The triumph that wasn't

In the closing days of the election campaign, a senior minister whispered to me in the crush of a rally that the Conservatives were on for a comfortable majority or “our voters are being deceitful”.

On the day of the election itself, multiple conversations with Labour and Tory politicians reported the same thing. The evidence on the ground pointed to a clear Tory win.

Labour MPs talked of being “battered” outside London. During the campaign one senior Labour figure described it vividly: “We have to grit our teeth and watch the car crash happen.”

The leader’s office was expecting a Conservative majority of 40 or so, sources suggest.

Jeremy Corbyn’s team deny they were focusing on any particular number, but it was suggested that a hung parliament was, although at the upper end of their expectation, one of the scenarios they had under consideration.

Then again, a leaked copy of Labour’s prepared script for MPs doing interviews on election night suggested they were prepared for losses, trying to focus on their vote share, and the mistakes of the Tory campaign.

The script included tell-tale lines such as “this was always going to be a challenging election” and “the collapse of UKIP has clearly been a boost to the Conservatives since the referendum, but Labour has closed the gap”.

Over at Tory HQ, they were preparing for an increased majority. The blue balloons were tied outside the windows of the party’s smart Westminster office.

At the start of the campaign the Tories looked like they would romp home.

MPs from both of the main parties had that reinforced on the doorstep, time and again. Those voters weren’t of course, telling porkie pies to political canvassers. But neither Tories nor Labour in their individual constituencies could do much more than talk to their own “promises” – households where they had had support before, or they could theoretically pick it up.

Especially in a brief campaign, candidates, short of time, and short of resources, were talking to voters whose track record they knew – they knocked on doors where it might have been worthwhile.

Traditional canvassing doesn’t therefore pick up what’s going on with people who haven’t voted before.

So as Labour were becoming more buoyant, appealing to young voters and new voters, it was possible to sense a change, but very hard to pick up the scale.

While everyone saw the response to Mr Corbyn at the rallies he attended around the country, the record of previous elections prompted scepticism about the impact that that would have on turnout.

“No-one picked up the surge in young people,” one senior minister now believes. “To my eternal frustration people are always fighting the election we’ve just had – we should have known after the referendum this was the election that young people would be switched on.”

Labour did a much, much better job of using technology to motivate those new voters too.

If private reflexes were wrong too, what makes the Tories’ metaphorical defeat so crushing is the almost total failure to manage public expectations.

From the start Downing Street insiders believed they might be in line for a majority of only about 50. Anything less than that would “be a disappointment”, I recall being told, but “still much better than what we’ve got”.

But early polls, and the local election results that pointed to a Labour wipeout, were arguably not stamped on hard enough by Conservative HQ.

The prime minister was not completely convincing when she insisted she was taking nothing for granted. It wasn’t totally credible because she only called the election believing that she would increase the majority by some margin.

Labour’s experience was almost the precise opposite of the Tories'. After a tumultuous two years in Westminster, seeming often not to be able to control his party, let alone events, expectations of Mr Corbyn were low from the start, both in terms of the polling, and the perception of his potential to win.

I remember when he first became the Labour leader, talking to senior members of his team about whether they believed they could turn him into a credible national figure, rather than a campaigner who had undoubtedly had huge success in mobilising the left.

Their view was always that the building blocks were there – when people saw him on his own terms they liked him. In the context of a general election campaign where he could be himself, rather than in the constraints of Westminster, the opportunity would be there for him to build much bigger levels of support.

The test was always whether the “Corbyn effect” that changed the Labour Party could be replicated to create a coalition of anti-Tory sentiment – whether Labour, former Lib Dems, Green voters or new voters – big enough to win.

During the campaign, by appearing surrounded by his fans, giving more or less the same passionate stump speech time after time, Mr Corbyn was simply exposed to more and more people on his own terms, and pictured surrounded by people hugely enthused by him, creating more of the same energy.

