Communicating and Strategising Leadership in British Elections: Follow the Leader? (Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership) 3030610667, 9783030610661

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Political Leadership and Contemporary British Election Campaigns
Leadership and the Personalisation of Politics
Campaigning
Placing Leadership into (Post-modern) Campaigning
Outline of the Book
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Hitting the Road
Locating Visits
Regional Visits
Visit Strategy
Tenure
Brexit
Defensive and Expansionist Visits: Picking Your Battles
Visit Determinants
Visit Types and Symbolism
Audience, Access and Security
Grand-Standing Visits
Policy-Themed Visits
Cheerleading
Campaigning
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Preaching to the Converted?
The Impact of Leader Visits
Leader Visits and Vote Choice
Leader Visits as Sources of Voter Mobilisation
Timing Leader Visits
The Impact of Visit Types
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Follow the Leader?
Leader Effects in Contemporary Voter Behaviour
Issue Voting and Incumbency
Leadership Effects in British General Elections Since 2010
Leaders and Voting
Leader/Party Differentials
Campaigns and Shifts in Leader Evaluations
Leaders, Visits and Impact in Contemporary British Elections
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Reporting Leadership
The Political Press in Britain
Press Reporting During Elections
Exploring Leadership Reporting
Prominence of Leaders in Reporting
The Personal Is Political
Reporting Visits
Standalone Visit Reporting
When Things Go Wrong
(In)congruence
Holding Leaders to Account
The Final Push
Gender and Reporting Leadership
Power-Dressing
Harridans
Incumbency Shifts in Reporting
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Partners in Politics
Gendered Dimensions of Political Partnership
2010: Bumps and Lady Macbeth
Sarah Brown: Mummy Brown, Pedicures and Ink Stains
Samantha Cameron: ‘Bump-first’ and Feminine
Miriam Gonzalez Durantez: Not Playing the Campaign Game
2015: The Secret Blogger
Sam Cam: Campaigning Motherhood
Justine Thornton: The Dowdy Mouse
Miriam Gonzalez Durantez: Fiery Food Blogger
2017: Into the Shadows
2019: A Return to Active Partnership?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Towards a Typology
Making Sense of Seats
Categorising Constituencies
Urban Hub seats
Dead Certs
Legacy Seats
Scene-setter Seats
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 8: The Future of the Campaign Trail
The Role of Leadership in Engaging the Public
The Personal Is Political
Bridging the Air War and Ground War
Performing Leadership
Bibliography
Appendices
Appendix A: Full Results for Table 3.1: The Impact of Leader Visits on the Electorate
Appendix B: Full Results for Table 4.4: The Impact of Leader Evaluations on Voter Behaviour, with Visited Seats Isolated
Data Sources
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Communicating and Strategising Leadership in British Elections Follow the Leader? Alia Middleton

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership Series Editors Ludger Helms University of Innsbruck Innsbruck, Austria Gillian Peele Department of Politics and International Relations University of Oxford Oxford, UK Bert A. Rockman Department of Political Science Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership seeks to gather some of the best work on political leadership broadly defined, stretching from classical areas such as executive, legislative and party leadership to understudied manifestations of political leadership beyond the state. Edited by an international board of distinguished leadership scholars from the United States, Europe and Asia, the series publishes cutting-edge research that reaches out to a global readership. The editors are gratefully supported by an advisory board comprising of: Takashi Inoguchi (University of Tokyo, Japan), R.A.W Rhodes (University of Southampton, UK) and Ferdinand Müller-­ Rommel (University of Luneburg, Germany). More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14602

Alia Middleton

Communicating and Strategising Leadership in British Elections Follow the Leader?

Alia Middleton Politics Department University of Surrey Guildford, UK

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership ISBN 978-3-030-61066-1    ISBN 978-3-030-61067-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61067-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Claudio Divizia / EyeEm / Getty Image This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Amidst all the debates, interviews, speeches and speculation, election campaigns represent an almost never-ending round of events for party leaders, their circle and the journalists hanging on their every word. Yet on top of these demands on their time, party leaders are expected to board battle buses and make a hectic dash around the country, meeting voters and inspiring their followers. They appear in high-vis jackets on building sites, sit down with school pupils, approach bewildered patients in hospitals and give speeches in local community centres. They may be heckled and may have eggs thrown at them, all while eager journalists follow them around. British politics can be very strange. There are particular feats which we expect our leaders to perform—such as eating in public, or visiting a pub. The press attack party leaders for not meeting members of the public, then pounce when something goes wrong. These visits do not happen by accident; they are carefully planned as expressions of the leader and their policies. You may not have given them much thought, but I hope this book will make you think when you next see a battle bus. My interest in them came about largely by chance; borrowing a book on Canadian elections from my PhD supervisor, I had intended to read about local campaign intensity. I read the wrong chapter. The chapter I actually read instead happened to be on where the party leaders visited during election campaigns. It chimed with something that had already occurred to me when thinking about British elections—leaders are prominent, and we see them a lot during election campaigns, but where are they going? And why? It struck me that so much attention is paid to where the v

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leader goes during a campaign and numerous photographs of the campaign trail perpetuate reporting on elections that I set out to find some research on the subject. While there was a healthy body of international literature, particularly from the USA and Canada, I couldn’t find any British equivalent. As we were at that time hurtling into the 2010 election campaign I decided to go for it and see what data I could gather. It was perhaps more difficult than I expected—some visits are more newsworthy than others (as we will see later in this book), and party records on where the leaders visited are often unreliable and difficult to come by—when they exist at all. On several occasions, when speaking with party representatives, I was told my list was more comprehensive than their own. Interviewing election agents, I found some of them were unaware their party leader had visited the seat. And no wonder there is confusion—election campaigns are hectic whirlwinds of frenetic activity, with the leader participating in visits, debates, interviews, policy discussions and the like, as well as trying to have some semblance of a private life. Aides may change depending on the stage of the campaign and the state of the polls. Visits may be hastily arranged, changed and cancelled—some are organised days in advance, with photo locations carefully scoped out, while others are more like a visit Theresa May organised herself via text on her way from another visit. In short, comprehensive lists of places the leader has visited and what they did when they were there are extremely rare. There has been some growing interest in the campaign trail since I started collecting my data, but there are problems regarding correct allocation of visits to particular constituencies and whether you should count visits to a leader’s home constituency (I do not—the strategic intentions of a leader visiting their home seat are quite different to popping up at the other end of the country). As such, I have unique data from the last four general elections on where the leaders visited and can therefore tell you with some ease where Tim Farron was when he asked an activist to smell his spaniel, or where Gordon Brown was unveiling a poster and inadvertently caused a car crash. Collecting the data has also changed over the years, via multiple rolling news sources, as well as local media and increasingly social media. But for all the large-scale manifesto launches and gimmicks in factories, there is a need to be vigilant and use multiple sources. In 2019, for example, I only noted that Boris Johnson had visited Neasden Temple with Carrie Symonds when I passed the newspaper stand in a shop. Largely because

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there was a big picture of the two of them on the front. Yet this report was hardly picked up on in the rolling coverage, and international newspapers reported on it far more than the domestic media. The process of writing this book has been a long one at times, particularly on a cold October day mid-way through the write-up when yet another snap general election was called. I had been teaching crisis leadership (perhaps appropriately) when it was announced that Labour would no longer stand in the way of another early election. As my students received notifications on their phones, I remained blissfully unaware for the next hour. It drove me back to data collection, and some generous contributions of election leaflets from my students, along with the expectation of some niche Christmas-themed visits. I was rewarded with a Christmas cracker factory visit and a few festive market walkabouts. But quite besides the novelty value of a winter election, it also meant that I could test out some key developments I had already begun to advance in the book (then under construction). In writing and researching about leader visits since the 2010 general election, it has been exciting to explore new ground and develop a deeper understanding of leadership on the ground. With such a small amount of research establishing leader visits in the British context, there is a great deal of potential to advance the literature considerably, and I hope this book goes some way towards that, particularly when it comes to understanding that not all visits are the same. While there have been a few forays into visit types elsewhere (specifically in the USA), there is no equivalent in the Britain (or as far as I can find any other parliamentary system). But just from collecting and poring over four elections worth of visit data, I have been able to disentangle particular types and this book will explore how we can identify them. We’ll look at what works in reporting visits and allocate constituencies to a typology that combines media reporting and visit strategies. You may of course disagree with me, which I welcome, but I hope this serves to get you thinking about what amount of work goes on behind the glossy battle buses wending their way around the British countryside. There are so many people to thank in their inspiration and support before, during and after the writing process. Thanks must go to my friends; in particular Dr Louise Thompson for her wise advice and support, Dr Emily Rainsford for being a great friend (and managing to grow a whole human during the time it has taken me to write this book) and Dr Laura

