[Percentage of voters [net] added to the Labour tally in each of their terms as leaders].
In each of their respective times leading the parties, Kinnock gained the party (net) 3.1million voters, Blair lost the part 2 million voters, and Gordon Brown lost the party 1 million voters. All in all, Old Labour gained 3.1 million, and New Labour lost a similar amount. Thus, Kinnock's recovery from Michael Foot was extremely impressive but was undone by later leaders. To put it another way, 7% of the total electorate flocked to Labour under Kinnock. But under New Labour 8.1% 'flocked' away. Tony Blair lost Labour two thirds of Kinnock's voters, whilst Brown lost a third. These calculation are both a) in raw million of voters and b) as a percentage of the electorate eligible to vote. The raw figures mask a further 1.4% drop as a result of the increased electorate under New Labour. With a bigger pond to fish from they still came up short.
[The numbers of voters in millions who voted Labour at each election]
Now that net assessment of the gains made by respective leaders, does not tell the full picture. You can that Blair had a flurry in 1997 actually growing the Labour base by nearly 2 million voters. Thus from the depths of Michael Foot's defeat Labour managed to gain 5million voters, and two fifths of those were gained by Tony Blair! Bravo! Except that snippet of good news makes what followed afterwards even worse. From his high point of 13.51, Tony Blair actually lost 4million voters in 8years. Gordon Brown lost a further million. 80% of the voters lost since 1997 lie at the responsibility of Tony Blair, with the remaining 20% the handiwork of Gordon Brown. But I think we should cut Tony some slack, after all he did gain us 2 million to begin with meaning that he only inflicted net losses on the party of 2 million voters, not the 4 million as some would claim. Brown though is categorically unequivocally not the reason Labour lost in 2010. They were up a creek without a paddle long before he got his mitts on the keys to Number Ten.
[The percentage of the overall electorate voting for Labour at each election]
Let's look at their performances as a percentage of the total eligible to vote choosing Labour. Kinnock attracted 23% from Foot's low point of 20%, and he added in 1992 a further 4% to that. Hence the net 7% figure you heard earlier. Blair added 4% of the total electorate to Labour in 1997, before losing 7% of it in 2001 and a further 2.4% in 2005. Blair lost a total of 9.4% of the UK electorate in 8 years. Don't excuse Brown either, he added a further 2.6% to that.
[The net gain/loss of voters as a percentage of the overall electorate at each election]
To sum up then. Kinnock added the most voters to Labour both in raw terms and as a percentage of the electorate. Blair lost the most voters from Labour both in raw terms and as a percentage of the electorate. Gordon Brown was a non event. Blair achieved the highest percentage of voters, and in raw terms the highest number of voters. But he inherited the best scenario. Both Kinnock and Brown inherited a party that was shedding voters.
My verdict?
- Kinnock did not appeal to middle England, but he did well in increasing the Labour vote.
- Blair did well to capitalize in 1997 but frankly it was a procession from day one.
- Once in power, Tony Blair delivered a voters equivalent of the rocky horror show.
- Gordon Brown was unwise to go for the job as he clearly made no impact. In fact he simply confirmed what voters had already decided. New Labour was dead.
- Brown attracted less of the electorate to vote Labour than Michael Foot did.
Don't let purple bookers feed you the line that Blair won three elections by appealing to Middle England. It was a lot more complicated than that.
Projected vote tally is in millions]
There are a dozen headlines to be made from above but let me first explain what the table is. I have taken each raw number of votes recorded by each of the two parties at each of the last six election. Looking at the turnout differences between 2010 and each of the other 6 elections, it is possible to say how many votes they would have each gotten in 2010. I also took into account the growing electorate. So for example in 1983 the electorate was smaller than it is today so each party's performance in 1983, needed to be upgraded to take account of the 3 million odd new voters. But in saying that, the turnout was higher in 1983 so each of the parties needed to be deducted some votes to get them back down to 2010's turnout. So all things being equal on turnout and electorate sizes this is how the parties would have done.
Now there are of course caveats. None of this takes account of the strength of the third largest party. None of this takes account of the competing personalities. We don't know whose personality or leadership the voters would have preferred when we take two separate characters from two separate periods of time. Thus, this is an academic exercise. But there are some nuggets to be gained from it.
Immediately what stands out is that Tony Blair amassed that much popular appeal that he would have beaten Thatcher in her hey day. Of course there is every chance that he may not have, this is just maths. What is very interesting is that Major's 1992 vote re-calibrated comes up higher than Blair's 2001 recording. There is every chance in 2001 that Major and Blair could have been a close contest in different circumstances. That both Major's 1992 showing and Blair's 2001 showing were both incumbency performances makes it hard to be clear about this. Another point of interest is that Cameron's 2010 performance may well have beaten Blair in 2005, denying him a third term in office. In fact other than Blair's first term neither of his second and third are by any means guaranteed. What is also interesting to note is that Neil Kinnock would have beaten Michael Howard and William Hague and won for Labour two consecutive terms. In fact, it is not altogether certain that Kinnock could not have won a straight three terms himself. We'll never know if Kinnock could have beaten Major in 1997, but on this data he could have beaten Howard and Hague and Major in 1997. We can also see from the chart that Gordon Brown was that unpopular its possible that under any circumstances he might never have won an election for Labour. Remember the caveats folks, these are different people from different periods. The most interesting statistics was Cameron's showing could have stood up well in 2005, and that Blair at his best was unbeatable.
This chart shows what each of the respective elections would have delivered Labour in terms of votes all things being equal. That means that all are calculated on a turnout of 65.1%, and all are calculated with an electorate of c.45 million. The net result of this is that it makes Kinnock's performances look worse than the raw data and it makes Blair's look much better. In particularly the graph assumes that the very low turnouts under Blair were down to the fact that the electorate knew the outcome of the election and so voted in smaller numbers. This is a reasonable assumption to make. Form his peak Blair only lost the party 2.4million voters, and Brown actually instead of being liable for the 1 million that the raw data shows can actually be credited with costing Labour 1.8million voters, if we assume those that stayed at home in 2005 would have on this turnout voted Labour. Blair's 10.4 million would not have been enough to beat Cameron in 2010, nor would it have been enough to win in 1992 against Major. This is evidence I think that Blair at his best was the best probably that this country will ever see. After 18 years of Tory rule he must have seemed like a Camelot knight to so many. But Blair's three election victories were down to a unique set of circumstances. Kinnock's 1992 showing would have won all three elections that Blair won.
