Labour’s 2017 campaign and the myth of the stab in the back

In the 2017 General Election the professional staff of the Labour Party delivered an against the odds performance. By 2019 those staff had largely gone. Instead the pure believers had full control and were able to run the campaign they wanted and electoral oblivion awaited.

This week reading the accounts from inside Labour’s 2019 general election campaign may have been jaw dropping for many but it came as little surprise to those who had lived through the 2017 election. As Jeremy and his closest aids will recall Marx wrote ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’ The same chaos, lack of communication and personality clashes between senior players, stubborn refusal to take polling seriously - dismissing it as Tory or fake - and rows over targeting all characterised the 2017 campaign.

We were not prepared to see Labour seats sacrificed on the altar of those clashing egos as happened in 2019.

We aimed to fulfil the constitution’s number one defining objective as a Party - to win seats in order to maintain a Labour Party in Parliament.

This is what happened….

When the 2017 snap election was called, I was locked in an office in Labour HQ taking Andrew Gwynne (National Campaign Coordinator) through some documents and preparations we had put in place for such an eventuality. For nearly a year I had been predicting a general election in spring 2017. While I found it hard to convince Corbyn’s team that this was a real possibility – we had made sure HQ and our organisation around the country was as ready as possible.

In June 2016 I sent an 8-page memo to Jon Trickett, then national campaign coordinator, about preparing for a snap election. The memo included a prediction of a May 2017 election. I wrote:

“The Labour Party is currently not prepared for a snap general election. At this stage we do not have the staff, resource or space to fight an election. This very short note sets out the main organisational and strategic challenges that we will need to address in the coming weeks if we are to get ourselves prepared.”

Mr Trickett appointed BMG as the party’s pollster, he then instructed them not to share polling information with Head Office, while at the same time claiming he wanted to build a unified team.

I warned Jon Trickett and Jeremy’s team that the Tories were increasing their staffing. I’d proposed recruiting an army of digital organisers to work with the new Facebook targeting software (Promote) that my team had developed. This was blocked and in February 2017 LOTO (Leaders Office) asked the party to stop recruitment of organisers.

HQ colleagues were incredulous. We knew the Tories were recruiting, we needed to be prepared. The refusal to allow us to recruit was leaving us exposed.

What’s more, we had the funds to recruit.

Unlike any election in living memory, we went into the campaign with millions of pounds in the bank. The debts from the 2005 election had been paid off just before Jeremy became Leader. For nearly a decade before £2million every year went into debt repayment – once that was cleared and coupled with the money from additional members joining post 2015, we created a General Election reserve fund. When the election was called, we already had £3 million ready.

But despite the bank balance everyone accepted the electoral terrain we faced was daunting.

Theresa May’s Tory Party around 25 points ahead in the polls, comfortably miles ahead on the economy and leadership. Our initial modelling forecasts had us losing scores of Labour constituencies including both Tom Watson’s seat and John McDonnell’s seat. Len McCluskey later remarked it would be a ‘success’ for Labour to be returned with a mere 200 seats.

Every election I’ve been involved in whether as a foot soldier or an executive director targets resources in key seats. A target seat can expect more national mailings, more visits from prominent politicians to attract media attention, it’s where we direct activists and these days they receive more national social media messaging.

In those early days Jeremy’s staff and HQ agreed to resource our defensive Labour-held seats given the scale of the Tory lead. In 2015 Labour collapsed in Scottish constituencies, with the SNP the beneficiaries. Many of us feared the ‘red wall’ wipe out we witnessed in 2019 was heading our way in 2017.

There was also an important practical consideration.

With virtually no candidates selected in seats without a sitting Labour MP, it was an obvious choice to support local candidates campaigning in Labour held seats in that first part of the campaign. Some of Jeremy’s team wanted every re-standing Labour MP to go through a re-selection process, something that would have tied them up when they need to be focused on campaigning, fortunately, the NEC pushed back against it.

This early decision was reinforced two weeks into the campaign when local elections took place. They were a disaster for Labour. Seven years after losing power in Westminster, seven years of brutal Tory cuts in these areas and we lost Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire to the Tories – counties with swathes of marginal constituencies. We took a hammering in heartland areas such as Northumberland where Laura Pidcock lost her council seat.

Overall, we were way behind the Tories losing nearly 400 seats in a night described by many as the worst performance for any opposition in local elections for a generation. Jeremy’s team knew it was disastrous and so on the following weekend they campaigned in areas where no county council elections had taken place, heading to do a rally in Leicester.