He is fundamentally a happy campaigner and thrived in the closing weeks, comfortable among the crowds. I remember hearing him after a couple of interviews, turn to an aide and enthusiastically ask: “Is it selfie time?”

The “big mo” - the enthusiasm and energy in the campaign - was certainly on his side, not the Conservatives’. That is not, however, always what actually determines the result. Despite Labour joy that they did better than they expected, one senior figure said this week “remember it was Dunkirk, not D-Day”.

Arguably Labour’s advances now present as much of a risk as an opportunity. There is another story in what happens to Labour next. It’s still divided on many issues, and on Jeremy Corbyn’s real capabilities.

Remember that some of the MPs who increased their majorities unashamedly promised their constituents on the doorsteps that he would be gone after the election and, more to the point, that they’d help remove him.

And as the party ponders its future, it might be wise to consider the advice of a Labour Party sage who argues: “This was the worst Tory campaign in 50 years, and we still lost.”

The Conservative effort was a bad campaign. In truth, the verdict on any election machine is really the result - a dire few weeks followed by a victory scrubs memories of poor performance.

But this time, the campaign really was poor, and this time, it really mattered. At the manifesto launch I asked Mrs May if she was not setting out a bleak picture of the country.

Her team had set a lot of store in her ability to take the tough decisions, to “make the hard choices”. I’d been told by senior insiders their private polling ratings for her as a leader were “off the charts”.

This gave them the confidence to sketch out a manifesto that was more hard graft and gruel than milk and honey. One Conservative MP now describes it as “more gloomy than the Book of Revelations”.

The theme of hard choices was meant to play into their chosen campaign focus of leadership. Could it have worked?

Until the manifesto was launched, voters we met were offering opinions on her that seemed nearly always favourable. We heard time and again different versions of “I’m normally Labour but I like Theresa May”.

She wasn’t slick, “didn’t seem like those other Tories”, was less posh than David Cameron, and was straight. The kind of character, perhaps like your child’s headteacher, who made voters want to stand up properly, pay attention, and not protest too much.

But her plans for social care in England were a hard choice too far for many voters. The idea had been in the works, along with some other considerations, across government for many months. But the final version in the manifesto, swiftly branded the “dementia tax”, was a political disaster.

Within days, unlike any other previous leader, she had publicly redrafted one of her main manifesto promises. That was problem enough. But the perception of her being straight, unlike other politicians, was trashed by her insistence in front of the cameras, when asked again and again, that nothing had changed about her policy. Plainly, there had been a significant move.

While Westminster is extremely unforgiving of the dreaded political U-turn, I’ve often felt voters are more understanding.

We all change our minds in normal life, but that tolerance has to meet one vital condition, that the politician admits they have shifted.

For Mrs May to try to front out the change, pretending the policy was exactly the same, killed off one of the most valuable aspects of her brand as a politician. She suddenly was, in some voters’ minds, just as slippery as the rest.

Refusing to give details on how many people would be hit by changes to winter fuel allowance, failing to explain why and how millions of primary school children would lose their free school meals while the most in need kept theirs, suggesting the Conservatives might revisit the vote on fox hunting - the difficulties began to pile-up.

Beyond the problems with the grim manifesto, as one of her now departed chiefs of staff has accepted, the Tory party simply ran the wrong campaign for her.

Their polling numbers suggested the best plan was to make it all about the leader. To run a presidential-style campaign in the UK - as the Tories did around David Cameron, and Labour did around Tony Blair - you need the candidate to be willing, and comfortable with what that requires.

While Mrs May answered hundreds of press questions, and attended dozens of events, she is simply not the type of politician who is comfortable in situations that are unpredictable, that might go wrong.

I suspect, strangely for someone in her position, she is fundamentally rather shy when it comes to her own image.

Aides told me after we carried out her only interview during the referendum campaign last year that she asked her husband to watch it, rather than look at it herself, as she was so nervous about how she had come across.

