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 Edited by
“Highly topical and rich in creative ideas on how to increase

Changing communities
solidarities, this book will provide an inspiration to those Rob Manwaring
promoting social cohesion.” & Paul Kennedy
Ines Newman, De Montfort University

“In an international context of change and volatility, this

book presents an important resource for policy makers,
practitioners and activists. Most importantly, it presents the
reader with the voices of displaced people themselves.”
Mae Shaw, University of Edinburgh

Issues of displacement and dispossession have become defining

characteristics of a globalised 21st century. People are moving within and
across national borders, whether displaced, relocated or moving in search

Marjorie Mayo
of better livelihoods.

This book brings theoretical understandings of migration and

displacement together with empirical illustrations of the creative,
cultural ways in which communities reflect upon their experiences of
change, and how they respond, including through poetry and story-
telling, photography and other art forms, exploring the scope for building

Why the left

communities of solidarity and social justice.

The concluding chapters identify potential implications for policy and

professional practice to promote communities of solidarity, addressing
the structural causes of widening inequalities, taking account of different
interests, including those related to social class, gender, ethnicity, age,

loses
ability and faith.

Marjorie Mayo is Emeritus Professor of Community Development at

Goldsmiths, University of London. Marjorie’s research interests include
community education and development; community cohesion and social
solidarity; participation; active citizenship; and global citizenship.

The decline of the centre-left

in comparative perspective

www.policypress.co.uk
@policypress @policypress
 WHY THE LEFT LOSES
The decline of the centre-left in
comparative perspective
Edited by Rob Manwaring and Paul Kennedy
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

Policy Press North America office:

University of Bristol Policy Press
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 Contents
List of tables and figures v
List of contributors vi
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword 1
Sheri Berman
one Why the left loses: understanding the comparative decline 5
of the centre-left
Rob Manwaring and Paul Kennedy

Part 1: The centre-left in the Anglosphere 23

two The case of the British Labour Party: back to the wilderness 25
Rob Manwaring and Matt Beech
three Electoral competition in Canada among centre-left parties: 39
liberals versus social democracts
David McGrane
four The ‘soft target’ of Labour in New Zealand 53
Grant Duncan
five Australian social democracy: capitalist constraints and the 69
challenges of equality
Carol Johnson
six Exit left: the case of Australian state Labor 85
Rob Manwaring

Part 2: The centre-left in Western Europe 101

seven Germany: little hope in times of crisis 103
Uwe Jun
eight The Swedish Social Democrats and the ‘new Swedish 123
model’: playing a losing game
Claes Belfrage and Mikko Kuisma
nine Between a rock and a hard place in Spain: the PSOE 137
Paul Kennedy
ten The French Parti socialiste (2010-16): from office to crisis 151
Sophie Di Francesco-Mayot

iii
 Why the left loses

Part 3: Conclusion: Why the left loses 167

eleven The end of revisionism? 169
Chris Pierson
twelve Social democracy and the populist challenge 185
René Cuperus
thirteen The dilemmas of social democracy 203
Paul Kennedy and Rob Manwaring

Index 219

iv
 List of tables and figures

Tables
1.1 Centre-left parties in Office and Opposition (2008-16) 8
3.1 Canadian federal election results (2006, 2008, 40
2011 and 2015)
6.1 Labour governments in four Australian states (1995-2015) 87
7.1 SPD’s parliamentary results (2002, 2005, 2009 and 2013) 103
13.1 Class voting at the 2015 UK general election 208
13.2 Centre-left parties’ share of the vote (1997-2016) 213

Figures
7.1 SPD performance during three legislative terms 104
7.2 SPD party members (1990-2014) 114
7.3 Germany – CDU/CSU and SPD polling data (2013-17) 116
13.1 Voting Conservative/Labour by employer/employees 207
(1964-2015)

v
 Why the left loses

List of contributors

Editors
Rob Manwaring is Senior Lecturer at Flinders University, Adelaide,
South Australia. His research interests include social democratic and
labour politics, as well as wider democratic politics. In 2014, his
book, The search for democratic renewal, was published with Manchester
University Press.

Paul Kennedy is Lecturer in Spanish and European Studies at the

University of Bath. He is author of The Spanish Socialist Party and
the modernisation of Spain (Manchester University Press, 2013). His
forthcoming publications include Podemos and the art of the possible
(Manchester University Press, 2018), which he is co-authoring with
David Cutts.

Contributors
Matt Beech is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for British
Politics at the University of Hull, UK. In 2017, he was a Visiting
Scholar at the Institute of European Studies, University of California,
Berkeley, USA, where he is researching his latest book, The triumph of
liberalism: British politics 1990-2016.

Claes Belfrage is Senior Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the

University of Liverpool Management School, UK. He researches the
transformative processes of ‘financialisation’ through select European
and emerging market economy case studies. He is also interested in
critical research methodology.

Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College,

Columbia University, USA. She has written extensively on political
development, democracy and democratisation; European politics; and
fascism, populism and the history of the left. Her most recent book,
Democracy and dictatorship in Europe: From the ancient regime to the present
day, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

vi
 List of contributors

René Cuperus is Director for International Relations at the Wiardi

Beckman Foundation, a think-tank for Dutch social democracy,
Research Fellow at the Germany Institute of the University of
Amsterdam, and political columnist for the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
In September 2017 he started working as Scholar in Residence at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

Sophie Di Francesco-Mayot is Lecturer in European Politics at

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests
include European integration, EU institutions, political parties and
party systems, culture, religion and identity. She previously worked in
the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels, Belgium.

Grant Duncan is Associate Professor in Politics at Massey University,

Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand. He teaches New Zealand
politics and public policy as well as political theory. His recent
publications in public policy have dealt with constitutional conventions
and the Cabinet Manual, and with the ‘new public management’ in
New Zealand. He is currently working on the nature of trust as a
factor in political life.

Carol Johnson is Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide,

South Australia. Her main teaching and research interests are in
Australian politics, the politics of gender and sexuality, the politics of
emotion and analyses of ideology and discourse. She was elected to be
a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2005.

Uwe Jun is Professor of Political Science at the University of Trier,

Germany. Uwe has published extensively on a range of topics, including
social democracy and political parties.

Mikko Kuisma is Research Fellow at the University of Tübingen,

Germany. His current research interests lie in the politics of Nordic
welfare reform, and in European populist parties, especially their
programmatic discourses relating to welfare nationalism and welfare
chauvinism. His book, The social construction of welfare: Citizenship and
Nordic welfare capitalism in an age of globalization, is forthcoming from
Edward Elgar.

David McGrane is an Associate Professor of Political Studies at

St Thomas More College and the University of Saskatchewan in
Canada. His research interests include Canadian political theory,

vii
 Why the left loses

political marketing and voter behaviour. He is the author of Remaining

loyal: Social democracy in Quebec and Saskatchewan (McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2014), and is currently writing a book about the
New Democratic Party of Canada.

Chris Pierson is Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham,

UK, and author of Hard choices (Polity, 2001) and Beyond the welfare state
(Polity, 2006). He is currently completing the third part of a three-
volume history of the idea of property, Just property (Oxford University
Press, 2013 and 2016).

viii
 Acknowledgements
This book would not have seen the light of day without the support,
assistance and input from a number of people. We, as editors, set out
our thanks and gratitude to some of those good people here. The
genesis for the volume emerged on the back of the conference ‘Is social
democracy exhausted?’ held at Flinders University, Adelaide, South
Australia in 2012. A number of the papers, and wider discussion, helped
fuel the impetus for this volume, and our thanks to all participants at
the conference. It is perhaps worth noting that the joint editors of this
volume first became acquainted at this event, via a video conference,
which made short work of the 10,000-mile distance between Adelaide
and Bath.
We thank all the contributors to this volume, and they have all
responded with positive encouragement, and a general adherence to
our editorial demands. In early 2016, we held a workshop attended by
some of the contributors at King’s College, London, and our thanks to
Simon Sleight and colleagues at the Menzies Centre for his generosity
in hosting us.
We offer our gratitude to all the colleagues at Policy Press for their
support and positive engagement with the project. Emily Mew was
instrumental at the outset of this journey, and we thank the very
supportive Emily Watt and Jamie Askew for their work and efforts to
help us complete this in a (relatively) timely fashion. Many thanks to
Dawn Rushen for her editing work.
Rob wishes to thank a number of people for their involvement
and support. Josh Holloway and Karen Austin, both PhD students
at Flinders University, provided important research assistance for a
number of the chapters, and some early editing work. Lionel Orchard
gave crucial and much needed feedback on the final chapter. Rob also
extends his thanks to colleagues at Flinders, not least George Crowder
for sterling mentoring efforts, and Haydon Manning. He also adds his
thanks to Carol Johnson for her ongoing support. Finally, his thanks to
his partner, Sandy, for her unflagging support, and his two irrepressible
children Matilda and Tess, for their love, nonsense, and inability to
tidy their rooms.
Paul would once again like to thank his wife, Santina, who has
been unstinting in her support despite academic concerns continually
finding ways of stealing that most precious of things: time together.
He’s also grateful to his former colleague at Bath, David Cutts, whose
encouragement was as timely as it was cherished.

ix
 Foreword
Sheri Berman

The decline of the centre-left over the past years is one of the most
alarming trends in Western politics. During the latter part of the
20th century such parties either ran the government or led the loyal
Opposition in virtually every Western democracy. Germany’s Social
Democratic Party (SPD), once the most powerful party of the left in
continental Europe, currently polls in high 20s or 30s. The French
Socialist Party was eviscerated in the 2017 elections, as was the Dutch
Labour Party. Even the vaunted Scandinavian social democratic parties
are struggling, reduced to vote shares in the 30 per cent range. The
British Labour Party and the US Democrats have been protected from
challengers by their country’s first-past-the-post electoral systems,
but the former has recently taken a sharp turn to the hard-left under
Jeremy Corbyn, while the latter, although still competitive at the
national level, is a minority party at the state and local levels, where a
hard-right Republican Party dominates the scene.
The decline of the centre-left has hurt Western democracy. It has
left voters free to be captured by extremist parties, particularly of the
far-right populist variety, which threaten the liberal and perhaps even
democratic nature of Western politics. In addition, centre-left parties
played a crucial role in creating and maintaining the post-war order on
which stable democracy was built following the Second World War.
Without a revival of the centre-left, it is hard to see how this order
and perhaps even well functioning democracy can be resuscitated.
This book analyses the decline of the centre-left, and in so doing,
may provide its supporters with the insights necessary to revitalise it.
Why the left loses focuses on three main issues the centre-left must
confront: leadership, institutions/structural change and message/vision.
The first is the most straightforward, but nonetheless crucial. Leaders
represent and personify what parties stand for; in order to win, the
centre-left needs leaders who can connect to a diverse and demanding
electorate, and attractively, forcefully and effectively convey their
party’s messages. Attracting such leaders does not, of course, happen
in a vacuum. Talented and ambitious individuals are drawn to parties
they believe can deal with the challenges of the day. This brings us to
issues of institutions/structural change and message/vision.

