DAVID CAMERON'S CANDIDATES
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
David Cameron has named a change in the composition of candidates as his main instrument for ‘broadening our representation’ and leading a ‘modern compassionate’ Conservative Party.
This policy raises some important questions about electoral strategy. It is simply how important is the composition of a party’s candidates list?
Is it policies or the Leader or the candidates who attract voters?
The thirty year old continuous MORI analysis of determinants of voting, which has been running since the early 1970s, showed that in 2005 the relative weights of the main determinants were 45% for the policies of a party, 31% for the leader of the party and 24% for the party as a whole. How much of the 24% relates to unelected candidates is unknown. These percentages are fairly steady over the years.
Is the new policy aiming to attract blocs of votes? Will these be attracted by candidates or policies?
In considering electoral strategy, what sort of voters does the Party want to attract? Is it those who are close to the Party’s core vote or who used to vote Conservative or does it reach out into the opposition heartland? Is there an opportunity to attract ‘Reagan Democrats’? How important respectively are the Conservative moral and family vote, the patriotic vote and the business free market vote?
David Cameron has specified women and ethnic minority candidates as those he particularly wants to encourage. Why these particularly? Is it because Conservatives perform badly among these voters? Are there other neglected blocks of voters, older voters, Catholics, the Thatcher Essex voters? It may be that women are under-represented in the ranks of Conservative candidates but so are Glaswegians, members of ASLEF and pensioners. “People from diverse backgrounds” could include socialist lecturers, local government officials, etc. but should they be Conservative candidates?
How well did the types of candidates David Cameron promotes actually do in electoral terms?
How important is the composition of the candidate list in attracting voters? Is the type of candidate likely to attract voters especially if they are not in the constituencies selected for Cameron-preferred candidates? How exactly will the voter in Portsmouth North be affected by the fact that there is a Muslim candidate standing in Derby or a woman in Blackpool South?
PARTY AIMS
The electoral aim of the Conservative Party at the next general election must be to win an absolute majority of seats.
David Cameron said on 12th December 2005:
"When I launched my leadership campaign, I said that our Party had to change fundamentally. Engaging young people with a positive approach to the issues they care about. Showing we have the best ideas for urban revival. And crucially broadening our representation in Parliament so we better reflect the country we wish to govern."
"So today I’m announcing my plans to give this Party what it voted for; more women in Parliament. I’m going to tell you how I plan to change the face of the Conservative Party by changing the faces of the Conservative Party." The reason David Cameron gave was:
"The reason why we must take positive action to increase the number of women MP’s, the number of MP’s from different ethnic backgrounds and a point often overlooked, MP’s with disabilities, has got nothing to do with crude political calculation, or crazed political correctness. It’s about political effectiveness. To create effective policy, we must involve those who are affected by it."
"We need people from diverse backgrounds to inform everything we do, to give us the benefit of their diverse experience, to ensure that we stay in touch with the reality of life in Britain today.""My plan for positive action is based on clear principles. Guaranteeing more women and ethnic minorities are selected in winnable seats." It is useful to read substantial extracts from this speech because there is some difficulty in getting to the bottom of what David Cameron is actually aiming at.
He says he is not trying to attract blocs of votes by putting up candidates who may attract such blocs. He also says that it is not ‘crazed political correctness’. On the face of it, he says his desire for more women and ethnic minority candidates is aimed at ‘giving us the benefit of their diverse experience’ and ‘to create effective policy’. He also wants MP’s to "better reflect the country we wish to govern".
It certainly is a novelty for a party to believe that the type of parliamentary candidate it selects is all-important and that parliamentary candidates are the key to political effectiveness even though they could not hold public office for at least four years.
There are those who say that these are not the real reasons. They say the Conservative Leader believes that the appeal of the Party is too narrow and its image too old-fashioned and misrepresentative of modern Britain. In other words, the new policy is ‘re-branding’ via the Westminster lobby correspondents and how the Westminster lobby correspondents view the world. In any case, we have to analyse if the recent election supports the ideas that candidates who are women or ethnic minority and one might as well throw in gay candidates attract more support from the wider electorate. We should bear in mind that David Cameron does not say that such candidates will necessarily win votes; this is his point about ‘crude political calculation’. Nevertheless, if there is little or no effect of choosing such candidates in attracting electoral support, we are then forced back on the reasons given by David Cameron. That is the importance of changing the make up of candidates so as to effect policy. It certainly has not been the case in the past that candidates pronounced upon or had any role in policy formulations. Many elected MP’s might say that the leadership rarely asked for their opinions.
So, to take David Cameron at his word we have to envisage a flow of opinion and policy from the candidates which will affect policy formulation – and that is why the Party needs more women and ethnic minority candidates.
A further point to consider at this stage is why three groups in the population have been singled out for preferential treatment. Consider some groups who have been left out and are not well represented by existing MP’s. Take the case of the over 55’s and pensioners. They form over half the Conservative vote and most of its financial firepower or, again, what about industrial workers. Or Roman Catholics, a group identified by MORI as a key voting bloc.
One could also comment that the biggest change in society is the increasing number of older voters. If Cameron truly wanted to “reflect the country we wish to govern” he should study the increasing median age of the nominal electorate and especially the actual electorate that turns out.
It is difficult to see precisely what special insights women and ethnic minorities and the disabled could contribute to policy – and that is Cameron’s justification – that could not also be contributed to by Christians, industrial workers or pensioners.
WOMEN CANDIDATES
In viewing the emphasis put by David Cameron on increasing the number of women candidates, it is worth looking at how women candidates actually performed in recent elections.
There is a problem in measurement here. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats eschewed women-only shortlists or any preference rather than a general encouragement of female candidates. Those who became Tory or Liberal Democrat candidates could, therefore, be considered broadly as being there on merit, not by reason of some biased selection method. This was probably the view of the electorate.
It should be noted that David Cameron’s speech was misleading when he stated that there were 17 women MP’s out of the current Conservative parliamentary party of 198 when there were 13 in 1932 – of course, in 1932 there were 520 Conservative MP’s, so the percentage women MP’s in 1932 was far lower than in 2005.
However, in 2005, in the case of Labour, there were all-women shortlists imposed on many seats, especially in areas where regions were not considered ‘feminized’ enough, such as Wales.
