Revealed: Ed’s night-time dash to casa Brand driven by postal ballot panic

by Atul Hatwal

Uncut has learned the real reason for Ed Miliband’s sudden night-time visit to Russell Brand’s Shoreditch home: panic caused by the early tallies of postal ballots being fed back to party HQ, from marginals around the country.

Labour is behind and urgently needs to reach out to new voter groups. Russell Brand was a means to that end.

Postal voting started in mid-April. Over 5 million are expected to cast their ballot in this way and over the last week, local teams from all parties have attended postal vote opening sessions in each constituency.

Although the parties are legally not allowed to tally votes at these events, they all do and the constituency teams then dutifully pass their field intelligence back to HQ.

These are not opinion polls results or canvass returns but actual votes, hundreds of thousands of votes, from across Britain. Numbers have been flowing from each marginal to party strategists to give the most accurate picture of the current state of play.

Labour insiders familiar with the latest figures have told Uncut that the picture for Labour in marginal seats, where it is fighting the Tories, is almost uniformly grim.

Seats that canvass returns had suggested were strong prospects for gains are much more finely balanced and those that were close are swinging heavily to the Tories.

The tartan scare is working with the fear of McLabour shifting large numbers of wavering Lib Dems and Ukippers into the Tory column.

National opinion polls and Lord Ashcroft’s last swathe of constituency polling have seemed to indicate a shift towards the Tories recently, but Labour insiders say the effect on the ground in marginals is much bigger than picked up in polls so far.

Labour has already squeezed the Greens as much as possible for votes, and is coming up short. Despite a superior get-out-the-vote operation primed and ready for next Thursday, Labour cannot bridge the gap by organisation alone.

With just a few days to go until the election, Labour desperately needs new voters.

This is why Ed Miliband suddenly changed his plans and went to Russell Brand’s home to be interviewed.

Even though Labour’s press team advised that this would wipe-out Ed Balls’ planned offensive the next day on Tory tax plans and dominate media coverage, potentially for days, the decision was made to go ahead with the interview.

The rationale was that beyond the direct reach of Brand via his YouTube channel, and the millions that follow him on Twitter, the media discussion about Miliband’s interview would send a clear signal to young people and non-voters that Labour’s leader was different; that he would listen to them and engage with their concerns.

Whether Brand gave Labour an endorsement or didn’t (in the end he didn’t and backed Caroline Lucas and the Greens for Brighton Pavillion) was less important than sending this signal.

Given the intelligence that Lib Dems and Ukippers were already switching to the Tories, there was comparatively little downside to the choice with an upside that the story was the highest profile way to tip disaffected non-voters into voting Labour.

The tactic is logical, but speaks to an epic failure of strategy by Labour.

With just a few days left before polling, the party finds itself scrambling to reach non-voters; it is attempting to compress the work of years of engagement into less than a week, to save the election. Few expect this last minute gamble to yield any returns.

The very thin silver lining to the disastrous postal ballot field reports is Scotland: while the position in is bad, it is not the total meltdown suggested by the polls.

The opinion polls deal with Scotland as a whole where the huge reserves of SNP support in places like Glasgow deliver blow-out figures that suggest almost every Labour MP will lose their seat. However on a constituency basis, the distribution of support is much more even and Labour is competitive in seats that the polls suggest are lost.

According to the postal ballot reports, over half of Labour’s seats are genuinely winnable.

This is why so many Labour resources have been moved north of the border and the party has pivoted its campaign towards Scotland.

In recent days, Ed Miliband has been up in Scotland answering Tory charges about a future deal with the SNP, partially to try to address the problems in English seats, albeit far too late to have a major impact, but principally, to nationalise the Scottish campaign.

For disaffected Labour voters, the choice is being presented as Labour or Tory for the government of Britain where a vote for the SNP would just let the Tories in. For Tory and Lib Dem voters, the choice is between a party committed to the union, Labour, and one opposed, the SNP, where only a vote for Labour will safeguard the union.

In both cases the national dimension is central and Ed Miliband’s presence in Scotland, as national leader, underpins this approach.

The past week has been bracing and ugly for Labour strategists. The postal ballot intelligence has destroyed any residual sense that Labour is winning this campaign.

The priority now is to narrow the loss – the Tories are likely to be the largest party but if Labour can save enough Scottish seats, the result might just be close enough for Labour to cobble together a rainbow coalition to deny the Tories government, even from second place.

If Labour cannot save sufficient numbers of Scottish seats and results in England are as bad as the postal ballots suggest, then there is the real prospect of Labour entering the next parliament with fewer seats than in 2010.