At campaign events, as at political summits, she nearly always builds in 20-30 minutes of preparation time once at the venue before appearing in front of the cameras – the only politician I have covered who takes that kind of time.

This desire for preparation may be laudable. Government officials have previously talked flatteringly of this as an attribute. She wants to read everything, study everything, reflect and prepare.

But the combustible atmosphere of a campaign requires something else – a nimbleness, a lightness of touch, a willingness to busk it sometimes, and take the odd public risk. Privately, the prime minister is known to have a sense of humour. But on the road with Theresa May, allowing herself to eat a single chip in front of cameras felt like a truly daring act.

Her team were not particularly more controlling than those of other prime ministers that I have trekked around the country with. But the taut public atmosphere that surrounded her was tangible. She didn’t look like she was enjoying the campaign, so why would her efforts appeal to anyone else?

Her decision not to take part in the televised leaders’ debate led to complaints from opponents that she lacked “guts”. If elections really are a tactical game, Jeremy Corbyn took the points by turning up. There was no big breakthrough moment that night but what impact did her non-appearance have on voters?

I spoke to some members of the audience right after the debate had wrapped up. Even some Tory voters said they were pretty fed up that the prime minister hadn’t “bothered” to turn up. The calculation was based on the traditional notion that in a campaign, the frontrunner has no incentive to debate the underdog. The Tories believed it was the right call that night – Theresa May wasn’t part of what some described as a "rabble".

But it did make an impression on the electorate, not least because the Labour campaign brought it up again and again.

The hoped for “strong and stable” image morphed into accusations that Theresa May was simply a robot, unable to respond to changing situations, to rise to political challenges.

Since the election that perception has been intensified by her response to the Grenfell Tower disaster. No 10 considered carefully whether she should visit the scene on the day after. She did, but only privately met the emergency services and some volunteers. In contrast, Mr Corbyn was filmed meeting residents and locals caught up in the disaster.

There was obvious caution in Number 10 about what was a very fast moving situation. They were well aware that it left them open to accusations she looked uncaring. But on balance, cautious of being vulnerable to accusations of making political capital, distracting from the emergency effort, or being there, and unable to answer families’ questions, they decided not to, and not to alert the media to her visit.

This meant all that emerged were stilted photographs from a distance of the prime minister with uniformed emergency services. In the following days she met victims of the disaster but faced cries of "coward" from an angry crowd when she left a local church. She also met families at Downing Street.

Politics can call for empathy as well as leadership - the initial inability to visit more directly was a mistake. With Mrs May on the scene the afternoon after the terror attack at Finsbury Park, it’s a lesson No 10 seems now to have learnt.

The other awful terror attacks that slammed the brakes on the election campaign not once, but twice, had rammed Mrs May’s rigidity home to voters, and in the process overturned years of political assumptions.

As the terrible truth of the Manchester, and then the London Bridge attacks sank in, the prime minister was tested like never before, and her record as home secretary was called into question.

Although there was enormous praise for the emergency services at both events, before too long warnings made to her about police cuts during her time as home secretary began to surface.

It is true that there is no consensus about the impact that the loss of 20,000 police officers in England has had. Some experts, like the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, believe it has had no effect on Britain’s ability to deal with terrorism. Overall crime has fallen during that period too.

On the other side, there is a very appealing logic to the argument that suggests that of course it has had an impact. How can you possibly make a case that the loss of that number of officers has had no effect?

Tory and Labour MPs soon reported back that the attack on police cuts was playing on the public’s minds on the doorstep. Labour had found a policy criticism that damaged Mrs May in particular. It was a specific and meaningful real life example of the practical consequences of the cuts with the Conservative leader unwilling, or unable, to defend her case deftly or with much conviction.

For Mr Corbyn and Labour it was a perfect mash-up of austerity and security. He was vulnerable on security, criticised frequently by the Tories for his views on the nuclear deterrent, his attitude to foreign policy. But by zeroing in on police cuts, it was an issue that didn’t just put Mrs May under pressure on his favoured topic of austerity, but also went some way to neutralise one of his perceived negatives.