It is worth noting how extreme this ‘feminization’ was:
"In 48 seats where retiring Labour MP’s had been replaced by new candidates, 33 of them had been women (30 from all-women shortlists) but seven of these seats were lost at the election’"
(The British General Election 2005 by Kavanagh & Butler, 2005)
How did this work out? Let us look first at the elected Tories, bearing in mind that we would not expect to find much difference between male and female candidates as it was assumed women were chosen on merit.
New Conservative Women MPs Conservative Vote (%)
Putney +4.0
St. Albans +2.0
Guildford +2.3
Chipping Barnet +0.2
Basingstoke -1.2
Mid Bedford -1.1
Average in South East +2.3
So, the results for Tory women candidates elected were pretty much the same as the other candidates, with one good result in Putney.
However, there is no further evidence of any extra gain to the Conservative Party where it put up a female candidate.
As far as the Labour Party is concerned there is clear evidence that ‘feminization’ backfired badly.
First of all, ‘Female Labour candidates defending a seat Labour won in 2001 performed less well on average than their male counterparts. Incumbent female Labour MP’s (average vote down 7.6%) lost ground more heavily than incumbent male ones (down 6.6%)’. (Professor Curtice in Kavanagh and Butler)
This is, of course, a small difference but still the wrong way. But there is worse:
"Where a previous incumbent male Labour MP was replaced by a new female Labour candidate, Labour’s vote fell on average by three points more than where an incumbent male Labour MP was replaced by another man. Whether this reflects a more widespread opposition to the promotion of female Labour candidates than was evident at Blaenau Gwent where the male local Labour Welsh Assembly member, Peter Law, stood as an independent and defeated the official Labour candidate selected from an all-female shortlist is, however, uncertain." (Curtice)
To put it in simple terms, where this type of replacement took place, Labour lost 50% more votes than its average loss. So, from the point of view of actually winning votes and seats, it appears that if a party gets a reputation for imposing ‘feminization’ this is bad for its political health.
Obviously preferring one type of candidate could disadvantage others. So, Simon Wooley of Operation Black Vote said that 2Labour’s equality agenda shoves Blacks and Asians to the back of the queue; all women short lists will be all white women short lists".
GAY CANDIDATES
It is instructive to examine how ‘gay’ candidates performed at the elections of 2005. There were 5 openly ‘gay’ Conservative male candidates and one lesbian, Margot James, recently appointed by David Cameron to a job at Conservative Central Office. Of the gays, Nigel Herbert is now a front bench spokesman while Mark McGregor and Nicholas Boles are also reported as being close to the new Tory Leader. Results are compared with the nearest appropriate regional results.
These were the results:
Candidate Swing Tory share of vote
Eastern Region
North Norfolk Iain Dale 8.5% from Tories to LibDems -6.3%
East Anglian average: 3.1% to Tories -0.3%
South East
Hove Nicholas Boles 3.31% to Tories -1.8%
Thanet South Mark McGregor 1.60% to Tories -2.3%
Arundel Nick Herbert 3.55% to LibDems -2.4%
Outer S.East average: 3.3% to Tories +1.8%
South West
Falmouth Ashley Crossley N/A (Tories overtaken by LibDems) -3.6%
Devon & Cornwall average: 0.9% to Tories -0.9%
London
Holborn Margot James N/A (Tories in 3rd place both elections) +2.0%
London average: 5.4% to Conservatives +1.4%
Arundel was a Conservative seat.
Except for Holborn, all the others were eminently winnable for the Conservatives but they lost in all of them.
On the other hand, the one existing gay Tory MP, Alan Duncan, performed slightly above the East Midland average in terms of his share of the vote and did rather better in terms of swing.
What we can draw from the above is that in constituencies where the electorate was actually presented with ‘modern’ candidates in the shape of gay candidates, the Conservative vote did worse than the relevant region as a whole. Arundel was, of course, affected by the Howard Flight saga and Falmouth had an extra independent.
ETHNIC MINORITY CANDIDATES
David Cameron stated that black and ethnic minorities made up 8% of the UK’s population but only 6% of the Conservative candidates and 1% of their MP’s.
He stated that getting more minority ethnic candidates was not a matter of ‘crude political calculation’.
But, an effective election winning party needs to look at ‘crude political calculation’ and also at David Cameron’s rather simple percentages.
Ethnic Voters
First, we need to examine whether David Cameron’s statistics on ethnic minorities are valid. Is it fair that there should be, by his implication, 8% of the Conservative candidates from ethnic minorities?
Second, do ethnic minority candidates benefit the Conservatives in election terms?
Third, the policy implies a lumping together of all ethnic minorities. It is an extraordinary idea to lump ethnic minorities together and shows how out of touch much of Westminster is. Does, say, a Muslim Asian candidate attract more votes from Catholic Filipinos or West Indians than a white Christian candidate?
Fourth, what effect does continuous large-scale immigration portend for future Conservative chances?
Misconception of the Ethnic Vote
According to the 2001 census, approximately 8% of the British population was ethnic minority.
However, this figure must be reduced considerably when considering the number of registered voters and, even more, when considering the turnout. Some 20% of the ethnic population is not registered to vote and the age profile contains many more under the age of 18.
Then, the turnout of ethnic voters is poor due to a younger age profile, high concentration in low turnout Labour held constituencies and disengagement from British politics (after all many in Birmingham Council elections voted for the Justice Party whose main aim was to evict India from Kashmir).
The census of 2001 showed the following breakdown of the British population by ethnicity (GB only):
% 000’s
British 87.75 45,534
Irish 1.20 642
Other White 2.60 1,345
Asian 4.40 2,273
Black 2.20 1,140
Mixed 1.30 661
Chinese 0.40 227
Others 0.40 227
(Note: there are 1.6 million Muslims)
If you add up the ethnic population it is about 8.7% of the GB population but 8.4% of the UK population.
At this point we should note the size of the ‘Other White’ and ‘Irish’ population which totals 3.8% of the population, nearly half of the ethnic minority population, but voters for which David Cameron does not propose any special encouragement as candidates.
It appears not necessary to take ‘positive action’ to increase the number of candidates with, say, Irish or South African backgrounds and this more-or-less sums up the superficial attitude of the political class to immigration and integration.
As mentioned, David Cameron’s speech of the 12th December referred to 8% of the population as Black or Ethnic. According to MORI’s Black and Ethnic Minority Survey of July 2005 for the Electoral Commission, some 20% of that total is not electorally registered either because they are not entitled to vote or do not believe they have the right to do vote or, in any case, do not register. Additionally, the age profile of the ethnic population is such there are many more under voting age.
