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- 1 The notion of “heartland” is a contested notion and is used here as a commonly accepted shortcut to (...)
- 2 See for example Geoffrey Evans and James Tilly, The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion (...)
- 3 For a quick explainer, see for example Geoffrey Evans and Jonathan Mellon, “The Re-shaping Of Class (...)
- 4 Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England (Basingstoke: Macmillan (...)
1The Labour Party’s landslide victory on July 4, 2024, marked the endpoint of a highly turbulent period for the party. Whilst in opposition for fourteen years, Labour experienced huge swings in its political outlook under the leaderships of Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer. Among other problems, Labour had to contend with the loss of its “heartlands”,1 the culmination of a long-term process of disengagement of a constituency of voters once considered the party’s foundation and a captive audience, who had drifted away from the party since the New Labour years,2 before decisively swinging to the right in 2019 on the back of Brexit.3 The loss of Scotland and the collapse of the Red Wall had constituted moments of reckoning for Labour strategists. In this context, “rebuilding” the wall in ex-Labour “strongholds” in the North and Midlands and bringing back the “broken heartlands”,4 which had historically constituted the party’s “bedrock”, was deemed a priority to re-establish Labour’s anchoring in these communities and restore stability by protecting it from further electoral upheaval.
- 5 Deborah Mattinson, Beyond the Red Wall (London: Biteback, 2020). Mattinson worked as Starmer’s dire (...)
- 6 Sienna Rodgers, “Inside the Labour Party’s overhauled campaign machine ahead of the general electio (...)
2The massive July 2024 general election victory, which saw Labour sweep up 411 seats, seemed to vindicate the strategy adopted under Starmer to recapture these lost traditional Labour voters. The whole campaign hinged upon the targeting of a particularly volatile segment of the electorate called “hero voters”, who had backed Brexit and voted Conservative in 2019 but who may be persuaded to support Labour this time. The “hero voter” phrase was coined by Starmer’s director of strategy Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and the author of an influential book on the “Red Wall”,5 to describe a group defined as Brexit-supporting, older (but not retired), economically precarious, socially conservative, white, not in big cities, without higher education, concentrated mainly in “Red Wall” constituencies, and deemed persuadable if they could be reassured that political leaders addressed their fundamental core concerns. This was to be done through a focus on conservative values, a patriotic message, and an overall risk-minimising programme. In addition, as the then General Secretary, David Evans, put it, Labour would make “no apologies for that being our focus” because “those voters are worth two”,6 since each vote for Labour would take away one vote from the party’s main competitor, the Conservative Party.
- 7 On Labour’s electoral efficiency in 2024, see for example Marta Miori and Jane Green, “The Most Dis (...)
- 8 Twinning is defined in Labour Party literature as “a great way to move activists from non-target se (...)
- 9 “Voter Id” stands for ‘voter identification’ and refers to the process of building databases of Lab (...)
- 10 GOTV stands for Get Out the Vote and consists in “turning out” identified Labour voters on polling (...)
- 11 The first systematic studies of the activities, motivations and roles of party members were present (...)
- 12 Ibid. p. 7.
- 13 Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso, 2013).
3Indeed, more than anything, the victory crowned decades-long efforts to refine a ground campaign strategy designed to make campaigning more effective and maximise the number of seats won. This strategy entailed a strict targeting of “battleground” seats,7 the “twinning” of seats,8 and the adoption of a new script, in the summer of 2022, to guide conversations with voters on the doorstep. Labour’s new approach placed emphasis on the notion of “persuasion”, a term more or less expunged from Labour party campaign terminology since the mid-1990s, alongside that of “canvassing”, as they no longer reflected the aim of the ground campaign in the age of Voter Id9 and GOTV10 which were entirely geared to maximising turnout, with minimal meaningful interaction between party activists and voters. The return of “persuasion” and “canvassing” marks a shift in the Labour Party’s conception of the relationship between campaigners on the ground and voters, and of the role of doorstepping and other ground-campaign methods. This reflects a growing acknowledgement, both in parties and in academia, of the importance of party activists,11 with a realisation that they fulfil, through campaigning, a key role in connecting parties to society. This change in perception has led them to be regarded today as no less than “the footsoldiers and the lifeblood of democracy,”12 a view which runs counter to the thesis of the “hollowing out” of Western parties.13 A better understanding of what motivates members to join and, crucially, to be active, has had a strong impact on the conception of the ground campaign.
- 14 The author’s experience in election campaigning goes back to the early 1990s, with involvement in m (...)
4Drawing from first-hand material and direct participation in Labour training programmes both live and online, but also from campaigning in the general election in one of the battleground seats, discussions with campaign staff, as well as consultation of the wealth of training material available to party members in the website’s members’ area,14 this article will shed light on Labour’s evolving campaigning model, in terms of both philosophy and practice. It will focus in particular on the effects of the changes on the campaigning experience of activists, a key dimension to understanding the incentives and obstacles to mobilisation. Looking at how Labour campaign services sought to devise ways to engage their audience(s) more effectively on the doorstep, in a bid to create a new kind of rapport between party activists and voters, it will set these elements within the long-term evolution in the party’s conception of the voters and of the role of members in the period under study. In doing so, it will assess the extent to which the changes in campaigning outlook reflected a process of transformative or incremental adaptation. The article thus opens with a section outlining the evolution of the conception of campaigning, followed by an analysis of the new ground-campaign model and strategy in practice, followed, in the last section, by an evaluation of the effects of this approach in the short and long terms, on both voters and members. Will the renewed focus on persuasion, primarily dictated by the increased instability of the political environment Labour operates in, be sufficient to restore long-lasting trust?
- 15 See for example David Denver and Gordon Sands, “Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationa (...)
- 16 A comparative study of party members’ activities during the 2024 campaign showed Labour and Lib Dem (...)
- 17 See for example Lucas Audickas, “General Election 2019: Which party received the most donations?”, (...)
- 18 See Agnès Alexandre-Collier and Emmanuelle Avril, “An Undying Breed? The Electoral Mobilization of (...)
5To fully grasp the significance of the latest evolution of the ground-campaign model, we first need to set this in a wider context of changing conceptions of campaigning. Over the past 30 years, all the main UK parties have come to understand that contact increases turnout, and that an effective ground campaign can therefore make the difference between winning and losing a seat.15 Far from being a quaint and irrelevant tradition, political doorstepping continues to constitute a staple of UK election campaigns. According to internal research conducted by the Labour Party during a local election, the turnout stood at 42% where no contact was made, but increased to 57% with 1 contact (by phone or in person) and to 80% with 4 contacts during the campaign. Other research calculated that there was a gain of 1 vote for every 6 conversations. Doorstepping is a highly labour-intensive but demonstrably worthwhile element of the work carried out by volunteers – “the most useful thing that members can do”, according to one trainer.16 This is particularly crucial for Labour, for whom a large membership compensates for weaknesses in other areas (for example, the Labour Party does not have the “deep pockets” of the Conservatives, who typically attract the most donations from wealthy individuals17), but also a wasted resource if not mobilised effectively. Learning how to better engage with the members and supporters so they will campaign more actively thus became a priority for the Labour campaign team.18
- 19 On the impact of the data-driven ground campaign see for example Emmanuelle Avril “Paradoxes of the (...)