The last straw being clutched among the leader’s advisers is that Labour’s vote, its base which has been relentlessly targeted by canvassing teams, is disproportionately under-represented in postal ballots. It’s a hope shared by few outside of Ed Miliband’s most committed coterie.

The election campaign is nearly over. After the past week’s postal ballot reports, many previously optimistic senior Labour MPs and advisers fear the same is true for Labour’s chances of returning to government, even as a minority administration.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut


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72 Responses to “Revealed: Ed’s night-time dash to casa Brand driven by postal ballot panic”

  1. Mike says:

    I was talking to my parents today in Derby and they said that a Lib Dem who was posting leaflets through letter boxes had said that postal votes had been trending Conservative. I don`t know how he knows, but he has no benefit in saying that unless it was true.

    So this is curious and we will know if just a few days if there has been a swing to the Conservatives like in 1992.

  2. Tafia says:

    I’m wondering if this stems from something I noticed more than a decade ago in Manchester. That although they weren’t counting them, they were sorting them into stacks by party and putting each stack in it’s own box ready for counting (to speed the count up maybe?) and all you had to do was watch long enough and sooner or later you’d see one where you could see who the vote was for and then you would know who the relevant stack was for.

  3. robin strickland says:

    It is illegal for these to be viewed openly or counted prior to election day. What is going on?

  4. Rich says:

    Why are postal ballots opened prior to closing of polls on May 7th?

    Mind you, I would not be surprised at all if Labour put in much better result than opinion surveys indicate. In Scottish referendum the number of postal votes was almost double the difference between Nos and Yessed. Balls was reelected with a majority of around 950 in a constituency with almost 10,000 postal ballots last general election. The there was Labour MP McArthy who was so happy with postal votes sample in Bristol seat that she illegally tweeted about it last general election.

  5. Emma says:

    Yes, they’re not waved around for all to see, but as they are placed face down, candidates or agents watch and note where the X is.

    So Party A at the top of the ballot, Party Y at the bottom and so on.

    Why else would agents bother attending these when the could spend that hour leafleting or canvassing.

    Viewing isn’t illegal (what nonsense), publishing the figures you tally/note in your head is. Clear?

  6. Carol says:

    I think any concern about postal votes will prove to be academic. The picture of the segregated audience in Birmingham will sway undecided voters, especially female voters, and not towards the Tories.

  7. Carol says:

    Sorry, I meant to say not towards Labour.

  8. Ed Parkes Walker says:

    Atul Hatwal, you have been reported to the Electoral Commission for offences under s66A of the Representation of the People Act 1983.

    No point in pulling this webpage down now, I have screenshots and it will merely make you look more guilty.

    Enjoy 🙂

  9. Ed Parkes Walker says:

    @Gloone

    It doesn’t matter whether Hatwal made it up or not, both would be caught by s66A of the Representation of the People Act 1983

    http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1983/2/section/66A

    This Blairite has-been just couldn’t help himself, could he?

  10. John P Reid says:

    Gloone, the article doesn’t reveal how he knows postal votes are showing that the Tories are doing well, but as pointed out its possible to know

    PaulM, labour-uncut writing critical articles of Ed are trying to get the Tories elected, john McDonnell and Len Mcklusky have both wrote articles in the Newstatesman saying if Ed wins they’ll push for labour to swung to the left, or if he loses they’ll punish him, trying to swing labour to the left, by withdrawing support, and calling for various front benches they don’t like to be took off the Shadow cabinet,
    Do you feel their criticism, is the same as the Murdoch press, trying to oust Miliband?

  11. John P Reid says:

    Ed Parker Walker, grow up I re read Atuls article he doesn’t report he’s seen the postal votes he says that Uncut has learnt,and been told,so there’s not a word printed that he’s seen it himself,
    Regarding making it up, the Internet, is void of certain libel laws ,reguarding impartiality.

  12. Tafia says:

    Ed Parkes Walker, I doubt whether the Electoral Commission will be bothered by what he wrote. What they might do is ask him if he will reveal his sources within the Labour Party and then go and speak to them.

  13. Tafia says:

    Apart from which, should they decide to ask fir his sources they then would also have to start trying to track down each poster that has said something that shows how the weight of postal voting can be assessed and has been in the past.

  14. John P Reid says:

    Paulm ,who are these bitter Dan hodges types he’s still voting for Ed Miliband.

    Ed Miliband in understanding how unpopular we were in 2010′ took in think tanks ,from the Purple book to Blue labour, held talks with Selma Hayeb ,George Galloway, attended the Durham miners Gala, wanted Islamaphobia made illegal,and had a mug calling for limits on immigration
    Eds victory ,saw one member so to Neil Kinnock, we’ve got our party back, followed by Len Mklusky, threatening to withdrawal union money, if we didn’t meet his view to expel Progress and Blairites, Ed had also built his campaign on not only not being New Labour,but that his policies, were treating the Old labour views of the 80’s as the future,ignoring their electoral failure as, Blair was wrong ,when he took the party to the centre ground, as the only way to win,Resulting in his name receiving a booing,when Ed Miliband mentioned it at conference.

