Transcript
Dejan: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. Today we're incredibly lucky to be joined by Tim Bale, Professor Queen Mary University of London. But John, can you tell us more about who Tim is and what we're going to be talking about today?
debatablediscussions: Tim is one of the UK's most prominent politics professors, and he specialises in British politics, as well as perhaps particularly also the politics of the Conservative Party and of the right wing in the UK.
debatablediscussions: We've heard him speak, and he's delivered many excellent talks, in particular recently on voting patterns. And that's what we sort of wanted to talk to you today about, Tim.
Tim Bale: sure yeah happy to happy to talk
debatablediscussions: So without further ado, we were just going to perhaps start the conversation by asking what is this perhaps almost fairly momentous research that Queen Mary's has conducted recently about voting and how we vote?
Tim Bale: Yeah, I mean, the stuff I presented recently was more about political party members than although it does actually obviously feature comparisons with voters as well.
Tim Bale: So just to kind of introduce what we do to your listeners, basically after every election, we survey the members of Britain's main political parties.
Tim Bale: This time we did the Greens, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and Reform. We asked them a whole bunch of questions on this occasion actually about political psychology and the extent to which they favoured certain leaders, for example. But we also ask them, because we do it just after the general election, questions about how much they campaigned for their parties, for example, whether they donated money to their parties. That's another one we ask. And we also ask them some general questions about their values and their ideology. So our aim really is to build up over time pretty good portrait of these rather strange characters who... actually make the move from supporting a political party to actually kind of paying a subscription and belonging to it. Although, as you're a member, I would want to make a distinction between being a political party member on the one hand and being an activist on the other, because the two things aren't necessarily the same.
Dejan: Could you explain to our listeners why the two things are not the same? lot of people, I think, would assume that being an activist means you're a member of the political party and other way around as well.
Tim Bale: Sure.
debatablediscussions: Thank
Tim Bale: I mean, actually, from our research over the years, and we began this in 2015, so we've looked party members after the 2015 election, 2017, 2019, 2024, we find routinely that around of party members do absolutely nothing, I mean, zilch nada, right, for their parties at election time. In other words, at precisely the time when the parties would hope that they might help out with leafleting, with canvassing at the kind of upper end of the kind of intense activities, and then even just kind of displaying a poster or sharing something on social media at the lower end. But as I say, it's only actually kind of minority sport, particularly when we're looking at that hardcore activism. If you if you look at the most sort taxing things that people can do, which is going out and knocking on doors or delivering leaflets or maybe, you know, phone banking, for example, for the party. Very, very few people actually get involved in that. For most parties, it's only about 15 to 20 percent of people ever get involved in that kind of activity.
debatablediscussions: Of which parties did you find to have perhaps the most active members then? Were there some which stood out as having quite strong activist bases?
Tim Bale: Well,
Tim Bale: Well, there are a couple, I think, that are particularly interesting. One was very predictable, and that is the Liberal Democrats tend to be most active, and particularly when it comes to leafleting.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Tim Bale: But at the other end of the ideological spectrum, what we found this time that was quite interesting was reform members are particularly keen on activism online.
Dejan: Mm-hmm.
Tim Bale: So, you know, in real life, it's probably the Liberal Democrats. Labour aren't too bad. They're not too shabby. And online, actually, it's the Greens and Labour because they've got fairly young, digitally native supporters and the Reform Party members.
Tim Bale: The party with the real problem, actually, is the Conservatives.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Tim Bale: They're not particularly active in real life. They're not very active at all online. As, of course, campaigning moves online and it won't ever disappear from real life, but it's moving increasingly online.
Tim Bale: I think the Conservatives do need to worry about that. And in fact, all parties in some ways need to worry about it because, as you know, because you remember the presentation, the other thing about political parties is that actually don't have that many young members.
Tim Bale: There's no political party that goes, I think, above 5% of members who are aged between 18 and 24. So the pipeline of people who are kind of digitally savvy, I guess, is going to dry up unless, you know, parties can persuade these people to join.
Dejan: Out of the other parties, you've mentioned this stereotype about reform members. Have you found that other stereotypes are true or some that actually aren't true?
