State who'll look after whatever levelling up becomes.
The metro mayor model remains, in my mind at least, the best one for delivering change. They exist at a geography which is big enough to do some coordination and carry some weight, but close enough to the coalface to have real information, tailor interventions effectively, and deliver something tangible to people.
It was good to see a specific ask on Hitachi and rail jobs top the list as Kim McGuinness wrote to Starmer this week. Hitachi is a significant regional asset, and the Government can do something about ensuring its sustainability.
Making specific, North East-focused asks of Westminster is going to be crucial, and if we can coordinate and collaborate on what we're trying to achieve, then the region can see change faster.
Everyone who reads this newsletter is a policy actor in one way or another. Getting what the North East needs will take all of us.
North East ministers
Ministerial appointments are still ongoing, but there are three significant North East ones so far.
Bridget Phillipson is Secretary of State for Education, and is joined by Catherine McKinnell who is a minister in the same department. It's not been confirmed, but McKinnell held the shadow schools brief, so it's probably that.
Phillipson is also women and equalities minister, however it sounds like Annelise Dodds - a former shadow Chancellor who held the brief in opposition and has been given a junior ministerial role in Phillipson’s department, as well as one in Development - will be doing the actual work on it.
Alan Campbell continues as Chief Whip. He’s been in the whips office since 2010, and was Opposition Chief Whip from 2021.
Now is also the time to start building relationships with the newly married MPs. Firstly, because they'll be the ones doing constituency work. Secondly, because lots of them have been doing really significant jobs in and around the Labour Party, and once they've served a bit of time, they'll no doubt rapidly end up in ministerial positions. Starmer has shown willingness to promote new MPs quickly…see Georgia Gould and four others.
What's next?
With so much change, and so many new names and job roles to learn, you might be thinking about your policy influencing work.
If you want to talk about it, you can reach me on arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk.
I do things like policy briefings, research papers, data analysis, narratives and content and comms campaign planning.