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Chappell for too many late nights. Further thanks to my colleagues at the University of Surrey—not least Simon Usherwood, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Malte Kaeding, Amelia Hadfield, Roula Nezi, Ciaran Gillespie, Nikos Gkotsis Papaioannou and Roberta Guerrina, who have all been sources of support, encouragement, distraction and sounding boards for my ideas. More widely, thanks to Professor David Cutts for believing in a hunch and Dr Alistair Clark, who has been both wise and unfailingly fun. Also, to my former supervisors, Ailsa Henderson and Nicola McEwen, for what at times was a long PhD journey. The Women in Academia Support Network has been also been both eye-opening and inspiring, and the Elections, Public Opinion and Parties specialist group has been both exciting and challenging. For those I have lost over the course of writing this book— my much-missed Uncle Ian and my grandmother Mary Middleton. Finally, my family have been instrumental in supporting me through this project. So thanks to my mother, Ailsa Middleton, for her unfailing support, my brother Paul for some comedic intervals (and technological assistance), as well as Kamila, Timmy, Aunties Catherine, Michele and Sheila, and importantly my late father Dr Robert F. Middleton in showing that a little tenacity goes a long way. Guildford, UK

Alia Middleton

Contents

1 Political Leadership and Contemporary British Election Campaigns  1 2 Hitting the Road 17 3 Preaching to the Converted? 55 4 Follow the Leader? 81 5 Reporting Leadership107 6 Partners in Politics149 7 Towards a Typology173 8 The Future of the Campaign Trail201 Appendices209 Index215

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 5.1

Mean tenure for visited and non-visited seats Patterns of defensive and expansionist visits (%) 2010–2019 The proximity of visits to polling day Policy-focused reporting on leaders

33 37 70 140

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 2.6 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 5.1 Table 7.1

Frequency of visits by leaders at elections 2010–2019 20 Mean percentage majorities of visited/not visited seats split by party 27 Proportion of seats where MP has stepped down receiving visits, split by party 32 Estimated percentage Leave vote in visited seats 34 The determinants of visits across 2010–2019 40 Visits split according to type (%) 49 The impact of leader visits on the electorate 63 The mobilisationary potential of leader visits 68 Percentage change in share of electorate against stage of campaign at which visit took place 71 Comparing canvassing rates (%) in visited and non-visited seats 74 Independent samples t-test comparing change in electorate with outward- and inward-facing visits 74 The direct impact of leaders on vote choice in British elections 2010–201790 Differences in party and leader evaluations in British elections 2010–201993 Pre and post-campaign shifts in leader evaluations 95 The impact of leader evaluations on voter behaviour, with visited seats isolated 101 Press partisanship at British elections 2010–2019 112 A visit-based typology of constituencies 177

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CHAPTER 1

Political Leadership and Contemporary British Election Campaigns

Elections are often key drivers of social change—junctures in a nation’s history, held at times of recovery, rapid change and peace. In democracies they are opportunities for voters to express their opinion and change the direction of their country, in less democratic regimes, elections may still be held as a pseudo-democratic veil for the machinations of true power. They are times at which—in varying degrees—the eyes of the media become trained on a cluster of people—party leaders, their families, their colleagues and their advisers. Rather like a beauty contest, politicians are trotted out onto various televised interview programmes, participate in stunts of sometimes dubious value and speak of their hopes for the future. Yet all these activities can fail to connect with the audience they are intended for—the public. When confronted on a street near her home in Bristol by a journalist asking for her opinion on Theresa May calling a snap general election for June 2017, a woman named Brenda spoke for many when, exasperated, she answered ‘not another one!’ Defining the remit of an election campaign and its associated activities is a complex one. In the present context, campaigning means activities originating in the actions of those associated with political parties, with the intention of either encouraging people to vote or persuading people to change their vote. Campaigning becomes election campaigning when it occurs in the period immediately prior to an election. The precise delineation of when this campaigning period occurs is debatable. In Britain it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Middleton, Communicating and Strategising Leadership in British Elections, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61067-8_1

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should technically encompass the period between the dissolution of Parliament and polling day.1 Historically, the timing of an election could vary according to the government of the time’s assessment of key factors, including their place in polls and the amount of time left before the next election legally had to take place (Balke 1990), with Parliament limited to a maximum of five years. The introduction of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) under the coalition government in 2011 ostensibly removed this strategic dimension in calling an election by fixing the date far in advance, thereby enhancing the presence of both the long and short campaign in British politics2 and creating more equal opportunities for parties come election time (Shleiter and Belu 2016). With the 2015 election date known years in advance, the parties launched their long election campaigns in the January of 2015 (White 2015) before the short campaign proper kicked off in the final weeks before polling day.3 However, for a party to utilise the long campaign to its full potential relies on the luxury of knowing when the next election will occur. With the introduction of the FTPA the 2015 Parliament should have lasted until March 2020. Yet by that point in time, two snap general elections were held, both by different Conservative prime ministers. At the time of writing, the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, committed to the repeal of the FTPA during the current Parliament. As such, it is more useful to concentrate attention on the short campaign. The 2010 general election occurred after thirteen years of New Labour dominance and the accession of Gordon Brown to the premiership in 2007 after Tony Blair stepped aside. Shortly after his election as Conservative leader in 2005, David Cameron made a barbed comment at Prime Minister’s Question Time that Blair had once been the future, which seemed to symbolise a weary administration, full of familiar faces and power struggles (Kavanagh and Cowley 2010). When it came to the 2010 campaign, it became defined by the actions of the leaders—the sudden emergence of Nick Clegg as a popular figure in the leader debates, 1  Despite common misconceptions, while the media are regulated what they can broadcast on polling day, campaigning can technically continue, albeit not in and around polling stations themselves. 2  Largely determined by campaign expenditure rules. See White (2015) for how it relates to the 2015 campaign. 3  Which has arguably been enhanced by the snap elections of 2017 and 2019. Conservative Home (Wallace 2017) attributed one of the key failings of the 2017 campaign to the overcentralisation of election strategy.

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David Cameron’s use of his wife Samantha on the campaign trail and Gordon Brown’s remarks on Gillian Duffy in Rochdale. Describing her as a ‘bigoted…sort of woman’, he was not aware that a microphone had been left on his lapel. Fast forward to the 2015 election, and the campaign machinery had slowly been grinding into action ahead of the planned election date. With both David Cameron and Nick Clegg having to defend the Coalition’s time in government, Ed Miliband toured the country, with a lectern that press jokingly said never left his side. Yet 2015 feels like a long time ago in British politics. The following year, Cameron, now holding a majority, held a referendum on leaving the European Union and the victory for the Leave vote led to his departure and replacement by Theresa May. Less than a year later, in April 2017, she called a snap general election after a walking holiday in Wales. The campaign machinery, which for over three decades had dealt with elections towards the end of the parliamentary term, suddenly had to hit the ground running less than two years after the last election. The tone of the 2017 election campaign was driven by individuals and characterised by the contrasting styles of May and Corbyn. Amidst turmoil over the Brexit process, Johnson replaced May in July 2019 and prorogued Parliament in September 2019—a decision which was overturned by the Supreme Court. Hurtling into the first December election since 1923, the campaign was focused on the leaders, notably the articulation of the Get Brexit Done message by Johnson and the anti-­ Brexit positioning of the Liberal Democrats under newly elected leader Jo Swinson. This tumultuous time in British electoral politics, with its fast-­ changing personnel, is a fascinating opportunity to explore changing personalities, changing strategies and impacts by leaders.

