Thread by @FisherAndrew79

#OnThisDay in Labour history 5 years ago it was polling day in the 2017 general election🌹

While tens of thousands of Labour activists started knocking on doors, my day started with a meeting at the Cabinet Office with Karie Murphy to discuss arrangements if should Labour win🧵

Labour had a 24-point deficit when the campaign began. But in their final polls the major polling companies put the deficit anywhere between a 1-point and a 13-point lead for the Tories

In the last week we met 3 times with the Cabinet Secretary, as they planned for every outcome

Walking along Victoria Street (by Labour HQ) with a colleague in the early summer sunshine, and exhausted by 8 weeks of gruelling election campaign, I recall saying:

“Whatever happens tonight, I’m really proud of what we’ve done – I don’t think we could have done any more”

At the start of the campaign we were written off. We were, in the words of the Daily Mail, going to be crushed

Senior Labour HQ staff were plotting our demise, and planning for a leadership election

But thousands of activists who thronged streets thought otherwise ✊

Then, at 22:00 that exit poll dropped.

David Dimbleby explained, “The Conservatives are the largest party. Note they do not have an overall majority”

I turned away from the screen with my hands over mouth, mumbling the mantra, “please be f**king true”

At 22:22, Karie and I received an email from the Cabinet Office that read:

“Just sending this to open a line of contact if and as needed. Let's see what happens”

As the results came in, and Labour won seats it had never held before, for a moment even this didn't seem impossible

Obviously we didn't make it to No.10

But in taking away the Conservatives' majority we stopped some Tory policies - like the dementia tax, expansion of grammar schools, removing housing benefit from young people, and possibly the return of fox-hunting - from happening ...

Labour had gained its largest increase in the share of the vote since 1945

We had added 3.5m extra votes from the 2015 general election just two years earlier

And Labour had gained seats for the first time since 1997, adding 30 extra Labour MPs #forthemanynotthefew🌹
🧵ends

BONUS: This retrospective tweet thread on #GE2017 has inadvertently elicited this insight. And credit to top pollster Chris for it

But it also reminded me that this isn't the first time a post-debate poll involving Jeremy Corbyn has been suppressed…🧵

https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1534511744718086144?s=20&t=lt0C2BeOui3Kt0W8ceV2JQ

In June 2015 Newsnight organised a hustings for the Labour leadership contest between the four candidates on the ballot paper

Jeremy did very well in the debate (as @paulwaugh observed at the time

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/611241749764284416?s=20&t=qLTzYntO3AQWvoei7zLegQ

) ...

After the debate, streamed live on the BBC News Channel, went off-air, the #Newsnight team asked the audience who they thought did best: Corbyn won the vote of ex-Labour voters overwhelmingly

A prodcuer told me that would air on Newsnight. But it never did despite our complaints

Didn't do us any harm, Jeremy won by a landslide

As an aside, there's some amusing footage of the BBC News channel interviewing candidates' backers after the debate - and the camera having to pan (plummet!) down to me (5'7) after interviewing 6'7 @tobyperkinsmp (backing Liz K)