Bridging the Gap: Personality politics and Labour’s electoral challenge.
This article was first published in the 2022 spring edition of Fabian Review under the title ‘Personality Politics’.
Citation: Weinberg, J. (2022). Personality Politics. Fabian Review, Vol.134(1): 12-13.
At the time of writing, the Labour Party is seeing a boom in electoral support. Over the last four months, it has enjoyed a steady lead in the polls that, at one point in mid-January, was its largest since 2002. Accounting for recent surveys of political attitudes, it seems that the current Conservative Government has finally started to pay the price for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as a string of scandals that have damaged perceptions of its competence, integrity and benevolence.
Yet to draw on an adage attributed to the late Harold Wilson, a week can be a long time in politics. Public opinion is a fickle beast and the Labour Party cannot afford to be complacent or, more specifically, to be satisfied with accruing momentary public support as a default alternative to Conservative failure. It is worth remembering that in order to win the next election with a majority of one, Labour will have to increase its share of parliamentary seats by a little over 60 per cent. This is something that no political party has ever done.
“Them” and “Us”: personality and politicians
My recent book, Who Enters Politics and Why?, seeks to cast light on the psychological dimensions of this challenge – amongst others – using original survey and interview data on the basic human values of UK MPs and councillors as well as the UK electorate.
Basic values are well studied across the social sciences as one measure of personality; they denote a series of different motivational goals that we each hold to differing degrees and thus act to fulfil in various domains of our lives. A raft of research in psychology and political science has demonstrated the importance of personality characteristics, like basic values, for people’s political attitudes and participation. Comparing the basic values of governors and governed, I ask: do politicians share the value priorities (and thus motivational goals) of those citizens who vote for them and, ultimately, trust them with their democratic sovereignty?
In picking apart this question, I find first that partisanship and basic values share a strong relationship at all levels of UK politics. Second, partisan elites are much more polarised in their basic values than partisans in the public. And third, psychological congruence between MPs and voters occurs to a much greater extent on the right of British politics than the left.
What exactly does this mean? On the first point, for example, I find that Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrat MPs and voters score higher for ‘self-transcendence’ values (denoting benevolence and universalism) than their Conservative colleagues and peers. In many ways, these results reflect the ideological foundations of the UK’s centre-left parties and, in particular, their strong advocacy of social welfare ideals. By contrast, Conservative MPs and voters score higher for ‘conservation' values (denoting conformity, tradition and security), again in line with the Party’s historic ideological roots in social and economic hierarchy.
More informative still, I find that voters for parties on the left of British politics (primarily Labour) are more psychologically akin to voters on the right and elected politicians on the right (primarily Conservative), than those politicians on the left that they actually elect. The same is true of non-voters. These results paint a worrying picture for politicians and parties on the left – Labour in particular – who not only lack psychological affinity with their existing voters but also those who do not vote at all.
Leaders and followers: why psychological congruency matters
It is right to ask why and how these results matter. The first answer to that question lies in a theory from political psychology known as the congruency principle. Put simply, the congruency principle relates to the ways in which voters use personality characteristics as yardsticks to appraise politicians’ suitability for office and, in turn, their performance or policy proposals. Voters will seek and identify congruency between their own basic values and those of candidates or groups of candidates (ie political parties). Corroborated by studies in the US and a number of European states, the congruency principle – coupled with the findings reported above – may help to explain the Labour Party’s recent misfortunes.
On the ideological right, it would seem that basic values, as part of a reflexive and purposive system of personality, help people to make political choices consistent with the basic principles that guide their lives. Thus, there is psychological congruence between politicians and their voters; a lead-follower match as the esteemed academic David Winter would put it.
On the ideological left, the leader-follower match appears to fail in the UK (on aggregate). This may reflect the broader ideological space on the left and the challenge facing parties like Labour, which must bridge support from small-c conservatives, cosmopolitan liberals, and democratic socialists alike. Nevertheless, there is a considerable personality gap between Labour office-holders and the average Labour voter (let alone the average voter in the whole electorate).
The significance of this analysis is two-fold and pertains both to Labour’s past and future. To elaborate, let us consider first the nature of partisanship and how it forms.
Labour - a party for rather than of the people?
Very crudely, prominent explanations of partisanship tend to focus on one of two ‘pathways’ known as ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’. From an instrumental perspective, partisanship is grounded in a responsive and relatively well-informed degree of contemplation by citizens. Voting behaviours – taken as indicators of partisanship – therefore reflect citizens’ agreement with a particular party manifesto and can be equally responsive to a party’s policy successes, failures and the appearance or performance of its leaders. In the second pathway, partisanship is an expressive choice grounded in identity and emotion, and is therefore largely resistant to changes in party personnel or policy platforms. Expressive partisans engage more in motivated reasoning: biased thought patterns whereby we process information positively if it conforms to prior beliefs and process information negatively if it does not. Expressive partisans also display more animosity to out-groups, and exhibit defensive emotions when their party is threatened.
So what can we glean when we apply these theories and data to Labour’s past performance? Let us start in 1997, when Tony Blair’s New Labour offered an unashamedly neoliberal policy agenda. Policies such as caps on income tax and the end of the Party’s commitment to national ownership of public services drastically reduced the RILE scores (ideological differences) between Labour and Conservative campaign manifestos, and arguably made the former far more attractive to ‘instrumental partisans’ motivated by ‘conservation' values.
However, the New Labour movement simultaneously violated many of the norms associated with expressive social identification among its traditional support base. As the perceived differences between the two main parties decreased (both in terms of the types of people entering the parliamentary parties and their policy positions), the cohesion of this support base dwindled and expressive partisans started to look elsewhere or did not vote at all. Indeed, whilst the so-called Red Wall may have fallen in 2019, the cracks had been widening for the best part of two decades or more. The New Labour movement was, then, psychologically unsustainable, but by the same token subsequent strategists and leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn moved the Labour Party to the ‘radical’ left in a way that failed to compete with the Conservatives’ instrumental appeal to the psychology of the average British voter and previous non-voters (on Brexit in particular).
This leaves the Labour Party in somewhat of a quandary. Labour is proud to be the party of economic and social transformation (and rightly so), but at times this can also lead to a public image of Labour as a party for rather than of the people. Put another way, Labour seeks to sell a manifesto built on change to a median voter who is inherently more motivated by security, tradition, and conservation. In recent years, the Conservative Party has operated in reverse and fared much better at the ballot box. At the same time, the Labour Party – comprised of MPs and members who are not psychologically aligned with the wider electorate – has arguably failed to get outside of itself [enough] in order to understand when and why its message has not successfully resonated with [enough] voters. In this respect, the Labour Together inquiry into the 2019 election defeat was a highly instructive and worthwhile exercise.
Towards government
In politics, there is no consolation in losing an election; transformative governance can only take place when one is in government. This does not mean that the Labour Party should abandon its longstanding ideals, but it should think strategically about how it works those ideals into an alternative vision for the UK that properly resonates with the most important basic values of voters around the country (and not just its own membership or parliamentary body). Secondly, it must consider how it communicates that vision and its derivative policies in a way that clearly targets and thus activates people’s basic values in the run-up to elections. And finally, it might reflect carefully on how it does (or does not!) go about selecting candidates that are more psychologically representative of the nation it seeks to govern. Whilst the polls today do, then, show an encouraging picture for the Party, there remains a great deal of work to be done. And that work needs to start sooner rather than later.