Leadership and the Personalisation of Politics Party leaders are vital political actors; they articulate their party’s policies, can unite or divide memberships, shift party ideology and help in electoral success. Although contemporary discussions on leadership can be traced to Weber (1958), Machiavelli (1988) and beyond, compared to the more recent literature on leadership from areas such as psychology and business the specific political science literature on leadership is still expanding. While there is a particularly well-established literature on the impact of leadership on voting behaviour (which will be explored throughout subsequent chapters), other areas are still emerging, from crisis management strategies (Boin et al. 2006) to leadership styles (Burns 1978). Yet the role

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of party leaders has not proved uncontroversial. Partly this is due to changing perceptions of the susceptibility of voters to leaders as well as shifts in opportunity in the contemporary political environment of many countries, including Britain. The advent of classical sociological models of voting, most classically expressed by Lazarsfeld et al. (1944), relegated leaders to bit-parts in vote choice, with social cleavages such as religion, age and gender instead providing the key drivers for voter behaviour. Class was ‘the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail’ (Pulzer 1967: 98), with clear and close relationships between class membership and voting for particular parties. This was at least partly supported by empirical evidence, with the important and interesting caveat that the geographical distribution of populations could lead to deviance from strict sociological norms (Hindess 1967; Parkin 1967). The Michigan model (Campbell et  al. 1960) which proposed a combination of key social cleavages and partisan identification in vote choice also had particular traction in the case of Britain (Butler and Stokes 1974), with partisan identification offering a limited way in which leaders could shape voter opinions. However, there has been a process of at least partial dealignment in Britain over the past few decades (Crewe et al. 1977), with a declining number of voters identifying strongly with political parties, and a weakening of partisan ties for those remaining identifiers. The most recent post-election wave of the British Election Study (Fieldhouse et al. 2020) identifies 22 per cent of respondents as non-identifiers and only 16 per cent of identifiers describing themselves as ‘very strong’ supporters of their party. The resultant increased openness of voters to diverse cues has coincided with competency judgements that are closely linked to voter evaluations of leaders, as well as a commensurate improvement in technology enhancing political communication capabilities, which has all increased the personalisation of politics, to produce an environment where leaders can matter in shaping voter behaviour. This personalisation of politics shifts the focus to the leader’s personality and—crucially for this book—the way in which they engage with voters and how this is interpreted by the media. Individual leaders become ciphers for their parties (McAllister 1996). There is a degree of normative discomfort with the role of leaders in contemporary electoral politics—not least as a reliance on leaders as voting cues is often equated with voters less engaged with politics. Normative queasiness aside, the terminology surrounding personalisation, in particular the use of the term

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‘presidentialisation’, has also proved problematic. The usage of such a term in countries such as Britain, where a parliamentary system is in place can jar. Although often the use of presidentialisation as a term is more of a systemic reference than a direct comparison (Webb and Poguntke 2013), for some it hints at deeper parallels. Dowding (2013), for example, rejects the presidentialisation claim, including the notion that the focus on particular leaders at election time is akin to that operating in a presidential system. As this book will explore in later chapters, there are some ways in which the presidential campaigning style has been mimicked, in particular the role of the political spouse. However, in agreement with Dowding, this is not understood here as a universal phenomenon of British elections; a more presidential style of leadership (and indeed campaigning) tends to occur as a collision between particular personalities, contexts and strategy. As Foley (1993) argues, the key turning point in understandings of British political leadership came with Thatcher’s premiership. With the centralisation of decision-making and the focusing of media attention on her leadership, her time in power reshaped expectations regarding the visibility and authority required in subsequent political leaders. She helped to reshape and refine expectations of what it meant to wield leadership, and while the precise character of a leader remains individual to a particular leader, leadership matters in contemporary British politics. What this book sets out to do is to understand the importance of leaders in contemporary British elections, by considering their symbolic value as foreriders that strategically deploy the campaign message around the country. In understanding how leadership is communicated, from an increasing reliance on the personalities behind leadership, to how their campaign appearances are utilised in press agenda-setting, this book looks at leadership from a new perspective.

Campaigning If leaders are an important reference point for contemporary politics—and contemporary voters—including in Britain, campaigns are the instruments that they wield to attain or retain power. While some agency-­centred understandings of leadership are preoccupied by their operation within legislative scenarios (Bennister and Heffernan 2015), the election campaign represents a compelling opportunity to examine not only how the leader wants to be seen, but how they are seen and received by those who might vote to elect them. As such, despite the fleeting timescale of an

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election campaign, they can play an important role launching a relatively unknown leader onto the national stage or in defining how a leader is perceived. There has been much controversy over the role of election campaigns; particularly regarding whether they matter. Much of this is bound up— like leadership—with discussions about pull-factors on voters. However, as Holbrook (1996: 18) argues, and as will be echoed throughout this book, there is no need for a campaign to be pivotal in determining the outcome of the election. Instead greater merit and appreciation of the full potential of campaigning are found in considering the full potential of the campaign itself—whether increasing attention to politics, encouraging people to exercise their democratic right or swaying their favoured party. However, to talk amorphously about ‘campaigning’ conceals its true potential. More distinctively campaigning can be divided into the air war (debates, televised interviews, party election broadcasts etc.)—most typically described as the national campaign—and the ground war (canvassing, leafleting, street stalls etc.)—which equates to the local campaign. Just focusing on the debates that form part of the campaign in many countries gives encouraging signs that they shape voter behaviour. In the case of the USA and Canada, Blais and Perrella’s (2008) extensive examination of survey data reveals the role of debates in drawing attention to less well-known candidates, while Holbrook’s (1999) equally longitudinal study signifies the role of presidential debates as key sources of information for voters. Although televised debates have been a relatively recent inclusion into the British campaigning arsenal,4 Pattie and Johnston (2011) find indications of some direct impact on voter evaluations of leaders as well as vote choice. At the aggregate level, there is good evidence that the ground war also has an effect on vote share (e.g. see Huckfeldt and Sprague 1992). Jacobson’s studies (1978 amongst others) on the impact of campaign expenditure also indicate a significant effect, although this is tempered by incumbency. Further evidence from the USA (Cutright and Rossi 1958; Kramer 1970; Frendreis et  al. 1990; Gerber and Green 2000) demonstrates that campaigns can have a significant mobilisationary capacity. 4  The first televised debates were held during the 2010 campaign and will be discussed in later chapters. The appearance, and non-appearance, of party leaders in the debates has also become a regular part of campaign discourse. In 2017, May’s absence from the debates and Corbyn’s last-minute attendance at the first BBC debate in Cambridge were much reported on. Equally in 2019, Boris Johnson’s refusal to participate in a Channel 4 debate focused on climate change led to his replacement on-stage with a slowly melting block of ice.

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In a first-past-the-post electoral system as used in Canada and the UK, the strong geographic links enable local campaigning to potentially make a significant difference to local outcomes. Cumulatively, these local victories can accumulate to change the result of an election. But any change or shift in the behaviour of local voters as a result of the campaign is evidence that the efforts by candidates and activities can actually pay off. In the British context, local campaigning was dismissed as ineffective and irrelevant (Butler and Kavanagh 1988), in the face of enduring social cleavages for much of the twentieth century. Holt and Turner (1968) and Bochel and Denver (1971, 1972) began to explore the potential of the local campaigns with highly localised case studies of campaigns. There is a large body of literature that engages with the impact of local campaigning on constituency outcomes and voter behaviour in Britain, with a key point of contention not whether local outcomes can be affected, but instead what the best operationalisation of the local campaign is.5 The balance between the relative importance of the air and ground wars has been developed by Norris (2004) in her delineation of the evolution of campaign communication in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century into three stages: the pre-modern, modern and post-modern periods. Whereas pre-modern campaigns were typified by localism and little complete oversight, the modern campaign removed the centre of party strategy to party headquarters. The post-modern campaign is a hybrid model, combining strategic oversight and professionalised campaigning techniques from the centre, alongside a hyper-localism that not only targets specific constituencies, but can target voters at the most granular level. The role of leaders is worth more consideration. In the pre-modern age, party leaders were central in coordinating the campaign proper and making appearances on the campaign trail, yet over the modern and post-­ modern campaigns, the leader becomes increasingly important as an instrument in the campaign. Rather than the centrality of coordination in pre-modern campaigns, leaders have become central to the articulation of contemporary British election campaigns. In the current post-modern environment, party leaders play an important bridging role between the over-arching national strategy and hyper-local efforts. They represent a unity of message, and an important reference point for many voters to make sense of competing messages.