The Conservatives had long been considered the party of law and order – but perhaps not in this election. And the issue allied a tangible statistic to a general sense that, Tory ministers acknowledge themselves, was perhaps already stirring.

For year after year since 2010, the public sector has been under real pressure. The coalition’s first layer of cuts gave rise to assumptions in some political quarters that you could keep slicing at public sector budgets and not feel much political pain.

Overall, public sector spending has continued to increase in cash terms. But taking inflation into consideration, it’s roughly the same - and there’s much stronger demand for the health service, and an increasing population. There’s no question some parts of the public sector have experienced seven years of tightening budgets, and the consequences could no longer be ignored.

Labour was able to benefit not just from growing public unease, but also from a number of parallel campaigns that were not necessarily party political.

On school cuts for example, the unions drove a significant campaign - headteachers even wrote home to families warning of the impact of school funding changes. That was not of course a direct instruction to parents round the country to vote Labour, but another component in developing a sense of unease about the Conservative government.

In these volatile days there are all sorts of attempts to reach sweeping conclusions about what the public was trying to say.

For me, it’s just not that simple, but a gloriously tangled web of reasons and rationales. There was effectively a different underlying question on the ballot paper in Scotland for example - whether to have a second independence referendum. That drove the decisions for many voters, taking the shine from Nicola Sturgeon’s now wonky crown.

It would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but it was the Scottish Conservatives that saved Mrs May, introducing a new Tory power, in its leader Ruth Davidson, to a broader national stage. Labour in Scotland didn’t collapse either, putting on seats.

But the referendum has indeed seemed to remove UKIP’s reason for being – the party has travelled some distance now from national relevance. Their voters did not move overwhelmingly to the Tories, but split out between them and the Labour Party.

For the Lib Dems, there was no grand resurgence, but they did pick up a few more seats.

And the wallpaper of the election - Brexit - motivated different voters in different ways. In some seats, certainly, Labour held off Conservative opposition because of the prime minister’s stance on Brexit. But that happened in reverse too.

And for millions of voters, of course, day-to-day considerations helped make their minds up too. Again, the Tory calculation that made this campaign all about the leadership required for a political process proved a mistake.

What, dear voter, are you more affected by? The form of the British negotiating team in Brussels during a 20-month session of political hard bargaining? Or the letter that came home in your child’s school bag from the headteacher warning they might have to sack two teachers because of their shrinking budget?

What this election notably did feature was a bigger difference between the two main political parties than we have seen for some time. And when that was on offer, voters returned to those two traditional tribes in a way we haven’t seen for years.

It’s impossible to conclude purely that this election was a wholesale rejection of the prime minister’s view on Brexit, or a general howl of pain against austerity, or an electoral slam dunk for Mr Corbyn’s different vision and more radical manifesto.

Voters are too complex, too wonderfully varied, too differently motivated to have their views stuffed into pigeonholes in such straightforward ways.

This election result leaves the country now in the most unstable political state for years. What it stunningly and decisively was not, was the election that Theresa May had expected.

She is now stuck with the most painful irony. The prime minister called this election, at least in part to insulate herself from the demands of her own party, to achieve a mandate that would free her to stand up to her backbenches, and give her breathing space in Brussels.

In contrast, the result damned her with faint praise. Her own reputation crashed, arguably faster than any other in modern British political times.

She now looks set to be dependent on support from a tiny party, the DUP, that only represents one part of the United Kingdom, whose past views and record have alarmed some Conservatives.

Only four weeks after a set of local elections where she swept all before her, the general election humbled her, weakened her, leaving Theresa May a “wounded antelope” in the words of one of her senior colleagues.

An election called to show who was in charge ended with politicians being given a striking reminder. It is not them, but the public who is the boss.