1
 Why the left loses

Institutional and structural changes over the last decades in domestic

and international political economies have created major challenges for
all traditional political parties, but particularly for those of the centre-
left. After 1945 in Western Europe (and beginning with the New
Deal in the US), the West began constructing a new type of political
economy, one that could ensure economic growth while at the same
time protecting societies from capitalism’s destructive and destabilising
consequences. This order represented a decisive break with the past:
states would not be limited to ensuring that markets could grow and
flourish, nor would economic interests be given the widest possible
leeway. Instead, after 1945 the state was to become the guardian of
society rather than the economy, and economic imperatives would
sometimes have to take a back seat to social ones. This post-war order
represented something historically unusual: capitalism remained, but
it was capitalism of a very different type than had existed before the
war – one tempered and limited by the power of the democratic
state, and often made subservient to the goals of social stability and
solidarity, rather than the other way round. This was a far cry from the
revolutionary destruction of the capitalist order that orthodox Marxists,
communists and others on the far left had demanded during the pre-
war period, but it still varied significantly from what liberals had long
favoured – namely, giving as much free rein to markets as possible. This
was, in short, a social democratic order – and it worked remarkably
well. Despite fears after the war that it would perhaps take decades for
Europe to recover economically, by the early 1950s most of Europe
had easily surpassed interwar economic figures, and the 30 years after
1945 were Europe’s fastest period of growth ever. The restructured
political economies of the post-war era seemed to offer something to
everyone, and this, in turn, helped to eliminate the belief – long held
by liberals, Marxists and others – that democratic states could not or
would not protect particular groups’ interests. Because the centre-left
was most closely associated with this order and the most determined
defender of it, it had the most to lose from its demise. And so the
pressures put on this order since the 1970s by increasing globalisation,
growing government deficits and the neoliberal and eventually austerity
policies adopted by the European Union (EU) have left the centre-
left scrambling to come up with new strategies for getting economies
moving again, while also ensuring that democratic states continued to
protect citizens from the changes brought by ever-evolving capitalism.
Alongside changes in domestic and international political economies,
centre-left parties have also been challenged by social and cultural
shifts that began in the 1960s and threatened traditional identities,

2
 Foreword

communities and mores – a process further exacerbated, particularly

in Europe, by growing immigration. Together these trends helped
erode the social solidarity and sense of shared national purpose that
had supported the social democratic post-war order and helped to
stabilise European democracies in the decades following the Second
World War. The US faced its own version of this with the growing
political incorporation and mobilisation of minority groups since the
civil rights era, and the increasing shift towards a non-majority white
population destabilising traditional social and political patterns.
But economic, social and cultural institutional and structural
changes have not doomed the centre-left to oblivion. They represent
challenges, and how the centre-left (or any other party) responds to
challenges determines how voters react and political systems evolve.
The problem for the centre-left, in other words, is not merely the
challenges it has faced over the past decades so much as its lack of
convincing and coherent responses to them. Here is where Why the
left loses’ third issue comes in: message/vision. After the 2008 financial
crisis many observers expected a significant swing to the left among
Western electorates, since many blamed the economy’s problems on
the neoliberal policies that had proliferated during the end of the
20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. But the centre-left lacked a
convincing message for dealing with the crisis, or a more general vision
of how to promote growth while protecting citizens from the harsher
aspects of free markets. Instead, it kept on trying to defend out-dated
policies or proposed watered-down versions of neoliberalism that barely
differentiated it from the centre-right. The centre-left also lacked a
convincing message about how to deal with increasing diversity or a
vision of social solidarity appropriate to changing demographic and
cultural realities. Instead, the centre-left either ignored the challenge
of diversity or especially among the intellectual left, put forward a
message of ‘multiculturalism’ – neither of these responses was able to
stem social conflict or electoral flight from the left, especially on the
part of the working class.
It has now become fairly commonplace to note the support given by
traditionally centre-left voters to the populist right. This connection
was on obvious display in the Brexit referendum, where many
traditional Labour strongholds and supporters voted to leave the EU,
and it has been a prominent feature of elections in Europe as working-
class voters have flocked to right-wing populist parties. And, of course,
a version of this was present in the US, where Donald Trump garnered
disproportionate support from less-educated and working-class voters.
What is still worth stressing, however, is the causal connection between

3
 Why the left loses

the failures or missteps of the centre-left and the rise of right-wing

populist parties that offered simple, straightforward messages in response
to citizens’ economic and social fears. Economically, the populist right
promises to promote prosperity, via increased government control of
the economy and limits on globalisation. Socially, the populist right
promises to restore social solidarity and a sense of shared national
purpose, by expelling foreigners or severely limiting immigration,
diminishing the influence of the EU and globalisation, and protecting
traditional values, identities and mores.
For those who bemoan the decline of the centre-left and the rise
of the populist right, the challenge is clear: you can’t beat something
with nothing, and if the centre-left can’t come up with more viable
and attractive messages about how to solve contemporary problems,
and a more attractive vision of the future than those offered by its
competitors, it can expect to continue its slide into the dust heap of
history. The following chapters provide an excellent starting point for
the debate about the centre-left’s future.

4
 ONE

Why the left loses: understanding

the comparative decline of the
centre-left
Rob Manwaring and Paul Kennedy

Introduction
Since the global financial crisis (GFC), if not before, there has been
a general decline in the fortunes of social democratic and labour
parties. Against these recent developments, there is a long-standing
literature that appraises the electoral performance and impact of the
left more broadly (Przeworski and Sprague, 1986; Kitschelt, 1994;
Moschonas, 2002). Much of the literature on social democracy tends
to be pessimistic, and there is a plethora of research that denotes recent
developments as a ‘crisis’, on the ‘back foot’, ‘in retreat’, and perhaps
most arrestingly, as ‘dead’ (Gray, 1996; Pierson, 2001; Keating and
McCrone, 2013; Lavelle, 2013; Ludwigshafen et al, 2016). In a prescient
address at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE) in 2011, David Miliband catalogued the general wreckage of
the electoral fortunes of the centre-left across Western Europe. In his
critical survey of European social democracy, he noted:

• The UK General Election in 2010 – the second worst result for

Labour since 1918.
• Sweden, also in 2010 – the worst result since 1911.
• Germany in 2009 – the worst result since the founding of the
Federal Republic, with a greater loss of support than any party in
the history of the country.
• France in 2007 – the worst result since 1969.
• The Netherlands in 2009 – a traumatic transition from a junior
coalition partner to Opposition.
• Italy – a yo-yo in and out of power, with personal and political
divisions disabling opposition to Berlusconi.

5
 Why the left loses

More recent results generally confirm this overall trend, with British
Labour losing both the 2015 and 2017 general elections. The Dutch
general election in early 2017 saw the worst-ever result for the
Dutch Labour Party (PvDA, Partij van de Arbeid). The PvDA lost 29
seats, only holding 9 in the 150-seat Parliament. The Dutch result is
something of an outlier for the misfortunes of the centre-left. Later in
this chapter we survey the state of the left more widely.
This collected volume investigates the electoral fortunes of the
family of centre-left labour and social democratic political parties.
In this chapter we set out the aims and scope of the volume, and its
contribution to understanding the comparative political decline of the
centre-left. After mapping the electoral fortunes of centre-left political
parties, we then locate this volume in the current literature, and set out
the distinctive approach offered here. From our perspective, one of the
deficiencies of the current literature is that it focuses almost exclusively
on the family of (mostly Western) European social democratic and
labour parties. While much of this literature is incisive and important,
we have a nagging concern that this narrow focus is missing a key
part of the wider story. As we outline below, we need to expand the
explanatory universe to better understand the current plight of the
centre-left.
We have been a little mischievous in the title of this volume – Why
the left loses – and it would be useful here to clarify the book’s scope.
The volume is not called ‘Why the left always loses’ or ‘Why the left
will never win again’. Rather, the focus is on examining the current
electoral performance of a cohort of the family of social democratic
and labour political parties within a specific timeframe (broadly, 2008-16).
The title of the volume is deliberately provocative, in part, because
we hope that it will reach a wider readership than just the academy.
The term ‘left’ is deployed here as a proxy for these groups of political
parties.1 Our focus remains their fate of – often, but not always – the
main carriers of wider social democratic values. The book does not
seek to argue that the values and ideas associated with the ‘left’ are in
decline – indeed, we argue that in a number of cases the opposite is
true, that they have been readily co-opted by a number of parties on
the centre-right, and other populist challengers. Nor are we suggesting
that there are common or single causes for the current state of the
full suite of centre-left political parties. And to be clear, by ‘left’ we
mostly focus on the long-standing social democratic and labour parties
rather than some of the alternative ‘socialist’ or ‘left’ parties such as Die
Linke established in Germany in 2007. The social democratic parties

6
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

remain important political actors, even if they are not in the best of
electoral health.
The risk with the title Why the left loses is that by the time the
volume is published, there will have been a turnaround in the electoral
fortunes of the social democratic parties. Indeed, it was just at the point
of Blair and Schröder declaring the hegemonic victory of the Third
Way/Neue Mitte that the fortunes of the left began to decline. As
Ralf Dahrendorf noted in a telling intervention, the highpoint in the
late 1990s for the centre-left masked other key changes in the party
systems of the advanced industrial democracies:

The real trend – which is underlined by the European

elections – is towards non-traditional parties, many of which
did not exist 20 years ago. (Dahrendorf, 1999)

The key issue is that while the late 1990s may have signalled something
like the ‘magical return’ of social democracy, we are more circumspect
in predicting a ‘second coming’ by the time this volume is released.
Moreover, if there were to be a revival of the centre-left, and clearly
many of the writers in this volume would welcome a return to a
more full-bloodied variant of social democratic politics, it would
not necessarily undermine the central focus of the book. We look to
explain why the left has been doing poorly in this period under review.
Indeed, in one of our cases – state Labor in Australia – there has been
something of a revival of the centre-left.
Overall, we focus predominately on the period from the mid-2000s
to the mid-2010s. The crucial event here is the impact of the global
financial crisis (GFC), and the response of the parties to this latest
rupture in the global capitalist system. The response has not been
overwhelming.

The state of the left

There have been a number of recent surveys of the family of social
democratic parties (Keating and McCrone, 2013; Bailey et al, 2014,
p 8), with the focus predominately on the European parties. Here we
offer a related, but broader, survey.
While there is no clear, uniform trend, the overall picture is rather
dismal for centre-left parties (see Table 1.1).
In France, the 2012 presidential election win proved a temporary
highpoint for the Parti socialiste (PS) under François Hollande.
Indeed, the seven-year term of the presidency arguably overstates the

7
 Why the left loses

Table 1.1: Centre-left parties in Office and Opposition (2008-16)

Country 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

France

Germany
Italy

Netherlands

Spain
Sweden

UK
Canada
New Zealand
Australia

Key

In Office
In Office (junior partner)
In Office (major partner)
In Opposition

Note: In Canada Justin Trudeau took the Liberal Party into office. There is a dispute as to whether to
categorise the Liberals as centrist or social democratic, given the New Democratic Party espouses the
clearest social democratic programme in Canada.

Source: European data drawn in part from Bailey et al (2014, p 9)

dominance of the PS. As outlined by Sophie Di Francesco-Mayot (see

Chapter 10), there is a strong case that while the left was in office, it
was ‘losing the battle of ideas’. It was striking, and perhaps not that
surprising, when Hollande announced that he would not be contesting
the 2017 presidential elections – the first post-war president not to
seek office. Strikingly, PS did not make the second round run-off in
the 2017 presidential election, much like the dismal 2002 election.
Indeed, the Macron phenomenon would suggest a further decline and
fragmentation of the centre-left.
In Germany, the centre-left SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands, or Social Democratic Party of Germany) has been
unable for quite some time to puncture the dominance of Angela
Merkel’s CDU (Christian Democratic Union). Since 2005, Merkel
has been unassailable in German politics, with the SPD first as a junior
coalition partner, then back in Opposition. At the 2013 election,
Merkel reluctantly turned to the SPD as junior partner once again. In

8
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

Uwe Jun’s account (see Chapter 7), the factors for the SPD’s electoral
health are examined. What is striking about the SPD is that like other
cases considered here, its troubles pre-date the GFC. To a large extent,
the SPD, like the SAP (Swedish Social Democratic Party) and the UK
Labour Party, is experiencing a prolonged hangover from its turn to
the Third Way.
In Spain, the picture is arguably more pessimistic for the PSOE
(Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party). Since losing office in 2011, the party
has lost consecutive general elections in 2015 and 2016, and, as Paul
Kennedy outlines in his overview (see Chapter 9), it faces a range of
pressures, not least the emergence of the left-populist Podemos party
in 2014. Over this time, the PSOE has been haemorrhaging votes. As
Kennedy notes, while the PSOE has not yet faced its own version of
‘Pasokification’ (the ultimate destruction of the once dominant Greek
social democrats), its future is far from assured.
In Sweden, often claimed as having the purest form of social
democracy, the SAP finds itself in turbulent times. It was in office
from 1994 to 2002; it then lost both the 2006 and 2010 elections,
and narrowly won the 2014 election, governing in coalition with the
Green Party. The 2014 results obscure the thinness of SAP’s victory
with only a minor improvement of its vote, at 31 per cent. Here, we
see a clear example of arguably a structural trend facing centre-left
parties – a narrowing of its voter base. Whereas the PSOE faces a
left-populist challenge, the striking characteristic of the Swedish party
system has been the emergence of the nationalist right-populist Swedish
Democrats. As Claes Belfrage and Mikko Kuisma argue (see Chapter 8),
the SAP is confronted by long-standing economic constraints imposed
by the capitalist system and is playing something of a ‘losing game’. It
remains unclear how far the 2014 result signifies a meaningful revival
of the centre-left.
While this volume confines its European focus to these countries,
the outlook for the centre-left across Europe is mixed, at best. In
Italy, the fortunes of the centre-left have been – in David Miliband’s
words – something of a ‘yo-yo’. The centre-right was dominant from
2001 to 2006. Under Romano Prodi, the centre-left briefly resumed
office (2006-08), before losing again to the centre-right in 2008. It is
telling that after the GFC, the Italian electorate placed its faith in the
‘technocratic’ government of Mario Monti, until the centre-left bloc
took over in 2013. This recent development, however, can hardly be
considered stable government, and the development of Beppe Grillo’s
Five Star Movement presents another populist challenge to both left
and right.