5

 These will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 3.

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This hybrid understanding of post-modern election campaigning is where this book is situated—the ‘horizon’ level between the air war and ground war. In understanding the strategising and communication of leadership at contemporary British elections, this book highlights the roles of the campaign trail: in bringing the air war down to the ground, it represents an important tool in a post-modern campaign.

Placing Leadership into (Post-modern) Campaigning Leaders have become an increasingly prominent element in election campaigns, taking up much of the media reporting and attracting the photographers’ lenses. However, defining the campaign trail and explaining the terminology associated with it requires a little attention. In short, the campaign trail refers to visits made by party leaders during election campaigns. The campaign trail, leader visits and whistle-stop tours all relate to the same campaign activity; appearances in strategically chosen locations, characterised by a particular activity or purpose in mind. Party leaders in many countries take to the road (and air, and water) during the campaign. They may visit hospitals, schools, give speeches on stages and meet the public in the street. The trail represents an attractive lure for journalists, particularly television media, with the provision of powerful visual images that can be incorporated into campaign reporting. The trail itself may be understood as a typical example of what Boorstin (1962) refers to as pseudo-events; such events are largely designed to address the reciprocal need for the media in an age of rolling news to have things to report on and for politicians to be reported upon. Where the campaign trail goes beyond a purely ineffectual example of mutual exchange between politics and the press is the growing body of evidence that they play a role in affecting voter behaviour. This is not to say that the campaign trail operates in isolation from the wider national and local campaigns. They form part of political communication on leadership and policy priorities, with diffusion across a range of press sources (Milita and Ryan 2019), as well as forming part of local campaign discourse (Middleton 2019). In Britain, leader visits bring the national campaign to the local context, serving to bridge the air wars and the ground wars. As we will see later in this book, they are core sources of narrative for the press during election campaigns, and there is good evidence that they impact the way in which people vote. Beyond that though, visits become internalised and intermeshed in the local campaign itself.

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Photographs of the leader visiting a constituency may be used on a local party’s social media pages, as part of canvassing discussions and, in the case of Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, holding public rallies. Much of the literature on the campaign trail originates in the USA, with attention paid to the strategic deployment of presidential candidates to particular locations (both marginality and the Electoral College system are key drivers—this will be discussed further in the next chapter) and the impact on vote share. Presidential candidates are central to the campaign trail, with Shaw and Gimpel (2012) emphasising their importance on the ground. A combination of a presidential system that focuses attention on potential presidents rather than their party as well as the wide usage of rallies gives the US context a particular character, although similar rally-­ driven campaigns are also evident in Mexico (Camp 2010), Argentina (Szwareberg 2012), Africa (Paget 2019) and beyond. Yet these appearances around the country during election periods are not exclusive to presidential systems; Bélanger et al. (2003) and Carty and Eagles (2005) present good evidence of strategic deployment and electoral impact in Canada. It is useful to think of leader visits as a key characteristic of contemporary British election campaigns. They are, however, not a new phenomenon, but a long-lasting remnant of a pre-mass-media environment, adapted for the modern age. In the British context, the campaign trail might at first seem like an archaic harking back to the slow progress of monarchs such as Elizabeth I around the country, stopping off at the locations of favoured courtiers. In the pre-modern age, before the widespread usage of television, a party leader touring the country was at least in part a necessity—a way of being seen and getting their message out. Fisher and Denver (2009) give a good overview of the evolution of leader visits from personal contacts and newsworthy contests in the 1950s to more strategic location selections from the mid-1970s onwards. Even when the modern age of campaigning (Norris 2004) ostensibly diminished the importance of local campaigning at the expense of national campaigning, this left leader visits in a unique position—as a key bridge between the two types of campaigns. Thatcher effectively weaponised the campaign trail, maximising the newsworthy potential of photo calls during her visits, including ahead of the 1979 campaign when she was pictured holding a (rather large) calf in her arms. Here is the start of the modern campaign trail, highly strategised, newsworthy and coordinated from the centre. Her successor, John Major, during the 1992 election campaign, famously stood on a soapbox on

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streets around the country, speaking directly to voters. Yet a full exploration of the peculiarly British context of the campaign trail and the strategies and symbolism that underpin it are under-developed and will be advanced considerably in the rest of this book. Instead of the rally-centric appearances of prospective US presidents, there is an interesting contradiction of both intimacy and remoteness in the British campaign trail. Rallies are—as we will see in the next chapter—comparatively few in the British context; instead we are more likely to see a party leader pulling a pint in a pub or wearing a hard hat while touring a construction site. Compared to the large-scale American rallies of presidential candidates, a British party leader may only speak to an audience of fifty activists in a far-­ flung village hall—a more intimate experience. However, there is a tension between the expectations fostered by the media (Chap. 5) of the public being able to engage directly with leaders on the campaign trail and tendency of leaders to shy away from being embarrassed by unplanned encounters (Chap. 2) with the public. Paying close attention to the four elections between 2010 and 2019, the campaign trail formed an important element of justification and expression for party leaders. At the heart of Labour’s 2015 election strategy was the weaponising of the campaign trail as a tool to engage with voters to have ‘five million conversations’ over the course of the long campaign (Labour List 2015); a figure they achieved. When Theresa May was asked why she was not participating in televised debates during the 2017 campaign, a spokesman answered that ‘Mrs May will instead focus on touring the country to talk directly to voters’ (Groves 2017). Just days later, Jeremy Corbyn spoke of campaigning across the country, meeting the public and hearing directly from them. Visits are also a way in which the party leaders are held to account by the press—which will be explored further in Chap. 5. The literature exploring the campaign trail in Britain is comparatively small (Middleton 2014, 2015, 2019; Middleton and Cutts 2019) and has given indications not only of clear strategic underpinnings for where British party leaders visit during general election campaigns, but also steps into understanding their role in the mechanics of voting behaviour. This is where this book advances the literature considerably in five ways: • By presenting a comparative overview of the rationale for visit locations

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• Exploring the direct and indirect impacts of the campaign trail on voter behaviour across multiple elections • Understanding the role that the campaign trail plays in political communication • Comparing strategies across four consecutive elections and nine party leaders • By identifying types of visits that pertain specifically to the British context In doing so, this book not only substantially advances the understanding of the campaign trail in contemporary British elections but adds to understandings of the role of leadership in both political communication and voter behaviour.

Outline of the Book This book enables the in-depth exploration of leadership at British general elections since 2010, particularly in advancing the examination of leadership on the campaign trail. The next chapter begins by examining longitudinal patterns in the campaign trails at the 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections, using the author’s own data. It explores how frequently leaders hit the road, the areas of the country they tend to visit and the battlegrounds they fight over. It considers to what extent incumbency plays an important role in determining where leaders visit, alongside contextual factors such as whether the sitting MP has retired and how marginal a seat is, alongside demographic determinants which reflect key policy priorities pertinent to the campaign—not least the local spread of the Brexit vote in the two elections since 2016. Attempting for the first time to engage with the nuances of the campaign trail itself, the chapter examines the symbolism of visit locations and creates a classification of visit ‘types’: policy-­ themed visits, grand-standing opportunities, campaigning visits and cheerleading scenarios. Chapter 3 examines why the party leaders mount their battle buses. It argues that the visits they make can significantly change the electoral outcomes in key areas of the country and that a more expansive understanding of what it means to ‘matter’ is needed to appreciate the potential of the campaign trail. The chapter examines both mobilisationary and conversion potentials resulting from visits, looking at whether visits by particular leaders shape local outcomes. It also considers the timing of visits,