    There are those who have come into Labour in the last 5 years,who can’t understand the criticism, saying its only Blairites ,bitter David didn’t win,and that they’re the reason Ed isn’t as popular as he should be, And those Ed supporters are blaming anyone who isn’t old labour, for our lack of support saying,they know best what the public wants, but as a working class Northern former Labour MPs simon Dankzuk, John Mann ,they’ve no time for the islington, metropolitan middle class elite. Ed rightly said new labour, was over, But going back to old left wing labour wasn’t the way .The right of old labour ,at least had answers wing , What Ed should have done was to say what replaced it ,in not being new labour, but something new for labour, Resulting in labour publicly admitting is has Given up on the skilled white working class as a potential vote, that Mrs T and Tony Blair loved.

    The new Islamaphobia policy ,contradicts wanting to conserve freedom of speech, innocent till proven guilty or democracy, now we have nothing in common with democratic socialism, that the posting discrimination views of Harriet Harman too Emily Thoenberrys snobbery over White van man, and Diane Abbott,contempt for the law regarding the juries decision on the Mark Dugan case

  15. John P Reid says:

    PaulM supporters of the Iraq war, Neil Kinnock Roy Hattersley,Luke Akehurst and Peter Hain supported for Ed Miliband, due mainly to the Fact that David Didnt understand how unpopular we were.

  16. Madasafish says:

    “Ed Parkes Walker says:
    May 4, 2015 at 2:16 am
    Atul Hatwal, you have been reported to the Electoral Commission for offences under s66A of the Representation of the People Act 1983.”

    Clearly you don’t appear to understand the Law. Nowhere on this article is any information on counts given. Nowhere is it identified which counts have been identified. No numbers have been quoted.

    All that is reported is hearsay.

    The Electoral Commission has more important things to do than investigate what is little more than gossip.

  17. Ed says:

    Madasafish

    No, you clearly don’t understand the law. Even if he completely made it up it will still be caught by the act.

    [F166A Prohibition on publication of exit polls.

    (1)No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed—

    (a)any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or

    (b)any forecast as to the result of the election which is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information so given.]

    Game, set and match, butthurt Blairites. I’ve also reported him to Crimestoppers

  18. Ed says:

    @Tafia

    This has nothing to do with his sources. Hatwal has broken the law by contravening the s66A. Even if he completely made it up he still broke the law

    [F166A Prohibition on publication of exit polls.

    (1)No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed—

    (a)any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or

    (b)any forecast as to the result of the election which is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information so given.]

  19. Ed says:

    @John P Reid

    You clearly don’t understand the law, so here it is so you can read it for yourself; it doesn’t matter who his sources are, whether he made it up or how he came to believeit. Publishing information before the polls are closed which reveals or **purports** to reveal how people voted is illegal

    [F166A Prohibition on publication of exit polls.

    (1)No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed—

    (a)any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or

    (b)any forecast as to the result of the election which is (**or might reasonably be taken to be**) based on information so given.]

  20. Bob_of_Bonsall says:

    I suspect this is a load of fuss over not very much.
    Postal votes come with two envelopes. The actual ballot paper is place into Envelope A which also has a declaration attached that you then sign.

    Envelope A, with the declaration still attached, is placed into Envelope B which you then seal and post.

    What I suspect is happening, is that the Envelopes B are being opened, and the signed declarations being checked and removed from the Envelopes A.

    The Envelopes A are then stored securely until polling day when they are then opened, the ballot papers removed and then, after the polls closed and the boxes returned for counting, mixed up with the votes cast for that day and the counting then begins.

  21. Tafia says:

    Ed – well in that case there are far bigger fish to fry for the Commission as the mainstream media were running with it as well and bits of it along with the link (and publishing the link is classed as communicating the contents of it) have been reproduced on many other sites including the esteemed UK Polling Report ( where other commenters have described other incidents – so they will have to be investigated as well)

    Not to mention the thousands and thousands of people that have re-tweeted it and shared it on facebook – and again sharing the link is legally just the same as publishing the contents.

    Looks like the Commission is going to be very very very busy for a very very very long time.

    Might apply for a job with them – should be able to spin this out all the way to a pension.

  22. KnightAngel45 says:

    The corrupt British voting system is a joke. Ruth Davidson was never investigated about her knowledge of postal votes during scottish referendum even n though she let slip info on live tv. The british government is dishonest and unworthy of people’s trust.

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