9
 Why the left loses

In The Netherlands, the 2017 election was catastrophic for the PvDA.
Prior to this calamity, it was in Opposition between 2002 and 2006,
and again between 2010 and 2012. At the 2012 elections it entered as
a junior partner in coalition with the centre-right VVD (People’s Party
for Freedom and Democracy). In the multi-party Dutch system, the
PvDA has been unable to secure a firmer electoral base, and again, a
xenophobic populist party – in this case, led by the ubiquitous Geert
Wilders – poses both a strategic and ideational dilemma for both left
and right.
It appears that the left not only loses elections; it can’t win them
outright either. In Austria, while the SPŐ (Social Democratic Party of
Austria) has been the largest partner (just) in a grand coalition, Austrian
politics has seen the emergence of the far-right, and both major parties
recorded their worst ever results at the 2008 legislative elections.
In Norway, Jens Stoltenberg’s Labour party (AAP) was a dominant
force from 2005-13, but lost power to the centre-right bloc.
While these cases are not considered here, they remain emblematic of
a range of problems and dilemmas facing social democratic and labour
parties, especially in the context of a shifting party system, with new
populist challengers.
We also include and survey the fortunes of the centre-left in the
Anglosphere, and here we focus our attention on Australia, New
Zealand, Canada and the UK. Controversially for some, we locate the
UK Labour Party outside the core European family of social democratic
parties (although the Brexit result provides further support for this case).
As a range of writers and indeed, Labour figures, have pointed out,
the UK Labour Party often has more in common with its Antipodean
Labour sisters than its European social democratic counterparts. As Rob
Manwaring and Matt Beech outline in Chapter 2, the picture here is
fairly dismal for the centre-left. Labour has experienced ‘Pasokification’
in Scotland, and since the fall of New Labour in 2010 has been unable
to claw its way back into power. While the 2010 result was widely
anticipated, Labour’s loss to the Conservatives in 2015 was not. While
Corbyn-led Labour secured a better-than-expected result at the 2017
general election, Labour has now lost three elections in a row since
Tony Blair stepped down as leader.
Elsewhere, there is a catalogue of defeat for the left. In two different
contexts, Canada and New Zealand, there has been a dominance of
the centre-right. From 2008-15, Stephen Harper’s Conservative party
has dominated Canadian politics, and it is only with the recent win of
Justin Trudeau that there has been some shifting back to a more left-
leaning position. Yet, as David McGrane outlines in Chapter 3, the

10
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

fate of the NDP (New Democratic Party) illustrates the difficulty of

seeking to impose a social democratic settlement at a time of Liberal
Party resurgence. Strikingly, at the 2011 election, the NDP seemingly
made a key breakthrough under the leadership of Jack Layton, but the
fortunes of the NDP have since declined.
Likewise, in New Zealand, the NZ Labour Party has been
unsuccessful in dislodging the centre-right National Party under the
dominant leadership of John Key. Labour lost three straight elections,
and despite the unexpected resignation of Key at the end of 2016,
its chances of winning at the 2017 general election look marginal at
best. Grant Duncan surveys the wreckage of the NZ Labour Party (in
Chapter 4), and what is striking here is the flexibility of the centre-
right, and, most notably, a shift away from a strident form of neoliberal
politics.
Finally, in Australia, after 11 years in the wilderness, the ALP
(Australian Labor Party) took office under the, initially, strong
leadership of Kevin Rudd. Yet, within the space of a few years, the
ALP turned in on itself, and Julia Gillard (just) secured a minority
government in 2010. And in another rancorous turn, the ALP ditched
Gillard weeks before the 2013 election. Since then, despite a promising
election campaign in 2016, the ALP remains in Opposition. As Carol
Johnson examines in her chapter on the ALP (see Chapter 5), Labor
was beset by a range of both institutional and ideational problems.
Most critically, Johnson examines the central dilemma facing centre-
left parties in the capitalist system. We also include in this volume a
chapter on a much neglected story of the centre-left – the Australian
state Labor parties (see Chapter 6). During the mid-2000s, a rather
intriguing phenomenon occurred when Labor held office in every
single state and territory. Since then state Labor has been on the back
foot. The chapter therefore offers the reader a clear comparative case
study of sub-national social democracy to illuminate why the left loses
elections.
If time and space permitted, we might also look beyond our cases
and see the, at best, mixed picture for the centre-left. Critically, the
2016 presidential election victory by Donald Trump in the US seems
to encapsulate many of the current dynamics of the modern party
system, with a populist backlash against both major political parties. In
Latin America, left-ist parties have also suffered setbacks (Aidi, 2015),
although the extent to which we locate them in the ‘social democratic’
tradition is contested. The key issue from this brief survey is that the
left is currently losing, or not winning well, and also recording some
record losses in the period from the GFC to 2016. The aim of this

11
 Why the left loses

volume is to explore and examine, comparatively, the reasons for this

current state of play.
It is worth making a few caveats to this overall survey. First, most
liberal democracies in advanced industrial settings operate on some
turnover of governments. We are circumspect in over-emphasising
any ‘trend’ of the ‘left losing’. Second, in many cases, the left losing is,
indeed, a noted part of their histories. To take the UK Labour Party
as a prominent example, until New Labour, its electoral record was
patchy at best (between 1945 and 1997 it held office for just 17 of
those 52 years). Third, while we make comparative judgements, and
see some common themes, such as populism, Third Way hangovers,
out-dated political economic models, changing class patterns, and so
on, there are specific conditions playing out. The left loses, but not
always for the same reasons.
That said, the ‘transformation’ of social democracy has been well
documented (Kitschelt, 1994; Moschonas 2002). Yet, since the heyday
of the neoliberal turn in the 1980s, the social democratic project seems
to have been significantly weakened. Ultimately, we are asking why
the left has been losing in the modern era.

The cases
The focus of our study is on two broad cohorts of social democratic
parties. First, the group we are loosely calling the left in the
‘Anglosphere’ focuses on the electoral performance of relevant parties
in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. The second cohort
are the cluster of parties that have formed part of the heart of the social
democratic project in Europe – Sweden, Germany, Spain and France.
We focus on these eight countries for the following reasons.
This volume builds on a well-established formula in political science
by comparing broadly similar cohorts of (social democratic) parties
(Paterson and Thomas, 1986; Kitschelt, 1994; Bonoli and Powell,
2004; Merkel et al, 2008; Callaghan et al, 2009; Lavelle, 2013). There
are striking omissions (and odd inclusions) in any edited volume, and
this collection is arguably no different. Austria, Finland, Norway and
the Netherlands, for example, are all worthy cases for inclusion. The
Australian states might seem anachronistic, but we defend that choice
here (although see Chapter 6 for a fuller defence). The main reason
for including a sub-national case is that it is both a neglected part of
the centre-left story, and a sub-national comparator also offers some
key variables to examine any overall trends or patterns for left losses.
Given that the sub-national governments have much more limited

12
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

policy levers, our attention is drawn to the different ways that ‘labour’
or social democratic ideas and institutions can be reinvigorated (or
indeed, not) in a different political setting. In effect, the sub-national
case invites us to ask if sub-national left governments lose for the same
reasons as national left governments.
Our European cases are all prominent and core examples of social
democracy, both nominally and in practice. We limit ourselves to eight
countries for comparative purposes, and, truth be told, for brevity.
The Palgrave handbook of European social democracy in the European Union
(de Waele et al, 2013) features all 27 member states. While it is a fine
achievement, we wager that even the most devout scholars of social
democracy are unlikely to have read all cases. It is our aim that the cases
included here are to be ‘read across’ with each other, and indeed, to be
read. The key issue is that the chapters are not stand-alone; rather, they
are part of a broader dynamic picture of institutional and ideational
decline on the left. The cases selected here are emblematic of different
parts of the wider story of the weakening of the left.
Unlike the fine Keating and McCrone, and Bailey et al collections,
and indeed much of the social democracy literature (see, for example,
Sassoon, 2013), we also deliberately include some cases from the
‘Anglosphere’. As Chris Pierson (2001) notes, the diversity of social
democracy is often ignored, and the temptation is to impose a Crosland-
ite or Swedish set of inclusion criteria on all cases. A key contribution
of this volume, and a corrective to some of the wider social democratic
literature, is to broaden the scope of focus.
In addition, the recent collections on European social democracy,
while important, do have some limitations. First, the Keating and
McCrone volume only really has one dedicated case study, which
is the Swedish one. Its thematic chapters are important, but for
comparative purposes the challenge is to ensure that this collection has
a clear underpinning integrity and reasonably sound architecture. As
noted above, the focus on social democracy as a (Western) European
phenomenon has a limiting effect. For example, one of the overarching
factors widely cited for the problems of the European centre-left is
the difficulties posed by membership to (and/or relationship with)
the European Union (EU). A number of writers see the ‘Faustian
pact’ as being at the heart of the problems of the centre-left (Escalona
and Vieira, 2014). While no doubt a pressing dilemma, this focus has
the net effect of over-playing certain variables over others. There are
clear common problems for a cluster of centre-left parties – especially
those that took a Third Way ‘turn’. We argue that a stronger factor
for the weakening of the centre-left in the UK, Sweden and other

13
 Why the left loses

parts of Europe is the difficulty in reconciling with the Third Way

agenda rather than a strategic position in relation to the EU. Here,
the inclusion of the New Zealand and Australian Labo(u)r Parties is
particularly instructive, because while many of the issues are similar
to their European counterparts, the EU is clearly not central to the
difficulties faced by the Antipodean sister parties. It might be that the
European ‘Faustian pact’ is a localised metaphor for a wider political
problem – the wider reconfiguration of the Keynesian welfare state
political economy in the neoliberal era – but if that is the case, it ought
to be more clearly circumscribed. The central issue is that the lens of
the telescope has to be widened to enable a clearer picture.2
This is a comparative study, and falls within the comparative case
study approach (see Yin, 2013). Indeed, one of the contributions this
volume makes is to provide a stronger comparative focus for the political
phenomena in question, which links in with some of the limits of
several of the other collections, such as Bailey et al (2014). Often, the
cases are too ‘stand-alone’ and don’t enable meaningful comparison.
Writers focus on their specific cases, and usually detail them well, with
perceptive insights. Yet the scope for wider comparison is limited.
Arguably, the volume that has the most sustained approach in adopting
a comparative framework is by Bonoli and Powell (2004), with its
policy regime emphasis. Their focus is slightly different from ours, as
the ideological and policy contours of their cases are examined. In this
volume, we focus on explanatory factors for electoral performance.

Understanding change and continuity in the left

To understand why the left is losing, we use what Randall (2003) calls
a ‘synthetic’ approach. Randall helpfully outlines the main range of
strategies that have been taken to understand change and continuity
in the centre-left: (1) materialist, (2) ideational, (3) institutional, (4)
electoral and (5) synthetic.
Without rehearsing all of Randall’s arguments, each approach
applies a specific lens to the issue at hand. Materialist strategies examine
changes in the capitalist system; ideational approaches focus on the
changing currents in social democratic traditions; institutional approaches
focus on intra-party and related issues; and electoral strategies examine
socioeconomic changes in the demos. Finally, ‘synthetic’ approaches are
probably best understood as hybrid strategies, adopting elements of
them all.
The synthetic approach taken here is drawn from two sets of
complementary literature – first, following Randall (2003), the well-

14
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

established work on the left more broadly, and second, what might be
termed the ‘opposition’ literature – the body of research that focuses
on analysing the performance of parties out of office. We adopt the
framework developed by Ball (2005) and Bale (2010). In Bale’s excellent
work on the UK Conservative Party, he asks, why did it take the party
so long to regain office? Bale’s crucial insight is that political parties
are not purely ‘rational’ or ‘vote-maximising’ machines. A striking
characteristic of the Conservative Party in Opposition was a long-
standing refusal to adopt a quicker route back into power.
Bale’s book is a single case of a party in Opposition, and his analysis
focuses on three key dimensions: institutions, individuals and ideas.3
This is the broad framework we apply in this volume. Each writer
analyses his or her specific case through these three lenses. Each
chapter examines the institutional and structural factors that explain
lack of electoral success; the role of key individuals, especially party
leaders; and finally, the role of ideas in explaining why the centre-left
is currently in retreat. The strength of this approach is that it enables
an analysis of the structural and agency conditions that might explain
the state of the centre-left party in each case, but also attend to the
ideational battleground where parties have sought to find a new or
revised form of social democratic politics. The framework is both
rigorous and focused, and crucially, enables flexibility for authors to
identify key local and specific factors at play. Perhaps more importantly,
for our purposes, it means that our chapters can ‘wear their theory
lightly’, so the general reader is not subjected to some of the tedium
that can sometimes engulf theoretical and conceptual debates in the
academy. It is worth outlining in a little more detail these three broad
thematic areas.