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comparing vote share changes in seats visited over the course of the campaign. Lastly, the chapter brings in the types articulated in the previous chapter to understand the contrasting potential of inward and outward facing visits. To supplement the original data produced by the author elsewhere in this book, Chap. 4 uses individual-level data from the British Election Study to explore whether leaders play an important role in contemporary voter behaviour. Using these survey data, it looks at the changing numbers of voters who directly attribute their vote to their attitude towards the party leaders, examining whether it is less interested voters who rely more on leader cues. In contrasting individual differentials between parties and their leaders, the chapter also indicates that voters can articulate distinct responses to leaders, including those already attached to the party. It compares the relative importance of the national context, local candidate factors and leader evaluations across the elections under study. Drawing together the earlier chapters, respondents from seats visited by a party leader are isolated to explore any amplification of the effect of leaders. Chapter 5 begins by examining the role of the press during election campaigns and how this has altered (and diversified) over the course of the elections under examination. It sets out press partisanship at each election and resultant expectations on how each leader would be reported. Drawing a link with the leader visit section of this book, the chapter explores—for the first time in the British context—how the campaign trail is represented in the press and how prominent it is in relation to other campaign events. It also examines in detail how the party leaders were reported during each of the campaigns, conducting a content analysis to understand the main themes in the way each party leader was represented by different sections of the press and the degree to which incumbency affects this. The chapter focuses additionally on the relative personalisation of media reporting, by understanding whether personalisation is a tool most often used when discussing leaders of smaller parties. Chapter 6 expands the personalised dimension of reporting to examine how the partners of party leaders are represented in the press. By extending the examination, gendered dimensions of leadership reporting are brought to the literature. Leaders often rely on those close to them during election campaign, not least to tell us something about them as a person. This chapter examines how the press report on the spouses/partners of party leaders during election campaign. It offers a perspective on the gender bias of reporting on spouses when compared to leaders—the focus on

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their appearance and clothing rather than their personal attributes. It delineates ‘traditional’ spousal support roles as well as how the media copes with non-traditional partners. The chapter also offers a cross-gender perspective on partner reporting by comparing reporting on male and female partners. Linking the previous chapters together, Chap. 7 draws together the findings to create a typology of constituency experiences at election time. It proposes four types of constituency, with accompanying illustrative case studies for each. These include ‘dead cert’ seats, ‘urban hubs’ ‘scene-­ setters’ and ‘legacy seats’, and the discussion combines an examination of the visits that each type of seat should expect to receive, the seat-specific electoral context and local versus national press engagement of the visits. The final chapter looks ahead to consider what the future holds for political leadership in a changing social and media environment. It considers the need for authenticity in visits and for a close fit between a leader’s own style and the campaign trail. The chapter explores whether the distinct contrast of election campaigning styles between May and Corbyn in 2017 has had implications for subsequent elections, particularly regarding the potential move away from more ‘professionalised’ appearances.

Bibliography Balke, N. (1990). The Rational Timing of Parliamentary Elections. Public Choice, 65(2), 201–216. Bélanger, P., Carty, R., & Eagles, D. (2003). The Geography of Canadian Parties, Electoral Campaigns: Leaders’ Tours and Constituency Election Results. Political Geography, 22(4), 439–455. Bennister, M., & Heffernan, R. (2015). The Limits to Prime Ministerial Autonomy: Cameron and the Constraints of Coalition. Parliamentary Affairs, 68(1), 25–41. Blais, A., & Perrella, A. (2008). Systemic Effects of Televised Candidates’ Debates. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 13(4), 451–464. Bochel, J., & Denver, D. (1971). Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support: An Experiment. British Journal of Political Science, 1(3), 257–269. Bochel, J., & Denver, D. (1972). The Impact of the Campaign on the Results of Local Government Elections. British Journal of Political Science, 2(2), 239–244. Boin, A., t’Hart, P., Stern, E., & Sundelius, B. (2006). The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boorstin, D. (1962). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

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Burns, J. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper and Row. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1988). The British General Election of 1987. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Stokes, D. (1974). Political Change in Britain (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. Camp, R. (2010). The Metamorphosis of Leadership in Democratic Mexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W., & Stokes, D. (1960). The American Voter. New York: Wiley. Carty, R., & Eagles, M. (2005). Politics is Local: National Politics at the Grassroots. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crewe, I., Särlvik, B., & Alt, J. (1977). Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964–1974. British Journal of Political Science, 7(2), 129–190. Cutright, P., & Rossi, P. (1958). Grass-Roots Politicians and the Vote. American Sociological Review, 23(1), 171–179. Dowding, K. (2013). The Prime Ministerialisation of the British Prime Minister. Parliamentary Affairs, 66(4), 617–635. Fieldhouse, E., Green, J., Evans, G, Mellon, J., & Prosser, C. (2020). British Election Study Internet Panel Wave 19. Retrieved from https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/data-­objects/panel-­study-­data/ Fisher, J., & Denver, D. (2009). Evaluating the Electoral Effects of Traditional and Modern Modes of Constituency Campaigning in Britain 1992–2005. Parliamentary Affairs, 62(2), 196–210. Foley, M. (1993). The Rise of the British Presidency. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Frendreis, J., Gibson, J., & Vertz, L. (1990). The Electoral Relevance of Local Party Organizations. American Political Science Review, 84(1), 225–235. Gerber, A., & Green, D. (2000). The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. American Political Science Review, 94(3), 653–663. Groves, J. (2017, April 19). Dimbleby: TV Debates Could Go on Without PM. Daily Mail. Hindess, B. (1967). Local Elections and the Labour Vote in Liverpool. Sociology, 1(2), 187–195. Holbrook, T. (1996). Do Campaigns Matter? London: Sage. Holbrook, T. (1999). Political Learning from Presidential Debates. Political Behavior, 21(1), 67–89. Holt, R., & Turner, J. (1968). Political Parties in Action: The Battle of Barons Court. London: Collier-Macmillan. Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1992). Political Parties and Electoral Mobilization: Political Structure, Social Structure, and the Party Canvass. American Political Science Review, 86(1), 70–86.

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Jacobson, G. (1978). The Effect of Campaign Spending in Congressional Elections. American Political Science Review, 72(3), 469–491. Kavanagh, D., & Cowley, P. (2010). The British General Election of 2010. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kramer, G. (1970). The Effects of Precinct-Level Canvassing on Voter Behaviour. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34(4), 560–572. Labour List. (2015, May 6). Labour Activists Have Had 5 Million Conversations Since January, Says Miliband. LabourList [online]. Retrieved from https:// labourlist.org/2015/05/labour-­activists-­have-­had-­5-­million-­conversations­since-­january-­says-­miliband/ Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1944). The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New  York: Columbia University Press. Machiavelli, N. (1988). The Prince. Edited by Q.  Skinner & Price. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAllister, I. (1996). Leaders. In L.  LeDuc, R.  Niemi, & P.  Norris (Eds.), Comparing Democracies, Elections and Voting in Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Middleton, A. (2014). “Election, What Election?” Low Levels Campaigns and Detrimental Local Outcomes in Safe Constituencies. Unpublished PhD thesis. Middleton, A. (2015). The Effectiveness of Leader Visits During the 2010 General Election Campaign. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 17(2), 244–259. Middleton, A. (2019). “For the Many, Not the Few”: Strategising the Campaign Trail at the 2017 Election. Parliamentary Affairs, 72(3), 501–521. Middleton, A., & Cutts, D. (2019, November 21). Where are Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn Visiting—and What Do Their Travel Plans Tell Us About the Election? The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ where-­a re-­b oris-­j ohnson-­a nd-­j eremy-­c orbyn-­v isiting-­a nd-­w hat-­d o-­t heir-­ travel-­plans-­tell-­us-­about-­the-­election-­127278 Milita, K., & Ryan, J. (2019). Battleground States and Local Coverage of American Presidential Campaigns. Political Research Quarterly, 72(1), 104–116. Norris, P. (2004). The Evolution of Election Campaigns: Eroding Political Engagement. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6cef/905 1c8815bfe29c590df15b4d6469d0ce11b.pdf Paget, D. (2019). The Rally-Intensive Campaign: A Distinct Form of Electioneering in Sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(4), 444–464. Parkin, F. (1967). Working-Class Conservatives: A Theory of Political Deviance. The British Journal of Sociology, 18(1), 278–290.