Tim Bale: Well, I mean, in terms of their values, what you expect is what you get, actually. If you look, for example, at their views on, you know, so-called sort culture war issues, it's very easy to see that there is very much a split between the members of the progressive parties. And there I'd include the Lib Dems with the Greens and Labour on the one hand, and then the members of the right wing parties other on the other. So the progressive parties, for example, in immigration, their members, you know, are relatively speaking, either sort of happy with how immigration has gone over the past few years, or they're quite happy to see more immigrants come in. Whereas if you look at the Conservative Party members and Reform Party members, they are absolutely adamant that immigration has been too high. Another kind of culture war issue, which I think I highlighted in the talk, was their view of the nation's history. Progressive party members are much more kind of ambivalent about pride in the nation, probably because they
Tim Bale: are either embarrassed perhaps or maybe even ashamed of britain's colonial past its role in slavery etc whereas conservative and reform party members are absolutely almost to a man and a woman you know proud of this country's history you know and i i would guess that they see any attempt to kind of uncover or stress Britain's colonial sins or past as it were as being illegitimate if you like and somehow infradigged against the nation and unpatriotic if you like And then, you know, you get some fairly kind of conventional views as well on tax and spend. You know, once again, you have the kind of progressive parties lined up together versus the members of reform and the Conservatives. And I think, you know, this is one thing I would stress. mean, we talked about voting at the beginning. And in some ways, what we're seeing with party members is what we see in voters. So in other words, we've got this huge fragmentation of the party system at the moment. You know, it's blown up. We've got five parties.
Tim Bale: If you include Scotland Wales, we've got six or seven parties in contention. But actually, know, if you boil things down, you've got these two blocks. You've got the progressive or the kind of centre left block.
Tim Bale: on the one hand, which would include the nationalist parties and the Lib Dems, the Greens, Labour on the one hand. And then you've got this right wing bloc composed of Conservative and reform members who think pretty much the same way. And I think, you know, with regard to voting, mean, there are still floating voters in this country. but most of them float within the blocks rather than between the blocks. So you don't actually get that many people flipping, if you like, from the kind of progressive side of politics to the more right-wing side and vice versa. We haven't quite come to the kind of polarisation almost hatred, I think, we see in the United States, but we could be on the way there.
Tim Bale: And that would be quite worrying, I think.
debatablediscussions: You mentioned there this sort of bloc nature, which we have now in politics, which is very much true.
Tim Bale: Mm-hmm.
debatablediscussions: And it sort of, it makes me think, what are the dominant parties on each side of the bloc, particularly on that right wing bloc? Do you think reform are going to be there for the long term to almost perhaps completely finish the Tories? Yeah.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Tim Bale: actually wants to surpass the Conservative Party and in some ways become, you know, the main party as he sees it on the centre-right, as he sometimes puts it, maybe.
Tim Bale: Yeah. arguably, of British politics. But obviously, you know, the Conservatives are still very much around in Parliament, although they've got you pathetically small parliamentary contingent. It's still much bigger than Reform UK's. They still obviously can claim to have far more second place finishes than Reform UK at the 2024 election. You know, they're still actually doing quite well in terms of donations. So it's clear that, you know, some business and wealthy individuals are still betting on the Conservative Party to make some kind of comeback. They do have a better infrastructure, too.
Tim Bale: You know, they've got more branches, you know, that have been there longer in some ways. So, you know, the Conservatives have got advantages. They're the official opposition in Parliament, which means that Kemie Baden-Ock, and she's used this to her advantage recently, gets to ask questions at parliamentary prime minister's questions in a way that Nigel Farage doesn't, much of his frustration. But, but, but, if you look at the polling, obviously, what we see is reform, you know, polling in the late 20s, early 30s, and the Conservatives still polling under 20%.
Tim Bale: It will take a long time, I think, to convince many people that they're a party worth voting for. And if migration stays very much at the top of people's minds as we go into the next election, then presumably that will favor Nigel Farage.
Tim Bale: So I think who knows exactly what will happen. But I think your question is a good one because then it raises the question of what a party is going to do in that situation.
Tim Bale: If they're going into the next election, they can't be sure who's the main party on the right or who's the main party on the left.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Tim Bale: Are they going to just, you know, campaign against each other and see what happens? Or are they going arrange some kind of pre-electoral pact? Maybe, you know, they'll stand down candidates in constituencies where they think the other party in their bloc has got a better chance of winning.