- 20 An iconic example is Blue State Digital, which “helped the Obama Campaign elevate their digital pre (...)
- 21 For an up-to-date and comprehensive definition of data-driven campaigning, see Kate Dommett, Andrew (...)
- 22 The “Bostonians” were three French consultants who had been trained in Boston during Obama’s campai (...)
6The approach to the ground campaign, and particularly doorstepping, has undergone a steady evolution since the mid-1990s, starting with the enthusiastic espousal of GOTV techniques under New Labour (paralleling a similar switch by the US Democrats from whom they drew inspiration), until all parties eventually followed suit.19 The conduct of the ground campaign progressively developed into a huge area of expertise, with specialised consultancies mushrooming in the wake of the 2008 Obama campaign to provide guidance and best practice.20 A key factor has been the way UK campaigns have become increasingly reliant on analysing large and detailed datasets to profile voters.21 This model was deemed so successful that, at one point, it was even exported into countries which did not have a tradition of doorstepping, such as France when the “Bostonians” coordinated François Hollande’s Obama-inspired 2012 presidential campaign and then claimed to have clinched the new president’s victory.22
- 23 Photo credits Emmanuelle Avril.
Figure 1: Activist interacting with a voter on election day, Chipping Barnet, 4 July 202423
- 24 One early analysis of the use by parties of strategies such as positioning, segmentation, and targe (...)
- 25 The Mosaic classification provided by data and technology company Experian is still in use to profi (...)
- 26 Screenshot. Personal archive.
- 27 Screenshot. Personal archive.
- 28 For example Andy Charlwood, “We need to talk about Labour’s ground campaign”, Progress, 26 May 2015 (...)
7This reflected a conception of the relationship between activists and voters in which the first group’s main task was reduced to mining data from the second, a highly mechanistic understanding of the role of campaigners which was mirrored by an equally reductive view of the voters as essentially self-interested and unpersuadable. The adoption of political marketing tools and techniques24 – and a very narrow conception of them too – left no room for activists to build relationships: it consisted in collecting voters’ views through polling and focus groups and reflecting these views back to them in the party’s programme. As its name indicates, GOTV (Get Out The Vote) was entirely focussed on maximising the vote on polling day. Activists were told in training sessions that they should not engage with voters who were not supporters and generally to move on as fast as they could from door to door. With a few minor changes, this was the approach that dominated the next two decades: the only changes were technical ones, with the gradual move from paper to digital formats (Contact Creator, Labour’s centralised canvassing system, was progressively deployed during the period), all the way to today’s use of apps on mobile phones to allow the inputting of data on the go. The adoption of micro-targeting techniques was a far cry from the claim to be “listening” to voters – based on geomarketing tools,25 it simply allowed the campaign to better tailor the party’s message to different categories of voters in the hope of swaying them in the party’s favour. In 2010, the party asserted on its Labour Doorstep page that “it’s people, not posters, that will win this election’ through the ‘millions of conversations going on across the country”;26 in 2015, the website claimed that the party was in the process of building “the biggest people-driven campaign in British political history.”27 Yet critics stressed that Labour’s 2015 ground campaign tactics still rested on a 1950s model of campaigning where the organisational focus was on getting out the vote and targeting the already supportive.28 Behind the rhetoric of “people-centred”, “word of mouth” or “listening” campaign, lay a largely statistical conception of the role of doorstep “conversations”.
8Therefore the key question is to evaluate whether the latest “persuasion” model of campaigning devised in the run-up to the 2024 general election reflected a qualitative change in the conception of what takes place on the doorstep between voters and activists, or was just yet another claim to do this, not grounded in practice. Indeed, the notions of “persuasion” and “canvassing” indicate that the purpose of the ground campaign, where activists engage in face-to-face conversations with the public, goes beyond the collection of data and the securing of votes in the final weeks leading to polling day; it is also about fostering meaningful and long-lasting connections with the voters by gathering first-hand insights into their concerns and preferences. This entails a view of the role of activists as no longer merely engaged in gathering data to be crunched by party strategists, but also as deploying interpersonal skills to listen and relate to voters.
- 29 Daniel Green, “Labour Party membership dips below 400,000 for first time in almost a decade”, Labou (...)
- 30 Mark Ferguson, “5 key things to take away from Labour’s target seat list (and election strategy)”, (...)
9The other arc of travel to consider is that of the ebb and flow of membership numbers: the troughs engendered a need to devise more creative and effective ways to utilise a shrinking pool of party activists. The slump since Starmer became leader mirrors a similar collapse following Tony Blair’s victory in 1997. The party’s annual accounts show that Labour lost 37,000 members during 2023, with a total membership of 370,450 at the end of the year, a figure which is significantly down from its peak of 564,443 in 2017.29 While the party maintains the largest membership of any UK political party, the dip marks the first time Labour’s membership dropped below 400,000 since 2015, the year Jeremy Corbyn became party leader. Even if all members are not active campaigners, they constitute a key resource for a party which relies on party members to carry out a wide range of activities conducted at local level, including the essential task of campaigning. Therefore any decline in membership numbers, and in the degree of involvement which often goes with it, will present a challenge for Labour. Writing at the time of the 2015 general election campaign, when the party was lacking foot soldiers, the editor of the LabourList blog explained that since “there isn’t the money that there once was for general election campaigns,” members had become “far more important than they [had] been before.”30 Using this resource effectively has thus been a constant concern, with the growing realisation that the party needed to give members, whose work could not be taken for granted, reasons to be active. This has led progressively to a reflection on what motivates members and how to better engage them.
- 31 Labour Together, How Labour Won https://www.labourtogether.uk/how-labour-won-2024-report consulted (...)
- 32 Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review of the 2019 General Election” https:// (...)
- 33 Kate Proctor, “Labour’s canvassing strategy had ‘major deficiencies’, leaked report says”, Guardian(...)
- 34 Cited in Kate Proctor, Ibid.
- 35 Ibid.
- 36 Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review”, op. cit., p. 8.
- 37 Ibid. p. 10.
- 38 Ibid. p. 6.