Institutions

Institutional factors relate to the structural conditions that shape (and

can hinder) the centre-left. Broadly we might sub-divide these into
endogenous and exogenous factors. An institutional and structural focus
draws our attention to crucial political components of the electoral
system, and elements such as the changing sociology of the left vote.
The internal institutional factors include those such as the influence
of the trade unions and dimensions like the factional divisions within
the party. An institutional focus has long been a mainstay within the
centre-left scholarly tradition, such as Minkin’s 2014 opus on the UK
Labour Party. Indeed, a focus on some of the constituent parts of the

15
 Why the left loses

relevant party seems crucial, as Di Francesco-Mayot notes in her analysis

of the PS, or the rise of Jeremy Corbyn as British Labour leader.

Individuals

A focus on individuals then shifts attention to the explanatory power

of the role of agency. Here, the contributors focus on the role of key
leaders and other figures who have been instrumental in shaping the
fortunes of the party. Indeed, one of the strongest accounts of the UK
Labour Party – David Marquand’s (1992) The progressive dilemma – adopts
this approach, plotting Labour’s history through the influence of key
individuals on the party. Leadership is often a neglected dimension of
understanding the fortunes of the centre-left. For example, two of the
most rigorous analyses of social democracy both note this is an element
missing in their research. Kitschelt’s (1994) path-breaking work offers
perhaps the most conceptually rigorous account of social democracy.
Yet, as Kitschelt acknowledges, in his structural/institutional account:

… by and large leaves out the impact of the charisma of

unique political personalities on the success of left parties.
(Kitschelt, 1994, p 284)

Kitschelt notes the importance of leaders, but rightly also notes the
difficultly in measuring their impact. We can’t claim to solve this issue,
but by giving this clearer prominence in our analysis, we give more
attention to this dimension. Similarly, Moschonas (2002) notes that the
issue of leadership is becoming increasingly important in understanding
recent developments in what was originally a mass movement (although
this approach admittedly risks caricaturing the history). Moschonas
notes that party leaders are becoming more ‘autonomous’ of the party,
which, for the leader ‘… secures extraordinary power, which is isolated
and isolating. And fragile’ (2002, p 315). If the parties are broadly
shifting into new entities, and the liberal democracies are becoming
more ‘leader-centric’ and personalised, then a focus on individuals and
leadership is arguably becoming a stronger factor in understanding
social democratic performance.

Ideas

Finally, the analysis looks briefly at ideational questions, and the ability
of the parties to build a coherent narrative and ideological message in
the face of these wider changes. The power of ideas is often difficult

16
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

to capture, but, as Keynes noted, the ‘world is ruled by little else’, even
if ‘practical men’ often assume they are exempt from them. Ideational
questions are a long-standing prism to view the trajectories of political
parties, and arguably the most significant ideational innovation has been
the ‘Third Way’ debates of the 1990s (Giddens, 1998). Here, the debate
has focused on the potential great betrayal of the much-vaunted ‘labour
tradition’. In many countries, including the UK, Australia, Sweden
and elsewhere, the ideational debate has focused on the continuity/
discontinuity thesis – the extent to which a neoliberal embrace of
(mostly) economic policy settings has meant that the parties can no
longer be considered social democratic or labour (see Lavelle, 2013).
There have been several single case studies that have examined the Third
Way legacy, and Goes’ (2016) excellent book on the UK post-New
Labour Party is an exemplar. Here, Goes tracks the ideational legacy
of the Third Way, and the dilemmas facing Ed Miliband and the wider
party in dealing with the ideational shift in the party. At the time of
writing, the Corbyn phenomenon seems like a radical ideational and
institutional reaction against the New Labour legacy.
For the purposes of this study, we invited the contributors to
consider the ideational questions that continue to vex the parties.
Broadly speaking, as Bramston (2011) notes in his study of the ALP in
Australia, the party is often a site for the ideational struggle between
different traditions. As most of the mainstream social democratic
parties no longer draw heavily on the Socialist tradition, there seems
a narrowing of ideas from the social liberal and social democratic
traditions and, in some cases, the ‘Labourist’ tradition.4 The extent to
which the Third Way can be considered a ‘new’ tradition is open to
interpretation (Manwaring, 2014). Nonetheless, in many cases, a key
issue for the centre-left is its response to ideational re-positioning in
neoliberal times (Glyn, 2001).

A poor diagnosis for the left

This chapter has set the scene for the book, and has laid out the
comparative framework for the analysis of the state of the centre-left.
The key themes of individuals, institutions and ideas are interdependent
and dialectic. By this, we suggest that they are mutually reinforcing, and
non-reducible. Ideational change requires both the force of agency, and
the contextual conditioning of structure. For the academic reader, we
locate this approach in the ‘critical realist’ tradition, yet we also recognise
that not all the contributors might subscribe to this epistemological
approach. Regardless, it allows for a meaningful comparative analysis,

17
 Why the left loses

while allowing sufficient flexibility for case-specific variables. In this

sense, we very much follow Marsh and Smith’s (2001) view that there is
more than one way to practice political science (see Marsh and Smith,
2001; Furlong and Marsh, 2010).
While we recognise that some chapters might give some prominence
to some dimensions over others, we mitigate against this in at least
two ways. First, a different emphasis – for example, more prominence
on institutional problems – à la French Socialists – arguably reflects an
empirical reality, whereas in other cases, perhaps the Swedish case, its
deeper problems are ideational. Even if we accept that our different
contributors have different epistemological approaches, our concluding
chapters, where the wider comparative judgements are made, are a
useful way to redress any imbalances in our case chapters. In sum,
no edited volume can fully avoid some unevenness, but our claim
is that unlike some other recent contributions, we tell a much more
meaningful comparative story.
In our volume we are offering a distinctive approach to understanding
the state of the centre-left. Our cases are more recent than other
volumes, and our focus is wider than just Europe. Each of our chapters
offers insights into wider theoretical and ideational approaches aimed
at understanding the phenomena of the centre-left, although our
approach, like most of the significant contributions on the left (see,
for example, Sassoon, 2013), offers a contribution that is incremental,
rather than path-breaking. Our cases mostly draw on secondary, rather
than primary, sources. We are not claiming significant methodological
innovation, but we are offering a distinctive contribution to the
wider field of understanding political parties. The synthetic approach
outlined and adopted here has not been used in a comparative context
anywhere else.
Overall, at the time of our analysis, the ‘health’ of the left is hardly
robust. The left is losing, and in many cases, at record levels. Without
wishing to overplay the medical analogy, the aim of this volume is to
gather some critical insights into the wider diagnosis of the condition
of the family of centre-left political parties. Whether their condition
is ‘terminal’ might well be a question that persists for some time yet.

Notes
1 There is a long-standing literature that notes the complexity of defining ‘social
democracy’ and its variants (Bonoli and Powell, 2004, p 2, offers a useful synopsis).
There are numerous disagreements about what constitutes its ‘purest’ form. In this
volume we focus on the main social democratic and labour parties, but it is not
the aim to wade into these wider definitional debates. While the parties we focus

18
 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

on are often the main conduits for a ‘social democratic’ form of politics, we note
that this is not always consistent in their histories, and indeed, their histories are
complex and varied.
2 Gumbrell-McCormick and Hyndman (2013) usefully employ the motif of the
telescope and the microscope to examine political phenomena – in their case, the
plight of trade unions in Western Europe.
3 While Bale employs the three main dimensions, arguably, he gives greatest
prominence to institutional factors. This can be a weakness in any ‘synthetic’
approach. In our volume, all contributors were asked to scrutinise their cases
through the three dimensions, yet, invariably, some give greater attention to some
over others. The strength of this approach is that the over-arching framework allows
both methodological and case flexibility. A perceived weakness might be that it
blunts the comparative explanatory power, and leads to some thematic incoherence.
4 Bramston focuses on the ALP (Australian Labor Party), and clearly there will be
different ideological traditions across the wider family of social democratic parties.
However, this schema is a useful snapshot to capture some of the main ideological
differences on the centre-left.

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Merkel, W., Petring, A., Henkes, C. and Egle, C. (2008) Social democracy
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Miliband, D. (2011) ‘Speech on the European left’, New Statesman, 8
March, London: London School of Economics and Political Science,
www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2011/03/centre-parties-social

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 Understanding the comparative decline of the centre-left

Minkin, L. (2014) The Blair supremacy: A study in the politics of Labour’s

Party management, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Moschonas, G. (2002) In the name of social democracy: The great
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Publications.

21
 Part 1
The centre-left in the Anglosphere

23
 TWO

The British Labour Party:

back to the wilderness
Rob Manwaring and Matt Beech

Introduction
For a brief period of time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, New Labour
seemed to offer a distinctive model for the renewal (or, according to
some critics, a betrayal) of social democracy. For 13 years New Labour
had seemingly found an electorally successful model that also offered
clues for a recalibration of the centre-left in the 21st century. Yet, at
the 2010 general election Labour was ingloriously ejected from office,
under the unfortunate leadership of Gordon Brown. Brown’s tired and
exhausted government, battered by the MPs’ expenses scandal, secured
just 29 per cent of the vote, paving the way for David Cameron for
the Conservative Party to secure office in coalition with the Liberal
Democrats.
If the 2010 result was lacklustre for Labour, the 2015 general election,
under the leadership of Ed Miliband, was far more damaging, in part,
because it was unexpected. While Labour did increase its vote share
to 30.4 per cent, Cameron secured a 12-seat majority. Since 2015,
Labour has suddenly found itself in quite extraordinary territory, with
the unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. In 2017,
the Conservative Party was surging ahead in the polls, and Prime
Minister Theresa May took a gamble and called a snap election for 8
June. Corbyn-led Labour performed better than was widely expected,
and won an additional 30 seats, forcing a hung Parliament. Labour
won 40 per cent of the vote, and the Tories clung to power with the
support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Paradoxically, the
mood in Labour was upbeat following the election, despite losing its
third general election on the trot.
This chapter focuses on the period from 2010 to the 2017 general
election to examine why the Labour Party is losing, and on its
current trajectory, well may face a prolonged period of exile in the
electoral wilderness. As Randall (2003) notes, there are multiple

25
 Why the left loses

ways of examining centre-left political parties, including materialist,

institutional, ideational and electoral strategies. Here, we adopt
what Randall calls the synthetic approach, which integrates structural,
institutional, ideational and agency factors. This is a comparative
study, and this chapter is organised around the three core themes of
institutions, ideas and individuals. By focusing on the interaction and
symbiotic relationship between these three core elements, we can
offer a view as to why the Labour Party is losing, and indeed, may
well continue to do so.
In this chapter, we examine the institutional factors that are stymieing
a renewal of the party. What is clear is that despite the influx of new
members to Labour, both under Miliband and particularly under
Corbyn, the core nexus between leader, unions, PLP (the Parliamentary
Labour Party) and rank-and-file appears to be at a critical breaking
point. The focus on individuals draws attention to the leadership styles
of Miliband and Corbyn, and again, are key explanatory factors for
Labour’s current woes. Finally, the focus on individual factors then
examines the extent to which Labour under Brown, Miliband and
Corbyn has failed to find a coherent and electorally appealing renewal
of the social democratic tradition.
It is also worth setting out here what this chapter adds to the existing
literature on the travails of Labour in the post-New Labour era. First, it
should be read in conjunction with the other cases in this volume, and
is structured to enable comparative insights. (Much of the literature on
the Labour Party tends to solely focus on the UK context.) Second,
this chapter complements some existing literature, but also includes
a distinctive analysis of the failures of the British left. For example,
the two key statements of the Miliband period are offered by Goes
(2016) and Bale (2015) – both important works. Goes focuses on
ideational issues, and Bale has a stronger focus on institutional and
electoral factors. Here, we seek to integrate such approaches into
our analysis. In addition, while there is much journalistic critique of
Labour’s plight – much of it interesting – there is less academic material.
Further, while the Beckett Report (2016) offers a candid, and no doubt
painful, account of the 2015 election loss, it has shortcomings – not
least in arguably over-playing structural factors such as the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act (2011), and, to some extent, down-playing Miliband’s
muddled leadership. Finally, using a wider critical lens, and taking in
the period that includes Brown, Miliband and Corbyn, we argue that
Labour’s woes require a deeper analysis than insightful, but one-off,
electoral accounts (see, for example, Ross, 2015). The chapter proceeds
by examining Labour through the prism of these key themes, and

26
 The British Labour Party

concludes with further reflections of Corbyn’s current leadership of

the party.