Tim Bale: Or, you know, will they not want to do that because it's too difficult to do and then hope, you know, whatever happens with the electoral arithmetic will allow them to do some kind of coalition deal afterwards. So really all to play for.
Dejan: You've mentioned the Conservative Party. How do you think they've performed so far in their role as opposition? Have they performed well or...?
Tim Bale: Well, I mean, Kemi Bainock, according to people who watch her carefully, seems to be doing bit better at PMQs. But the example of William Haig, who led the party between 97 and 2001, shows that you can be as brilliant as you like at PMQs.
Tim Bale: You know, you can skew the prime minister, you can be witty, et cetera, et cetera. But it does you absolutely no good when it comes to elections. But I think, you know, there is a bit more of a kind of spring in the step of most conservatives who I think, you know, really had reached a pretty low ebb last year.
Tim Bale: Having said that, I don't think they've really come to terms with why they lost the last election. It seems to me that they are very much focused on their supposedly failings on immigration, which, you know, were relevant.
Tim Bale: OK, I mean, it's true. They promised to stop the boats and they didn't stop the boats. But there are a whole bunch of reasons why they lost that election, in particular, the way that allowed public services to crumble, particularly when it comes to NHS waiting lists, waiting times, et cetera, et cetera.
Tim Bale: They were a real problem for a lot of people, not being able to see a GP quickly, et cetera, et cetera. And their failure really to think about the underfunding of public services and and how much that bothered so many voters, I think is rather instructive.
Dejan: Thank you.
Tim Bale: And in some ways, I think it suggests that they've still got those blinkers on. You know, they still see the solution to everything as lower taxes and lower spending. You know, that might be great, but of course that comes at a price.
Tim Bale: And normally the price is paid by people who use public services, many of whom vote and many of whom, you know, were pretty angry with the state of things in the country. And, and voted accordingly. So the idea that it was all about immigration or the idea that, you know, they talk right but acted left is for the birds, but it's still something that a lot of Conservative Party politicians cling on
debatablediscussions: Yeah, I sort of agree with that. I think there are fundamental issues there. Kemi has sort of warmed up a bit as leader of the opposition, but it's sort of reason surrounding the economy, which she hasn't been able to grasp. I think it's been a criticism of hers that she's not perhaps almost really produced any sort substantive policies as leader of the opposition.
Tim Bale: Yeah, I mean, she's talked about doing something on stamp duty, as if, you know, that's going to solve all the problems, you know, but that's, I guess, you know, put a little bit of fire into the bellies of conservatives who like to see those kinds of things go.
debatablediscussions: Would you agree with that? Yeah.
Dejan: Thank you.
debatablediscussions: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Bale: I mean, I made the point about public services, but you actually make an even better point, which is, you know, it was the economy stupid in some ways that did for the Conservative Party as well. You know, we've had this huge financial crash in 2008. And, you know, the effects of that were compounded by the austerity policies that the Conservative Party pursued after 2010. which means that we've had incredibly slow growth in the economy and, you know, a very, very small rises even by now in people's real wages. And as a result of that, people are feeling pretty discontented.
Tim Bale: And of course, the tax revenues that you need to fund public services just aren't there. So the economy has been really, really important in the Conservatives' failure, I think. And again, as you've suggested, don't think that's one things they've really come to terms with. They're so focused on Reform UK and so focused on immigration that I think they have a very kind of narrow view, A, of why they lost the election, and then B, where they need to go in order to kind of do something about the situation they find themselves in.
Dejan: You've mentioned about the sort of obsession with immigration. How would you sort of analyse the trend now with multiple parties, not just the Conservatives, like the Argue Labour as well, of of trying to appeal to the traditional reform voter?
Dejan: Do you think it's going to work or do you think it's just going to push them further away?
Tim Bale: Well, I mean, interestingly, that's where we can broaden the question out and look at what's going all across Europe. And for quite some time now, probably the last decade, we've seen parties on the centre-right and the centre-left react to the rise of populist radical right parties by adopting some of their rhetoric and some of their policies in the hope that if they do that, somehow they they will go away or support for them will fall. Unfortunately, wherever you look, that has not been the case. All that happens is that by talking continually about immigration and asylum, you simply raise the issue And make it more salient to voters.
Tim Bale: And given that they think that the populist radical right either owns that issue or at least will do better than the established parties on that issue, it tends actually to raise their vote rather than lower it. So it's been completely counterproductive.
