Current Affairs for dummies, slash people who actually have lives and don’t have time to read the news
By: Nick Melendez
Tags: Elections, Labour Party, Politics, UK Politics, Jeremy Corbyn

What’s this noise about Labour — candidate selection (August, 2016)

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The Labour Party leadership is being decided in elections at the moment. This is being voted on by members of the party, votes are being cast as we speak and the result will be announced September 12th. The vote is between Jeremy Corbyn, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. According to most polls Corbyn has the majority of support with Burham chasing closely behind. Cooper is just trailing and Kendall has been more or less left in the dust.

Why does this matter? Well the winner of these elections will face off against the conservatives in the next general elections in 2020. Now this is very important, Labour got defeated last time, largely put down to them being seen as too left-wing. At the moment it looks like by 2020 the British economy will have recovered and people with more money tend to be more conservative (right-wing)* — Look at seconds graph of reference 1, when household income reaches above £50k they are much more likely to vote Conservative.

It’s also arguable that voters will associate the economic recovery with the Tories (right-wing) as they will have presided over a period of strong growth. Whilst of course their policies will have had an effect on the UK economy, the recovery would also be due to a Global (and especially European) recovery. Not just that but the Tories also took over basically at the lowest point, meaning things could basically only get better. Furthermore the Bank of England had a big hand in spurring the economic growth Britain experienced**.

So if people consider the economy to be the most important thing when voting**, they attribute the economic growth to be down to Tory policy and they are also more likely to vote Tory if they have more money, it’s going to be a tough fight for Labour come next election.

Out of the candidates Corbyn is considered to be the most left-wing. He argues for the re-nationalization (government taking over) of the rail and energy sectors and a big uptick in taxes & spending****. So basically Corbyn winning the Labour leadership race could really harm the chances of Labour winning General election in 2020. This is either good news or bad news depending on your views, if you think lower taxes and less spending is good, raise a glass to Corby. If you prefer a higher tax, higher spending model, you may be in trouble.

As a side note, pollsters got the 2015 election more or less totally wrong. Although most polls are putting Corbyn as the most popular, bookies are suggesting the winner will be Burham. Whilst he is more moderate than Corby, he still argues for the re-nationalisation of the railways and spending & tax increases. If he were to win control of the Labour party, he would, as is often the case with politicians, have to move more to the centre, giving up some of his more extreme ideas. Let’s see what happens.

*://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/to-explain-voting-intentions-income-is-more-important-for-the-conservatives-than-for-labour/

**http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21650606-recovery-will-not-be-complete-until-interest-rates-rise-climb-come

***http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11559986/Vote-could-be-swayed-by-Tory-strength-on-economy-poll-finds.html

****http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33772024