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Pattie, C., & Johnston, R. (2011). A Tale of Sound and Fury, Signifying Something? The Impact of the Leaders’ Debates in the 2010 UK General Election. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 21(2), 147–177. Pulzer, P. (1967). Political Representation and Elections in Britain. London: Allen & Unwin. Shaw, D., & Gimpel, J. (2012). What If We Randomize the Governor’s Schedule? Evidence on Campaign Appearance Effects from a Texas Field Experiment. Political Communication, 29(1), 137–159. Shleiter, P., & Belu, V. (2016). The Decline of Majoritarianism in the UK and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. Parliamentary Affairs, 69(1), 36–52. Szwareberg, M. (2012). Uncertainty, Political Clientelism, and Voter Turnout in Latin America: Why Parties Conduct Rallies in Argentina. Comparative Politics, 45(1), 88–106. Wallace, M. (2017) Our CCHQ Election Audit: The Rusty Machine, Part One. Why the Operation That Succeeded in 2015 Failed in 2017. Conservative Home [online]. Retrieved from https://www.conservativehome.com/majority_conservatism/2017/09/our-­cchq-­election-­audit-­the-­r usty-­machine-­part-­ one-­why-­the-­operation-­that-­succeeded-­in-­2015-­failed-­in-­2017.html Webb, P., & Poguntke, T. (2013). The Presidentialisation of Politics Thesis Defended. Parliamentary Affairs, 66(4), 646–654. Weber, M. (1958). Politics as a Vocation. In H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, I. (2015). Regulation of Candidates’ Campaign Expenditure: The Long and the Short of It…. House of Commons Library [online]. Retrieved from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/parliament-­and-­elections/elections-­ elections/regulation-­o f-­c andidates-­c ampaign-­e xpenditure-­t he-­l ong-­a nd-­ the-­short-­of-­it/

CHAPTER 2

Hitting the Road

A key theme in existing studies of political leadership is understanding how leadership operates within institutional constraints, such as the office of Prime Minister or the need to build consensus in Cabinet (see, e.g. Burrett 2017; Byrne et  al. 2017). However, at election time leadership enters a new dimension, simultaneously battling to retain (or gain) incumbency while providing a central focus for the national campaign. Much of the conventional needs of institutional leadership are absent. There is no Parliament to shape behaviour and while leaders still head up their party, the electoral battle in a geographically based system like First Past the Post (FPTP) forces reflection on one’s own fortunes. The role of leadership at election times is to be weaponised as a point of reference and simplification for voters. If leaders and leadership mattered little in election campaigning, they would fade into the background—yet they appear on debates, on interviews, in newspapers and—crucially for the focus of this book—around the country. Of course there are elements of constraint on party leaders at election time: schedules are carefully structured (although this is often a moving feast and receptive to ad hoc adjustments), locations for photo opportunities are scoped out and speeches are both written and rehearsed. But scrutinising the campaign trail offers insight into how the ground war meets the air war of the campaign. Turning to the campaign trail, simply put, there is no accident where party leaders visit during a campaign. Their itineraries are carefully © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Middleton, Communicating and Strategising Leadership in British Elections, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61067-8_2

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planned (Hill et  al. 2010) and rationalised, although circumstances can intervene. That the leader’s schedule is a combination of planning and dynamic in-campaign opportunities is evinced by Middleton (2019a) and Carty and Eagles (2005). A cost/benefits-based analysis of where presidents choose to visit during mid-term elections is evident (Sellers and Denton 2006), and similar considerations underpin where British party leaders visit (Middleton 2015). However, it is not just the costs and benefits associated with marginality that determine where British party leaders visit. Over the two elections when he led the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn spent a considerable time in seats his party held by tens of thousands of votes. In reality, as this chapter will explore, visits can have different purposes. Carefully laid visit schedules can also be disrupted by events on the campaign trail; most notably in the elections covered here in the 2010 general election campaign. In Rochdale, Labour leader Gordon Brown had been approached on a walkabout by Gillian Duffy, a Labour-­supporting member of the public. After a conversation and with his microphone still attached to his lapel, Brown sped off in a car and was overheard to call her a ‘bigoted…sort of woman’. Not only did this cause a great deal of media attention (see Chap. 5), it also disrupted Brown’s planned campaigning schedule, with his campaign trail making a subsequent detour to visit Mrs Duffy in private at her home to apologise (Siddique 2010). Boris Johnson had planned to make an appearance at a bakery in Glastonbury in November 2019, but on being confronted with Extinction Rebellion protestors, diverted to a bakery in nearby Wells amid security concerns (Merrick 2019). Besides avoiding potentially embarrassing situations or coping with their aftermath, there are also more informal pulls on the leader’s schedule beyond the campaign trail—the need to be in travelling distance from a televised appearance or debate, a friendly message from a candidate of a constituency nearby or, in the case of Theresa May in 2017, the need to attend the G20 summit in Naples. What this chapter explores is where party leaders go during election campaigns, examining longitudinal patterns in the campaign trails at the 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections. Using the author’s own data, it begins by examining how many visits leaders manage over the campaign, with clear partisan differences. Clear strategic observations are able to be made about campaign intentions when exploring which party holds the seats visited by a leader; as will be explored later in this chapter, defensive and expansionist strategies are evident and depend on the party’s occupation of power. The role of Brexit voting patterns in shaping visits in the

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2017 and 2019 campaigns is explained. This chapter also questions the role of marginality in determining whether a seat is visited; it is by no means a perfect relationship, and more nuanced understandings of the purposes of visits are needed to explain this. As such, crucially, this chapter goes beyond existing literature to make a substantial contribution in disaggregating distinct types of visits in the British context. As introduced in the last chapter, the rally-heavy and fundraising types of visits explained in the US literature does not effectively fit with the experience in Britain. In considering the symbolism behind visit locations, for the first time the hidden messages in the British campaign trail can be seen.

Locating Visits To begin, we need to know where the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats visit in recent general elections. There are, however, some key points of practicality to note first. In each case, and throughout the rest of this book, visits by leaders to their own constituencies are discounted from analysis. While some appearances that leaders make in their own seats may make the press (in 2017, photographs of Theresa May going to her local church on a Sunday made the press, feeding into the image of her as a ‘vicar’s daughter’), the intentions are different and not comparable with visits to other seats. Here they are the candidate as well as the leader, in familiar circumstances and surroundings. Also, The Speaker of the House of Commons stands in their constituency on a non-party platform as ‘The Speaker seeking re-election’ and the constituency1 is conventionally uncontested by the other major parties. As such a distinct case, the Speaker’s seat has been excluded from analysis here. Lastly, Northern Ireland has a party system dissimilar to the rest of the UK. Labour and the Liberal Democrats did not stand here in the elections covered, while the Conservatives stood alongside the Ulster Unionist Party at the 2010 election, gaining 15.2 per cent of the vote in Northern Ireland, but in the subsequent general elections covered by this book, the Northern Irish Conservatives have scored below 1  per cent. However, Conservative leaders have made occasional visits to Northern Ireland, usually as part of a day-long symbolic trip around the country that 1  In the 2010, 2015 and 2017 elections, John Bercow, MP for Buckingham, was the Speaker. In the 2019 election, the newly elected Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley, was the Speaker.

