Transforming British politics: The man who helped make Corbyn mainstream

The Labour Party was beating itself up, having just lost the Copeland by-election in Cumbria, with the feeling more defeats would follow, and there was open hostility to its leader from within the ranks.

But the crushing defeat did not come. Labour did indeed lose the election but Jeremy Corbyn took the party’s proportion of the national vote to 40 per cent – higher than Tony Blair achieved in 2005.

It was Labour’s best result for 20 years and the largest increase in its vote share since 1945.

Far from winning a landslide, the Tories were left without a majority and forced to abandon many of their unpopular plans.

Steve Howell was at the centre of Corbyn’s 2017 election machine. A member of the Labour leader’s strategy group, he was involved in all the key campaign decisions.

His new book, Game Changer, tells the story of the “eight weeks that transformed British politics”.

Speaking at Katie Fitzgerald’s pub in Stourbridge on a promotional tour of the book, he recalled how tough the challenge looked on day one.

Strategy

“Our in-house pollsters were telling us we could lose 130 seats – we were going to be absolutely decimated. Meanwhile the Tories were riding high in the polls and had closed ranks behind Theresa May,” he said.

Howell, who ran a successful PR company, was hired by the Corbyn team to help draw up the party’s election strategy.

From a long line of Labour activists – his grandmother is credited for persuading Peter Mandelson to join the party – he had total belief in Corbyn and his policies, whatever the polls predicted.

Labour had several trump cards up their sleeves, chief among them was bicycle-riding allotment holder Corbyn himself, seen as more genuine, down-to-earth and trustworthy than the glib and glossy average politician.

Howell says: “I think people got tired of the slick Obama-esqe, Clinton-esque type of politician.”

“Clegg, Cameron and Blair were all similar ages when they came to prominence, in their late 30s, early 40s, and similar in looks – male, slick, snappy dressers, good talkers – that’s not necessarily what people want from their politicians.”

He believes the Conservatives totally misjudged the mood of the electorate and ran a poorly pitched campaign that focused on attacking Corbyn.

Meanwhile the Labour leader chose to put the focus on the party’s manifesto, waving it proudly at every event. It had been leaked early, a factor which ultimately worked in his favour.

Howell recalls: “The headlines were saying ‘Labour wants to take Britain back to the 1970s’. But was it really that bad in the 1970s? The NHS didn’t seem to be in crisis back then, there were no tuition fees, it wasn’t such a bad idea. It showed how out of touch the Tories were.”

The manifesto leak sparked a surge in voter registrations, from a daily run of 50 – 60,000 to over the 100,000 mark. Of these, a third were 24 or younger and another third were 25 to 34. People were saying young people didn’t vote, that no-one read manifestos, but within days, supplies of hard copies had run out.

Corbyn galavanised the young vote with policies that resonated with them – not only the scrapping of tuition fees but 30 hours’ free childcare, bringing the Royal Mail and rail services back into public ownership, free school meals, a £10 minimum wage.

Brexit clouded the issue, with the belief among many working-class Leave voters that the Conservatives were more likely than Labour to deliver on the referendum vote. Instead, Labour focused on giving people the belief there was an alternative to austerity.

Veteran

Corbyn was also a veteran campaigner. Howell added: “There was a very distorted view of him on TV, he was seen as a rabble-rousing extremist but Jeremy was great at campaigning, and wherever he went, he drew huge crowds.”

The strategy team knew from the start that social media was going to play a massive part in their campaign, and so it turned out. Corbyn began gaining about 50,000 new Twitter followers a week, taking him to over a million by the time of the manifesto’s official launch. On Facebook, it was the same story.

Howell said that through these platforms the campaign’s political messages were translated into lively content, using graphics and video, that people were keen to share. On Twitter alone Corbyn’s posts racked up a staggering 1.5m retweets in those eight weeks.

The party was given a further boost from an unexpected quarter. Howell joked: “I’d never heard of Grime until artists such as Stormzy and Jme signed up for our voter registration campaign.”

In the end it was Theresa May whom the Queen invited to form a government but it took two weeks and £1billion in spending promises to the Democratic Unionist Party, the author points out.

Since those heady days however, and with the Brexit deadline looming, there are some who believe the Labour leader has made mistakes in his handling of the issue.

Predictably 65-year-old Howell is not one of them. He said: “I think he’s the only person who’s talking any sense on Brexit.

“He’s been plugging away on the point that there is a deal to be done with the EU for a customs union. They have indicated that they are open to that discussion.

“There’s a majority in Parliament who support Brexit based on a customs union. But Theresa May won’t even open up that discussion because it’s too dangerous for her in terms of internal Tory party politics.”

Meltdown

On the question of whether the government will survive, he cannot say.

“The meltdown is ongoing as we speak. If we crash out, there could be a lot of economical and political chaos and you could get a bid to oust May coming from the far right in her party for whom she’s been a useful idiot.

“If there is a general election, I think we’ve got every chance of winning. History doesn’t absolutely repeat itself but, believe me, Jeremy is going around the country, and has been every week. He’s not stopped, and wherever he goes he gets big crowds. We’ve got a database now of supporters that’s over two million.”

If that day came, however, there are some who doubt, even among those who like him, that the Labour leader could hold his own on the world stage.

Howell thinks otherwise. “He’s actually got good relationships with a lot of prominent figures. He’s mates with the Prime Minister of Portugal and the president of Mexico. Would he get on with Donald Trump? Probably not. But Angela Merkel? Funnily enough, I think he would.”

He has jokingly put on twitter: ‘June could be the end of May’, a line that was circulating two years ago, when he was recruited, he says.

“It could be revived, we’ve still got the artwork,” he laughs. More seriously, he says the party is now in a strong financial position and is well organised. There’s an integrated management, everyone’s working together. One of the last contributions he made was to suggest a new structure to bring the party together.

Corbynism is no passing phase, he believes. “It’s not about Corbyn, or any personality. It was huge levels of inequality that gave rise to Corbynism, and as long as there is social injustice, there will be Corbynism.”

• Game Changer by Steve Howell is available now, priced £15.99