Andrew Fisher Profile picture
Columnist for The i Paper & Inside Croydon https://t.co/FCkd1Myzb4 Democratic Socialist. Formerly Labour's Executive Director of Policy Trade unionist NUJ & Unite

Apr 18, 2022, 10 tweets

Five years ago today, Theresa May announced she was making a statement in Downing Street ...

... despite repeated assurances that "I'm not going to be calling a snap election", she called a snap election 🧵

The subject of the statement was not announced, speculation swirled: Had a Royal died? Was she resigning? Was she calling a snap election?

May wanted a bigger majority to deliver Brexit, and said the election was about two issues: Brexit & leadership

The press was enthused

The pollsters at the time confirmed the confidence of the Tory press:

ComRes put the Conservatives on 50% and Labour on 25%.

YouGov had the Tories on 49% and Labour on 24%

Despite the polls, there was confidence in Corbyn's team that the ground could shift and Labour could make gains

A positive strategy was put together: to register voters, to engage non-voters & mobilise members to campaign in Tory seats

Such optimism was not shared in Labour HQ

Labour HQ's proposed strategy was to write-off marginal Labour-held seats, fund Labour seats with majorities of 5000+, with no offensive targets

Despite this approach being rejected, we now know from #Labourleaks report that a secret operation was established to channel funds

It's also worth recalling that Theresa May's personal polling was extremely strong at the outset of the campaign ... hence why her strategists opted for "strong and stable" as the slogan, and personalised their campaign around her ...

Within days, the 'For the Many, Not the Few' slogan had encapsulated Labour's framing of the election

The slogan - an adaptation of Shelley's "Ye are many, they are few" - summed up the core tenets of Corbynism: for public ownership, redistributive taxation and anti-austerity

With internal division suppressing Labour's output for much of the previous 2 years, this was the first time since the summer of 2015 that the policy platform - on which Jeremy Corbyn had been overwhelmingly elected as Labour leader - had got a decent airing. It proved popular…

Labour changed the terms of the debate in #GE2017

As Kavanagh & Cowley write in their review of the election, "separating out the impact of Corbyn (as party leader) and the party manifesto (which only existed in that form because of Corbyn's leadership) is close to impossible"

In the 2017 election, the Labour vote increased by more between elections than at any time since 1945 - up 9.6 percentage points and 3.5m votes.

It also marked the first time since 1997 that Labour had gained seats in a general election.

🧵ends

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