Institutions
When seeking to understand the failure of the British left in general,
and the Labour Party in particular since 2010, a sensible place to start
is by examining the institutional relationship between the Labour Party
and the wider labour movement. The Labour Party is the political
wing of the labour movement, and has responsibility for representing
the labour movement in the UK Parliament. The elite of the labour
movement comprise the first tier of the Labour Party – the Party
Leader and Deputy Leader, both of whom are directly elected by
party members. When in Opposition, as Labour have been since
2010, the Shadow Cabinet, with its junior Shadow Ministers and
parliamentary Private Secretaries, make up the second tier of the elite.
The backbenchers of the PLP can then be classed as the third tier. In
the 2017 Parliament, Labour has 262 MPs.
As the UK is an asymmetric polity with devolved institutions, the
labour movement has political representation through Scottish Labour
in the Scottish Parliament. In the 2016 Scottish Parliament, Scottish
Labour has 23 MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament). Welsh
Labour represents Labour interests in the National Assembly for Wales,
and in the 2017 Welsh Assembly Welsh Labour has 29 AMs (Assembly
Members). The London Labour Party represents Labour in the London
Assembly, and in the 2017 Assembly it has 12 seats. Labour does not
contest elections in Northern Ireland, but the Social Democratic
and Labour Party (SDLP) is a sister. In the House of Commons, the
SDLP has 3 MPs, all of whom take the Labour whip voluntarily,
and sit with Labour members. Finally, at the sub-national level, local
representatives of the Labour Party are elected as councillors to town,
borough, district, city and county councils, many of which are unitary
authorities. In England and Wales since 2015 Labour controls 110
local authorities (Local Government Association, 2015). In Scotland
since 2012 Labour has run 8 councils and is in a coalition in a further
8 (Curtice, 2012, p 24).
The wider Labour movement comprises affiliated trade unions,
socialist societies, registered supporters and party members. In recent
years Labour has been successful at engaging young people through
social media, and in 2015 they offered younger supporters the reduced
fee of just £3 to join. The number of young people who joined
and, in particular, the number of young people who joined Labour

27
 Why the left loses

to vote for Corbyn as leader in the summer of 2015 is evidence of

this. Similarly, in July 2016, membership of the Labour Party was
estimated to be nearly 600,000, as over 100,000 people had swiftly
joined to participate in the leadership election after Angela Eagle
initially challenged Jeremy Corbyn (Bush, 2016). In numerical terms,
although Labour Party membership is currently at its highest for
decades, many new registered supporters have not become regular
activists within constituency Labour parties. The phenomenon of the
sudden expansion of Labour membership appears to be one where
people – especially younger people – have bought in to the leadership
election process with the goal of voting for their preferred candidate.
While to an extent the institutions of the labour movement are growing
in numbers and reaching younger citizens, at the same time, the PLP
is riven with bitter divisions. On 28 June 2016 Labour MPs voted by
172 to 40 for a motion of ‘no confidence’ in Corbyn’s leadership (BBC
News, 2016). During the 2017 election campaign and shortly after
the unexpectedly positive result, there was an uneasy truce within the
party. Yet flash points still remain. Corbyn, freshly emboldened from
the election, sacked three Shadow Ministers, and there were internal
struggles over the internal parliamentary committee.
The referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union
(EU) is the most revealing example of the institutional challenges facing
the Labour Party. The referendum was won on the issue of immigration
(Jonas, 2016). The argument that carried the day was that uncontrolled,
mass, low-skill immigration has had a deleterious effect on working-
class communities. Brexit revealed a divided UK, with especially deep
fissures in the English left over the type of country Labour-inclined
voters want to see (Beech, 2016, p 128). This can be understood as
the progressive left versus conservative Labour. According to YouGov,
65 per cent of people who voted Labour in the 2015 general election
opted for ‘Remain’ while 35 per cent chose ‘Leave’ (YouGov, 2016).
In a YouGov poll of Labour Party members, 90 per cent responded
that they voted ‘Remain’ and 9 per cent responded that they voted
‘Leave’ (Curtis, 2016). Brexiteers were more likely to be older, modestly
educated and to live in the provinces of England and Wales (Moore,
2016). Brexit has stirred a more conservative vision of the English left
in the hearts and minds of many instinctive Labour voters.
The Brexit result demonstrates that there is no shared vision for the
good society on the British left. The political identity and values of
the vast majority of the PLP, party members and registered supporters
is at variance with millions of Labour-inclined voters, especially those
from working-class communities. The part that the institutions of the

28
 The British Labour Party

British left has played in its malaise pertains to what can be explained
as the values gap, the gap in social values between those voters who
have historically been Labour-inclined, and the activists and politicians
within the Labour Party. The Labour Party and labour movement
has ceased to be a broad church in terms of social values, and is more
accurately described as a handful of disputatious political sects. On
issues such as membership of the EU, mass immigration from Eastern
and South Eastern Europe, the culture of human rights, feminism,
gay marriage and patriotism, Labour politicians and activists are firmly
progressive (Edwards and Beech, 2016, p 494). But this is not the vision
of Labour politics recognised by older voters, non-metropolitan voters
and many working-class voters in Labour’s heartlands. The values gap
argument relates not to economic perspectives where the breadth
of opinion within the labour movement is plain for all to see. The
socialism of the hard left Corbynites is different from the soft left social
democracy of Ed Miliband and his inner circle, which, in turn, was
different from the centrism of the Brownite and Blairite centre-left.
Labour-inclined voters do not clearly coalesce around one variant of
Labour political economy.
The other factor in the values gap argument is that the more
conservative vision of the left is alien to Londoners. London Labour
is the epitome of cosmopolitanism, and is necessarily progressive. This
leads us to the second point – geography matters. A further difficulty
for the Labour Party comes, in part, from London’s dominance. The
nation’s capital is a bedrock of the Labour Party, with 45 out of 73 MPs.
Its voter base is disproportionally young, wealthier than average, socially
liberal and represented (some might say, over-represented) in the mass
media. Its voice is therefore loud and it receives multiple platforms in
the broadcast and print media to press its case for progressive Labour
values. When this progressive left voice reverberates outside of the
metropolis, and is received in the Labour heartlands, it is as hard to
comprehend as an unknown tongue.

Ideas
At the heart of Labour’s current plight lies an ideational paradox. The
spectre that continues to haunt the party is the legacy of New Labour.
British Labour has not yet decisively, and in a unified way, answered
the question of what the post-New Labour Party stands for. This is
not an uncommon phenomenon. As Bale (2010) deftly points out,
it took the Conservative Party four leaders and 13 years to reconcile
itself to the Thatcherite legacy. The paradox for Labour is that ‘New

29
 Why the left loses

Labour’ was built on a broad consensus of ideas and principles, and yet
remained quite contradictory (see Gamble, 2010; Manwaring, 2014).
Thematically, New Labour was conceived around a new political
economy largely accommodating the Thatcherite legacy; a focus on
social inclusion (and not inequality); an enabling state; a focus on
community; and a shift to equality of opportunity (not outcome)
(Driver and Martell, 2000). Of course, these were synthesised most
coherently by Anthony Giddens and his extensive writings on the
Third Way, and Blair’s own Third Way pamphlet. The key issue is that
even if some normatively challenged the New Labour consensus, the
range of ideas was relatively coherent, and it clearly found electoral
support. The fragility and internal contradictions were exposed most
fatally by the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC).
Ideationally, neither Brown, Miliband nor Corbyn have yet found
a similar winning formula. As Beech (2009) argues, a striking feature
of Gordon Brown’s time as party leader was a refusal to build an
ideological narrative for his government. Indeed, the party’s manifesto
at the 2010 election, while rich in policy detail, and with a strong
focus on rebuilding the British economy, lacked a clear ideational
identity. Of all the leaders post-Blair, Brown was most acutely caught
between the Scylla and Charybdis of New Labour’s ideational legacy
and the response to the GFC. Perhaps the strongest point of ideational
difference was Brown’s, albeit limited, attempt to develop an agenda on
democratic renewal (Labour Party, 2010). It remains unclear, however,
if Brown had won in 2010 how far this push for devolution and the
elusive ‘new politics’ would have been delivered.
Ideationally, of all three leaders, Ed Miliband remains the most
intriguing in his quest to reformulate social democracy. As Goes
(2016) critically outlines, Miliband flirted with and was restless with
a wide range of ideas and principles during his tenure. Despite his
claims, Miliband never quite fully broke with New Labour, yet in
his ideational fluctuations we see an attempt to rethink some core
principles, including:

• equality (via predistribution)

• the state (via Blue Labour)
• capitalism (via ‘producers vs predators’)
• class and social cohesion (via ‘One Nation’).

Brevity forbids a detailed examination of Miliband’s ideas here, but

the rough contours can be outlined. A defining, and clear, ideational
break from New Labour was Miliband’s interest in notions of

30
 The British Labour Party

inequality (see Miliband, 2016). Miliband tried to recalibrate policy

around tackling structural forms of inequality, and his advisers flirted
with Jacob Hacker’s notions of predistribution. Simply, this refers to
state interventions in the market before traditional redistribution/
tax transfers take place, childcare funding being commonly cited as
an example. Tactically, this potentially meant a rediscovery of earlier
social democratic traditions, but without recourse to a traditional ‘tax
and spend’ approach. Predistribution remains a contested concept,
and Miliband both struggled to articulate what it meant and to give
it coherent policy expression. Second, Miliband attempted to offer
a more sustained critique of capitalism with his focus on ‘predators’,
not producers. The difficulty for Miliband was an ongoing tendency
to raise ideas that either lacked coherence or clear policy expression.
Moreover, Miliband’s ideational journey had then moved on. Early
on he was influenced by the ‘Blue Labour’ notions most closely
associated with Maurice Glasman (Davis, 2011). The insight here was
Glasman’s critique of the statist tradition in Labour thinking, and its
abandonment of community and other sources of collectivist power.
Miliband was influenced to some extent by this thinking, and found
expression in his adoption of community organising and campaigns
such as the ‘Living Wage’ (the latter co-opted by former Conservative
Chancellor George Osborne). Yet, his views on the role of the state
were not as clear as New Labour’s ‘enabling state’ motif. As is well
documented, Miliband backed away from Blue Labour following
Glasman’s controversial comments about immigration and engaging
with supporters of the English Defence League (EDL). Again, a core
ideational problem for Miliband and Labour has been to articulate
a clear policy agenda on immigration that appeases working-class
people and multiculturalists in London, while respecting the principle
of the free movement of people. The vexed issue of Labour’s stance
on immigration was given full airing with Gordon Brown’s ill-fated
meeting with Labour voter Gillian Duffy in the run-up to the 2010
election.
The next ‘big idea’ was to re-claim Disraeli’s ‘One Nation’ label to
re-assert a more consensual form of governance, to some extent, more
like a German social market model. Yet, as outlined elsewhere, despite
much interest in the idea by Jon Cruddas during the policy review,
Miliband’s own personal commitment to the idea was lukewarm at
best. Moreover, as an ideational principle it actually gave few clues
for a clear re-formulation of social democracy. In sum, Miliband’s
ideational journey reflected both a determined effort to engage in
new ideas and to break from New Labour orthodoxy, but was beset

31
 Why the left loses

by inconsistent messages, poor policy proposals and ambivalence from

Miliband himself on some of these agendas.
Ideationally, Corbyn is the clearest ‘circuit-breaker’ from the New
Labour ideational model. His politics are much contested, and arguably,
the ‘radicalism’ of his thinking is probably over-stated. Indeed, some
commentators noted some policy continuity from Ed Miliband’s period
as leader. Corbyn’s ideational agenda is organised around the following
themes (Corbyn, 2016):

• a ‘new politics’ fostering particular forms of ‘grassroots democracy’

• a ‘new economics’ linked to his strident anti-austerity agenda
• a focus on internationalism in foreign affairs.

Arguably, Corbyn’s foreign policy agenda is the starkest break from

the New Labour era. Ideationally, Corbyn’s use of the term ‘socialism’
is not always clear, but it has its roots in traditions from the Bennite
New left faction of the party in the 1980s. To date, it remains far from
apparent how either Corbyn or John McDonnell (Shadow Chancellor)
can forge a distinctive new political economy. It seems to hark back to
a pre-1990s Swedish form of Scandinavian social democracy with an
unashamed use of tax measures to defend core welfare state institutions.
Nor is it obvious the extent to which Corbyn and McDonnell have
engaged with the sustainability of a welfare state model that was best
suited to the heyday of Keynesian demand management (for a more
nuanced critique of this dilemma, see Andersson, 2014). For the 2017
election campaign, Corbyn placed nationalisation front and centre,
although polling data suggested misgivings from the wider public about
how this might all be funded.
Ideationally, Labour has shifted from its New Labour moorings quite
considerably since the fall of the Brown government. While Miliband’s
efforts have been the most intellectually fresh, there was a failure to
make them cohere. The existential crisis for British Labour continues,
and it is unlikely that Corbyn can offer an ideational package that
electorally succeeds where both Brown and Miliband failed. Labour
is losing, largely because it has not shifted beyond the paradox of New
Labour’s ideational legacy.

