TRANSFORM’S ELECTIONS POLICY (PROPOSED) (1 September 2023)
This document is only proposals for an elections policy. No policy has yet been adopted.
I have been fighting council and General Elections since 1966.
My claim to fame is that I captured a safe Tory ward in Bradford by increasing the Labour vote 80%.
On re-election I increased my previous vote 47%. We had a second Labour councillor win the year after.
I have done every job from leafletting to Parliamentary Agent.
I twice have had the joy of standing in a chip shop queue hearing the queue favourably discussing a leaflet I had written.
There are 650 constituencies. 18 are in Northern Ireland, 40 in Wales, 72 in Scotland, and 520 in England.
With 5,000 members, we have fewer than 10 members in each constituency.
If membership mushrooms, I would rather have a few campaigns run with literally hundreds of activists each than a TUSC like “throw it at the wall and see if anything sticks”.
Yes of course I would like a free broadcast, ideally produced by Ken Loach, but we have other uses for £100,000.
While I believe in fighting the good fight, I prefer winning. We have to concentrate our resources on a relatively small number of constituencies.
I believe that the Transform Party could win seats at the next General Election.
If we have our own MPs, those MPs can be high profile campaigners for Transform.
Please also allow for negotiations with other Left parties where we may agree not to stand in some constituencies.
I divide our prospects into various categories.
CATEGORY A: Seats we can realistically win from Labour
CATEGORY B: Labour held seats we should contest without expecting to win
CATEGORY D: Special Cases
I should also mention “Short Money”, which is only important if we expect to win at least one seat.
Category A: Seats we can realistically win from Labour
Labour’s strongest argument is that if people do not vote Labour, they risk giving the constituency to the Conservatives. This works in many wards and constituencies, because it is true.
There are over 60 constituencies where Labour in 2017 won more than 60% of the vote. In those constituencies we can split the vote. Either Transform or Labour will win that constituency.
We have to address the traditional Labour vote and persuade them to vote for Transform. There are also people who did not vote in 2019, or did not vote Labour in 2019, who will vote for us.
In these constituencies we are fighting for the Labour heartlands, the core Labour vote. The habit of a lifetime is that if they vote, they vote Labour. The core Labour voters have long been taken for granted by Labour. Many are open to a “safe” loan of their vote to Transform.
The national impact of beating Labour in the Labour heartlands, or even just coming close, would be immense.
A survey in 2021, Social media usage in the United Kingdom (UK) – statistics & facts | Statista showed that well over 25% of the UK population does not use social media.
“After a marked increase of roughly 7 million users between 2016 and 2017, social media uptake in the United Kingdom has slowed down. Despite this, the number of users continues to grow each year and is forecast to reach nearly 51 million by 2025 with a market penetration rate of approximately 73.5 percent nationwide.”
The same survey showed that 99% of young people now use social media. But will they read our social media?
A 2017 survey showed that those not using social media tend to be elderly, poor, and those unable to use social media for financial, physical, educational, or intellectual reasons.
The constituencies we are targeting are poorer than the average, and less well educated than the average.
The proportion of the population not using social media could easily be 30%.
We cannot readily identify this 30%. We will have to reach them by campaigning and leaflets. As a rough policy we will concentrate leafleting in Council Tax Bands A and B, because that is where most poor people are.
The leaflets will be A5, because people just will not read long leaflets. There can be links to a campaign web site. They must be attention grabbing.
One leaflet, however well written, will not persuade people to change the voting or non-voting habits of a lifetime. A series of leaflets delivered roughly monthly for six months or longer will have some effect. The more leaflets delivered, the more opportunity there is to change minds.
The messages to get across each time are:
Tories are bad / criminal / corrupt / incompetent / liars /
The Tories have badly damaged the NHS, the working poor, the disabled, pensions, young people, and people with families. The Tories have diverted money to the rich (with examples). The Tories have more than doubled National Debt. We the people have nothing to show for it. We lost more lives under Covid (150,000+) than in the Blitz (52,000). It is more important to attack the Tories as a whole than to concentrate on individuals.
Labour is complicit / not opposing/ side with the rich / liars / no different (some honourable exceptions)/ did little or nothing to protect people working in care homes and the NHS or people losing pay through illness, unemployment, or short time.
Transform are on our side. Stress our policies.
Others usually just ignore
CATEGORY B: Labour held seats we should contest without expecting to win
These are marginal seats where by splitting the vote we can probably ensure that the sitting Labour MP loses. We would say that Labour MPs who do not oppose the Tories tooth and nail are a waste of space.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton Pontefract and Castleford) majority 1,276.
Labour Conservative UKIP/Brexit
2015 25,213 9,569 9,785
2017 29,268 14,769 3,030
2019 18,297 17,021 8,032
Canterbury is held by Rosie Duffield. Transform has pledged to stand there AND there is a group of ex Labour supporters happy to campaign against her under the Transform banner.
Doncaster Central is held by Rosie Winterton.
Doncaster North is held by Ed Miliband.
A number of paper-thin majorities are held by left-wing Labour MPs or MPs no-one has heard of. Local knowledge about MPs with slim majorities might add a constituency to this list.
CATEGORY C: Constituencies where we have local defectors from Labour who wish to fight under the Transform banner.
Canterbury (above) and Colchester groups exist. More groups will be approaching us as the General Election gets closer.
CATEGORY D: Special Cases
There may be seats held by Conservatives or others that Transform could win, but none come to mind.
The Labour Party does not run candidates in Northern Ireland. We may be approached by socialists in Northern Ireland who wish to stand as Transform.
Byelections are a world on their own. The lesson from Chesham and Amersham is to get in hard and early, or leave it alone. Do not dither.
Having the same team producing social media and leaflets everything ensures that Transform speaks with one “voice”.
SHORT MONEY
Named after Labour Minister Ted Short, this money supports minority parties who gain two seats, or one seat plus 150,000 votes.
- General funding for Opposition Parties – the amount payable to qualifying parties from 1 April 2021 is £18,407.21 for every seat won at the last election plus £36.76 for every 200 votes gained by the party.
- Travel Expenses for Opposition Parties – the total amount payable under this component of the scheme for the financial year commencing on 1 April 2021 is £202,213.04 apportioned between each of the Opposition parties in the same proportion as the amount given to each of them under the basic funding scheme set out above.
- Leader of the Opposition’s Office – under the third component of the scheme, £857,596.87 is available for the running costs of the Leader of the Opposition’s office for the financial year commencing on 1 April 2021.
If fewer than 5 MPs the floor is set at £102,150 and the ceiling is set at £306,150.
NOTE: These are annual figures. If we are confident of gaining Short money then it makes financial sense to stand in any constituency where we are confident of gaining 1,000 votes. We lose our £500 deposit but we gain at least £183.80 a year in Short money.
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