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encompasses stops in England, Wales and Scotland too. Only these occasionally visited Northern Irish seats are retained for analysis. It would be nigh on impossible for a party leader to visit every constituency in Britain over the course of a general election campaign. With an average campaign length of 34  days, and excluding their own seat, Northern Ireland and the Speaker’s seat, they would have to visit approximately 130 constituencies a week—equivalent to 18 every day of the campaign. Party leaders (and their strategists) therefore need to carefully select a selection of constituencies to be visited. But just how many do party leaders get around in an election campaign? As seen in Table 2.1, each party’s leader only covers between about 7 and 12 per cent of constituencies in Britain (excluding the Speaker and the leader’s own constituency) during the campaign. When we look at the number of visits being made, the Labour party have made the highest number of visits at each election, except for 2015—perhaps surprising for a campaign centred around direct dialogues with voters. While Corbyn often emphasised in his speeches in both 2017 and 2019 the number of seats that he had visited, his record at the two contests is only a marginal increase of eight or nine constituencies over the whole campaign on Brown’s campaign trail in 2010. The Liberal Democrat leaders have in 2010, 2017 and 2019 recorded the lowest number of visits made, a likely reflection of the party’s comparatively low campaign resources. There is an important distinction to make, however, between the number of visits made by the leaders and the number of seats they actually visit. For each party leader, at each of the elections under analysis they have paid more than one visit to particular constituencies. This seems to be a key dimension of Liberal Democrat visit strategies—a criss-crossing of well-­ trodden roads. Of course in 2015, Nick Clegg was trying to insulate his Table 2.1  Frequency of visits by leaders at elections 2010–2019 2010

1 visit 2 visits 3+ Visits made Seats visited

2015

2017

2019

C

L

LD

C

L

LD

C

L

LD

C

L

LD

53 6

66 2 1 73 69

46 2

60 9

62 7 1 81 70

27 12 1 54 40

59 2

68 7

29 7

78 69

25 16 3 66 44

65 7

50 48

46 4 1 59 54

63 61

82 75

43 36

65 59

79 72

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21

party from the repercussions of being in Coalition government, and the comparatively high number of repeat visits by his two successors can be interpreted as attempts to regain seats and consolidate support in those the party already held. In the 2010 campaign, many of the repeat visits made by the three party leaders reflected the sometimes dramatic changes to constituency boundaries (for full breakdowns of the changes made, see Rallings and Thrasher 2007). For example, Gordon Brown visited Hammersmith twice—the new seat now contained 40.9  per cent of the former Ealing Central and Acton constituency, with the changes making Hammersmith a marginal Labour seat. The predecessor seat, Hammersmith and Fulham had been a Conservative gain in 2005. Brown also paid repeat visits to Manchester Central, a long-standing hub of Labour support. Cameron’s repeat visits were to Bermondsey and Birmingham Ladywood, held by the Liberal Democrats and Labour respectively. Cameron visited a charity and a children’s hospital on his trips to Birmingham; the seat’s MP, Clare Short, was standing down. Nick Clegg’s repeats were to urban seats in Liverpool and Glasgow, held by Labour with large majorities. We see a rise in repeat visits by all three parties in the 2015 campaign. Cameron’s repeat visits can be divided broadly into two groups: those seats taken by the Conservatives in 2010, often with small majorities (Camborne and Redruth, City of Chester, Elmet and Rothwell, Kingswood), and those where the Conservatives were second to the Liberal Democrats in marginal seats (North Cornwall and St Ives—both of which were subsequently lost to the Conservatives in 2015).2 Miliband made repeat visits to five seats, including the Cities of London and Westminster, where he held a rally for supporters and visited Microsoft’s headquarters, amongst others. Other repeat visits were to the Shadow Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn’s safe seat of Leeds Central (where the majority was more than 10,000 votes), alongside recent losses to the Conservatives, such as Elmet and Rothwell and Pudsey (where the majority was just 3.4 percentage points). Nick Clegg made the most repeat visits of the three leaders, with three seats visited three times. Apart from the hub of Cities of London and Westminster, where he gave large-scale speeches, these included the Assistant Government Whip Lorely Burt’s seat of Solihull and the Chippenham seat of Duncan Hames, Clegg’s 2  The other repeat visit was to Holborn and St Pancras, where Frank Dobson was stepping down after thirty-six years.

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Parliamentary Private Secretary. Both seats were ultra-marginal, and both were lost. Otherwise Liberal Democrat repeat visits focused on the South West, where many Liberal Democrat incumbents were defending small majorities from their Conservative challengers. Of the nineteen seats Clegg visited more than once during the campaign, thirteen were lost by the Liberal Democrats in 2015. In the 2017 campaign, Theresa May paid repeated visits to marginal seats held by both the Conservatives (such as Plymouth Sutton and Devonport) and Labour (Stoke-on-Trent South and Wolverhampton North East). Corbyn’s repeat visits were split between seats that had been lost to the Conservatives in 2015 (e.g. Telford) and Labour strongholds, such as Liverpool Riverside, an ultra-safe Labour seat (majority 55.4% in 2015). Farron’s repeat visits were, perhaps predictably, largely to seats that the party had lost in 2015. These included Bermondsey and Old Southwark, where Simon Hughes, the former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, was hoping to regain the seat he had held since 1983. Perhaps surprisingly, none of Farron’s repeat visits were to the seats lost in the South West. The 2019 campaign saw a fall in the repeat number of visits by the Conservative leader. Boris Johnson only visited two constituencies twice— the first was the Cities of London and Westminster, and the second, Derbyshire Dales. In this seat, Sir McLoughlin Patrick, the former Conservative Party Chair and MP since 1986, was retiring. Johnson’s first visit was a flying one in the aftermath of the severe flooding that had hit Yorkshire and Derbyshire in early November; he was pictured mopping up floodwaters from a Specsavers in Matlock. The second visit was an activist rally a week before polling day. Corbyn, by contrast, repeatedly visited seven seats. These included Ashfield, where Shadow Justice Minister Gloria del Piero was standing down, as well as either marginal seats held by the Conservatives (Morecambe and Lunesdale and Worcester) or former Labour seats gained by the Scottish National Party in 2015 (e.g. Glasgow Central and Glasgow South West). Swinson’s repeats were down on the previous two elections at seven in total. Swinson’s repeat visits were ambitious targets though; all were held by other parties, and in each case, the Liberal Democrats were in third place. Many of these seats were in the ultra-safe category—including Jacob Rees-Mogg’s North East Somerset seat where Swinson visited a forest school and later held an activist rally. She also visited Kensington twice, to support the former Conservative MP Sam Gyimah, who had defected to the Liberal Democrats.

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What is clear is that the number and location of repeat visits changes election by election. Where leaders go and how frequently tell us about their party’s ambitions and hopes. Repeated visits to seats that are ostensibly safely held by the leader’s party, or safely held by an opponent’s party, also begin to hint that the strict targeting of visits on marginal seats explained by Fisher and Denver (2009) may not hold and that a more detailed examination of what leaders are doing when they visit is required. In all four elections covered here, the only seat to receive a visit by every single party leader at each election was the Cities of London and Westminster seat—perhaps no surprise when we consider it is the seat that covers Parliament and Downing Street itself. Its very proximity to the seat of power offers leaders convenient opportunities (particularly in the twilight period between an election being called and Parliament being dissolved) of making campaign appearances without needing to travel too far, but also speaks of the various national conferences held there that leaders typically speak at (such as the Citizens UK conference); these are classified as visits as they are distinct activities being carried out to showcase the leader. But these are not the only types of visits the seat experiences: in 2017, for example, Theresa May spoke to a local business HQ, Jeremy Corbyn gave a speech and Tim Farron visited a Westminster synagogue. Overall, the number of seats that received at least one party leader during an election campaign has remained stable—between 125 in the 2015 campaign and 159  in the 2017 campaign. Of those seats visited, the vast majority were only visited by a single leader—which tells us that leaders have distinctive visit strategies and do not just carpetbag each other around the same seats over the course of the campaign. However, if you live in the Cities of London and Westminster, then you are guaranteed to see the battle buses of all three leaders roll in at election time.

