UK election 2019

The Guardian has a handy guide to how the six main parties (yes, six) enter the election in terms of finances, policies, and campaign strategies: www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/30/let-battle-commence-how-the-parties-are-shaping-up-for-decembers-election.

What's striking is that to me is that to some degree the parties will be talking past each other. For the Conservatives, Brexit is the overriding issue, though of course they will have a broader manifesto. Basically, EU membership has torn the Tories apart for decades, and even though nearly all their MPs have come around to supporting some form of Brexit since the referendum, it was the split between their own hardliners and their mainstream Members that caused May's plan to fail spectacularly, and forced the 2017 election that cost them their narrow majority. With Johnson, who was the face of the Leave Campaign, as their leader Brexit has to be front and center and that should help pull the party back together. Making that more imperative is the presence of Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party, which will push for a "clean break" from the EU (i.e., no-deal Brexit) in the more than 600 constituencies where it is running candidates. In many close constituencies leakage to them could cost the Tories seats they now hold or hope to gain. Blunting the BP's appeal is why Johnson has been trying out belligerence of the Trump-Farage variety in the runup to the election.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Liberal-Democrats have recently staked out the most anti-Brexit position possible: just don't do it. Forget the referendum result altogether on the grounds that in 2016 people were voting without full information on the costs of EU withdrawal, but now that those are known there's no justification for going forward. Of course, the L-Ds almost certainly won't win a majority in the new House, so there's no way they  can revoke the UK's Article 50 withdrawal notice. But by setting out a strong anti-Brexit position they're hoping to attract Conservative and Labour remainers so that they can regain their position as kingmakers before the catastrophic losses they suffered in 2015 (thanks to their foolish coalition with the Tories). 

Labour's strategy is quite different. It's not that they will ignore Brexit--it's the elephant in the voting booth, after all--but they intend to run on a much wider set of "radical" policies that broadly amount to reversing the Tories' austerity program, re-privatizing certain businesses (e.g., railroads), boosting social benefits and paying for it by reversing Tory tax cuts for the well-off, and co-opting climate change ideas from the Greens. On Brexit they'll offer leavers a re-negotiated Labour Brexit that would keep the UK in the single market and customs union, while  giving remainers a "confirmatory vote" (i.e., referendum) that would allow voters to decide not to leave the EU after all. Essentially, they'd be saying their kind of Brexit would not be an existential uprooting of decades of economic integration with Europe, and if people think even that's too much they can just decide to leave things status quo; but in any case the whole episode would be over one way or the other, while a Labour Government would get on to other issues that are more important to voters, but have been sidelined in Parliament while the Tories fretted over their internal Brexit battles. It could be a smart strategy or an utter failure, but it is different.

The SNP is hoping to take all 13 constituencies the Tories now hold in Scotland, which would get them nearer to the 52  seats they held before the last election's major losses. And they just might pull it off. As usual, they will view every issue through the lens of Scottish independence, and if Labour needs their support to form a Government after the election the price will be another independence referendum. In this regard, Brexit is for them an issue that reinforces their position that Scotland needs independence from the English-dominated UK, which largely ignores the country except at holiday and election times. The Greens, ironically, are trying to expand their issue portfolio at just the time when the electorate is more focused on their key issue of the environment/climate change. They're anti-Brexit, but that's not their major focus.

The Lib-Dems, Plaid Cymru, and Greens have reached an agreement to allow just one of them to field a candidate in 60 constituencies in England and Wales. The idea is to have a single "remain" candidate running against "leave" Members, thus increasing the chances of winning. Mostly that will involve running against Conservatives, but in some cases they'll also be facing Labour candidates who also may be remainers. In 2017 there was an effort to create such an arrangement including Labour, but local party organizers scotched that idea, so this time the small parties are sorting it out among themselves. This kind of electoral pact is common on the Continent but almost unheard of in the UK, although these parties test-drove the idea in a by-election in August, and it worked. By contrast, the Tories not only have rejected such a pact with the Brexit Party, but today Boris went after Farage along with Corbyn, so the strategy clearly is to maximize Tory seats. link 

While I was in Europe last week I got to catch up a bit on the UK elections, which likely will result in a Conservative majority, and finally Brexit. Then maybe the breakup of the UK itself, but that's for another day. Over the weekend Trump weighed in against Labour, which panicked the Tories because the last thing they need is to be lumped in with Trump, whose popularity in Britain is approximately that of cheap American beer. So Boris quickly distanced himself from "foreign interference in our elections" even from the US.