10The new approach to campaigning also resulted from the post-mortem exercise which followed the 2019 electoral rout. Several reports analysing the shortcomings of the party’s ground campaign were produced, both by the pro-Starmer group Labour Together31 and by Corbyn-supporting Momentum.32 The weaknesses of the 2019 campaign were also outlined in an internal report produced for senior party figures, drawing from discussions with activists, which was leaked to the Guardian by a Labour staffer.33 The report found major deficiencies in the running of the campaign including “poor quality and late delivery of printed materials, lack of communication and preparation over key policy lines, lack of clarity on how campaigns could secure the data of newly registered voters, the unreliability of digital tools, and – this is a key point here – inadequate training of activists.”34 It concluded that “there is clearly major room for improvement in the effectiveness of on-the-ground campaigning.” Overall, the report concluded: “It is also clear that the potential of the Party’s mass membership has not yet been fully harnessed.”35 Interestingly these conclusions were echoed in Momentum’s own analysis, which identified areas for improvement: “The existing digital infrastructure is inadequate, with a number of digital tools that were undeveloped and faulty during the General Election, to the extent that many local campaigns came to see them as “gambles” with the potential to cause more problems than they solved.”36 Although Momentum’s report ascribed most of these shortcomings to the party’s reluctance to fix the digital tools and unwillingness to provide support to local campaigns (it saw this as a manifestation of “inappropriate factionalism that undermines the ability to deliver strategic objectives”37) which is not the remit of this paper to discuss – the improvements were indeed made. The Momentum report also pointed to strategic errors: “many seats were lost in the Midlands and Northern regions without having had significant campaigns, pointing not only to issues with targeting […], but more significantly towards the long-term challenge of how to build up Party membership in constituencies across the country.”38 The issue of targeting was confronted head-on, but the uneven distribution of members across the country generally continues to constitute a major weakness, bearing in mind the strong correlation between contact and turnout. The leaked report showed significant regional differences in the rate of conversations Labour activists had with voters: correlating conversations with voters to vote share for the party in individual seats, it showed that while the contact rate in London marginals was 28% of eligible voters (approximately 23,000 contacts), in Scottish marginals, the contact rate was only 6.4% (4,745 contacts).
- 39 Quoted in Sienna Rodgers, “Inside the Labour Party’s overhauled campaign machine…”, op. cit.
- 40 Daniel Green, “Revealed: How many battleground election targets did Labour win and lose?” LabourLis (...)
11This raises the issue of the mobilisation of volunteers. Under Corbyn, it was a point of pride for the left that they could almost effortlessly attract hundreds of activists to campaign in a single seat. Now that the party has fewer members and no organisation akin to Momentum to whip up support, getting people out on the doorstep requires much more effort. This is something that the Starmer team was well aware of. As NEC member Luke Akehurst (now an MP) acknowledged, “I don’t think we’re firing on every cylinder yet on member mobilisation. That is a big task between now and the general election.”39 A big push was made in the run-up to the election to squeeze as much time as possible from members and supporters, with some results: according to internal party data, as of April 2024, 35,000 members and volunteers had signed to Labour’s national volunteer page, Organise. It also meant that activists should be concentrating their efforts in marginal seats where the ground campaign could flip the seat (or secure an endangered one). Labour thus focussed its campaigning efforts in 2024 on “battleground seats” and established a system of twinning whereby activists in unwinnable or safe seats were strongly encouraged to campaign in target seats. According to research carried out by the LabourList blog into the party volunteer sign-up website, the party labelled 253 constituencies as “battleground areas”: some 231 of these were areas Labour hoped to gain, ranging from the most marginal (Burnley) to areas with substantial Conservative majorities at the last election (such as Tamworth). The list also included every seat in Scotland except Orkney and Shetland.40 Partly as a result of this strategy (the national swing was also a major factor), Labour gained more than 200 of the constituencies it had designated “battleground areas”, only missing out on taking 30.
- 41 Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review”, op. cit., p. 7.
12The 2019 experience had shown that, despite the huge numbers of activists prepared to get involved, the ground campaign had not been efficient enough, leading to the loss of many seats which, strategists believed, could have been retained with the right approach. But this laid the ground for future successes. As Momentum’s report concluded more optimistically: “thousands of activists took on key roles in local campaigns for the first time, learning new skills and gaining in confidence, all of which could be harnessed for far more effective and dynamic campaigns in the future”41 – which it was. This led to the creation of a new script designed to conduct “effective doorstep conversations”, explored in the next section.
13To firm up support among its target voters (in particular the ‘hero voters’), Labour launched what it called a new “persuasion pathways” initiative on the doorstep. On closer inspection, it turns out that the changes were not so significant and consisted mainly in improving existing practices rather than overhauling them. Indeed the training material from 2019 was almost identical to that used in the 2024 elections. If it wasn’t for the byline (“for the many, not the few”) and the occasional photo of Corbyn, the slides could be mistaken to have been produced at any point during the period. Labour’s campaign operation is a well-oiled machine, developed and fine-tuned over several decades, so that an activist teleported from the 1990s would not have felt too much at a loss: digital tools have replaced paper tools, the ground campaign is more integrated and coordinated, but the general techniques of voter targeting and segmentation to persuade “soft” voters to switch to Labour, or identify Labour’s voters and turn them out to vote on polling day, are pretty much the same.
- 42 Labour Party, General Election Best Practice Guide (London: Labour Party, 2024), p. 20.
- 43 Ibid.
14This extract from the party’s “Best Practice” brochure encapsulates the new thinking: “By actively engaging and upskilling new and existing volunteers, you can turn motivation into action and increase capacity to support key battleground seats.” It defined “Persuasion Pathways” as “our undecided voter follow up strategy that targets key voters with multiple high quality and personalised interactions. First, the voter has a conversation with a canvasser on the doorstep or phone, or they fill out a survey online. At this stage we collect information on what the voter tells us they care about – as well as the standard voting intention data. Next, the candidate sends them a follow up direct mail including a handwritten note referring the specific issues they raised with us. Then finally, the candidate calls them personally.”42 In sum, the new “persuasion” approach rests upon three main principles: the upskilling of members, meaningful interactions on the doorstep, and follow-up. “Based on Contact Creator data” – the document concludes – “we found that undecided voters that went through the Persuasion Pathways flow were 22% more likely to break to Labour.”43
15It must be recalled that campaigning unfolds in a succession of stages – the long campaign, the short campaign, polling day – each stage calling for a specific approach. “Canvassing” refers to work that takes place all year round. The most significant and intensive is the short campaign, which runs in the five weeks ahead of election day and requires the mobilisation of vast numbers of volunteers, coming to a head in the last 10 days, when the local party switches to full GOTV mode. As election day gets closer, the net narrows down, reflected in a streamlined script that focusses increasingly on the practicalities of casting your vote. The short campaign consists in maximising the vote by prioritising switchers and first-time voters, but also by addressing different categories in different ways: minor party supporters (Green or Lib Dem voters), voters with favourable demographics, uncontacted voters in Labour households, all people deemed to be “persuadable” (that is to say, not core Tory voters) and who can be funnelled down to becoming Labour ‘promises’ (voters committed to vote Labour). Targeting is also dictated by limited resources in terms of time, people and money: there are roughly 76,000 residents in each constituency, of whom, if the constituency is a battleground seat, the party should aim to garner between 27,000 and 30,000 promises.
