Neil Kinnock: Labour leader who lost ‘unlosable’ election predicts Starmer will end up in No 10
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has cautiously predicted a victory for Sir Keir Starmer at the next general election – but refused to speculate on whether he will win a majority.
Lord Kinnock famously lost the 1992 election despite the polls being stacked firmly in his favour as the country, then under its 13th consecutive year of a Conservative government, battled a recession and declining living standards.
His rival John Major clinched a victory in a shock outcome that resulted in five more years of the Tories in power, before being wiped out by Labour’s Tony Blair.
Given Sir Keir’s 20 point lead in the polls, pundits are questioning whether the next election could be a repeat of the party’s 1997 landslide victory, or a 1992 false dawn.
But Lord Kinnock told Sunday Morning With Trevor Philips (SMTP) that it will be “neither 92 or 97”.
“It’s going to be 24 because every single election is different.”
Pressed if he thought Labour will win, he said: “I’m convinced now that we’re not going to lose… I will go no further than that.”
He said he thought Sir Keir would end up in Downing Street, but that the UK’s First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system made it too difficult to guess by how much anybody could win or lose by.
On criticism that Sir Keir is too cautious, he said the Labour leader is taking a sensible approach to win broad support for his party.
Neil Kinnock in 1985 (Pic: PA)
“Caution is fine. To be reserved, to not disclose full plans, to accept convections before the election to give the reassurance which is crucial to getting a breadth of support without which you can’t win… that is just sensible.”
The next election is expected to take place in the second half of this year.
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Labour needs a historic 12.7 percentage point swing to win a majority – larger than the 10.2% swing former prime minister Tony Blair achieved.
Labour has been buoyed by a series of by-election victories this parliament, including two on Friday, but Sir Keir has insisted he is not complacent – telling reporters this week: “You don’t win the league by a good result in February. So we’ve got to fight like we’re five points behind in the polls.”
It followed what was considered to be the biggest crisis of his leadership so far as the party became embroiled in another antisemitism row, which resulted in them withdrawing support for Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali.
Lord Kinnock said he believed Sir Keir “acted with courage and correctly” over the issue.
Pressed on whether Sir Keir would end up in 10 Downing Street, he said: “Yes. And I look forward to that very much because I think he would be a mature, honest, dependable leader of a party. And by God, we need all that now.”
Politics
Sunak and Starmer facing historic unpopularity with ethnically diverse communities, polling suggests
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer are both facing a historic lack of popularity among ethnically diverse communities, new polling suggests.
While ethnically diverse community voting trends are incredibly complex and almost always hard to predict, some polling can give useful indications that can speak to the mood of the country.
A comprehensive set of data based on polling by Ipsos and shared exclusively with Sky News gives us a general sense of how the leaders of the two main parties are faring at this very specific time.
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Sunak more popular with white voters
Mr Sunak was named the UK’s next leader on the festival of Diwali, serving as a reminder of the milestone in Britain’s evolution as a multicultural and multi-faith society.
He’s the UK’s first prime minister from an ethnically diverse background and the first Hindu prime minister, but in terms of how much ethnically diverse communities have rewarded him for these historic firsts, it’s a somewhat surprising figure.
Over the past year, his approval rating among ethnically diverse communities is -53.
That figure is historic too – it’s one of the worst of any prime minister in nearly 30 years.
Actually, from these figures, he’s much better liked by white voters – who give him a rating of -41.
This is perhaps unsurprising, given that historically the majority of ethnically diverse communities have voted Labour.
Though support for the Conservatives reached a high of 30% in the first half of 2016 and only falling sharply in the aftermath of Brexit and then in the 2017 general election under a different leader.
Sir Keir behind Blair and Brown
For the Labour Party then, the stakes could not be much higher as they bill themselves as the party of equality and progressive politics and ethnically diverse communities have traditionally rewarded them for it.
The party has consistently held large leads with ethnically diverse community voters over the last few decades and under previous Labour leaders, often given net positive satisfaction levels.
The current leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has a more favourable rating than the current prime minister, with an average satisfaction rating over the past year of -32.
But he is also considerably more popular among white voters.
And when you compare these numbers to previous Labour leaders, it is more stark.
Sir Keir’s standing with ethnically diverse community voters currently is the lowest level a Labour leader has recorded among black and south Asian voters since 1996.
Far worse than the very worst ratings recorded by either Tony Blair (at -11 during the Iraq War) or Gordon Brown (at -13).
‘The Gaza Effect’
Now, there are myriad reasons why individuals and different communities have drifted from the central parties and traditional voting patterns, but Ipsos has outlined one specific thread of dissatisfaction with both parties that they call “The Gaza Effect”.
During by-elections and the recent local elections we saw a wave of independent candidates running on this single issue platform, most prominently George Galloway in Rochdale, but this data shows an indication of how deep that sentiment runs.
When you compare the aggregate satisfactions levels across the year for both leaders, you can see how different ratings become for ethnically diverse communities when compared to white voters.
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For white voters, there’s next to no effect in satisfaction levels towards the two leaders post 7 October.
When you compare that data to the rating ethnically diverse community voters have given the two leaders, there is a noticeable drop in support.
For Mr Sunak the drop is only around 13 points, but for Sir Keir, it is far more significant with a huge fall of 29 points.
The scale of the impact is almost impossible to predict, and the drop in these figures won’t necessarily translate into votes or even seats – but what is clear is these figures show both parties will need to offer ethnically diverse communities much more to win their vote at the next election.
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