At this point it is reasonable that we can guess that the Black or Ethnic Minority part of the registered electorate is 8.4% less 25% or 6.3%.
Then the turnout needs to be considered. According to MORI’s Election Aggregate Analysis for the 2005 election, the Black and Ethnic Minority turnout was 47% as against 61% for White voters (inclusive of Irish and non-British). Bearing in mind that ethnic voters are again far more widely represented in the younger voting age groups and much less in the high voting over 65’s and that they are concentrated in low turnout seats, this appears to be a very high survey result but taking MORI’s figure it would appear that the actual BME vote may be estimated to be about a quarter less than the White turnout and, therefore, 4.7% of the actual voter turnout.
How does this 4.7% vote?
The MORI study, Black and Ethnic Minority Survey of July 2005 for the Electoral Commission, also contained some rather astonishing figures on the voting patterns of the ethnic voters in 2005. (The following figures are somewhat simplified and should be regarded as illustrative rather than an exact analysis. The detailed figures are not available from the MORI survey to complete the exact enumeration. (The figures do not necessarily exactly agree.)
It recorded their votes as follows (those actually voting):
Labour Conservative LibDems Votes for Other Parties or Not Recorded by MORI
Total 58% 10.0% 16% 16.0%
Black 80% 2.5% 8% 9.5%
Others 47% 12.0% 19% 22.0%
When we apply these figures to the 4.7% of the electorate who, it is estimated, were Black and Ethnic Minority and actually voted as a percentage of the total 27,123,000 who actually voted, the total Black and Ethnic Minority vote may be estimated to be 1,274,781 and it breaks down as follows:
Total Labour Conservative LibDems Votes for Other Parties or not recorded
1,274,781 739,256 127,478 203,983 203,932
Black 25% 318,000 254,400 7,950 25,440 30,210
Other 75% 956,781 449,687 114,813 181,788 210,491
If the MORI survey figures are reasonably correct, of the present Conservative voters of 8,772,000, less than one in a thousand is Black and 1.30 per cent are other Ethnic. (Thirteen in one thousand voters) Less than 8,000 Blacks probably voted Conservative. The total Black and Ethnic Minority percentage of Conservative voters is about 1.45%, which equates to 3 Conservative MP’s. Bearing in mind the heavy concentration of some 75% of the Black and Ethnic minority voters in the strong Labour seats, what also stands out from these figures is what little electoral support in terms of winning seats the Conservatives could get from even reasonably successful inroads into the ethnic minority vote.
Ethnic Minority Candidates
A separate issue is how well the Conservative Black and Ethnic Minority candidates actually perform when offered to the voters and, by implication, how will voters be influenced by a larger number of imposed Black and Ethnic Minority candidates.
The above analysis shows that the Conservatives are already well representing the approximately 1.5% of the Conservative electorate which is Black and Ethnic Minority.
MORI’s paper ‘The effect of candidate ethnicity in the British General Elections of 1992 and 2001’ stated that ‘statistical analysis of constituency results in the last two general elections strongly suggests that Ethnic minority candidates secure a smaller share of the vote for their parties than do white candidates’.
In this paper, MORI said the figures suggested that in 2001 ‘selecting an ethnic minority candidate cost Labour about 3.6% of the vote and lost the LibDems about 1.5% pf the vote’. There was no statistically significant effect detected in the case of Conservative candidates.
Moving on to the 2005 election, Robert Worcester’s book Explaining Labour’s Landslip said ‘and again found that ethnic minority candidates – of all three major parties this time – are disadvantaged. Selecting an ethnic minority candidate cost Labour about 1.3% of the vote, the LibDems about 1.3% of the vote and the Tories a very substantial 2.5%’. According to Kavanagh and Butler ‘on average (Conservative ethnic candidates) saw their vote fall by 3.2 points’.
It should also be noted that MORI reported a further survey for the BBC Asian network showing that 18% of Asians would be more likely to vote for a political party if it had an Asian candidate standing in their constituency. (It is difficult to take this totally seriously since there is no definition of ‘Asian’.)
It should also be noted that this is a much greater percentage of Asian voters than the percentage of total voters who appear not to have voted for a BME candidate among the general electorate.
This latter figure shows a greater number of Asian voters would be influenced in their vote by the presence of an Asian candidate than the number of White voters would be affected by the presence of a White candidate.
WHAT EFFECT DOES LARGE-SCALE IMMIGRATION HAVE ON THE CONSERVATIVE VOTE? In a word – disastrous.
The actual number of Black and Ethnic Minority voters is expanding both by children of existing Black and Ethnic Minority voters coming of voting age and likely to vote as their parents and by the arrival of new immigrants who, after a period and depending on their status, will get voting rights. (The effect of Black and Ethnic Minority voters coming of voting age is not further considered below.)
Any analysis of the electoral impact needs to consider the voting pattern of the 120,000 (net) British citizens emigrating every year as well as the inflow of 342,000 (net) non-British citizens of whom an unknown number settle down and become voters (2005 figures).
If we took the average of the last five years of net immigration from the new Commonwealth and other foreign countries of 220,000 and took half of that as being added to the electoral vote, which is nearly the number of those given permanent settlement, these 110,000 new voters would break down as below if they voted in accordance with existing Black and Minority Ethnic voters.
Labour 63,800
Conservative 11,000
LibDems 17,600
Not recorded/Other Parties 17,600
This shows a net gain to Labour over the Conservatives every year of some 52,000 voters. In other words, in two and a half years Labour is adding to its electoral margin over the Conservatives among BME voters the whole total of the Conservative electoral vote among the Black and Ethnic Minority electorate. Immigration adds just over one vote per 1,000 for the Conservatives per annum.
We saw that the Black and Ethnic Minorities form about 1.45% of the Conservative vote. If we compare the BME vote for Labour on these very rough estimates it is 739,256 out of a total Labour vote of 9,547,944, which is 7.75%. Labour is adding through immigration 63,800 a year to its vote from new immigrants or about 7 to every 1,000.
Should turnout remain the same and the same voting pattern prevails about 10% of Labour’s vote at the next election will be Black or Ethnic Minority.
On the above figures, the BME vote for Labour in an election in 2009 would total about one million votes, of which 97% live in England. In England Labour’s vote in 2005 was 8,043,461, so a BME vote of 970,000 amounts to 12.06% of the English Labour vote.
