One perfectly valid reason for voting is to reward past success and punish past failures. We have no guarantees about what politicians will do in future, whatever they promise. We know what they did in the past.
For millions of right-wingers, this punish-reward perspective is central to their decision about how to vote in 2024. They may differ a bit on what it is that they want to punish the Tory party for – whether it’s for partygate; ousting Liz Truss; net zero; inflation; Brexit; not making enough of Brexit; high public spending and taxes; too much wokery; too much immigration; or too many lockdowns. Whatever the precise reason for their rage, it is largely looking at the past. The Tories have done wrong and they have to pay the price.
It’s rather odd that Covid hasn’t featured more prominently in this election campaign
But this backwards-looking perspective significantly colours how we think of other parties as well. For example, over the past week or so Reform’s poll rating (which until then had appeared to have sufficient momentum to pull ahead of the Tories) has taken a significant hit following Nigel Farage’s comments about the origins of the Russo-Ukraine war and in particular his claim that the expansion of the EU was one of the key causes of the Russian invasion.
On the face of it it’s rather strange that so many people appear to have been put off from voting Reform by Farage’s views about events from decades ago (however flawed you might think his views are). Yet perhaps it becomes less strange if we grasp that the electorate – especially the right-leaning electorate – has shifted into punishing parties for past actions. Whether they would articulate things like this or not, right-leaning voters may subconsciously feel that they can’t overlook Farage’s positions concerning matters from rather long ago, given they are so determined to punish Tory actions that are now behind us.
Yet if we are to be consistent, that places right-wing voters in an awkward position. For if we are to punish the Tories for their past actions and punish Farage for his views about the past, what of Labour’s own (perhaps rather more pertinent, recent and egregious) past errors? After all, in July 2021 Keir Starmer denounced Boris Johnson’s government’s decision to remove almost all remaining Covid restrictions, saying that it would cause the NHS to be swamped that summer and that the large spike in hospitalisations and deaths that could follow would be known as the ‘Johnson variant’. It is rare for an opposition leader to be in a position where her or his preferred policy can be definitively assessed. July 2021 was one of those rare occasions. Starmer was spectacularly wrong.
And that wasn’t the only time that year that Labour was wrong about Covid restrictions. It opposed Johnson’s opening up at almost every step, then through the autumn of 2021 it continually demanded the re-imposition of restrictions. If past actions ought to be the key basis on which we vote, isn’t a demonstrably unjustifiably urging that we all be placed under house arrest for several extra months the kind of thing that ought to rule out someone from any consideration as Prime Minister? Many right-wingers definitely said so at the time.
It’s rather odd that Covid hasn’t featured more prominently in this election campaign. Reform was (re)launched as an explicitly anti-lockdown party. Labour urged for extra restrictions and slower removal of restrictions in 2021. If the basis of your anti-Tory vote is the past and you are torn between Reform and Labour (as many of us are) it’s every bit as much of a challenge to accept voting for a party that wanted us placed under house arrest unnecessarily for many extra months as it is to accept voting for a party that thinks the EU caused Russia to invade Ukraine. Perhaps even more so.
We can’t ignore the past in our voting. The ability to ‘kick the rotters out’ when they let us down is arguably the single most important virtue of democracy. But in 2024, for right-leaning voters, no party’s hands are clean. Looking backwards is important. But we need to think about what we want in the future as well.
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