Individuals
The leadership styles of Brown, Miliband and Corbyn are contrasting
in tone and approach but similar in an important way, namely, their
slow footedness and natural unease on multiple media platforms.

32
 The British Labour Party

Brown struggled to display empathy while Prime Minister. Meeting

members of the public did not sit comfortably with him, and the
‘smiling Brown’ appeared contrived (Saul, 2014). This was not the
baron of HM Treasury that the public had seen bestriding Whitehall for
the previous 10 years. Brown was better at the Despatch Box arguing
data points and policy.
Miliband was even less convincing than Brown in the House of
Commons. This view must be tempered, however, by the fact that as
Leader of the Opposition, he did not control the political narrative of
the day. Nor did he have the apparatus of the state surrounding him,
which adds gravity to a political leader. Miliband was nonetheless
a competent and calm interviewee, and appeared relaxed when
interacting with the public. Criticisms of his leadership style came in
the form of the politics of perception, that he was a ‘policy-wonk’
displaying occasional signs of social maladjustment. This was largely
created and fuelled by the Conservative-supporting tabloid press.
Miliband’s shortcomings lay in the fact that he was considered,
quite correctly, to be a left intellectual (Pickard, 2015), and despite
representing Doncaster North, he came across as very much part of the
Westminster establishment. When one recalls that Miliband (like many
of his generation) never had a professional career outside of politics,
coupled with the fact he was a long-time Treasury adviser to Brown,
and that his brother is a former Labour Foreign Secretary, the view that
he occupies the Whitehall-Westminster bubble is difficult to refute.
Corbyn is unique in the modern era – a Labour leader who appears
uncomfortable when interviewed and unconvincing at the Despatch
Box. His preferred environment is that of the extra-parliamentary
protest where he is skilful in making speeches to like-minded
supporters. A case in point is Corbyn’s post-election performance at
Glastonbury in June 2017. Corbyn is much less disposed to engage
with those who sharply disagree with him or, in the media’s case,
appear to ask him critical questions. This is possibly due to the fact that
throughout a long parliamentary career, Corbyn has been a backbench
rebel. From 1997 to 2010 he was the most rebellious Labour MP in
Parliament (Cowley, 2016). Corbyn’s leadership style is reinforced due
to the strength of his mandate from the overwhelming victory in the
leadership contest of 2015 where he won in each of the three sections
(BBC News, 2015). With invaluable assistance from Momentum – a
dedicated group of supporters who have successfully targeted young
voters through social media, and deployed groups of activists in many
constituency Labour parties (especially in London) – the Corbyn brand
has become a highly effective recruiting sergeant for Labour. This has

33
 Why the left loses

reinforced Corbyn’s control of the wider party, but highlighted the

internecine struggle within the PLP, which is in constant discussion
of how to remove him.
Brown, Miliband and Corbyn display quite significant weaknesses
in leadership style, but arguably a more significant issue is the values
gap mentioned above. As Prime Minister, Brown frequently spoke
of ‘Britishness’ – understandably so, as a Scot, and MP for Kirkcaldy
and Cowdenbeath, who believed in the Union of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland. But England – barring London – was overlooked.
This would prove costly for Labour in the long run. Miliband tried
to connect his ideas of the ‘squeezed middle’ to the struggles of the
employed strivers outside of the wealthy classes (BBC News, 2010).
Yet he could not adapt his metropolitanism; grasping the depth of
concern from Labour-inclined voters towards mass immigration from
Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and gay marriage, was a cultural
bridge too far for him to cross (Edwards and Beech, 2016). Corbyn, like
Miliband, is London Labour. Their economic preferences, approach
to foreign policy and the defence of the realm are very different. One
is an acolyte of Tony Benn, the other a one-time Brownite. But what
unites them, and the mainstay of Labour politicians and activists,
is progressivism. Or, put another way, a worldview of ardent social
liberalism. The problem of the values gap is both an institutional and
a leadership problem for the Labour Party.

Conclusion
British democracy is in a state of unprecedented flux, buffeted by
a fragmenting union, a political class still recovering from the MPs’
expenses scandal, and, of course, divisions and uncertainty following
the Brexit vote. Structurally, the biases in the electoral system are both
masking and exacerbating deeper divisions. What was once a relatively
stable two-party system is shifting to a new multi-party ecology. As
many commentators have pointed out, at the 2015 election, UKIP
attracted 3.88 million votes and won one seat. In contrast, with Labour
annihilated in Scotland, the SNP (Scottish National Party), with 1.45
million votes, won 56 seats. Labour’s loss has to be located in the
wider public detachment from the major parties, which is masked by
the surge in party members since Corbyn became leader. While we
might attribute much of the loss in 2010 to tiredness and a backlash
against the GFC, these wider structural factors are more important.
More widely, as Gamble (2010, p 641) notes, one way of
understanding the trajectories of Labour is through a series of ‘cycles’.

34
 The British Labour Party

Arguably, the 2008 GFC marks a new cycle for Labour’s identity. It is
worth reflecting that while Labour is currently losing, until the advent
of New Labour, this is not a particularly new phenomenon. British
Labour’s post-war electoral record is patchy at best. One interpretation
might be to understand Labour’s electoral appeal by borrowing a
concept from public policy – ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (see Cairney,
2012). Broadly speaking, political systems are both stable and dynamic,
and in between periods of incremental change there can be periods of
intense activity. It could well be that even if there is support for wider
social democratic ideals in the UK, voters have not historically always
chosen Labour to deliver them. Labour’s appeal might be to establish
crucial public institutions and goods (for example, the NHS, British
Rail, the National Parks and the Open University), and then be ejected
from office. On this reading, it may well be several elections before it
has a new political imagination to deliver the next set of critical public
goods in the 21st century.
Relatedly, a key factor in explaining why Labour is losing, and
might continue to lose, is the conservative impulse of the party. As
David Marquand (1991, p 37) reminds us, for much of the post-war
period, Labour was essentially ‘conservative’, partly because it was an
instrument of a 19th-century economic model unable to meet the
challenges of the 20th century. Marquand suggests that when Labour
won office, British voters were asking it to restore a previous political
order. Oddly, under Corbyn, there is a conservative impulse – ultimately
to re-assert a form of social democracy from the 1980s. Indeed, writers
like the late Tony Judt (2009) see a key impulse of a revitalised social
democracy to ‘conserve’, by defending the achievements of the
past undone by neoliberalism. Corbyn’s agenda – probably what we
might unhelpfully call ‘old Labour’ – might meet this criterion in its
conservative mission to defend the NHS. However, this might not be
enough in the complexity of modern politics, not least as there is a
much clearer value placed on the role of leaders.
UK politics is now a multi-party system, the electorate is far more
fragmented – especially with the shift to identity, not class politics in
Scotland. More crucially, this is an era of ‘valence’ politics (Johnston
and Pattie, 2010), with government shifting away from ideology and
rather focusing on ‘sound economic management’.

35
 Why the left loses

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Curtis, C. (2016) ‘Corbyn loses support among Labour Party
membership’, YouGov/Times poll of Labour Party members, 30
June, https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/30/labour-members-
corbyn-post-brexit/
Davis, R. (2011) Tangled up in blue: Blue Labour and the struggle for
Labour’s soul, London: Ruskin Publishing.

36
 The British Labour Party

Driver, S, and Martell, L. (2000) ‘Left, Right and Third Way’, Policy
& Politics, vol 28, no 2, pp 147-61.
Edwards, B.M. and Beech, M. (2016) ‘Labour parties, ideas transfer
and ideological positioning: Australia and Britain compared’, Policy
Studies, vol 37, no 5, pp 486-98.
Gamble, A. (2010) ‘New Labour and political change’, Parliamentary
Affairs, vol 63, no 4, pp 639-52.
Goes, E. (2016) The Labour Party under Ed Miliband: Trying but failing
to renew social democracy, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Johnston, R. and Pattie, C. (2011) ‘Where did Labour’s votes go?
Valence politics and campaign effects at the 2010 British General
Election’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol 13,
no 3, pp 283-303.
Jonas, M. (2016) ‘Brexit: Why so surprised?’, NatCen, 11 July, http://
natcen.ac.uk/blog/brexit-why-so-surprised?gclid=CITVpOD98s0C
FW8o0wodaP4IgQ
Judt, T. (2009) ‘What is living and what is dead in social democracy’,
The New York Review of Books, 17 December, www.nybooks.com/
articles/2009/12/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-
democrac/
Labour Party (2010) A future fair for all, London: Labour Party.
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local-government-elections-2015-majority-party-all-councils-07-
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Manwaring, R. (2014) The search for democratic renewal: The politics of
consultation in Britain and Australia, Manchester: Manchester University
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Marquand, D. (1991) The progressive dilemma, London: Heinemann.
Miliband, E. (2016) ‘The inequality problem’, London Review of Books,
vol 38, no 3, pp 19-20.
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as likely as under-25s to have voted to leave the European Union’,
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37
 Why the left loses

Ross, T. (2015) Why the Tories won: The inside story of the 2015 election,
London: Biteback Publishing.
Saul, H. (2014) ‘Gordon Brown: Six moments the former PM would
rather forget’, The Independent, 1 December, www.independent.
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document/oxmidrr5wh/EUFinalCall_Reweighted.pdf

38
 THREE

Electoral competition in Canada

among centre-left parties: liberals
versus social democracts
David McGrane

In their introduction of What’s left of the left, Cronin, Ross and Shoch
(2011: 3) discuss how many electable parties in Western democracies
could be categorised as centre-lefts. However, these parties are so
diverse that it is more apt to talk of ‘centre-lefts’ that include ‘social
liberals, social democrats, democratic socialists, progressives, greens,
and human rights campaigners’ (Cronin et al, 2011, p 3). Despite the
disagreements of these ‘centre-lefts’ on a variety of issues, Cronin et
al hold that they share a common commitment to state intervention
in the economy, wealth redistribution, environmental protection and
individual cultural liberties while recognising the multiple constraints
of economic internationalisation.
In Canada, the concept of ‘centre-lefts’ has been particularly pertinent
over the last decade. Roughly two-thirds of Canadian voters have
values and policy positions that could be broadly defined as ‘left-
of-centre’ or ‘progressive’ in Canadian parlance (McGrane, 2015).
During the decade of rule by a decidedly right-wing Conservative
government under Stephen Harper’s prime ministership, no less than
four parties emerged as Canada’s ‘centre-lefts’ to court this clientele
of left-of-centre voters. Unlike other Western countries, where there
is a more distinct left/right polarisation in party systems, Canada has
two relatively large centre-left parties: the centrist Liberals, that has
won successive majority governments during the 20th century, and
the fledgling New Democratic Party (NDP), that often comes third
in Canadian federal elections.
Scholarly explanations for the Liberals’ dominance of Canadian
federal politics abound. The most common explanations point to
Canada’s lack of an industrial base and lack of strong unions that
would accompany that, the effectiveness of the Liberals in brokering
a compromise between French and English linguistic groups, and the
Liberals’ efficient internal organisation (Carty, 2015; Johnston, 2017).