Further, looking at London where Labour won 1,135,687 votes in May 2005, but where fifty per cent of all ethnic minorities live, there would appear to be some 637,000 BME voters in total and about 370,000 BME Labour voters in London. BME voters are, therefore, 32.5% of Labour’s London vote. On the other hand, the total Conservative vote in London was 931,966 of which our estimate of the BME voters is 50% of 127,478 or 63,700 (6.8% of their total London vote).
It should be noted that our estimate of the BME Conservative vote outside London is 63,700 out of a total Conservative vote outside London of 7,840,034, which is 0.81%.
It is somewhat difficult to see why David Cameron should want to impose 8% BME candidates on a Conservative electorate of which only 0.81% is BME.
NEGLECTED VOTERS
The Essex Phenomenon
The brightest spot for the Conservatives in the 2001 general election was in South Essex. In this area of eleven seats, and the adjacent London Borough of Havering, the Conservatives marked a 5.9% advance in the vote as against their 1.0 advance nationally.
This is an area which produces Conservative MP’s who usually sit below the salt and are disregarded by Central Office and Conservative grandees.
The 2005 saw a further substantial advance by the Conservatives in Essex and Hertfordshire, spoilt only by the poor Conservative result in Watford (where the Conservatives fielded a BME candidate). Substantial gains were made in the Conservative share of the vote.
In Essex, the Conservatives now hold 13 out of 17 seats having won 2 in 2005 and one in 2001. In Hertfordshire they now hold 9 out of 11 having won 3 in 2005. In the adjacent London Borough of Havering they now hold three, having won 2 in 2001 and the third in 2005. In more traditional Conservative territory, areas such as East Sussex and Kent saw only one seat recovered in total between 2001 and 2005.
So, in Essex, Hertfordshire and Havering, the Conservatives have 25 seats out of 31, 12.5% of their parliamentary representation from 5% of the total GB number of seats. Over the two elections, their representation went from 16 seats to 25 seats. Out of net 32 seats won by the Conservatives in 2001 and 2005, nine were in this area.
Perhaps some attention might be paid by the Conservative leader to the dynamics of these results and those who achieved them should be given a higher place in the Party’s councils.
The Catholic Vote
MORI have run polls over a number of years showing Catholics were much more inclined to vote Labour than other Christians. According to MORI this has no relation to class votes but may be influenced by age - there being rather more Catholics in the youngest age groups. Previous MORI polls also indicate that there was an abnormally sharp drop in Catholic support for the Conservatives in 1997.
It is true that Catholics were particularly hostile to communism and the end of the cold war meant this ceased to be a driving issue. It can also be observed that Catholic clergy and the Catholic press carry an unconscious but very widespread view of the world in which social justice, aid to the Third World, help for the poor are highly valued. Unfortunately, this can easily be transmuted into a belief in the moral virtues of bureaucratic provision of welfare, expansion of state financing and activities in both the economic and social spheres and an uncritical view of any taxation which can be labelled as ‘helping the Third World’. A further area of criticism is their blindness to the social and economic dislocations caused by immigration.
It should be noted that 11% of the population and 10% of the voters who turnout are called Catholic; well over double the number of voters among ethnic minorities.
Voting by Religion 2005 (GB only)
Con Lab LibDems Other
All 33 36 23 8
All Christian 38 35 22 5
Catholics 23 53 22 2
Church of England 44 31 20 5
Other Christians (inc. CofE) 41 31 21 6
[Source: MORI]
MORI surveys conducted for the Tablet throughout the election campaign show that it was the support of Roman Catholic voters that gave Labour the edge in terms of votes cast; had no Catholics voted, the Tories would have gained a knife edge 35% to 34% lead in the popular vote.’ (Worcester)
Had Catholics voted in the same way as the Church of England voters this would have increased the Conservative vote by 2% and reduced the Labour vote by 2%.
The Conservative Party has not made the kind of policy stance which might attract leading Catholics and the clergy based on strong financial and social support for the family, the necessity for the utmost possible effort and self-reliance, clear-cut moral stances on abortion, ‘gay marriage’, etc.
The Older Voters
The Conservatives have steadily been improving this relative vote among older voters. They are truly conservative, in that they swung less to Mrs. Thatcher when she was winning elections easily and they have swung less to Tony Blair.
The turnout among the oldest voters also increased. 75% of the over 65’s voters turned out in 2005, double the turnout of 18-24 year olds so they amounted to 25% of actual voters. If you add the equally high voting 55-64 age bracket, this amounts to 43% voters who turned out and over half the Conservative vote. In fact, the increased turnout among the over 55’s was almost certainly the reason why the Conservatives even gained an 0.5% advance in their total vote.
But, despite the enthusiasm for attracting gay, ethnic and women candidates, there has been no effort to target this block. A large majority has fallen into the Conservative hands by default.
Insofar as the Conservatives have targeted candidate types in the past, they have aimed for ‘young’ candidates, which usually turn out to be people in their 30’s, while in Central Office ‘speak’ anyone over 50 is old and not encouraged. In addition to the obsession with gender and race there has been an obsession with age, producing candidates with no real achievement or experience outside politics and a far narrower age band than was present in Conservative MP’s earlier in the twentieth century.
There is also a neglect of candidates rooted in the provinces, not just in northern cities but also such identifiable areas as East Anglia, the Medway towns, Tyneside, individual Lancashire and Yorkshire towns, many of whom have their own identity.
FUTURUS/24 May 2006
- The MORI thirty year old continuous analysis of determinants of voting shows that some 24% of voting determinants is due to party, an unknown part of which relates to candidate choice.
- Labour’s imposition of female candidates backfired badly in 2005. Conservative female candidates did not outperform male candidates.
- Ethnic minority candidates lose votes, so do ‘gay’ candidates.
- The Cameron policy of favouring certain candidates because of sex or skin colour is discriminatory and does not offer voters the compliment of selecting the best candidates the local party can offer.
- The existing two BME Conservative MP’s approximately represent the BME proportion of the Conservative vote.
- The BME percentage of the Conservative vote outside London is less than 1%. To have 8% BME candidates is bizarre and counter-productive. Working through the MORI figures it appears that only about 4,000 Blacks voted Conservative outside London, out of a total vote there of nearly 8 million.