16The new script deployed in the summer of 2022 tells Labour members not to launch straight into voting intention when a voter answers the door, but instead to ask what the resident is interested in talking about. It also stresses the need to practise active listening. Only after discussing issues of concern will the canvasser then ask which party the resident would support if there were a general election tomorrow. General Secretary David Evans described this approach as “giving before we get.” This is followed by a new “one-to-10 scale”, where the voter is asked to put a number on how likely they are to consider backing Labour. This is to allow the party to segment the electorate more effectively and gather data to inform follow-ups. If the voter offers a number between eight and 10, Labour will hope to sign them up for a postal vote; if the number is between four and seven, “squeeze messaging” will be used in calls and letters. This will enable campaigners to focus their efforts where Labour’s support is “soft”. The big change was that Labour activists, who for decades had spent the short campaign identifying Labour voters and the last week “Getting Out The Vote”, continued to speak to undecided voters right up to 10 pm on polling day. Overall, the script establishes a better balance between data gathering and the recording of voters’ concerns regarding local issues, which the local party or candidate(s) can then address. Indeed, key to the new approach is follow-up, in other words being seen to do something about issues raised on the doorstep, an approach which is thought of as best able to build a bond of trust between voter and caseworker.
- 44 Alan Duggan, Caitlin Milazzo and Siim Trumm, “Local Leaflets: Constituency Issue Messaging at the 2 (...)
17Labour’s digital tools and printed materials also saw marked improvements. The party provided local parties with leaflets that were centrally designed and produced, but tailored to the specific needs of each constituency, a system which freed agents and organisers from hours struggling to produce their own printed material on the Labour Connects website. As a result, Labour distributed 432 different local leaflets during the 2024 general election campaign, more than any other party.44 Improvements to the mobile canvassing app (the Doorstep App) allowed activists to continue their work even in areas with limited or no internet connectivity, ensuring that no data was lost and that canvassers could operate efficiently regardless of the location. These digital canvassing tools also enabled collaboration among team members: with shared access to platforms, campaign staff were able to coordinate efforts, assign territories, and track progress. WhatsApp groups helped set up and coordinate leafletting and canvassing groups. This level of coordination improved the overall canvassing experience, maximised the impact of the campaign, and enhanced data accuracy and analysis.
18Efforts were also deployed to make campaigning a fun thing to do. Since activities such as leafletting and canvassing are very intensive, it can be difficult to persuade ordinary members to help out. The WhatsApp groups allowed organisers to motivate activists, thank them for their work, and get them to engage more. Data collected by the canvassing app during each session would show the number of contacts made, which the board runner would read out as a tap on the shoulder to the volunteers. The practice of candidates posting selfies with smiling groups of activists on social media was made systematic, as a way both to promote the candidate’s campaign and to encourage other members to join in. While the motivation of some of the activists derives from their being already embedded in the local social networks of the party, for others, less engaged with their local party, such symbolic gratifications will help them feel valued.
19But one of the main improvements has been the focus on training. Although member training has existed for decades, the change of approach was made very visible at the 2023 annual conference in Liverpool. Up until then, the rooms used for training were tucked away at the end of a corridor or on an upper floor of the conference venue. Taking part in training sessions was reserved for party members, who had to register in advance in order to be granted access. For the first time in 2023, and again in 2024, the training area took the shape of an open plan located in the middle of the main exhibition hall, next to the Labour Party stall. This meant that anybody could just walk in and take a seat, without being screened. The full programme of the 20-25-minute training sessions was displayed on a wall and advertised in the party’s brochure, online and on paper. Staff were very open to questions from participants and were always around to engage in conversations between sessions. Although at the 2022 conference, people could already attend a 10-minute session on the party stall, this was the first time the entirety of the training programme was made fully available to anyone interested, possibly a sign that the 2022 experiment had proven conclusive. GH Display, the exhibition-stand company hired by Labour to build the area, explained: “The Labour Party team had a clear exhibition stand brief and required their 12 metre x 6 metre space to include an inviting Labour Party shop, an open and bright training area and an engaging information space.”45 This is revealing of the new approach designed to draw in as many people as possible, regardless of background.
Figure 2: Labour Party training area, annual conference, Liverpool 2024
20Training also took the form of online sessions that were attended by hundreds of volunteers (one session on doorstepping was attended by over 800 members). Several of the sessions started with an instant poll of those who attended, providing very useful information for the training team (as well as for researchers). One such poll showed a very wide range of experience since 40% of participants had only been members for 2 years or under, while 40% had been members for over 5 years. The poll also showed that 40% of participants in the session had had no prior experience of door knocking, while 40% had done a bit and 15% a lot. All this shows a big focus on training all categories of members and not just agents, organisers and candidates, who also had dedicated training modules tailored to their needs.
21Training videos were then made accessible on the party’s e-learning platform, Achieve, allowing members to train independently at their leisure, establishing a process of self-learning rather than attempting to foist training onto party members in a way which, in the past, could be felt to be infantilising. Another instant poll run during an online session dedicated to preparing for the general election showed that 42% of those who participated felt that they ‘could be better prepared’, while 20% felt they were ‘very prepared’ and another 26% “not bad”, with 12% “not at all”. The member of staff running the session explained that the objective of the training was “to move you all to that very prepared”, in other words, to upskill the members. The training aimed at providing members with the skills and confidence to be more active. Some of the staff providing the training were highly experienced, one having been active in the party for 20 years and having worked in this particular unit since 2010. They interacted with volunteers in a manner which was both comradely and professional, and said to this author in informal conversations at the annual conference that they considered themselves to be the party’s “civil servants”, quite irrespective of who the party leader was. There is no doubt that this attitude, which percolated through the entire team culture, contributed to the remarkable popularity of the training sessions.
- 46 Although the core group of activists in Chipping Barnet Labour Party has been stable, the loss of C (...)