Recent weeks have seen the growth in conspiracy theories suggesting there was some grand plan to “throw” or “sabotage” the 2017 election. This is not the reality but simply a deflection tactic to absolve the architects of the 2019 campaign of their culpability for a disastrous result.

In 2017 there were very many conversations about the right balance between our initial defensive campaign and the desire to go offensive in the later parts of the campaign.

This is nothing new. Every election campaign involves disagreements about resources. But disagreements are not sabotage - they are part and parcel of any professional campaign.

Jeremy’s team asked us to expand the target list to include 93 offensive seats. We did.

These seats received extra support, extra digital advertising and key seat visits.

But just because we were going on the offensive, I considered it highly irresponsible to take other seats off the defensive list.

On 19th May at 8am I met with a senior member of Corbyn’s team who gave me a list of seats that should be defunded. I countered that our latest polling showed some of these seats as being very marginal. “I don’t care” was the response. I was told if this leaked, I would be “going in the Skwawkbox”. The seats to defund were largely MPs considered by Corbyn’s team to be political opponents (many of them would fall to the Tories in 2019). I was also given a list of seats that needed extra funding. Most of these had majorities of over 10,000 but were strong allies of the Leadership.

I have email and photographic evidence of this - which has been provided to the Forde Inquiry.

As the Tory campaign faltered and we picked up momentum especially amongst young people, students and voters in university cities and towns. It was clear that different groups of voters were behaving differently. We continually received reports from candidates about voter antipathy and lack of trust in Jeremy. Frankly for many voters in “red wall” seats Jeremy’s leadership was still a big issue. Simply pumping out the same message across the country would be counterproductive.

I’ve also suspected in their hearts that both Jon Trickett and Ian Lavery knew this. Both of them asked me quietly about their own seats and they were added to the list of seats that Corbyn’s team had already requested resources for. Ian Lavery asked me personally to produce a report for him on his prospects which I did and sent to him and his constituency.

In late May Steve Howell from Jeremy’s team pushed us to pay for three newspaper adverts covering Jon Trickett’s seat – which of course we did. Again, the relevant emails have been shared with the Forde Inquiry. I’ve seen the reports this week that Mr Trickett was last year pushing the Labour staff in his region to deploy more staff to his seat.

Steve Howell also told our candidates on a conference call not to get into defending Jeremy on the doorstep with voters that raised concerns about his leadership. In what was to be known in 2019 as the ‘Red Wall’ we knew we continued to face deep problems which would have been utterly negligent to ignore.

But we were in a bind. We felt it was pointless to try and discuss this sensibly with Jeremy’s staff. Apart from the existing attempt to funnel money on a factional basis, Corbyn’s team were simply not prepared to take polling information seriously.

But we knew we couldn’t acquiesce in allowing these seats to fall.

We ensured these constituencies continued to receive support.

Because our canvassing returns and polling showed Jeremy was unpopular in some constituencies this meant different campaign materials that focused on the local MP or the Labour brand rather than Corbyn. This is not sabotage – it was the right approach to win as many votes and seats for Labour as possible. From the accounts of the 2019 campaign it sounds like the same arguments were played out again without any action being taken to remedy it.

Targeted materials happen in every single election campaign. Our job as organisers is to make objective judgements on what is necessary to win a constituency, not go along with an Emperor’s new clothes fantasy that the Leader is popular in every demographic in every constituency.

Sadly, we weren’t able to pull every seat over the line. We still lost Mansfield, North East Derbyshire, Stoke South, Walsall North, Middlesbrough South and failed to take back Copeland. The cracks were appearing in the Red Wall and people in the North and Midlands heartlands were starting to swing to the Tories.

But this operation helped us hold on in constituencies like Newcastle Under Lyme, Ashfield, Barrow, Bishop Auckland and Dudley North. Without the defensive campaign we would have lost many more. Indeed, two years later these seats and too many others like them would be turned blue while the Labour campaign hubristically attempted to gain unwinnable safe Tory seats.

The writing was on the Red Wall seats in 2017. Below the national picture there had been swings to the Tories in about 25% of our seats – including Mr Trickett’s and Mr Lavery’s seats.

We fought an offensive campaign and a defensive campaign – as that was the only way to ensure any gains, were not cancelled out by losing Labour seats. I have heard it said that Labour could have been in power for just over 2000 more votes in the right seats. It’s also true that the Tories could have won a majority by moving a lot fewer votes the other way. Such post-election calculations are always possible with our electoral system but they show an unsophisticated understanding of parliamentary democracy and FPTP as a general election almost always results in a small number of seats being won or lost by a small number of votes. Resources are finite and taking resources from one area and shifting them to another doesn’t guarantee either seat will be won.