- About one-third of Labour’s vote in London is now BME. Because the BME vote throughout the country is mainly concentrated in strong Labour seats, there is little chance of the Conservatives affecting their result by targeting BME electors.
- The Conservative strong vote among the over 55’s has been achieved by default. It needs nurturing. It is wide open to attack if neglected.
- The Conservative results in Essex and Hertfordshire in 2001 and 2005 were outstanding. Those who achieved then should be given high ranking in the Conservative Party.
- The Roman Catholic vote is a major source of weakness for Conservatives. It is over twice the size of the ethnic vote. The source of this appear to be in confusion among leading Catholics between sympathy and concern for the poor with support for bureaucratic welfare and lack of consideration of the downside effect of welfare and immigration on those who suffer from those policies. Some targeting of influential Catholic clergy and others with principled policies in favour of free markets, immigration control and family-oriented policies is essential.
INTRODUCTION
David Cameron has named a change in the composition of candidates as his main instrument for ‘broadening our representation’ and leading a ‘modern compassionate’ Conservative Party.
This policy raises some important questions about electoral strategy. It is simply how important is the composition of a party’s candidates list?
Is it policies or the Leader or the candidates who attract voters?
The thirty year old continuous MORI analysis of determinants of voting, which has been running since the early 1970s, showed that in 2005 the relative weights of the main determinants were 45% for the policies of a party, 31% for the leader of the party and 24% for the party as a whole. How much of the 24% relates to unelected candidates is unknown. These percentages are fairly steady over the years.
Is the new policy aiming to attract blocs of votes? Will these be attracted by candidates or policies?
In considering electoral strategy, what sort of voters does the Party want to attract? Is it those who are close to the Party’s core vote or who used to vote Conservative or does it reach out into the opposition heartland? Is there an opportunity to attract ‘Reagan Democrats’? How important respectively are the Conservative moral and family vote, the patriotic vote and the business free market vote?
David Cameron has specified women and ethnic minority candidates as those he particularly wants to encourage. Why these particularly? Is it because Conservatives perform badly among these voters? Are there other neglected blocks of voters, older voters, Catholics, the Thatcher Essex voters? It may be that women are under-represented in the ranks of Conservative candidates but so are Glaswegians, members of ASLEF and pensioners. “People from diverse backgrounds” could include socialist lecturers, local government officials, etc. but should they be Conservative candidates?
How well did the types of candidates David Cameron promotes actually do in electoral terms?
How important is the composition of the candidate list in attracting voters? Is the type of candidate likely to attract voters especially if they are not in the constituencies selected for Cameron-preferred candidates? How exactly will the voter in Portsmouth North be affected by the fact that there is a Muslim candidate standing in Derby or a woman in Blackpool South?
PARTY AIMS
The electoral aim of the Conservative Party at the next general election must be to win an absolute majority of seats.
David Cameron said on 12th December 2005:
"When I launched my leadership campaign, I said that our Party had to change fundamentally. Engaging young people with a positive approach to the issues they care about. Showing we have the best ideas for urban revival. And crucially broadening our representation in Parliament so we better reflect the country we wish to govern."
"So today I’m announcing my plans to give this Party what it voted for; more women in Parliament. I’m going to tell you how I plan to change the face of the Conservative Party by changing the faces of the Conservative Party." The reason David Cameron gave was:
"The reason why we must take positive action to increase the number of women MP’s, the number of MP’s from different ethnic backgrounds and a point often overlooked, MP’s with disabilities, has got nothing to do with crude political calculation, or crazed political correctness. It’s about political effectiveness. To create effective policy, we must involve those who are affected by it."
"We need people from diverse backgrounds to inform everything we do, to give us the benefit of their diverse experience, to ensure that we stay in touch with the reality of life in Britain today.""My plan for positive action is based on clear principles. Guaranteeing more women and ethnic minorities are selected in winnable seats." It is useful to read substantial extracts from this speech because there is some difficulty in getting to the bottom of what David Cameron is actually aiming at.
He says he is not trying to attract blocs of votes by putting up candidates who may attract such blocs. He also says that it is not ‘crazed political correctness’. On the face of it, he says his desire for more women and ethnic minority candidates is aimed at ‘giving us the benefit of their diverse experience’ and ‘to create effective policy’. He also wants MP’s to "better reflect the country we wish to govern".
It certainly is a novelty for a party to believe that the type of parliamentary candidate it selects is all-important and that parliamentary candidates are the key to political effectiveness even though they could not hold public office for at least four years.
There are those who say that these are not the real reasons. They say the Conservative Leader believes that the appeal of the Party is too narrow and its image too old-fashioned and misrepresentative of modern Britain. In other words, the new policy is ‘re-branding’ via the Westminster lobby correspondents and how the Westminster lobby correspondents view the world. In any case, we have to analyse if the recent election supports the ideas that candidates who are women or ethnic minority and one might as well throw in gay candidates attract more support from the wider electorate. We should bear in mind that David Cameron does not say that such candidates will necessarily win votes; this is his point about ‘crude political calculation’. Nevertheless, if there is little or no effect of choosing such candidates in attracting electoral support, we are then forced back on the reasons given by David Cameron. That is the importance of changing the make up of candidates so as to effect policy. It certainly has not been the case in the past that candidates pronounced upon or had any role in policy formulations. Many elected MP’s might say that the leadership rarely asked for their opinions.
So, to take David Cameron at his word we have to envisage a flow of opinion and policy from the candidates which will affect policy formulation – and that is why the Party needs more women and ethnic minority candidates.
A further point to consider at this stage is why three groups in the population have been singled out for preferential treatment. Consider some groups who have been left out and are not well represented by existing MP’s. Take the case of the over 55’s and pensioners. They form over half the Conservative vote and most of its financial firepower or, again, what about industrial workers. Or Roman Catholics, a group identified by MORI as a key voting bloc.
One could also comment that the biggest change in society is the increasing number of older voters. If Cameron truly wanted to “reflect the country we wish to govern” he should study the increasing median age of the nominal electorate and especially the actual electorate that turns out.
It is difficult to see precisely what special insights women and ethnic minorities and the disabled could contribute to policy – and that is Cameron’s justification – that could not also be contributed to by Christians, industrial workers or pensioners.
WOMEN CANDIDATES
In viewing the emphasis put by David Cameron on increasing the number of women candidates, it is worth looking at how women candidates actually performed in recent elections.