22This approach entailed a much-improved experience for volunteers. For the purpose of this article, this author took part in the last week of the campaign in a constituency (Chipping Barnet) with which they had no past ties, campaigned for a candidate they knew nothing about, alongside, in the main, groups of people they had never met before. The feeling was that the campaign was a very smooth operation and an overall satisfying experience. The WhatsApp groups made access and integration very easy, providing all the required practical information. The WhatsApp group called “Canvassing Chipping Barnet”, which had 512 members, advertised canvassing sessions for each day so that volunteers could tick the sessions they were planning to take part in: typically, 12 people would sign up for each session (there were four two-hour sessions per day in the last week of the campaign, running from 10 am to 8.30 pm). During the session, anybody who was a member could ask for a pin number to download the app and run the application: it was up to each group to decide on the spot who would act as board runner, giving other members the names of voters to be talked to at specific addresses, and then collecting and inputting the data in real time. The impression of an effective ground campaign was echoed by local organisers who said they felt that activists in 2024, although slightly less numerous,46 were more efficient than in 2019, when bloated canvassing groups covered fewer doors than smaller ones would have done. Improved efficiency, according to organisers, was due both to the experience of long-term activists, who knew what they were doing, and to the training provided to new volunteers, as well as optimal management of resources.
- 47 Chipping Barnet is defined as “commuter suburbia” by the Electoral Calculus: well-educated, 67 per (...)
- 48 On the factors which helped Labour take Conservative seats, see Peter Dorey, “The weakening of the (...)
23The constituency of Chipping Barnet, a battleground seat,47 where Labour candidate Dan Tomlinson was trying to overturn the Conservative incumbent’s slim majority of just 1,212 votes, was twinned with that of Peckham, a solidly Labour seat where Harriet Harman had gained 71.3% of the vote in 2019, leaving her with a 33,780 majority. Despite the fact that the twinning of these two relatively distant London seats involved extensive travelling (over an hour by public transport), many complied with apparent good grace, including the parliamentary candidate (Miatta Fahnbulleh, now a Junior Minister) as well as several council candidates and party members, at times outnumbering volunteers from the local party. This was particularly useful in compensating for lower numbers of local activists at off-peak times (weekday evening sessions typically draw fewer volunteers than weekend ones). In a pattern replicated across Southern England,48 the Labour Party won the seat from the Conservatives for the first time since its creation in 1974 (it had been held by pro-Brexit Theresa Villiers since 2005).
- 49 In this article on Labour’s 2019 campaign, Eunice Goes explains that Momentum “trained thousands of (...)
24The adoption of the new script shows a process of incremental change rather than a repudiation of earlier methods. The increased focus on listening to the issues raised by voters on the doorstep, the importance given to follow-up, and the idea of inviting voters to take part in a local campaign even seems to have taken a leaf out of the community organising approach.49 Just like campaigning under Corbyn had built on previous experiences, campaigning under Starmer reflected a healthy process of experimentation, trial and error, and correction.
- 50 Another issue not covered in this article were controversies over candidate selection. The parachut (...)
- 51 See Joe Moran’s excellent history of the notion of “Middle England” on his blog: https://joemoran.n (...)
- 52 Alex Niven, “Labour is fixated on winning back the ‘red wall’. The only problem? It doesn’t exist”, (...)
- 53 Rafael Berh, “Red wall Brexiters will be the ‘hero voters’ of the next election. The rest of us are (...)
- 54 Alan Duggan, Caitlin Milazzo and Siim Trumm, op. cit.
- 55 Ben Quinn, “Keir Starmer faces discontent as Labour MPs reject union jack election flyers”, Guardia (...)
- 56 Mile End Institute, “Is the Labour Party losing its grip on London?”, 4 December 2024 https://www.q (...)
25The ground campaign needs to be set in the wider context of the national campaign, which, although highly effective in winning seats and delivering victory, helped hide serious underlying problems and created new ones.50 To begin with, the focus of the campaign nationally on the “hero voters” was not without its critics. The main characteristic of these voters is that they were “switchers”, i.e. people who had voted for Johnson’s Conservative Party in the previous election and who could be persuaded to return to Labour. There were two main problems with this approach: the first is that it meant that Labour’s strategy consisted in prioritising a narrow segment of the electorate considered to be the key to victory, echoing similar decisions in the past to target “Middle England”51 (Mattinson had already advised Labour through the 1980s and the birth of New Labour) with the idea that key “median” voters decide elections. This notion has been unpicked by academics, since groups such as “Middle England” and “Red Wall voters” have no real geographical or socio-economic anchoring and are far from being homogeneous; they are essentially associated to a set of values. Alex Niven rejected the notion that the Red Wall even exists: “the importance of marginal seats in deciding British election results may be real. But the obsession with winning them can give rise to an exotic menagerie of “spectral” figures – from Mondeo man to Whitby woman – who come to dominate election narratives, determine manifestos and media campaigns, and ultimately personify massive geographical areas such as the red wall.” 52Another commentator lamented the fact that “the anxieties and prejudices of those people exert a magnetic pull on national debate to the exclusion of other voters.”53 The focus on ‘hero voters’ who had voted for Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019 also involved “de-risking” the party and presenting them with a programme that would not scare them off: thus Labour crafted a message which revolved mainly – but not exclusively – around “conservative” values such as patriotism, security and the control of immigration, and avoided any positive mention of anything to do with the EU. A systematic study of local election leaflets showed that more than a third of Labour leaflets (38.7%) emphasised the issue of immigration, while the question of the EU/Brexit was bottom of the list (2.3%).54 The overtly patriotic leaflets grated on many activists, and there was concern among some backbenchers that the overuse of the Union Jack in party literature, evocative of the far right, could alienate ethnic minority voters.55 In some constituencies, like Chipping Barnet, activists had to distribute leaflets sometimes bearing somewhat underwhelming visuals, such as ugly close-ups of potholes, which Labour had promised to fix in a bid to woo motorists. This focus on a narrow set of issues to appeal to soft voters seems to have worked, but it also cost Labour many voters with progressive views, such as young voters, more concerned about the environment, who did not respond to these messages, and who as a result turned to the Lib Dems or the Greens. A Mile End Institute opinion poll suggested that Labour’s lead in London stood, in autumn 2024, at just 12 percentage points, down from 22% at the time of the election.56 In other words, by focussing on the voters they felt they really needed to win, Labour de-prioritised other voter groups who might be very difficult to recapture given the increased electoral fragmentation and volatility shown by the results.
- 57 House of Commons, “General election 2024: Results and analysis”, 24 September 2024 https://research (...)
- 58 John Curtice, “The dramatic Tory decline behind Labour’s landslide”, BBC News, 5 July 2024 https:// (...)
- 59 James Moules, “Labour vote fell in many Red Wall seats despite election win, analysis finds”, Labou (...)