To suggest these questions of judgement are akin to sabotage is laughable. Yes, there were differences of opinion on how to get the best result possible. In the end I think the balance between offensive, and defensive was probably just about right given the facts and data we had. It’s hard to claim the balance was right in the 2019 Labour campaign.

As the results came in on election night we were ecstatic that the Labour MPs that we had worked so hard to save were returned, many of whom were convinced they were going to lose. The Formby EHRC submission curiously omits our whatsapp messages such as ‘amazing, amazing, amazing’ at the news we had won Reading East or ‘yay Jenny Chapman’ when we hold Darlington or the excitement when its confirmed it’s a hung parliament followed by “and Gloria wins. I am so delighted”, or the news that “Labour gain Crewe” followed by “its come home,” and when we take Weaver Vale “Mike Amesbury!!!” followed by a smiley face.

These staff had visited many constituencies and been out all hours on the doorstep. As they will continue to do so for Keir Starmer.

Despite 2017’s gains we had still lost our third general election in a row. Fundamentally that is not a success.

I spoke to Jeremy on the phone at about 12.30am to tell him that I was of the view that it was now impossible for the Tories to get a majority. He was delighted. At the same time there was sadness too. I knew that the results would mean the end of my career. There had been ongoing attempts by Corbyn’s team to force me out for months leading up to the election – there was no chance of stopping that now. Once my departure was announced Skwawkbox reported that Jeremy’s team were “cock a hoop” and that “Patrick had to go”.

In 2019 Jeremy’s team got to run the election campaign they wanted. It was a car crash. Virtually all the senior experienced staff in HQ had been removed, side-lined or left. A huge loss of professional and institutional knowledge. I had been able to have short conversations with both Jeremy and John McDonnell shortly before the campaign began. I told them that I thought an election right then would be bad news and that keeping the Tories trapped for as long as possible seemed the right strategic approach. Johnson as a new Leader was not yet tarred by the ongoing stalemate on Brexit that had destroyed Theresa May’s last year in charge and his simple slogan to “Get Brexit Done” was always going to be appealing to a country bored by the ongoing saga.

Once the election was called the only real option to stop the Tories gaining a substantial overall majority would in my opinion have been some sort of electoral pact between the Labour and the Lib Dems. I floated the idea of Labour and Lib Dems both standing down in 50 seats each. And a behind the scenes deal with the Lib Dems. I put the feelers out to senior Lib Dems who seemed interested. So, I approached Corbyn’s team. While politically a tough sell I still believe this would have put Jeremy into Number 10.

The message I received back was clear: “We don’t do deals with the Lib Dems. If people are so desperate to stay in the EU rather than have a socialist government that’s their choice.” (Even though these same people now claim that had 2000 votes switched in 2017 Jeremy would be in his third year as Prime Minister based on a deal with the minor parties including the Lib Dems…)

It was strange to watch the campaign from the outside. But it was clear things were not going well. Rumours of huge arguments about strategy, failing technology and lack of funds. Limited resources and activists were thrown at constituencies where we had little chance while Labour MPs pleading to Head Office for help were left to sink. The reports this week of Jeremy being blocked from seeing his own schedule mirror what we experienced in 2017. And in 2019 for the first time in history the Lib Dems outspent the Labour Party in a general election. My own election communication leaflet arrived the day after the election.

The run up to 2019 was categorised by massive expenditure on huge pet projects with little relevance to winning a future election. The losses from the Labour Live “festival” were huge yet were dwarfed by the millions thrown into a community organising project which in his own words Jeremy Corbyn described as not being about “winning key seats in elections”.

Sounds like sabotage.

The claims against me and other staff about 2017 are not new. Soon after the election, Skwawkbox began reporting similar claims without any actual evidence. This was rich from a website that in 2017 had advised Labour members to campaign in Northern Ireland despite Labour not standing candidates there.

If Corbyn’s team had learned the right lessons from 2017 then Labour would not have lost so many seats last year. The stab in the back myth is their deflection from reality. There can be lessons in defeat, but only if you are open to understanding what happened. The endless debate of this fantasy needs to be put to bed. Grand conspiracy theories offer nothing for a Party that has been out of office for a decade so far.

Patrick Heneghan

Labour’s Executive Director for Elections, Campaigns and Organisation during the 2017 General Election