There is a problem in measurement here. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats eschewed women-only shortlists or any preference rather than a general encouragement of female candidates. Those who became Tory or Liberal Democrat candidates could, therefore, be considered broadly as being there on merit, not by reason of some biased selection method. This was probably the view of the electorate.
It should be noted that David Cameron’s speech was misleading when he stated that there were 17 women MP’s out of the current Conservative parliamentary party of 198 when there were 13 in 1932 – of course, in 1932 there were 520 Conservative MP’s, so the percentage women MP’s in 1932 was far lower than in 2005.
However, in 2005, in the case of Labour, there were all-women shortlists imposed on many seats, especially in areas where regions were not considered ‘feminized’ enough, such as Wales.
It is worth noting how extreme this ‘feminization’ was:
"In 48 seats where retiring Labour MP’s had been replaced by new candidates, 33 of them had been women (30 from all-women shortlists) but seven of these seats were lost at the election’"
(The British General Election 2005 by Kavanagh & Butler, 2005)
How did this work out? Let us look first at the elected Tories, bearing in mind that we would not expect to find much difference between male and female candidates as it was assumed women were chosen on merit.
New Conservative Women MPs Conservative Vote (%)
Putney +4.0
St. Albans +2.0
Guildford +2.3
Chipping Barnet +0.2
Basingstoke -1.2
Mid Bedford -1.1
Average in South East +2.3
So, the results for Tory women candidates elected were pretty much the same as the other candidates, with one good result in Putney.
However, there is no further evidence of any extra gain to the Conservative Party where it put up a female candidate.
As far as the Labour Party is concerned there is clear evidence that ‘feminization’ backfired badly.
First of all, ‘Female Labour candidates defending a seat Labour won in 2001 performed less well on average than their male counterparts. Incumbent female Labour MP’s (average vote down 7.6%) lost ground more heavily than incumbent male ones (down 6.6%)’. (Professor Curtice in Kavanagh and Butler)
This is, of course, a small difference but still the wrong way. But there is worse:
"Where a previous incumbent male Labour MP was replaced by a new female Labour candidate, Labour’s vote fell on average by three points more than where an incumbent male Labour MP was replaced by another man. Whether this reflects a more widespread opposition to the promotion of female Labour candidates than was evident at Blaenau Gwent where the male local Labour Welsh Assembly member, Peter Law, stood as an independent and defeated the official Labour candidate selected from an all-female shortlist is, however, uncertain." (Curtice)
To put it in simple terms, where this type of replacement took place, Labour lost 50% more votes than its average loss. So, from the point of view of actually winning votes and seats, it appears that if a party gets a reputation for imposing ‘feminization’ this is bad for its political health.
Obviously preferring one type of candidate could disadvantage others. So, Simon Wooley of Operation Black Vote said that 2Labour’s equality agenda shoves Blacks and Asians to the back of the queue; all women short lists will be all white women short lists".
GAY CANDIDATES
It is instructive to examine how ‘gay’ candidates performed at the elections of 2005. There were 5 openly ‘gay’ Conservative male candidates and one lesbian, Margot James, recently appointed by David Cameron to a job at Conservative Central Office. Of the gays, Nigel Herbert is now a front bench spokesman while Mark McGregor and Nicholas Boles are also reported as being close to the new Tory Leader. Results are compared with the nearest appropriate regional results.
These were the results:
Candidate Swing Tory share of vote
Eastern Region
North Norfolk Iain Dale 8.5% from Tories to LibDems -6.3%
East Anglian average: 3.1% to Tories -0.3%
South East
Hove Nicholas Boles 3.31% to Tories -1.8%
Thanet South Mark McGregor 1.60% to Tories -2.3%
Arundel Nick Herbert 3.55% to LibDems -2.4%
Outer S.East average: 3.3% to Tories +1.8%
South West
Falmouth Ashley Crossley N/A (Tories overtaken by LibDems) -3.6%
Devon & Cornwall average: 0.9% to Tories -0.9%
London
Holborn Margot James N/A (Tories in 3rd place both elections) +2.0%
London average: 5.4% to Conservatives +1.4%
Arundel was a Conservative seat.
Except for Holborn, all the others were eminently winnable for the Conservatives but they lost in all of them.
On the other hand, the one existing gay Tory MP, Alan Duncan, performed slightly above the East Midland average in terms of his share of the vote and did rather better in terms of swing.
What we can draw from the above is that in constituencies where the electorate was actually presented with ‘modern’ candidates in the shape of gay candidates, the Conservative vote did worse than the relevant region as a whole. Arundel was, of course, affected by the Howard Flight saga and Falmouth had an extra independent.
ETHNIC MINORITY CANDIDATES
David Cameron stated that black and ethnic minorities made up 8% of the UK’s population but only 6% of the Conservative candidates and 1% of their MP’s.
He stated that getting more minority ethnic candidates was not a matter of ‘crude political calculation’.
But, an effective election winning party needs to look at ‘crude political calculation’ and also at David Cameron’s rather simple percentages.
Ethnic Voters
First, we need to examine whether David Cameron’s statistics on ethnic minorities are valid. Is it fair that there should be, by his implication, 8% of the Conservative candidates from ethnic minorities?
Second, do ethnic minority candidates benefit the Conservatives in election terms?
Third, the policy implies a lumping together of all ethnic minorities. It is an extraordinary idea to lump ethnic minorities together and shows how out of touch much of Westminster is. Does, say, a Muslim Asian candidate attract more votes from Catholic Filipinos or West Indians than a white Christian candidate?
Fourth, what effect does continuous large-scale immigration portend for future Conservative chances?
Misconception of the Ethnic Vote
According to the 2001 census, approximately 8% of the British population was ethnic minority.
However, this figure must be reduced considerably when considering the number of registered voters and, even more, when considering the turnout. Some 20% of the ethnic population is not registered to vote and the age profile contains many more under the age of 18.
Then, the turnout of ethnic voters is poor due to a younger age profile, high concentration in low turnout Labour held constituencies and disengagement from British politics (after all many in Birmingham Council elections voted for the Justice Party whose main aim was to evict India from Kashmir).
The census of 2001 showed the following breakdown of the British population by ethnicity (GB only):
% 000’s
British 87.75 45,534
Irish 1.20 642
Other White 2.60 1,345
Asian 4.40 2,273
Black 2.20 1,140
Mixed 1.30 661
Chinese 0.40 227
Others 0.40 227
(Note: there are 1.6 million Muslims)
If you add up the ethnic population it is about 8.7% of the GB population but 8.4% of the UK population.