26The strategy therefore had several serious downsides for limited or short-term benefits. First, it must be recalled that the overall vote for Labour declined from previous general elections (9.7 million votes, a loss of 0.5 million on 2019). Labour’s 2024 tally of 411 seats was a little less than the 419 Tony Blair’s Labour won in 1997. Their overall vote share (33.7%) was up by just 1.6 % on 2019, and mainly as a result of a 17-point increase in support in Scotland (35.3% from the 2019 low of 18.6%). In Wales, the party’s vote fell back by four points, while in England it was up by only half a point from 2019.57 Labour secured their landslide on a lower share of the vote than that won by Tony Blair in each of his three victories, as well as the 40% won by Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.58 Indeed, the party’s share of the vote was the lowest won by a post-war single-party government. Therefore, with 211 extra seats won, this can be described as a large yet very shallow victory. Importantly, the Labour vote fell in many Red Wall seats despite the election win.59 Clearly, the strategy is not a magic formula: Mattinson and other party strategists went to meet Kamala Harris’s campaign team to explain how Labour had pulled off its election victory by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”, in the belief that the same strategy that delivered for Labour could help Harris beat Trump. Harris’s defeat is another sign that the success of the strategy deployed in 2024 will not necessarily be repeated.
- 60 On the tensions between the local and the regional/national levels during campaigns, see for exampl (...)
- 61 James Moules, Tom Berger and Daniel Green, “May elections: Party warned GE handling of ‘non-battleg (...)
- 62 Katie Neame and Tom Berger, “NEC member warns of CLP ‘resentment’ over twinning and cut-off IT acce (...)
27Secondly and most importantly, the twinning strategy, although highly efficient in delivering seats, was repeatedly described as over-controlling and “ruthless”, and is likely to have created problems for the future. Members usually much prefer to campaign in their own area, which is close to their home and which they are familiar with. People in seats considered safe and non-battleground may have worried that the calculations were wrong and they would lose the seat if they did not campaign. Therefore party HQ were very forceful in implementing the twinning strategy informed by their data modelling. Non-battleground Constituency Labour Parties were allowed to campaign locally as long as they were also doing three sessions a week in their twinned battleground seat, and could be ‘punished’ for failure to comply. There were many tales of “recalcitrant” local parties getting their software deactivated without warning.60 Some candidates, instructed not to fight for their seats, felt they had been poorly treated through this form of management by spreadsheet, the rigidity of which made it unresponsive to evolutions on the ground (the anticipated shrinking of Labour’s lead did not materialise, making many seats winnable after all).61 National Executive Member Ann Black expressed concerns at a meeting held after the election: “We are all volunteers, and punishing members will not move them en masse 50 miles down the road. Instead, some did nothing, and will do less when we need them in future.”62 She reported a situation where 25 members who were over 80 years old and would have happily sat as tellers outside polling stations, but “not make three-hour round trips no matter how much they were shouted at”, ended up with no role in the campaign. This approach led in some cases to the absurd situation of local parties keeping their activity below the radar, running “covert parallel and informal organisation”, and at times even winning without the use of any party IT tools. Therefore, although the campaigning strategy was extremely well thought out and executed, it could also be insensitive to local sentiments, pitching frustrated local activists against party HQ, and thus stoking resentment. Motivated activists are thin on the ground, and these will be even harder to mobilise next time.
- 63 See Clémence Lévêque’s contribution to this issue.
- 64 The Labour leadership was thought to take too soft a line on Israel’s actions in Gaza, a stance whi (...)
28Finally, Labour’s election strategy fully exploited the First Past The Post (FPTP) system, which has historically given Labour an advantage as it has done the Conservatives, to maximise the number of seats won. Yet the fact that the Lib Dems also managed to do exceptionally well under the system, winning 72 seats with just 12.2% of the vote,63 shows that the weight of this advantage for Labour is eroding. There were already signs of this when young voters on the doorstep said they would vote Green because they felt Labour was weak on climate change and disagreed with the party’s stance on Gaza.64 Plainly, the “it’s a 2-horse race” message failed to persuade certain groups of voters to tactically back Labour instead of a minority party. With FPTP now a less efficient barrier to entry, voters will be encouraged to continue to vote for their preferred parties. A strategy entirely geared to making the most of FPTP, which worked brilliantly this time, is also dangerous since it is widely believed that it might benefit Reform in Red Wall seats in future elections. Again, therefore, the short-term benefits for Labour may cost the party next time round, since the protection afforded to majority parties by the FPTP system is an illusion.
29There is no doubt that the approach to the ground campaign adopted by Labour in the 2024 general election was highly sophisticated and effective: the “persuasion pathways” model did deliver the results. By combining a focus on building long-lasting rapport with voters and straightforward GOTV techniques to maximise turnout, it made the experience for those involved on the doorstep, in battleground seats at least, much more positive. It also showed an ability of the party to establish good relationships between HQ and party members: volunteers were invested in, upskilled, and then trusted to carry out the work. Overall, Labour’s approach to campaigning and training shows a renewed effort to invest long-term in voters and members. Campaigning and training functions, often regarded as one of the less glamorous functions of party management and conducted behind the scenes, seem to have largely escaped the political upheavals of the past fifteen years. The long-term, incremental fine-tuning of the campaigning model testifies to an ability to renew and learn from past experiences not seen in other areas: there has not been a will to discard accumulated experience to mark a change of leadership.
- 65 Daniel Green, ‘Labour plans campaign materials aimed squarely at Reform and Green threats’, LabourL (...)
30Yet is it also clear that, away from the groundwork carried out in the battleground seats, the 2024 campaign revealed some serious problems: far fewer people were engaged in the campaign, resulting in more work resting on the shoulders of a shrinking pool of volunteers; entire swathes of the country were left untouched, since virtually no campaigning work was done in non-battleground seats; the focus on “hero voters” led to entire groups of voters (particularly young and urban voters) to be left aside. As Labour strategists brace themselves for a fight against the far-right (Reform came second to Labour in 89 seats), it looks like they are set to press in the same direction, as a 40-strong “Red Wall” group of MPs are “asking the party to ‘shout louder’ about Labour’s crackdown on immigration, including deporting thousands of people back to their home countries.”65 This will further alienate progressives.
31On the question of whether the latest changes to the campaigning model were truly transformative or simply incremental, the answer must be nuanced. Despite the scepticism that must arise from some of the shortcomings identified in this article, it may be that incremental improvements to foster greater collaboration and engagement at local level have laid the groundwork for more transformative changes which will in time help the party meet the future challenges posed by increased voter fragmentation and volatility, and the imminent threat of Reform. In an era of highly unstable political landscapes, the ability to have meaningful face-to-face interactions with the voters on the doorstep will become an even more essential asset. Persuasion is not a quick fix but an ongoing process that requires continuous engagement. Canvassing enables local parties to go beyond impersonal mass messaging and establish better connections with voters. If genuine, this approach can, over time, build trust and loyalty, which could have a significant impact on future electoral outcomes. Even if the ground campaign will not be sufficient to deliver victory in adverse circumstances, especially with a party platform unable to appeal to a wide electoral coalition, it is guaranteed to bring dividends at some point, provided the data analytics and modelling which dictate the national campaign is flexible enough to take into account the human realities on the ground, so that volunteers of all kinds and in all parts of the country can feel empowered and enthused.