Tim Bale: I mean, I'm not surprised that politicians do it because in some ways it's kind of intuitive. If you feel that you're losing votes to the radical right, then that seems like an intuitive thing to do. But actually, all the evidence, mean, all the evidence from whatever country you look at is really, really bad idea as to why they carry on doing that.
Tim Bale: in the face of all that evidence, we don't know. mean, I think, you know, that is a really interesting area of research that people need to get into. In other words, talking to politicians and asking them literally, know, why are you banging your head against a brick wall?
Tim Bale: I don't know. don't know the answer, but I think we need to know the answer because, you know, all we're doing really is kind of firing up support for the for the populist radical right and for anyone who wants a you know kind of decent tolerant country and that doesn't sort of backslide on democratic norms and actually realizes that you know because of labor market shortages it does actually occasionally have to import people particularly if it wants to you know have its population carry on growing rather than shrinking you know we we do
Tim Bale: We do need to think very seriously about whether we want governments that are going to kind of, you know, draw and pull up the drawbridge on immigration.
debatablediscussions: Following on from immigration, there's been a certain kind of migration which I think the Tories have been particularly concerned about, and that is migration to reform.
Tim Bale: Hmm.
Tim Bale: Hmm.
Tim Bale: Oh.
debatablediscussions: it Gavin Williamson?
Tim Bale: Yeah.
debatablediscussions: He's suspected to defect. But who would you guess is amongst the next defectors to reform?
Tim Bale: Do you know that that's really difficult to name names. I mean, I think at the moment, the Conservative Party can rest relatively easy because the people who have gone
debatablediscussions: Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Bale: in particular Braverman and Jenrick, were probably going nowhere in today's Conservative Party.
debatablediscussions: Oh, yeah.
Tim Bale: Jenrick may have had a chance of leading it, but actually he was disliked by quite a lot of his colleagues. And possibly I think that's one of the reasons he jumped. Although obviously one of the other reasons he jumped is because he thinks reform's got a good chance of winning the next election. I think where the Conservative Party would have to worry is if they began to lose younger people so-called rising stars. OK, so someone like Katie Lam, for example, you know, for for all that, you know, people may or may not like her or even have heard of her. If she was to go to reform, I think that would send a signal.
Tim Bale: You know, if they were to lose someone like Jack Rankin, who's the MP for Windsor, quite a hardliner on immigration. But again, young, probably the future in the Conservative Party. If he were to go to reform, you know, that would send a signal and that would be a problem. I mean, I don't doubt that after the May elections, despite what Nigel Farage says about not accepting any Conservative defectors after the 7th of May, I don't doubt that if the Conservatives do really, really badly, there may be some some defections. But in some ways, it's kind of who defects rather than least if it's only a handful, how many.
debatablediscussions: Okay.
Dejan: Yeah, I think you've mentioned sort of rising stars. Do you think you also previously mentioned the fact that only sort of 5%, 4% of people that members of parties are really young.
Dejan: Do you think it's going to be a problem in the future? Do you think sort of politics is moving to an older aged game?
Tim Bale: Yeah. Well, I mean, think if you look at voting, that's pretty obvious. It's not the case in every European country, but certainly in the UK, just as is the case in the US, you know, younger people are not voting. Obviously, we're going to see the voting age reduced to 16 this time. But there's considerable debate about whether that is a good idea in terms of getting younger people to vote. What we do know from research is that once you vote for the first time, you are more likely to vote next time around. So people pick up the habit at 16, that's all well and good. The worry is, however, that actually people are offered the choice of voting at 16. Very, very few of them take it up and therefore get into the kind of chronic abstentionism that we've seen from, you know, 18 to 24 year olds. And if that's the case, actually, might make things worse rather than better. I do think some of the kind of technical changes that are due to come in might help, which automatic registration is an obvious one.
Tim Bale: You know, at the moment, there are a lot of people who aren't on the electoral register. And many of those are young people because they move around. You know, they just can't be bothered or whatever. They don't like giving the government their details.
Tim Bale: That's another one. And with automatic registration, that might help.
debatablediscussions: Thank you.
