Framing certainly matters. So why, when considering, say, Reform UK, do we focus on their share of vote at last year's GE (just over 14%) or this years council & by-elections (nudging 25%) without mentioning the turnout (which brings their support down below 10% at both polls)?
We ignore those that don't turn out, or that don't respond to opinion polls as if they don't have opinions. Maybe they do, and they feel unrepresented, or feel that FPTP makes them voiceless, or God knows what. We don't know why they don't vote because we don't ask them and media & the parties, using the same methods and thinking as turns people off from voting, only care about the people who show up. And even then, Lib Dems getting similar vote share at the GE and many more MPs (thanks FPTP! 🙄)are almost absent from public media discourse while Farage, Tice, Anderson and the other one (two if you include those elected as Reform who then fell out with Nige) are nigh-on inescapable.
For sure, Labour need to grow a spine and stop trying to please Reform voters ahead of anyone else, but who can blame them when the whole media political nexus ignores every other standpoint and has done for over a decade.
Great piece - particularly for policy and polling naifs like me. The irony for me is that I think Starmer's core moral and intellectual judgements (rule of law, competence not dogma, effective public service, fairness and balance, evidence-based) would go down well
The Labour government got off on the wrong foot for me. They have allowed the NHS to follow outdated science. Government scientists in UK continue to claim Covid is spread by "droplets" when Covid is airborne.
The reason why is obvious. Appeasing business at the expense of workers to save them from ensuring workplaces have adequate indoor air quality (IAQ).
And this ignorance will come back to haunt them as more and more develop Long Covid which already affects 3.1 million.
So what this is saying is that they’re no good at politics - the business of politics, as in politics being the art of the possible and in winning the argument. The absence of a governing narrative is a huge problem for the Starmer govt. Hence, these missteps and unnecessary errors of political judgment. Had the winter fuel allowance claw back been earmarked to help lift children out of poverty or invest in getting young people off welfare into work, we would be in a different place now.
This government's biggest weakness is communication of its values (if it knows what its values are).
Framing certainly matters. So why, when considering, say, Reform UK, do we focus on their share of vote at last year's GE (just over 14%) or this years council & by-elections (nudging 25%) without mentioning the turnout (which brings their support down below 10% at both polls)?
We ignore those that don't turn out, or that don't respond to opinion polls as if they don't have opinions. Maybe they do, and they feel unrepresented, or feel that FPTP makes them voiceless, or God knows what. We don't know why they don't vote because we don't ask them and media & the parties, using the same methods and thinking as turns people off from voting, only care about the people who show up. And even then, Lib Dems getting similar vote share at the GE and many more MPs (thanks FPTP! 🙄)are almost absent from public media discourse while Farage, Tice, Anderson and the other one (two if you include those elected as Reform who then fell out with Nige) are nigh-on inescapable.
For sure, Labour need to grow a spine and stop trying to please Reform voters ahead of anyone else, but who can blame them when the whole media political nexus ignores every other standpoint and has done for over a decade.
Thank you, Peter. It seems to be the case that the PM’s attachment to pragmatism and “what works” in politics may be insufficient. Framing matters.
Great piece - particularly for policy and polling naifs like me. The irony for me is that I think Starmer's core moral and intellectual judgements (rule of law, competence not dogma, effective public service, fairness and balance, evidence-based) would go down well
The Labour government got off on the wrong foot for me. They have allowed the NHS to follow outdated science. Government scientists in UK continue to claim Covid is spread by "droplets" when Covid is airborne.
The reason why is obvious. Appeasing business at the expense of workers to save them from ensuring workplaces have adequate indoor air quality (IAQ).
And this ignorance will come back to haunt them as more and more develop Long Covid which already affects 3.1 million.
So what this is saying is that they’re no good at politics - the business of politics, as in politics being the art of the possible and in winning the argument. The absence of a governing narrative is a huge problem for the Starmer govt. Hence, these missteps and unnecessary errors of political judgment. Had the winter fuel allowance claw back been earmarked to help lift children out of poverty or invest in getting young people off welfare into work, we would be in a different place now.