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Notes
The notion of “heartland” is a contested notion and is used here as a commonly accepted shortcut to designate traditional Labour voters particularly in the North of England and the Midlands.
See for example Geoffrey Evans and James Tilly, The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) and Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, John Curtice, “Were Traditional Labour Voters Disillusioned with New Labour?” in Anthony Heath et al, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) pp. 147–155. Analysing the short‐term and long‐term electoral consequences of the changes, the authors predicted a rise of class non-voting. The alienation of traditional voters was also highlighted in Deborah Mattinson, Talking to a Brick Wall: How New Labour Stopped Listening and Why We Need a New Politics (London: Biteback, 2010). These trends, although hidden by the unexpected good results for Labour in 2017, continued throughout the years in opposition.
For a quick explainer, see for example Geoffrey Evans and Jonathan Mellon, “The Re-shaping Of Class Voting”, British Election Study, 2020. https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/the-re-shaping-of-class-voting-in-the-2019-election-by-geoffrey-evans-and-jonathan-mellon/ consulted 05 February 2025.
Sebastian Payne, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2021).
Deborah Mattinson, Beyond the Red Wall (London: Biteback, 2020). Mattinson worked as Starmer’s director of strategy from 2021 to the 2024 general election before becoming a Senior Advisor to global CEO advisory firm Teneo.
Sienna Rodgers, “Inside the Labour Party’s overhauled campaign machine ahead of the general election”, PoliticsHome, 27 February 2024, https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/labour-getting-campaign-machine-shape-ahead-election, consulted 21 January 2025.
On Labour’s electoral efficiency in 2024, see for example Marta Miori and Jane Green, “The Most Disproportionate UK Election: How the Labour Party Doubled its Seat Share with a 1.6-Point Increase in Vote Share in 2024”, Political Quarterly, 28 January 2025. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.13504 consulted 05 February 2025.
Twinning is defined in Labour Party literature as “a great way to move activists from non-target seats (or seats with an abundance of members and volunteers) to key targets that require additional support. This practice ensured resources are allocated where they are most needed, maximizing campaign effectiveness.” Labour Party, General Election Best Practice Guide (London: Labour Party, 2024), p. 11.
“Voter Id” stands for ‘voter identification’ and refers to the process of building databases of Labour voters. This is achieved using the electoral register, with the aim of “contacting”, through door knocking or by phone, the largest possible percentage of voters in the constituency.
GOTV stands for Get Out the Vote and consists in “turning out” identified Labour voters on polling day.
The first systematic studies of the activities, motivations and roles of party members were presented in the works of Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s Grass Roots. The Politics of Party Membership (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) and New Labour’s Grassroots: The Transformation of the Labour Party Membership (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). The study of party members was taken up by Tim Bale, Paul Webb and Monica Pellotti, Footsoldiers. Political Party Membership in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2020).
Ibid. p. 7.
Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (London: Verso, 2013).
The author’s experience in election campaigning goes back to the early 1990s, with involvement in many general, local, mayoral and European election campaigns, as well as participation in training sessions for activists throughout the period.
See for example David Denver and Gordon Sands, “Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced?”, Electoral Studies, 23 (4) (2004) 709-726 and Ron Johnston, David Cutts, Charles Pattie and Justin Fisher, “We’ve got them on the list: contacting, canvassing and voting in a British general election campaign”, Electoral Studies, 31(2) (2012) 317-329. For case studies of the conduct of the ground campaign, see Emmanuelle Avril “New Labour et la campagne de terrain à Finchley : de la coopération à la subversion”, in Charlot, Monica (ed.), “Les Elections législatives de 2001 au Royaume-Uni”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 11 (4), (2002) 20-33 and “Word of mouth, word of mouse : la campagne des Travaillistes à l’heure des ‘premières élections numériques’ en Grande-Bretagne’, in Avril, Emmanuelle, Schnapper, Pauline (eds), “Les Elections législatives britanniques de 2010”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 16 (1), (2011) 35-45.
A comparative study of party members’ activities during the 2024 campaign showed Labour and Lib Dem activists to be the most active, a result which correlates with their parties’ exceptionally good results in capturing seats. See Tim Bale, Paul Webb, Stavroula Chrona, “UK election: Reform and Green members campaigned more online – but pounded the pavements less”, The Conversation, 27 September 2024, https://theconversation.com/uk-election-reform-and-green-members-campaigned-more-online-but-pounded-the-pavements-less-239570 consulted 06 February 2025.
See for example Lucas Audickas, “General Election 2019: Which party received the most donations?”, House of Commons Library, 24 January 2024. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-which-party-received-the-most-donations/ consulted 5 February 2025. At the time of writing, the full figures for 2024 were not available. They will show Labour’s uptick, but this is likely to be a blip.
See Agnès Alexandre-Collier and Emmanuelle Avril, “An Undying Breed? The Electoral Mobilization of Supporters’ Networks by the Conservative and Labour Parties in the UK” in Agnès Alexandre-Collier, Alexandra Goujon and Guillaume Gourgues (eds), Innovations, Reinvented Politics and Representative Democracy (London: Routledge, 2020) pp. 77-90.
On the impact of the data-driven ground campaign see for example Emmanuelle Avril “Paradoxes of the Cyber Party: The Changing Organisational Design of the British Labour Party”, in Hunsinger, Jeremy, Klastrup, Lisbeth and Allen, Matthew (eds), Second International Handbook of Internet Research (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_12-1
An iconic example is Blue State Digital, which “helped the Obama Campaign elevate their digital presence to galvanize a grassroots movement” and was involved in several Labour Party campaigns. see www.bluestate.co.uk
For an up-to-date and comprehensive definition of data-driven campaigning, see Kate Dommett, Andrew Barclay, and Rachel Gibson, “Just what is data-driven campaigning? A systematic review”, Information, Communication & Society 27(1) (2024) 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2166794
The “Bostonians” were three French consultants who had been trained in Boston during Obama’s campaign. Guillaume Liegey, Arthur Muller and Vincent Pons, Porte à porte. Reconquérir la démocratie sur le terrain, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 2013.
Photo credits Emmanuelle Avril.
One early analysis of the use by parties of strategies such as positioning, segmentation, and targeting to best accommodate voter preferences was provided by Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Political Marketing and British Political Parties (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
The Mosaic classification provided by data and technology company Experian is still in use to profile voters.
Screenshot. Personal archive.
Screenshot. Personal archive.