The urgency for him is that Labour got hole of the initial demands of US trade negotiators and released them last week. Sure enough, there's a demand for opening up the UK's beloved National Health Service to private (read US corporate) ownership/competition, and another for longer patent protection for pharmaceuticals, a demand by US PhARMA that translates directly into much higher prices for consumers. That sent the Tories scrambling to deny any such thing will happen, but it also served to highlight the vacuity of their claims that negotiating trade deal with the US and other countries will be a "piece of cake" once they leave the EU.

The latest polls show the race quickly reverting to a two-party contest, with the Tories now at 43 percent and Labour at 31, both up sharply over the past two months Meanwhile the Lib-Dems have fallen to 14 percent, the Brexit Party to 3 (down from a field-leading 26 in June), and the Greens still sitting at 4, with others at 5. The failure of the anit-Brexit parties and independents to coalesce clearly is helping Johnson. Together, Labour and the L-Ds have as much support as the Tories. But it appears the Tories have a good chance of winning seats with minorities in many constituencies because neither of the other two parties will back off and let one have a clear shot.

www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/oct/31/uk-general-election-2019-poll-tracker

With the UK election coming up tomorrow (Thursday) a timely column in the WP explains how their elections differ from ours:

STAFFORDSHIRE, England — Imagine a world in which voters aren’t bombarded with television ads and robocalls for months, but are fully politically literate. It sounds like a dream world, but it’s not: It’s Britain.

British campaigning is about as different from the American model as you can get. That’s because it’s not a Wild West, free-market system like in the States, but by a combination of law and culture it revolves around three P’s: Parliament, parties and presenters. The parliamentary system of government gives full power to whatever group of people can combine to elect a prime minister and his or her cabinet. Unlike in the States, there is no directly elected executive for any governmental region above the city, so ambitious politicians cannot obtain power on their own by building a personal following. You must cooperate with others to get elected and rise upward.

This means the focus is on the party, not the politician. Party members, not voters, select who runs (here they say “stands”) for office. There are no primaries or caucuses; a couple of hundred dues-paying local activists decide. They also don’t have a completely free hand. In both major parties, the national “central office” influences their decisions by requiring central approval of anyone who carries the party label. That’s why Prime Minister Boris Johnson can credibly say that every Conservative candidate backs his Brexit withdrawal agreement. They had to in order to get central office approval.

The election laws enforce this system through rigid spending regulations. Candidates can spend only 8,700 pounds (about $11,500) for their campaign, plus between 6 and 9 pence per registered voter depending on whether the seat is urban or rural. That gives each person between roughly 12,000 and 15,000 pounds per seat to persuade voters. Since seats have an average of around 70,000 voters apiece, there’s just not enough money to pay for significant political advertising. Candidates, then, are largely dependent upon their national parties for the spending to reach voters, and that spending inevitably builds the party’s brand, not the individual’s.

Strict limits bring some advantages. Members don’t have to spend their time raising money like American members of Congress (who typically must spend millions for competitive districts), so they have time to get to know their constituents’ needs. It also pushes them to focus on something that has largely vanished from American politics: party-organized canvassing. The local parties still exist, and they can draw on large numbers of people who will walk door to door, drop off fliers and talk with people in their homes. There’s a people-focused politics here that helps keep members rooted and campaigns civil.

