Dr Danny Rye
Associate Professor in Politics, Liverpool Hope University
Danny Rye teaches British Politics and Political Theory at Liverpool Hope University. His research focuses on political parties, power and organisation, activism and participation.
Email: ryed@hope.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 4: Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
Parties and members can be troublesome for political leaders, but effective management of organisations and activists was crucial to electoral fortunes as the 2024 Election demonstrates.
Conservative members have little institutional power but are crucial to party fortunes. They influence policy chiefly through electing leaders. Leaders have significant discretion, but failure can be ruthlessly punished. Without membership support, they can struggle. Rishi Sunak, who helped topple membership favourite Boris Johnson and was installed without a vote after Liz Truss’s resignation, never quite won them over, contributing to his inability to distance himself from Johnson. Apparently surprising his own MPs and activists in calling the election did not help. With many MPs retiring and more than 150 candidates still to be selected, local parties felt unprepared and angered by the imposition of candidates, including Party Chair Richard Holden in Basildon and Billericay (who was almost defeated). Mobilisation was challenging already: declining membership, the loss of swathes of councillors, and low morale hit the party’s ground operation. Sunak’s D-Day departure, and gambling scandals did not improve things.
A leader-centred model gives flexibility to respond to circumstances but can create further problems. Policies like National Service took activists and candidates by surprise. The late entry of Nigel Farage upended party communication strategy: proposals like ‘triple-lock plus’ and the Rwanda scheme gradually gave way to a defensive and negative approach.
An authoritative Labour leader can also be very powerful, but Labour’s emphasis on rules and procedures means controlling or navigating party machinery and stakeholders, seeking agreement or acquiescence. The manifesto is the result of a process of deliberative forums, annual conference and the ‘Clause V’ meeting of party stakeholders. Agreement is not always easy: Unite, a major affiliated union and donor declined to actively endorse Labour’s programme.
The election announcement triggered Labour’s National Executive powers to impose and exclude candidates where not yet selected. This is advantageous for leaders, installing key allies and weeding out problematic candidates (as in Aberdeenshire), but risks undermining morale and angering activists on whom campaigns rely. Two excluded candidates, Fazia Shaheen in Chingford and former leader Jeremy Corbyn in Islington, caused splits locally, and led to defeats. Leaders perhaps calculated the trouble was worthwhile, reinforcing Keir Starmer’s distance from his predecessor. The apparent attempt to exclude Diane Abbott, however, threatened to derail Labour’s campaign, until the leadership backed-off. Otherwise, Labour’s disciplined communications during the campaign followed the Napoleonic maxim not to interrupt the enemy whilst he is making a mistake. Before the campaign, however, the party’s initial response to the war in Gaza galvanised left-wing opposition from departing ‘Corbynites’ and amongst Muslim supporters, leading to striking defeats, including Jonathan Ashworth, and some close calls.
Labour’s main challenge was directing and managing activist resources effectively. It did so ruthlessly, upsetting activists and neglecting support elsewhere. De-prioritised local campaigns were blocked from accessing systems, and shifted to target seats. Resources were diverted from Conservative-held Liberal Democrat targets (effectively giving the latter a clear run) and deployed deeper into Conservative territory. The results demonstrate the strategy’s effectiveness but also its risk. Parties need to balance gaining new ground with keeping current supporters on board.
The Liberal Democrats demonstrated how a well-organised smaller party, with a focused ground operation and an attention-grabbing national campaign can succeed. Its strong activist base and careful targeting meant a vote share similar to 2019 translated into a sixfold increase in seats. Leaders may now need to turn to wider party management: success means greater scrutiny and the party’s lively democratic culture means that leaders don’t always get their way: divisions over Europe and housing, for example, may become exposed.
Green Party success is similarly owed to professionalisation: careful targeting brought gains in Bristol, Herefordshire and Norfolk. This professionalisation means the party’s more consensual organisational traditions are being slowly reformed: until 2008, it rejected conventional leadership. It supported a ‘progressive alliance’, standing down for other parties in some seats. No longer: local parties have had candidates imposed on them under new leadership powers (which may have helped Jeremy Hunt’s narrow victory). This direction may continue with higher profile and greater scrutiny: its member-led policy process, for example, whilst more democratic, can lead to awkward questions, like those about its ‘natural childbirth’ policy. It could expose divisions over trans issues and between its urban left-wing and more rural conservative elements.
Reform UK ought to have fewer problems of this nature, since it has no members or organisation in any meaningful sense. This gives leaders a great deal of freedom: enabling Farage’s dramatic assumption of the leadership, and his changing party policy on refugees apparently mid-interview. The downside was exposed by the party’s incapacity to vet candidates, leading to suspensions and defections with the blame, rather unconvincingly, placed on a software provider. Lack of organised ground operation may have contributed to Reform’s inefficient vote distribution: despite winning half a million more votes than the Liberal Democrats, they won only five seats. Farage may need to make good his pledge to ‘professionalise’ and ‘democratise’. No members can be just as troublesome as many.