For example Andy Charlwood, “We need to talk about Labour’s ground campaign”, Progress, 26 May 2015 http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2015/05/26/we-need-to-talk-about-labours-ground-campaign/ consulted 21 January 2025.
Daniel Green, “Labour Party membership dips below 400,000 for first time in almost a decade”, LabourList, 23 August 2024 https://labourlist.org/2024/08/labour-party-membership-400000-keir-starmer-jeremy-corbyn/ accessed 22 January 2025.
Mark Ferguson, “5 key things to take away from Labour’s target seat list (and election strategy)”, LabourList, 8 January 2013 https://labourlist.org/2013/01/5-key-things-to-take-away-from-labours-target-seat-list-and-election-strategy/ consulted 22 January 2025.
Labour Together, How Labour Won https://www.labourtogether.uk/how-labour-won-2024-report consulted 21 January 2025.
Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review of the 2019 General Election” https://peoplesmomentum.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Momentums-Labour-Together-Submission.pdf consulted 21 January 2025.
Kate Proctor, “Labour’s canvassing strategy had ‘major deficiencies’, leaked report says”, Guardian, 7 February 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/07/labours-canvassing-strategy-had-major-deficiencies-leaked-report-says consulted 21 January 2025.
Cited in Kate Proctor, Ibid.
Ibid.
Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review”, op. cit., p. 8.
Ibid. p. 10.
Ibid. p. 6.
Quoted in Sienna Rodgers, “Inside the Labour Party’s overhauled campaign machine…”, op. cit.
Daniel Green, “Revealed: How many battleground election targets did Labour win and lose?” LabourList, 6 July 2024 https://labourlist.org/2024/07/labour-general-election-2024-battleground-areas/ consulted 22 January 2025.
Momentum, “Momentum Submission to the Labour Together Review”, op. cit., p. 7.
Labour Party, General Election Best Practice Guide (London: Labour Party, 2024), p. 20.
Ibid.
Alan Duggan, Caitlin Milazzo and Siim Trumm, “Local Leaflets: Constituency Issue Messaging at the 2024 General Election”, Political Quarterly (24 November 2024, Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue). https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13476 consulted 5 February 2025.
GH Display website, https://www.ghdisplay.co.uk/portfolio/the-labour-party/ consulted 24 January 2025.
Although the core group of activists in Chipping Barnet Labour Party has been stable, the loss of Corbyn supporters was only partially compensated by the arrival or return of centre-left volunteers.
Chipping Barnet is defined as “commuter suburbia” by the Electoral Calculus: well-educated, 67 per cent homeowners, 64 per cent white, 80 per cent car owners. In terms of attitudes, voters are socially liberal and anti-Brexit https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/seatdetails.py?seat=Chipping%20Barnet consulted 5 February 2025.
On the factors which helped Labour take Conservative seats, see Peter Dorey, “The weakening of the Blue Wall”, in Daniel Jackson et al (eds), UK Election Analysis 2024: Media, Voters and the Campaign (Bournemouth University: Centre for Comparative Politics & Media Research) https://www.electionanalysis.uk/uk-election-analysis-2024/section-4-parties-and-the-campaign/the-weakening-of-the-blue-wall/ consulted 5 February 2025.
In this article on Labour’s 2019 campaign, Eunice Goes explains that Momentum “trained thousands of activists on how to have persuasive conversations with voters, using techniques borrowed from the campaign team of the American presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.” Eunice Goes, “Labour’s 2019 Campaign: A Defeat of Epic Proportions”, Parliamentary Affairs, 73 (September 2020) 84–102.
Another issue not covered in this article were controversies over candidate selection. The parachuting of the leadership’s favoured candidates also contributed to depressing mobilisation in some local parties.
See Joe Moran’s excellent history of the notion of “Middle England” on his blog: https://joemoran.net/academic-articles/the-strange-birth-of-middle-england/ consulted 24 January 2025.
Alex Niven, “Labour is fixated on winning back the ‘red wall’. The only problem? It doesn’t exist”, Guardian, 18 June 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/18/red-wall-labour-general-election consulted 21 January 2025.
Rafael Berh, “Red wall Brexiters will be the ‘hero voters’ of the next election. The rest of us are just walk-on players”, Guardian, 29 March 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/29/red-wall-brexiters-hero-voters-election-partisan consulted 21 January 2025.
Alan Duggan, Caitlin Milazzo and Siim Trumm, op. cit.
Ben Quinn, “Keir Starmer faces discontent as Labour MPs reject union jack election flyers”, Guardian, 30 March 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/30/starmer-faces-discontent-as-labour-mps-criticise-election-flyers-union-jacks consulted 21 January 2025.
Mile End Institute, “Is the Labour Party losing its grip on London?”, 4 December 2024 https://www.qmul.ac.uk/mei/news-and-opinion/items/is-the-labour-party-losing-its-grip-on-london.html consulted 25 January 2025.
House of Commons, “General election 2024: Results and analysis”, 24 September 2024 https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10009/CBP-10009.pdf consulted 25 January 2025.
John Curtice, “The dramatic Tory decline behind Labour’s landslide”, BBC News, 5 July 2024 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2x0g8nkzmzo consulted 25 January 2025.
James Moules, “Labour vote fell in many Red Wall seats despite election win, analysis finds”, LabourList, 18 November 2024 https://labourlist.org/2024/11/labour-red-wall-general-election-2024-average-vote/ consulted 23 January 2025.
On the tensions between the local and the regional/national levels during campaigns, see for example Emmanuelle, Avril, “L’impossible standardisation des pratiques militantes sous le New Labour. Finchley, section locale récalcitrante”, in Sawicki, Frédéric and Vervaecke, Philippe (eds), Politix. Revue des Sciences Sociales du Politique, 81 (1) (2008) 151-178.
James Moules, Tom Berger and Daniel Green, “May elections: Party warned GE handling of ‘non-battlegrounds’ could cost votes”, LabourList, 14 November 2024 https://labourlist.org/2024/11/labour-non-battleground-seat-selection-nec/ consulted 23 January 2025.
Katie Neame and Tom Berger, “NEC member warns of CLP ‘resentment’ over twinning and cut-off IT access”, LabourList, 26 July 2024 https://labourlist.org/2024/07/labour-campaigning-general-election-2024-clps-contact-creator-twinning-nec-ann-black/ consulted 23 January 2025.
See Clémence Lévêque’s contribution to this issue.
The Labour leadership was thought to take too soft a line on Israel’s actions in Gaza, a stance which alienated Muslim voters as well as liberal left voters, and cost the party several seats in the election.
Daniel Green, ‘Labour plans campaign materials aimed squarely at Reform and Green threats’, LabourList, 5 February 2024 https://labourlist.org/2025/02/labour-campaign-materials-reform-green-party/ consulted 23 January 2025.
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