How long can Labour members stay happily unhappy?

Labour's membership figures have dropped as it's poll ratings and donations have risen. How much does this matter and why?

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The photo above was tweeted yesterday from the Rutherglen Labour account. For anyone who follows a number of Labour activists on Twitter/X or any of the other platforms, the form will be instantly recognisable. A group of dedicated activists holding up their leaflets or posters ready to embark on the joys of canvassing.

I’m going to tell you a secret: I hate canvassing. I’m good at it. Someone once told me that watching me canvass (in a town I was visiting for the first time) was like watching someone meet 20 unknown relatives. This is because I understand canvassing as a sales exercise and I have always excelled at sales. I didn’t love a chemical cleaner that diluted 500/1 either - but boy you would not have known that from the conversations I had with mid-level purchasing managers in the mid-90s. I accept that it is my role to be a friendly and public advocate of the Labour Party on the doorstep in order to extract the most helpful information from the residents as possible (what they would vote at the next election. What they voted previously). My training in sales and customer services tells me to do this with a smile on my face and a tendency not to challenge but to engage.

But I hate it. I find these conversations as false as the ones I used to have about chemicals - even though I believe that (diluted as they may be) Labour policies are the right ones for the country - something I was sceptical about with the products I used to sell. Because they are not natural. Voters don’t really want us on their doorsteps taking up their precious leisure time, however much their oft-voiced complaint is “we never see you”. So you feel the pressure to get out of the conversation as soon as both sides feel is polite, while simultaneously wanting to both extract the data you need and give the voter a genuine sense that you want to engage with them even as you sympathise with their unwillingness to engage with you.

I don’t know how many Labour members feel the same as I do. More than would say so out loud I am sure. For too many canvassing is not just seen as a duty to be done well, but also as something you have to be seen to enjoy even when not actually doing it. Of course, you can’t let on to the voters that this isn’t absolutely the only way you would want to be spending your Saturday morning. But it seems odd to me that we also feel the need to tell each other this too.

I mention all this because I have done a significant amount of canvassing in my life. I still do the odd leaflet round here and there. I give my time for free to try and get Labour candidates elected. Because I think there should be a Labour government and I give my time and my money in subs to try and make that happen. So what am I owed in return?

This is the question that bedevils political parties. Because by behaving as I have outlined above, it is quite clear that people who join political parties are a bit weird. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I just mean that we are different from mainstream voters - whatever they happen to vote.

I’ve long argued that we shouldn’t refer to ‘Labour voters’ or ‘Tory voters’ as it inculcates a mindset in which we can’t imagine changing such people’s minds. However, it is really hard to get Party members to stop doing so. In part because they struggle to put themselves into the mindset where voting is really a choice to be made. When you’re tribal enough to give up at least money and often money and time, the idea that voting is not something you feel strongly about is quite a long way from your comfort or empathy zone.

As such, what a party does to reach out to those potential voters looks very different to what a party would do were it to only please it’s supporters.

A few weeks ago, I made the generous and ungenerous cases for what I think is the strategy of Starmer’s Labour Party. I still veer between the two as the Labour top team have had a summer of excess caution. What I don’t think, either way, is that Starmer is essentially a Tory who has taken over the Labour Party in order to kill off any chance of there being anything left wing in government at all. But I know - or at least follow on Twitter - people who genuinely do believe this, some of whom are still members of the Labour Party.

A tweet I haven’t sent in response to many of these folk but have been frequently on the brink of doing so is “I don’t agree with that interpretation, but I recognise that it makes you happily unhappy to think that.”

I think happily unhappy is the default state for lots of Party members. Especially those who identify with the Party as a whole rather than allying themselves to a particular leader ( for example, Corbyn supporters are just unhappy with Starmer full stop. Blairites were just unhappy with Corbyn in totality. Both are or were too tortured in their unhappiness to be happy with it).

The happily unhappy are those who accept that the Party will never offer them everything they want. But can find at least a 51:49 ratio for rationalising their continued support. They may spend their time trying to persuade the party more to their will - say on Brexit or welfare policy or women’s rights or voting reform. But when push comes to shove, they accept that politics is a compromise between what you want as an individual and what the electorate will tolerate and you make your bargain based on your own personal red lines and what you are willing to tolerate to support a party whose principles you share and whose policies you believe to at least be better than what is in place now.

Now I was only 22 when Labour was last elected into government from opposition. So my memories are hazy from the excesses I indulged in at the time and the excess of youth I have long since recovered from. But I remember Party members feeling better in the run up to 1997 than they do today. Yes, there was a certain amount of grumbling about the narrowness, smallness, meanness of New Labour’s offering. But the happiness/unhappiness ratio felt less tight. We were more willing to be happily unhappy than it feels like many are today.

In part, I think that’s to do with the changes in society and - as a result - the left since then. We have got a lot more used to acting as consumers in so many more aspects of our lives, that we do tend to expect a more tailored politics. We curate so much of our lives through social media that we want a more curated politics.

But that will never happen in a mass-participation democracy. Labour’s offer has to appeal more widely than to its membership and sometimes that means deliberately not appealing to its activist base.

The problem is, Labour does need a certain amount of activism. And if it needs it less at this election, where to a large extent not being a Tory will go a long way, it will definitely definitely need it after what are likely to be a difficult and exhausting first term.

Labour cannot go into a core vote strategy. We have seen that end in disaster. But the Party leadership must learn how to piss off its activists less. Becuase the business money might be nice but it is contingent on Labour winning. Activist money time and energy never has been.

This is why Labour should both celebrate gaining lots of new donations (it makes us look like winners) while at the same time having a serious rethink around how to stop a drain of members. Because everyone at the top of the party has made clear that - ambitious or not - Labour’s plans for the country are a decade-long project at least. You want to get to the second half of that, you need to take more of your own people with you.

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What I’ve been up to

The last of my three summer reads interviews for House of Comments is now available. This time I interviewed Rafael Behr about his lovely book ‘Politics: A Survivor’s Guide’. Today Charlotte and I are back on form with a look at Dorries, ULEZ and the mini-reshuffle.

I also reviewed some absolutely delightful theatre this fortnight.

The Effect at the National Theatre was everything I thought it would be having studied it (and other Lucy Prebble works) previously.

Readers may remember I was a huge fan of Abigail Hood’s Monster last year. This year she is back with the equally intriguing Spiral. Watch out for Hood - she’s a Prebble in the making.

Finally, I really enjoyed seeing To Hecate! a really honest and beautiful examination of post-menopausal womanhood.