The myth that Labour's tax policies lost them the 1992 election

Why did John Major win the 1992 election when most pundits expected Neil Kinnock's Labour Party to be the victors?

Immediately after the contest, a consensus developed that the reason was the effectiveness of the Conservatives' campaign against Labour's economic policies. This view was certainly advanced by the Tories themselves, as its acceptance would make Labour more timid about challenging Thatcherite economics in future. 

And it was advanced by the head of the Tory campaign, Chris Patten, perhaps as a way of burnishing his reputation and consoling himself after he lost his own seat of Bath to the Liberal Democrats.

But I have always doubted this explanation. I remember thinking that it did not chime with what I had heard during the campaign from voters or from colleagues at work.

I recently came across an article that suggests I was right to be sceptical. In May 1994 the Independent published an article by Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell and John Curtice on the findings of their study of the 1992 election.

They go through the various explanations that had been offered for Labour's defeat and find them all wanting – notably the claim that "It's The Sun Wot Won It" made by, you guessed it, The Sun itself.

Here are Heath et al. on the suggestion that it was Labour's tax policies that had been decisive:

Labour's proposals for taxation and national insurance contributions – outlined in John Smith's 'alternative Budget' – were relentlessly attacked by the Conservatives. Faced with the prospect of a cut in their disposable income, the argument runs, voters had second thoughts about the wisdom of letting Labour in.

But our surveys find little evidence to back this argument. It arose because the polls showed a small Labour lead throughout a campaign in which taxation was one of the dominant issues and yet the Tories won. Our research, however, confirms that the pollsters had it wrong all along: they consistently underestimated the Tory vote. The Conservatives were ahead throughout the campaign. 

There was a late swing, but far too small to account for Labour's defeat. And the people who deserted Labour were not particularly averse to high taxation; rather, they seemed to have relatively little faith in Labour's ability to improve services such as health and education.

In fact, the authors find nothing in the 1992 election campaign had much of an effect on the final outcome.

I did receive intimations that there had been a late swing to the Tories. During the campaign, I'd heard stories of Liberal Democrat workers putting money on Nick Harvey gaining North Devon with a large majority, when ultimately he gained it with a small one. 

And I was told to put money on the Lib Dems in Falmouth and Camborne, because Sebastian Coe was going down very badly there. Luckily I didn't, because Coe held the seat for the Tories. He lost to Labour in 1997 and the Lib Dems finally took it in 2005.

My own theory was that voters had chosen John Major over Neil Kinnock. After Margaret Thatcher's late Sturm und Drang years, Major was a breath of fresh air. Those who only know of him as a figure of fun may be surprised at this, but if they study his statesmanlike conduct since losing power they may see why people found him attractive in 1992.

Neil Kinnock, by contrast, had been leader of the opposition for nine years. Some of the attacks on him as a "Welsh windbag" bordered on the racist, but, boy, he did talk a lot. And, burdened by cares of leadership, he had lost the wit and sparkle that had made his name as a backbench MP – notably on Jimmy Young's Radio 2 programme.

So that's why I didn't believe in 1992 that the Tories' attacks on Labour's tax policies had won them the election. And, going by Heath et al.'s study, I was right not to believe what became the received wisdom on that contest.

This question is not just of historical interest. Rachel Reeves's pledge not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT, which has backed her into such a corner, was made because of a more or less conscious memory of 1992.

Zack Polanski and Alistair Darling: Two soft rides from the Guardian

I'm late to the party on last week's Guardian interview with Zach Polanski, but I've still decided to come.

Reading it today, I find it's not the first time the Guardian has allowed the politician to present a carefully edited version of his past without challenge.

Zoe Williams¹ tells us that Polanksi:

started by joining the Lib Dems, and standing as a councillor in north London in 2016. “That was for one very clear reason,” he says. “Proportional representation – it’s always been really important to me.” He joined the Greens the following year...

But Polanski didn't stand in a London borough election: he stood for the Greater London Assembly. And, a prominent figure on social media, he clearly had higher ambitions with the Liberal Democrats. 

Some say he had his eye on the by-election in Richmond Park, and made up his mind to leave the Lib Dems once the local party decided to stick with Sarah Olney as their candidate.

And then there was that notorious article where he told a Sun journalist he could make her breasts bigger by using hypnosis.²

Reading it now, it looks like a puff piece for his business rather than a hatchet job. Yet Williams defends it on the grounds that "he was only just 30".

But this is not the first such interview I've seen in the Guardian. Here's Decca Aitkenhead profiling the late Alistair Darling back in 2008:

Studying law at Aberdeen, he stood for election in the student union, but not for a party. "I was just quite interested in getting things done." His manifesto favoured "strictly bread-and-butter issues, things like food prices in the student refectory". When he joined the Labour party in 1977, he never expected to be more than a member.

The truth was rather different and will surprise anyone who remembers Darling in days as Gordon Brown's chancellor.

Here's George Galloway remembering a meeting with Darling in 1973:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.

And joining Labour didn't curb his militant tendencies:

Later ... he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze.

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left.

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been.

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

A reader asks: So what's the moral of all this?

Liberal England replies: I suppose it's that you shouldn't believe everything you read in the Guardian.

The reader persists: That a bit obvious, isn't it?

Liberal England admits: I suppose it is. To be honest, I just wanted to repeat that George Galloway story one last time. Oh, and to show that I've found how to do the numbers for footnotes in superscript.³

Notes

1. Nevertheless, I won't hear a word against Zoe Williams: in my press officer days she was always a pleasure to deal with. Polly Toynbee, by contrast, once made me miss my train.
2. I'm not scandalised by that Sun article, it's just that it reminds me of when P.G. Wodehouse's Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts, turns out to be a designer of ladies' underwear. And Polanski's suggested strategy of concentrating on winning an urban, Corbynite vote will appeal to many Green members.
3. See?

Wellingborough by-election latest: Tories embarrassed by some of their candidate's nominators

The Conservative campaign in the Wellingborough by-election has run into trouble over two of the people who have nominated their candidate Helen Harrison.

They are pithily described by the Sun as:

a benefit fraudster and ex-cop who covered up drink driving.

And the paper goes on to give full details:

One of Harrison’s endorsers was Matt Binley, the son of Northampton South’s former MP, Brian Binley.

It was reported in the North Northants Journal that the ex-cop was slapped with a four month jail sentence in 2010 for conspiring to cover up drink driving.

Having smashed the car Binley then pretended that it was his relative who drove the car.

Another of Harrison’s local supporters is Bhupendra Patel, a convicted fraudster.

It was reported in the BBC that in 2013 Patel was given a suspended jail sentence for failing to disclose his councillor allowance while receiving incapacity benefit.

Patel resigned the Conservative whip once convicted.

This is simply a cracking news story, so it may be wise not to read too much into the fact that the Sun has reported it so fully. But I am reminded of the run up to the 1997 general election.

Then, Labour did not win because the Sun backed them: the Sun backed them because they were going to win. And I wonder if something similar may happen this year.

This report also confirms what I blogged the other day in my post about those spurious Facebook groups set up to campaign against the 20mph speed limit in Wales. The Tories have a problem with the sort of members they now attract.

And it makes you wonder if their Wellingborough campaign is being run by Peter Bone's Friends and Relations rather than people appointed for their competence.

Finally, a word in praise of tabloid news reporting. Notice how economically this story tells you what nominators do in an election.