Tim Bale: But then again, you know, you can be registered to vote and not turn up to vote. And ironically, what we could have at the next election is a much bigger electorate because more people are registered. But as a result of that, actually, turnout will be even worse because it will be the same, you know, absolute number of people voting, but a larger pool of voters eligible to to vote. I mean, personally, and I don't know what you two think of this, and know what your listeners and viewers think of this, don't see any solution but compulsory voting. You can try all the other means to try and, you know, tempt people into voting. You can, you know, you can make voting happen at the weekend, that makes one or 2% the difference.
Tim Bale: Proportional representation, one or 2% difference. But if you really want large numbers of people to vote, the only alternative is compulsory voting. And there are huge advantages of that because that means that political parties have to take account of the whole electorate rather than, as they do at the moment, taking account mainly of older voters, which is one reason why we've got this, for example, supposedly unaffordable triple lock on pensions and why younger people struggling, for example, to get on the housing ladder younger people with families find things so difficult. in fact, their benefits have been reduced rather than added to.
Tim Bale: Look how difficult it was, for example, to get rid of the winter fuel payment for the government. Now, whether you think that was a good idea or not, actually, the kind of lobbying over that that caused them to U-turn on it was massive. We live arguably, and I say this as someone who's 60 years old, in something of a gerontocracy.
Tim Bale: don't know what you two think.
debatablediscussions: I think that's very convincing, actually, because old people, and especially their issues, as you said, always dominate politics. And through compulsory voting, I do think it would widen our democracy from the sort of old, pale, stale, perhaps slightly more affluent politics.
debatablediscussions: group which is largely represented in politics and similarly though think also though regarding voting at 16 that may be a good idea but as you said there the government we should focus on getting 18 to 24 year olds to vote and solve that abstention crisis perhaps before we look at broadening at 16 yeah yes
Tim Bale: Mm-hmm.
Tim Bale: I don't know if that's the case. I mean, you guys be more expert on that than I would.
Dejan: Yeah, I don't know. I think it's difficult because lot of people don't really have an interest, but think it's also quite hard to develop one. You just get pushed when you're 18 and you sort of have to vote and you've not really been allowed to critically filter the information that you hear.
Tim Bale: Yeah.
Dejan: And you also haven't had a lot of civic training. But how would you think the results would change if it was compulsory voting?
Tim Bale: Well, I mean, I think if you look at countries where compulsory voting does take place, and Australia is the obvious one, I don't think necessarily you would get a left wing or a right wing government. You would simply get governments that have to take into account more of the interests of the people who currently don't vote. So, you know, as you've said, John, you know, Actually, poorer people don't vote as much as affluent people. You know, disabled people don't vote as much as able people. Ethnic minorities don't vote as much as white people. So there are a whole bunch of people who actually, know, governments and parties can afford to a degree to ignore who would then be brought into the political conversation.
Tim Bale: Arguably, you might say, well, having identified those particular groups, given that they tend to vote more for the left than for the right, then it might benefit the left more than the right. But actually in Australia, we do see left-wing governments and right-wing governments.
Tim Bale: So I'm not so sure that that is the case. I mean, I think having argued for this in theory, don't think it'll ever happen, right? I mean, I just think, you know, going to the electorate and telling people, you know, you're going to have to turn up and vote, I think is a kind of loser, really.
debatablediscussions: Yeah.
Tim Bale: I just don't think you can persuade people to do it. I mean, I think there's so many good reasons to do it. But I think, you know, we've been, you know, using this system for so long.
Tim Bale: It's bit like the first past the post system that I think it's quite difficult to see people being persuaded to change it in a big way.
debatablediscussions: Yeah, and I think with that, we'll perhaps conclude the episode. It's been fascinating to discuss this with you, Tim. mean, I'm sure Diane and I have certainly learned a lot, especially regarding how, at the end, really, about the voting, because perhaps it does sound a bit draconian, compulsory voting, but it probably actually is what a real democracy needs.
Tim Bale: Yeah, I agree. And, you know, sorry to end on a down note, really, by saying that it'd be a great idea, but it's never going to happen.
debatablediscussions: I know, but...
Tim Bale: But, you know, that's true so many things in politics, right?
debatablediscussions: Yeah. See
Dejan: yeah thank you Tim for coming and if you enjoyed the episode do let us know also give us a review and let us know what you'd like us to cover in future episodes thank you and see you next week
debatablediscussions: you then.