39
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
[33] Throughout this narrative it is astonishing to read of the
repeated reinforcements which Sir John French received. Actually,
except for a few drafts, no reinforcements joined the British in the
Ypres salient before the end of October: subsequently two
Territorial battalions, the Hertfordshires and the London Scottish,
two Yeomanry regiments, the North Somersets and the
Leicestershires, and the 3rd Dragoon Guards, the belated last unit
of the 3rd Cavalry Division, were added to the force, while the
exhausted infantry of the 7th Division were replaced by three
composite brigades from the II Corps, set free after three weeks
of strenuous fighting near La Bassée by the arrival of the Meerut
Division, and greatly below strength.
[34] The British counter-attack at the Kortekeer Cabaret did not
aim at doing more than recover the ground lost on 22nd October:
it was not an attempt at break-through, and was quite successful
in its immediate object.
[35] On 20th October the 7th Division held the line from
Zandvoorde to Kruiseik, thence to Broodseinde cross-roads east
of Zonnebeke, the line being continued by the 3rd Cavalry
Division to Passchendaele. The German 52nd Reserve Division
and the XXVII Reserve Corps were thus faced by less than half
their numbers. Nevertheless the only effect of their attack was
that after the 51st Reserve Division had driven the French out of
Westroosebeke, the British Cavalry found its flank exposed and
had to retire on St. Julien, the 7th Division throwing back its left
flank to conform. There was no fighting for Keiberg, and the
expulsion of the 7th Division from Becelaere (mentioned nine
lines below) after heavy street fighting, seems to be based on the
slender foundation that a British reconnaissance was made in the
direction of Gheluwe covered by two battalions nearer Terhand,
which fell back without being seriously pressed. The Germans
advancing in the evening from Becelaere were sharply repulsed
by the centre infantry brigade of the 7th Division east of Polygon
Wood. The events of 21st-22nd October on the front from
Langemarck to Kruiseik are somewhat slurred over in this
narrative. Briefly, on 21st October the Germans pressed all along
the line of the 7th Division without success except on the left,
where by enfilade fire from Passchendaele they forced the left of
the 22nd Infantry Brigade to fall back to the south-west of
Zonnebeke. Meanwhile the advance of the I Corps relieved the
pressure, and though, as already explained (see footnote 29), the
uncovering of the left of the I Corps prevented the advance being
pressed beyond the line Zonnebeke-Langemarck, this line was
made good and the German efforts to advance successfully
repulsed. On 22nd October the Germans attacked the line of the
2nd Division north-west of Zonnebeke, but were easily repulsed,
while further to their left they renewed their attacks on the 21st
Infantry Brigade east of Polygon Wood with equal ill-success.
[36] The IX French Corps was not yet up at the front. It did not
begin relieving the 2nd Division till the afternoon of 23rd October.
[37] The ‘well-planned maze of trenches behind broad wire
entanglements’ would have been most welcome to the British.
Unfortunately there had been no time or opportunity to do more
than dig in hastily where the advance of the I Corps had been
checked, while such trenches as the 7th Division had dug at
Zonnebeke were hastily prepared in such loose and sandy soil
that they collapsed when bombarded; wire was conspicuous by
its absence.
[38] The only thing in the nature of a ‘fortress’ at Langemarck
was a small redoubt, built by the 26th Field Company R.E. on the
night of 22nd-23rd October, and held by two platoons of the
Gloucesters.
[39] This is hardly a recognisable account of what took place. The
relief of the 1st Division by a French Territorial division did not
take place till the night 24th-25th, but the 2nd Division was
relieved by a division of the French IX Corps, and by the morning
of 24th October it was concentrated at St. Jean in reserve. In the
course of the morning of 24th October the Reserve Division
attacked the line of the 21st Infantry Brigade in overwhelming
strength, and broke through north of Reutel, penetrating into
Polygon Wood. It was cleared out by a counter-attack by the 5th
Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division, and the 2nd R. Warwicks of the
7th Division, and in the afternoon an advance was made north of
Polygon Wood by the 6th Infantry Brigade in co-operation with
the French IX Corps on the left. Fair progress was made, the 6th
Infantry Brigade crossing to the east of the Werwicq-Staden road.
Further south the 7th Division held its own successfully and all
attacks were repulsed.
[40] It has already been pointed out that the Belgian divisions
were much below establishment.
[41] See Les pages de gloire de l’Armée Belge: à Dixmuide.
[42] This testimony to the effective character of the help given by
Admiral Hood’s squadron is noteworthy, and contradicts what was
said in the narrative on page 22.
[43] The hamlet of Reutel had fallen into German hands on 24th
October (footnote 39), but the counter-attacks of the 2nd Division
had re-established the line on the eastern border of Polygon
Wood, and between 24th October and the morning of 29th
October what changes there were on the eastern face of the
Ypres salient had been in favour of the British. The 6th Infantry
Brigade made considerable progress east of the Werwicq-Staden
road in co-operation with the French IX Corps which pushed east
and north-east from Zonnebeke. By the showing of this narrative
the German forces in this area were decidedly superior in
numbers to those engaged in the attacks.
[44] The above account presumably refers to the attack of the
18th French Division and 2nd British Division on 25th October,
when a German battery was captured by the 1st Royal Berkshires
and the French unit with which they were co-operating. Further
to the British right, however, less progress was made, but the
implication that the British reached Becelaere and were then
thrust back by the 54th Reserve Division at the point of the
bayonet is unfounded; the force engaged on this quarter only
consisted of two battalions and the artillery support available was
insufficient to allow the advance to be pressed home; it was
therefore abandoned after a small gain of ground had been
made.
[45] The British who were streaming down from the high ground
about Wytschaete and Messines consisted of five brigades of
cavalry (perhaps 4000) and one brigade of the newly arrived
Lahore Division.
[46] There was very severe fighting south of the Menin road
during the period 25th-28th October, particularly at Kruiseik,
which formed the south-eastern angle of the east face of the
salient. This position was obstinately defended by the 20th
Infantry Brigade, 7th Division, which held on under heavy
bombardments and repulsed many attacks, notably on the night
of the 27th-28th October when over 200 of the 242nd Reserve
Infantry Regiment (XXVII Reserve Corps) who had penetrated
into Kruiseik were captured by a counter-attack of one company
2nd Scots Guards. The Germans renewed their attack in great
force next day, and succeeded in dislodging the 20th Infantry
Brigade from Kruiseik, but a new line was formed in rear, blunting
the salient, and with the aid of the 1st Division (in reserve since
24th October) the position was successfully maintained.
Elsewhere the 7th Division, which was holding a line reaching
back to Zandvoorde where the 3rd Cavalry Division connected it
up with the left of General Allenby’s Cavalry Corps on the Ypres-
Comines canal, held its ground.
[47] This account does not tell the story of 29th October very
intelligibly. The British front had been readjusted, and was now
held by the 2nd Division on the left, from the junction with the
French to west of Reutel, thence to the 9th kilometre on the
Ypres-Menin road by the 1st Division, thence to Zandvoorde by
the 7th Division with the 3rd Cavalry Division on their right. Under
cover of a mist the Germans (apparently the 6th Bavarian
Reserve Division) attacked in force against the junction of the 1st
and 7th Divisions, broke through at the 9th kilo cross-roads, and
rolled up the battalions to right and left after very severe fighting,
in which the 1st Grenadier Guards and 2nd Gordon Highlanders of
the 7th Division distinguished themselves greatly by repeated
counter-attacks. The resistance of the troops in the front line
delayed the Germans long enough to allow the reserves of the 1st
Division to be put in, and their counter-attacks recovered all but
the most advanced trenches. The Germans did not ever penetrate
as far as Gheluvelt, and their final gain of ground was
inconsiderable.
[48] It is interesting to notice that this account treats the fighting
on the La Bassée-Armentières front as quite distinct from the
main battle for Ypres. During the period 20th-29th October the II
and III Corps had a hard defensive battle to fight, the only
assistance they received being on the arrival on 23rd October of
the Jullundur Brigade and the divisional troops of the Lahore
Division, which replaced General Conneau’s French Cavalry at the
junction between the two Corps. As the net result of this fighting
the II and III Corps were forced back to a line running north by
east from Givenchy, west of Neuve Chapelle, past Bois Grenier,
south-east of Armentières to the Lys at Houplines, part of the 4th
Division continuing the line on the left bank of the Lys to the
junction with the Cavalry Corps just south of Messines. The
German attacks on this front were strongly pressed, and the
strain on the II and III Corps was very severe.
[49] In view of the reiterated statements about the superior
numbers of the Allies, it is worth pointing out that this new Army
Group by itself amounted to about two-thirds of the original
strength of the British forces engaged between La Bassée and
Zonnebeke. For its Order of Battle see at end of book.
[50] If the flooding of the country by the Belgians had barred the
further advance of the Germans along the coast, it had equally
covered the German extreme right against any chance of a
counter-attack, and enabled them to divert the III Reserve Corps
to the south; the Belgians, however, were in no position to deflect
any forces to the assistance of their Allies.
[51] No mass attacks were made by the British on 30th and 31st
October. It will be noticed that the French IX Corps is spoken of
here as though it had been an additional reinforcement; it had
been in action on the Zonnebeke area since 24th October.
[52] The heavy artillery at the disposal of the British Commander-
in-Chief amounted at this time to two batteries of 6-inch
howitzers, six of 60-pounders, and three of 4·7-inch guns, a total
of forty-four guns and howitzers in all (each battery having four
guns).
[53] At this time the Allied line from the Menin road south was
held by the 7th Division, supported by about two infantry
brigades of the I Corps, the line being carried on thence to
Messines by part of the XVI French Corps and British Cavalry
Divisions, and two battalions of the Lahore Division. Nearly all
these units had been heavily engaged for a week or more, and
were much under strength, but even at full war establishment
would have been outnumbered by nearly two to one.
[54] See footnote 51. The IX French Corps is mentioned for the
third time as a new arrival.
[55] See page 62.
[56] It is difficult to see how this assertion can be supported on
the statements previously given, even apart from the fact that the
German units were fresh and the British troops facing them
reduced by previous heavy losses. The British claim to have held
out against great odds is no more than the bare truth. The
battalions of the 1st Division who had held up the attack of the
46th Reserve Division north-west of Langemarck on 23rd October
were still in the line when the Prussian Guard attacked on 11th
November—or rather a scanty remnant of them was: in the
interval they had fought and held up a succession of attacks.
[57] The 7th Division had never left the line; a few battalions only
had been given a day’s rest, but the division as a whole had not
been relieved.
[58] These squadrons belonged to the 1st and 2nd Life Guards,
each of which regiments had a squadron cut off when
Zandvoorde was stormed. None of the III British Corps were in
this area, the extreme left of the Corps being about the river
Douve, south of Messines.
[59] There was no strong counter-attack in the Wambeke area:
the very thin line of the 2nd Cavalry Division (perhaps 3000 rifles
on a front of two miles) was forced back to a position much
nearer Wytschaete and St. Eloi, where it received reinforcements
amounting to about a brigade of French infantry.
[60] Messines ridge.
[61] The amount of work it had been possible to do there in
preparing the position for defence had been very much restricted
by lack of time and want of labour. ‘Deep trenches protected by
broad wire entanglements’ is a much exaggerated statement.
[62] An attack was made by the Germans on Messines about this
time, but was decisively repulsed.
[63] I and II Cavalry Corps. See Order of Battle.
[64] The Germans at one time broke the line of the 19th Infantry
Brigade on the right of the III Corps near Bois Grenier, but were
dislodged by a counter-attack by the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders and 1st Middlesex. In Ploegsteert Wood there was
also heavy fighting, the 1st Hampshires distinguishing themselves
in particular by a very stubborn resistance.
[65] Except at Zandvoorde the German attacks north of the
Ypres-Comines canal were not successful, and their success at
Zandvoorde was brought to a standstill by the arrival of two
battalions of the 1st Division under Brigadier-General Bulfin, and
three of the 2nd Division under Brigadier-General Lord Cavan,
whose intervention enabled a new line to be formed north-west
of Zandvoorde. To the east of Zandvoorde the 7th Division was
forced to fall back nearer to Gheluvelt, but east of Gheluvelt itself
the Germans made no progress.
[66] The arrival of the Meerut Division on 29th October allowed
some of the most exhausted units of the II Corps to be relieved
on the front east of Festubert, south-east of Richebourg St. Vaast,
west of Neuve Chapelle, but these battalions were not destined to
enjoy a very long spell of rest.
[67] The ‘reinforcements’ which the Allies had received on 29th-
30th October were not even sufficient to redress the balance
against them. (See footnote 66.)
[68] The troops holding Gheluvelt consisted of two battalions of
the 3rd Infantry Brigade, with portions of two of the 2nd Infantry
Brigade, at most 2000 men. Against these the Germans by their
own account put in about eight battalions.
[69] It would not be gathered from this account that the British
artillery had, as was the case, already been severely restricted as
to ammunition expenditure.
[70] The statement that ‘many attacks had to be delivered
against fresh troops in good sheltered entrenchments’ is almost
ludicrous in its travesty of the facts.
[71] It was not in ‘long colonial wars’ but in careful training on
the ranges that the majority of the defenders of Ypres had learnt