At this point we should note the size of the ‘Other White’ and ‘Irish’ population which totals 3.8% of the population, nearly half of the ethnic minority population, but voters for which David Cameron does not propose any special encouragement as candidates.
It appears not necessary to take ‘positive action’ to increase the number of candidates with, say, Irish or South African backgrounds and this more-or-less sums up the superficial attitude of the political class to immigration and integration.
As mentioned, David Cameron’s speech of the 12th December referred to 8% of the population as Black or Ethnic. According to MORI’s Black and Ethnic Minority Survey of July 2005 for the Electoral Commission, some 20% of that total is not electorally registered either because they are not entitled to vote or do not believe they have the right to do vote or, in any case, do not register. Additionally, the age profile of the ethnic population is such there are many more under voting age.
At this point it is reasonable that we can guess that the Black or Ethnic Minority part of the registered electorate is 8.4% less 25% or 6.3%.
Then the turnout needs to be considered. According to MORI’s Election Aggregate Analysis for the 2005 election, the Black and Ethnic Minority turnout was 47% as against 61% for White voters (inclusive of Irish and non-British). Bearing in mind that ethnic voters are again far more widely represented in the younger voting age groups and much less in the high voting over 65’s and that they are concentrated in low turnout seats, this appears to be a very high survey result but taking MORI’s figure it would appear that the actual BME vote may be estimated to be about a quarter less than the White turnout and, therefore, 4.7% of the actual voter turnout.
How does this 4.7% vote?
The MORI study, Black and Ethnic Minority Survey of July 2005 for the Electoral Commission, also contained some rather astonishing figures on the voting patterns of the ethnic voters in 2005. (The following figures are somewhat simplified and should be regarded as illustrative rather than an exact analysis. The detailed figures are not available from the MORI survey to complete the exact enumeration. (The figures do not necessarily exactly agree.)
It recorded their votes as follows (those actually voting):
Labour Conservative LibDems Votes for Other Parties or Not Recorded by MORI
Total 58% 10.0% 16% 16.0%
Black 80% 2.5% 8% 9.5%
Others 47% 12.0% 19% 22.0%
When we apply these figures to the 4.7% of the electorate who, it is estimated, were Black and Ethnic Minority and actually voted as a percentage of the total 27,123,000 who actually voted, the total Black and Ethnic Minority vote may be estimated to be 1,274,781 and it breaks down as follows:
Total Labour Conservative LibDems Votes for Other Parties or not recorded
1,274,781 739,256 127,478 203,983 203,932
Black 25% 318,000 254,400 7,950 25,440 30,210
Other 75% 956,781 449,687 114,813 181,788 210,491
If the MORI survey figures are reasonably correct, of the present Conservative voters of 8,772,000, less than one in a thousand is Black and 1.30 per cent are other Ethnic. (Thirteen in one thousand voters) Less than 8,000 Blacks probably voted Conservative. The total Black and Ethnic Minority percentage of Conservative voters is about 1.45%, which equates to 3 Conservative MP’s. Bearing in mind the heavy concentration of some 75% of the Black and Ethnic minority voters in the strong Labour seats, what also stands out from these figures is what little electoral support in terms of winning seats the Conservatives could get from even reasonably successful inroads into the ethnic minority vote.
Ethnic Minority Candidates
A separate issue is how well the Conservative Black and Ethnic Minority candidates actually perform when offered to the voters and, by implication, how will voters be influenced by a larger number of imposed Black and Ethnic Minority candidates.
The above analysis shows that the Conservatives are already well representing the approximately 1.5% of the Conservative electorate which is Black and Ethnic Minority.
MORI’s paper ‘The effect of candidate ethnicity in the British General Elections of 1992 and 2001’ stated that ‘statistical analysis of constituency results in the last two general elections strongly suggests that Ethnic minority candidates secure a smaller share of the vote for their parties than do white candidates’.
In this paper, MORI said the figures suggested that in 2001 ‘selecting an ethnic minority candidate cost Labour about 3.6% of the vote and lost the LibDems about 1.5% pf the vote’. There was no statistically significant effect detected in the case of Conservative candidates.
Moving on to the 2005 election, Robert Worcester’s book Explaining Labour’s Landslip said ‘and again found that ethnic minority candidates – of all three major parties this time – are disadvantaged. Selecting an ethnic minority candidate cost Labour about 1.3% of the vote, the LibDems about 1.3% of the vote and the Tories a very substantial 2.5%’. According to Kavanagh and Butler ‘on average (Conservative ethnic candidates) saw their vote fall by 3.2 points’.
It should also be noted that MORI reported a further survey for the BBC Asian network showing that 18% of Asians would be more likely to vote for a political party if it had an Asian candidate standing in their constituency. (It is difficult to take this totally seriously since there is no definition of ‘Asian’.)
It should also be noted that this is a much greater percentage of Asian voters than the percentage of total voters who appear not to have voted for a BME candidate among the general electorate.
This latter figure shows a greater number of Asian voters would be influenced in their vote by the presence of an Asian candidate than the number of White voters would be affected by the presence of a White candidate.
WHAT EFFECT DOES LARGE-SCALE IMMIGRATION HAVE ON THE CONSERVATIVE VOTE? In a word – disastrous.
The actual number of Black and Ethnic Minority voters is expanding both by children of existing Black and Ethnic Minority voters coming of voting age and likely to vote as their parents and by the arrival of new immigrants who, after a period and depending on their status, will get voting rights. (The effect of Black and Ethnic Minority voters coming of voting age is not further considered below.)
Any analysis of the electoral impact needs to consider the voting pattern of the 120,000 (net) British citizens emigrating every year as well as the inflow of 342,000 (net) non-British citizens of whom an unknown number settle down and become voters (2005 figures).
If we took the average of the last five years of net immigration from the new Commonwealth and other foreign countries of 220,000 and took half of that as being added to the electoral vote, which is nearly the number of those given permanent settlement, these 110,000 new voters would break down as below if they voted in accordance with existing Black and Minority Ethnic voters.