Regional Visits As Carty and Eagles (2005) observe in the Canadian case, there are particular areas of the country that receive disproportionate attention in the campaign trail. In 2010, besides Northern Ireland, every region received a visit from at least one of the three leaders. Considering the number of visits as a proportion of the overall number of constituencies in a region, London received the highest proportion of visits relative to the number of constituencies by both David Cameron (12 London constituencies or 16.4  per cent) and Gordon Brown (13 London

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constituencies or 17.8  per cent). Nick Clegg, in contrast, visited the highest proportion of seats in both the North East and Yorkshire regions. However, looking at the regions as a proportion of the overall number of visits each leader was making, London represents the largest proportion for all three. Scotland and Wales were visited by all three leaders during the campaign (excluding from analysis Gordon Brown’s home constituency), and there is little variation between the parties. Scotland was visited twice by each leader, and Wales three (Brown) or four (Cameron and Clegg) times during the campaign. David Cameron’s visits in the 2015 campaign indicates that the party was actively targeting the Liberal Democrats. The region visited most by his campaign trail was the South West: he visited 30 per cent of all constituencies here, and 25 per cent of the seats he visited twice were also in this region. Of these seats, the majority were held by the Liberal Democrats. The region comprising the largest number of visits made by Ed Miliband was the North West, making up 18 per cent of the seats he visited, followed close behind by Yorkshire and London. The South West accounted for over a quarter of the seats that Clegg visited. He made no visits at all to the East Midlands and North East but paid multiple visits to mainly Liberal Democrat-held seats in Scotland (five) and also in Wales (three). In 2017 the highest proportion of Theresa May’s visits to any region were split between London and Yorkshire and Humberside. These included seats such as Scunthorpe, where she met steel workers and Ealing Central and Acton, where she knocked on doors. Yorkshire and the Humber was a popular region in 2017, also comprising the highest proportion of visits made by Corbyn to any region—he visited 29.6 per cent of all seats here. Tim Farron also concentrated on London, with twelve of the forty seats that he visited being located here; this was five seats ahead of his next most popular region, the North West. All three leaders visited Scotland and Wales over the course of the campaign, with Theresa May visiting most Scottish seats (six), compared to five by Farron and three by Corbyn. She was accompanied by the comparatively popular Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson for much of her travels. We see more shifts in regional visits when it comes to the 2019 campaign. The region that Johnson visited most frequently was the South West, with eleven seats receiving Johnson, including Truro and Falmouth, where he visited a cider factory. With parallels to 2017, Corbyn spent much of his campaign in Yorkshire and the Humber, visiting ten seats here, on a par with his visits to the North West, an area with historically

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strong Labour support. However, he visited every single region of the UK, except for Northern Ireland, where his party did not stand. By far the region receiving most of Swinson’s visits was London, double that of the next nearest region at thirteen seats visited. Indeed, the Liberal Democrat leader visited seven different regions over the course of the campaign, whereas her predecessors typically covered ten. Many of her London visits were in support of new Liberal Democrat candidates who had formerly served such as former Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna, as well as Sam Gyimah, a former Conservative MP now standing in Kensington. Of all three leaders, Johnson visited Scotland least often, making two visits over the campaign: one a flying visit to a whisky distillery and the other the Scottish manifesto launch in North Queensferry. By contrast, Swinson visited six Scottish seats (excluding her own), including Fife North East—with two votes between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat, this was the most marginal seat in the UK. Corbyn paid eight visits in total to Scottish seats, but six of these were over the course of a two-day ‘blitz’ on 13 and 14 November. It was also not until 7 December before he visited Wales. So what do these regional patterns tell us about changing regional priorities? For the Conservatives, there has been a decrease in the importance of London as a campaign trail destination. Scotland has become more important for the party since 2010, but this fell back under Johnson, despite the Conservative’s relatively positive performance at the 2017 election. Likewise, the South West—once a very popular destination for Cameron’s campaign trail—has declined in importance since 2015. In contrast, areas such as the North East and Yorkshire are of rising importance and reflect the inroads made here at the 2019 election. Since 2017, the Conservative campaign trail seems to be moving away from a focused bombardment of particular regions and instead balancing the leader’s visits more evenly across the country. Labour have also seen a decrease in London as a campaign trail destination, declining from fifteen in 2010 to nine in 2019. The party’s interest in the South West as a campaign trail rose from four and three visits respectively in 2010 and 2015; Corbyn visited the region twenty times in 2017. However, by 2019 this had more than halved. Instead Corbyn spent much of the cold winter campaign in Yorkshire and the North West in areas once considered Labour heartlands. In contrast to the other two parties, the Liberal Democrats are increasingly using London as a

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campaign trail destination, with rises at each election covered here. While the South West was a key destination for Clegg in 2015, this has fallen back in the subsequent two elections, with Farron and Swinson increasing the amount of time spent in both the North East and Scotland. These patterns tell us that with a very few exceptions, each region of Britain is visited. The campaign trail may feel like a weary slog around obscure locations, but in reality, it is strategically adaptable and tailored to fit the electoral context.

Visit Strategy As we have seen so far, it is only a minority of constituencies that are visited by any party leader, and it is relatively rare for a constituency to be visited by more than one leader. But what precisely characterises the type of constituencies that are visited during election campaigns? This section examines key factors in the local political context which may give some insight to the strategic decisions by those behind the campaign trail. The first contextual issue is that of constituency marginality—in short the percentage majority that the incumbent party holds. The higher the majority, the safer the seat, with the conventional cut-off point between safe and marginal seats being 9.99 percentage points. Further detail may be added to this, with sub-categories ranging from the ultra-marginal (majorities of 4.99  percentage points and below) to the ultra-safe (any constituency where the majority is 20 percentage points and above)—categories that are in wide usage (see Norris 2019). Cornford and Dorling (1997) examined the appropriateness of this measure and concluded that the 9.99 cut-off does indeed indicate with some accuracy the vulnerability of the constituency.3 Importantly for this book, due to the association of marginality with the risk of defeat, the safety of a constituency often directly determines the amount of campaigning that occurs locally. Parties (see Denver and Hands 1997 amongst many others) are significantly more likely to concentrate their (often relatively limited) resources in marginal seats at risk of being lost or within grasp of victory. Activists from nearby safe seats may be expected to assist the effort in closer contests, and parties spend a higher proportion of the legal maximum allowed where majorities are lower. In 2010, for example, on average the Conservative spent 83 per cent of the legal maximum in ultra-marginal seats and 50  per cent in 3

 This will be discussed more fully in Chap. 7.

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ultra-safe seats. Campaigning in such marginal seats has a measurable impact on vote choice, but a lack of campaigning in safe seats can lead to voter disillusionment and disengagement (Middleton 2014). Regarding leader visits, the expectation is that marginality is a key driver in determining the campaign trail. This is certainly the case from the US literature (Hoddie and Routh 2004; Keele et  al. 2004), although in Canada, three of the five leaders at the 2003 election concentrated primarily on their own strongholds (Carty and Eagles 2005). British party leaders should be more likely to visit constituencies that are considered vulnerable. The focus of the campaign trail exclusively on marginal seats also forms a key part of Fisher and Denver’s (2009) vision of phase three of constituency campaigning in Britain. As shown in Table 2.2, to an extent these expectations hold; the average majority of the constituencies visited does indeed suggest they are more marginal than those that are not in receipt of a visit. However, it does not fit with Fisher and Denver’s expectations that leaders will concentrate their visits entirely on marginal seats. Indeed, only David Cameron’s visits in 2015 fit with this, with the average majority of the seats he visited being 9.5  percentage points, marginally below the marginal/safe cut-off of 9.99. Counterintuitively, there has been a shift from 2017 onwards to leaders visiting increasingly safe seats. This could perhaps be a result of the changing dynamics of safe and marginal seats in Britain; if the number of marginal seats has fallen over the period, then it might explain the higher average majorities of visited seats. In practice though, this does not hold; the number of marginal and safe seats over the period has been volatile. In 2010, for example, 170 constituencies were classified as safe, based on notional results from the previous election. This fell to 119 in 2015, before rising again to 161 in 2017. It therefore does not appear that leaders are visiting increasingly safe seats out of desperation at the dwindling numbers of marginals. Table 2.2  Mean percentage majorities of visited/not visited seats split by party 2010 Con

Lab

2015 LD

Con

Lab

2017 LD

Con

Lab

2019 LD

Con

Lab

LD

No visit 19.4 19.7 19.4 19.4 19.0 18.7 25.5 24.6 24.6 24.8 25.2 24.1 Visit 13.0 12.0 12.8 9.5 10.0 13.0 13.5 20.1 17.5 17.3 15.3 21.5 Note: Results in bold indicate p