Party spending is also limited. Each party can spend a maximum of 30,000 pounds per seat in which they have a candidate standing. That creates an effective maximum spending limit of 19 million pounds per party. Democrats are on track to spend nearly as much to win the Iowa caucuses than the Labour Party will spend on the whole campaign. There are also extensive regulations on how parties can spend their money. Political ads on television and radio are illegal. Yes, you read that right: no nasty negative ads; no ominous music; no distorted pictures interrupting your Sunday afternoon soccer. Instead, each party gets two or three regularly scheduled “party broadcasts,” depending upon its prior level of support, where it gets up to five minutes of free airtime to make its case. But that’s not enough in the modern age to make a serious dent in public opinion. Instead, parties increasingly spend on digital and social media advertising. These ads can include long videos: Both Labour and the Tories have produced humorous parodies of a famous scene from the film “Love Actually,” while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s video has him reading mean tweets about himself imitating Jimmy Kimmel. The longer length gives British campaigns more time to make an argument rather than just make charges.

All these factors combine to make the media much more important than in the United States. The television personalities — called news readers or presenters here — can shape how a party is perceived. Regulations do try to limit overt bias, but it still creeps in through the selection of issues to discuss and people to fill panels. Channel 4, for example, placed an ice sculpture on stage to fill Johnson’s chair when he turned down a chance to debate climate change policy, drawing vociferous Tory protests. The British media, however, are much more substantive and detailed in how they cover the races. Candidates are not treated deferentially in interviews as presenters relentlessly try to get real answers to their questions. Corbyn’s disastrous interview with Andrew Neil dominated the news here for two days after he refused to apologize for allegations his party is anti-Semitic. BBC One offers long programs focusing on specific voter groups and marginal seats, something American media never do.

The result is a well-informed populace, vigorous political debate, and a free and fair election. Our political system and the First Amendment probably preclude something similar from being implemented in the United States. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look with a bit of envy across the Atlantic.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/10/americans-should-be-jealous-british-elections/

While much of this is correct, the WP also notes in an editorial that the focus on digital/social media advertising is not necessarily a good thing:

IS IT still called election meddling when the meddlers are the very people trying to get elected? The United Kingdom’s political parties are putting the notion to the test. Researchers tracking disinformation in Thursday’s elections have found that campaigners are far from hesitant to adopt manipulative tactics that take advantage of a digital system in which lies and rumors spread further and faster than good old-fashioned facts. These strategies are undoubtedly immoral, but they aren’t illegal, which means that, for now, candidates are the only ones who can stop themselves.

The Conservative Party spread a doctored video that made the leading Labour Brexit spokesman appear as though he was unable to explain on television the exact policy he’s responsible for — when, in reality, he answered the question with little delay and lots of substance. That was on the heels of another nasty trick that involved disguising a party account as a nonpartisan fact-checker during the first televised debate and having it rate Boris Johnson’s statements as right on the money. The Tories also fashioned a website called LabourManifesto.co.uk to mislead voters who sought out the rival party’s platform, and purchased Google advertisements to raise the site’s profile in search results over the real deal.

Jeremy Corbyn’s operation isn’t entirely blameless, either. The opposition leader has been vocal in arguing that the Conservatives are plotting to “put up for sale” the National Health Service, and documents he has cited as incontrovertible proof seem to have been posted to Reddit as part of a Russian disinformation effort. These minutes from trade negotiations between British and U.S. negotiators appear authentic, but they come far from proving a secret plan to sell off the NHS.

Along the way, activists and everyday individuals who share inflammatory content online are helping conspiracies gain ground — whether the allegation that a viral image of a sick child lying on a hospital floor was a lie concocted by the left, or the suggestion that a stabbing near the London Bridge last month was a false flag planted by the right. The ability to foment discord has been democratized for the purpose of undermining democracy.

Experts have proposed actions that campaigns, government, civil society, industry and more can take to mitigate the problem, but overregulation of political speech is always a risk. What’s alarming is the widespread willingness of so many to exploit the freedoms the Web affords them — and to stomp on others’ freedom to vote with full and fair information along the way. Britain’s experience teaches this country and others around the world that it’s not only our enemies overseas we have to watch out for in elections. It’s also ourselves.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/britains-political-parties-are-taking-election-meddling-to-another-level/2019/12/11/29e2f222-1c4f-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html