Labour 63,800
Conservative 11,000
LibDems 17,600
Not recorded/Other Parties 17,600
This shows a net gain to Labour over the Conservatives every year of some 52,000 voters. In other words, in two and a half years Labour is adding to its electoral margin over the Conservatives among BME voters the whole total of the Conservative electoral vote among the Black and Ethnic Minority electorate. Immigration adds just over one vote per 1,000 for the Conservatives per annum.
We saw that the Black and Ethnic Minorities form about 1.45% of the Conservative vote. If we compare the BME vote for Labour on these very rough estimates it is 739,256 out of a total Labour vote of 9,547,944, which is 7.75%. Labour is adding through immigration 63,800 a year to its vote from new immigrants or about 7 to every 1,000.
Should turnout remain the same and the same voting pattern prevails about 10% of Labour’s vote at the next election will be Black or Ethnic Minority.
On the above figures, the BME vote for Labour in an election in 2009 would total about one million votes, of which 97% live in England. In England Labour’s vote in 2005 was 8,043,461, so a BME vote of 970,000 amounts to 12.06% of the English Labour vote.
Further, looking at London where Labour won 1,135,687 votes in May 2005, but where fifty per cent of all ethnic minorities live, there would appear to be some 637,000 BME voters in total and about 370,000 BME Labour voters in London. BME voters are, therefore, 32.5% of Labour’s London vote. On the other hand, the total Conservative vote in London was 931,966 of which our estimate of the BME voters is 50% of 127,478 or 63,700 (6.8% of their total London vote).
It should be noted that our estimate of the BME Conservative vote outside London is 63,700 out of a total Conservative vote outside London of 7,840,034, which is 0.81%.
It is somewhat difficult to see why David Cameron should want to impose 8% BME candidates on a Conservative electorate of which only 0.81% is BME.
NEGLECTED VOTERS
The Essex Phenomenon
The brightest spot for the Conservatives in the 2001 general election was in South Essex. In this area of eleven seats, and the adjacent London Borough of Havering, the Conservatives marked a 5.9% advance in the vote as against their 1.0 advance nationally.
This is an area which produces Conservative MP’s who usually sit below the salt and are disregarded by Central Office and Conservative grandees.
The 2005 saw a further substantial advance by the Conservatives in Essex and Hertfordshire, spoilt only by the poor Conservative result in Watford (where the Conservatives fielded a BME candidate). Substantial gains were made in the Conservative share of the vote.
In Essex, the Conservatives now hold 13 out of 17 seats having won 2 in 2005 and one in 2001. In Hertfordshire they now hold 9 out of 11 having won 3 in 2005. In the adjacent London Borough of Havering they now hold three, having won 2 in 2001 and the third in 2005. In more traditional Conservative territory, areas such as East Sussex and Kent saw only one seat recovered in total between 2001 and 2005.
So, in Essex, Hertfordshire and Havering, the Conservatives have 25 seats out of 31, 12.5% of their parliamentary representation from 5% of the total GB number of seats. Over the two elections, their representation went from 16 seats to 25 seats. Out of net 32 seats won by the Conservatives in 2001 and 2005, nine were in this area.
Perhaps some attention might be paid by the Conservative leader to the dynamics of these results and those who achieved them should be given a higher place in the Party’s councils.
The Catholic Vote
MORI have run polls over a number of years showing Catholics were much more inclined to vote Labour than other Christians. According to MORI this has no relation to class votes but may be influenced by age - there being rather more Catholics in the youngest age groups. Previous MORI polls also indicate that there was an abnormally sharp drop in Catholic support for the Conservatives in 1997.
It is true that Catholics were particularly hostile to communism and the end of the cold war meant this ceased to be a driving issue. It can also be observed that Catholic clergy and the Catholic press carry an unconscious but very widespread view of the world in which social justice, aid to the Third World, help for the poor are highly valued. Unfortunately, this can easily be transmuted into a belief in the moral virtues of bureaucratic provision of welfare, expansion of state financing and activities in both the economic and social spheres and an uncritical view of any taxation which can be labelled as ‘helping the Third World’. A further area of criticism is their blindness to the social and economic dislocations caused by immigration.
It should be noted that 11% of the population and 10% of the voters who turnout are called Catholic; well over double the number of voters among ethnic minorities.
Voting by Religion 2005 (GB only)
Con Lab LibDems Other
All 33 36 23 8
All Christian 38 35 22 5
Catholics 23 53 22 2
Church of England 44 31 20 5
Other Christians (inc. CofE) 41 31 21 6
[Source: MORI]
MORI surveys conducted for the Tablet throughout the election campaign show that it was the support of Roman Catholic voters that gave Labour the edge in terms of votes cast; had no Catholics voted, the Tories would have gained a knife edge 35% to 34% lead in the popular vote.’ (Worcester)
Had Catholics voted in the same way as the Church of England voters this would have increased the Conservative vote by 2% and reduced the Labour vote by 2%.
The Conservative Party has not made the kind of policy stance which might attract leading Catholics and the clergy based on strong financial and social support for the family, the necessity for the utmost possible effort and self-reliance, clear-cut moral stances on abortion, ‘gay marriage’, etc.
The Older Voters
The Conservatives have steadily been improving this relative vote among older voters. They are truly conservative, in that they swung less to Mrs. Thatcher when she was winning elections easily and they have swung less to Tony Blair.
The turnout among the oldest voters also increased. 75% of the over 65’s voters turned out in 2005, double the turnout of 18-24 year olds so they amounted to 25% of actual voters. If you add the equally high voting 55-64 age bracket, this amounts to 43% voters who turned out and over half the Conservative vote. In fact, the increased turnout among the over 55’s was almost certainly the reason why the Conservatives even gained an 0.5% advance in their total vote.
But, despite the enthusiasm for attracting gay, ethnic and women candidates, there has been no effort to target this block. A large majority has fallen into the Conservative hands by default.
Insofar as the Conservatives have targeted candidate types in the past, they have aimed for ‘young’ candidates, which usually turn out to be people in their 30’s, while in Central Office ‘speak’ anyone over 50 is old and not encouraged. In addition to the obsession with gender and race there has been an obsession with age, producing candidates with no real achievement or experience outside politics and a far narrower age band than was present in Conservative MP’s earlier in the twentieth century.
There is also a neglect of candidates rooted in the provinces, not just in northern cities but also such identifiable areas as East Anglia, the Medway towns, Tyneside, individual Lancashire and Yorkshire towns, many of whom have their own identity.
FUTURUS/24 May 2006