that mastery of the rifle which was the mainstay of the success of
the defence. Between the close of the South African War (1902)
and the outbreak of war in 1914, scarcely any British troops had
been on active service.
[72] The position west of Reutel was maintained intact on 31st
October, the right of the 2nd Division and left of the 1st Division
holding on successfully even after the centre of the 1st Division
had been pierced at Gheluvelt.
[73] The picture of the great profusion of machine-guns in the
British possession is a little dimmed by the recollection that the
war establishments allowed two machine-guns per infantry
battalion, that by 31st October there had been no time to
produce enough machine-guns to increase the establishment;
indeed, most battalions had already one or both their guns put
out of action. The Germans clearly took for machine-gun fire the
rapid fire which the infantry of the original Expeditionary Force
could maintain.
[74] The capture of Gheluvelt was earlier than 3 p.m. by at least
an hour, 1 or 1.30 p.m. seems more like the correct time. The
‘château and park,’ north of Gheluvelt, were held by the 1st South
Wales Borderers, who maintained their ground, although their
right was left in the air by the loss of the village, until the 2nd
Worcesters came up and delivered their celebrated counter-attack
past the right of the S.W.B. This apparently occurred about 2 p.m.
The German account is, however, accurate in saying that
Gheluvelt was not retaken; what the Worcesters did was that they
completely checked the German efforts to push forward; the
position their counter-attack reached enabled them to flank any
advance west of Gheluvelt.
[75] The German claim to have captured three guns does not
seem founded on fact: one gun of the 117th Field Battery was
lost, but was subsequently retaken.
[76] The left of the XV Corps, which was in action against the
detachments under Brigadier-Generals Bulfin and Lord Cavan, and
the right of the 7th Division, in the woods later known as
Shrewsbury Forest, was successfully held in check: it gained but a
little ground, and at one point a most successful counter-attack
drove the Germans back a long way, many casualties being
inflicted and prisoners taken.
[77] The Staffs of both 1st and 2nd Divisions were there. Major-
General Lomax, commanding the 1st Division, and Major-General
Munro, commanding the 2nd Division, were wounded. Neither
was killed, but the former died many months after of his wounds.
[78] During the course of 31st October French reinforcements of
the XVI Corps had arrived and were taking over the left of the
line held by the Cavalry Corps, relieving the 3rd and 5th Cavalry
Brigades north-west of Hollebeke and south-east of St. Eloi. The
French were, however, unable to make much ground by their
counter-attacks, and further to the British right the 4th Cavalry
Brigade was heavily pressed. It was here that the London Scottish
were put in to recover trenches which had been lost east of the
Messines-Wytschaete road.
[79] Accurate details of the fighting which went on through the
night of 31st October-1st November round Wytschaete are
extremely difficult to disentangle. It seems that the 4th Cavalry
Brigade was forced out of the village somewhere between 2 and
3 a.m., that the advance of the Germans was then held up west
of the village, counter-attacks by two battalions of the 3rd
Division, which had just arrived from La Bassée-Neuve Chapelle
area, assisting to check them. Subsequently these battalions (1st
Northumberland Fusiliers and 1st Lincolnshires) were also forced
back, but by this time more French reinforcements were coming
up with some of the 5th Cavalry Brigade, and their counter-
attacks, though not wholly successful, prevented further German
progress. But the admission of this account that two whole
German regiments (six battalions) were engaged in the attack is a
fine testimony to the resistance made by the 2nd Cavalry Division
and attached infantry at Wytschaete with odds of more than two
to one against them.
[80] The forces available for the defence of Messines were the 1st
Cavalry Division, much reduced by the previous fighting, assisted
by portions of the 57th Rifles (Lahore Division) and two battalions
of the 5th Division (the 2nd King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 2nd
King’s Own Yorkshire L.I., both recently relieved from the
trenches near Neuve Chapelle and much below strength). The
twelve battalions of the 26th (Würtemburg) Division were thus in
overwhelming superiority. The only artillery available to assist the
defence were the 13-pounders of the R.H.A. batteries attached to
the Cavalry Corps.
[81] i.e. Würtemburg.
[82] This is not accurate. Poezelhoek Château had to be
evacuated during the night of 31st October-1st November, owing
to the withdrawal of the line made necessary by the loss of
Gheluvelt; but the Germans did not molest the retirement to the
new position, and such attempts as they made in the course of
1st November to press on westward beyond Gheluvelt were
unsuccessful. The British accounts do not give the impression that
the German attacks on this day were very heavily pressed in this
quarter; at any rate they failed to make any ground.
[83] The hardest fighting of 1st November in the Ypres salient
was in the area north-west of Zandvoorde where the
detachments under Brigadier-Generals Bulfin and Lord Cavan
were sharply engaged, as were also the remnants of the 7th
Division, now holding a position south-east and south of the
Herenthage Wood. A feature of this day’s fighting was a counter-
attack by the 26th Field Company R.E., acting as infantry in
default of any infantry reserves, which checked the efforts of the
Germans to advance north of Groenenburg Farm (north-west of
Zandvoorde).
[84] The Indian units hitherto employed under the Cavalry Corps
(57th Rifles and 129th Baluchis) had already been withdrawn to
Kemmel, and were not in action near Oosttaverne on 1st
November. This account of the ‘treacherous methods of the
Indians’ smacks of the conventional; it is what was attributed to
the Ghurkhas in some sections of the German Press, and seems
inserted rather to excite odium against the British for calling in
Asiatics to oppose the disciples of ‘Kultur.’
[85] French Divisions. By the afternoon of 1st November the
French had taken over the defence of Wytschaete. The 2nd
Cavalry Division assembled on a line east of Kemmel and
Wulverghem.
[86] These ‘reinforcements of newly arrived British troops’ are
imaginary.
[87] The Germans, attacking along the Menin road, succeeded in
breaking our line at this point and captured two guns which had
been pushed up into the front trenches. However, the 1st Scots
Guards, though taken in flank, held on north of the road till a
counter-attack by the 1st Black Watch re-established the line,
while south of the road a counter-attack by the remnants of the
2nd and 3rd Brigade cleared the Herenthage Wood completely,
but did not regain the front trenches a little eastward. Further to
the right Lord Cavern’s detachment (Brigadier-General Bulfin had
been wounded on 1st November, and his battalions had come
under Lord Cavan’s orders) and the remnants of the 1st
Grenadiers and 2nd Border Regiment (7th Division) held their
own successfully and inflicted very heavy losses on the Germans,
i.e. Deimling’s left wing.
[88] The credit for the gallant defence of Wytschaete on this day
belongs solely to the French; no British troops were in action
there.
[89] After the capture of Messines and Wytschaete the severity of
the fighting in this quarter died down rapidly. The French made
some attempts to recover Wytschaete, while the Germans
managed to capture Hill 75 (Spanbroekmolen), but could advance
no further, and the British Cavalry Corps established itself firmly in
trenches north-east of Wulverghem. Supported by the artillery of
the 5th Division, it maintained itself on this line till relieved by the
infantry of the 5th Division about the middle of November.
[90] The chaplain of the Guard Cavalry Division, ‘Hofprediger’ Dr.
Vogel, in his book ‘3000 Kilometer mit der Garde-Kavallerie’ (p.
212), says the attack was made and failed, but ‘next day the
English abandoned the farm: this may have been due either to
the power of our 8-inch howitzers, or to the moral effect of the
attack of the Guard Dragoons.’
[91] What other British troops were present in the Ypres salient
except the I and IV Corps this narrative does not pause to state,
for the simple reason that there were none. The I Corps was not
relieved, though some French battalions were put into the line
near Veldhoek; but in the course of 5th November the remnant of
the infantry of the 7th Division was relieved by the two composite
brigades from the II Corps composed of battalions which had had
three weeks’ fighting near La Bassée and had then to be thrust in
after only two or three days’ rest to hold some of the most
difficult parts of the line south-east of Ypres. The 7th Infantry
Division when relieved amounted to less than a third of their
original strength, without taking into account the drafts that had
joined since they landed, which amounted to 2000 or more. Most
of the battalions of the 1st Division were in scarcely better case.
[92] These ‘successive lines of rearward positions’ did not exist
except on paper during the period to be included in the ‘Battle of
Ypres,’ i.e. to 17th November.
[93] During the period 2nd-11th November the most serious
fighting on the British front was between 6th and 8th November.
On the 6th the Germans attacked near Zwarteleen and gained
ground, some of which was recovered by a fine counter-attack
delivered by the 7th Cavalry Brigade (cf. page 93, line 30), while
further counter-attacks by the 22nd Infantry Brigade, brought
back just as it had been drawn out for a rest, and by portions of
the 1st Division further improved the line next day. On that day
(7th November) a sharp attack on the 3rd Division, which had
now taken over the line south of the Menin road, gained a little
ground east of the Herenthage Wood. This part of the line was
again attacked in force on 8th November, and the line was broken
near Veldhoek, but was restored after some sharp fighting and
several counter-attacks. Further north again, in Polygon Wood
and to the east of it, the 2nd Division, though repeatedly
attacked, more than held its own. In the fighting near Veldhoek a
prominent part was taken by two battalions of Zouaves who had
filled a gap in the line of the 1st Division.
[94] St. Eloi is hardly situated ‘on high ground,’ as it is on the
down slope where the Warneton-Ypres road descends into the
low ground after crossing the north-easterly continuation of the
Messines-Wytschaete ridge.
[95] The allusion is not understood.
[96] The heavy artillery at Sir John French’s disposal at this
period was still extremely limited, and its effectiveness was
greatly hampered by the lack of ammunition, stringent
restrictions having to be placed on the ammunition expenditure of
guns of all calibres. Fortunately for the Allies a similar handicap
was beginning to make itself felt among the Germans; even their
preparations had been hardly equal to the vast ammunition
expenditure which had been incurred.
[97] The portion of the Ypres salient attacked by the XXIII Corps
was defended by French troops alone; there were no British north
of the Broodseinde cross-roads.
[98] The enemy is giving the Allies credit for his own tricks.
[99] However, when British troops took over the coastal sector in
1917 Lombartzyde was in Allied possession.
[100] For Order of Battle, see Appendix.
[101] A Machine-Gun Detachment (Abtheilung) is a mounted
battery with six guns.
[102] Consisting of the 4th Ersatz Division and the 43rd Reserve
Division.
[103] It is not clear why a British assertion about the defence of
Dixmude should be quoted, nor indeed is it clear what shape this
assertion can have taken, as no British troops were concerned in
the Dixmude fighting, nor could there have been any occasion for
any official British announcement about Dixmude.
In the diagram above, for 201st, 202nd, and 203rd Res. Jäger
Regt. read Res. Infantry Regt.
[104] The frontage attacked by the twelve battalions of General
von Winckler’s Guard Division, far from being held by two British
Divisions was held from north to south by the 1st Infantry
Brigade, now reduced to some 800 bayonets, a battalion of
Zouaves and the left brigade of the 3rd Division, little over 1200
strong. Even if the whole of the 3rd Guard Regiment may have
been absorbed in the task of covering the main attack from the
British troops lining the southern edge of the Polygon Wood, the
superiority of the attacking force was sufficiently pronounced.
[105] The Germans do not appear to have penetrated into the
Polygon Wood at any point. The northern end of the breach in the
British line was marked by a ‘strong point’ which had been
erected near the south-west corner of the wood, known later as
‘Black Watch Corner’: this was successfully defended all day by a
very weak company of the Black Watch. Attacks were made on
the 1st King’s lining the southern edge of the wood, apparently by
the 3rd Guard Regiment, and also further eastward and to the left
of the King’s, on the 2nd Coldstream Guards. The Germans in this
quarter would seem to have belonged to the 54th Reserve
Division: at neither of these points did the attackers meet with
any success.
[106] A thick mist which prevented the troops holding the front
line trenches from seeing far to their front undoubtedly played an
important part in concealing the advance of the German Guard,
and contributed appreciably to its success.
[107] This is the eastern part of the wood known later as
‘Inverness Copse.’
[108] This counter-attack may be identified with one delivered by
the 1st Scots Fusiliers and one company 2nd Duke of
Wellington’s.
[109] The 4th (Queen Augusta’s) Guard Grenadiers seem to have
attacked the right of the line held by the 9th Infantry Brigade and
to have been repulsed by the 1st Lincolnshires and 1st
Northumberland Fusiliers. Further to the British right the 15th and
7th Infantry Brigades were also attacked, but by the 4th Division,
not by the Guards. Here the Germans made no progress.
[110] This part of the German account is not borne out by the
British versions. The main body of the 1st Guard Regiment, which
broke through the thinly held line of the 1st Infantry Brigade,
pressed on north-west into the Nonne Bosch Wood, pushing right
through it, and coming out into the open on the western edge.
Here their progress was arrested mainly by the gunners of XLI
Brigade, R.F.A., who held them up with rifle fire at short range.
Various details of Royal Engineers, orderlies from Headquarters,
transport men, rallied stragglers of the 1st Brigade, assisted to
stop the Germans, but the situation was critical until about noon
or a little later the 2nd Oxford and Bucks L.I. arrived on the
scene. This battalion had been engaged for several days near
Zwarteleen, and had just been brought up to Westhoek to act as
Divisional Reserve. Though under 400 strong the battalion
promptly counter-attacked the Nonne Bosch Wood and drove the
Germans out headlong. Many of them were caught as they
escaped on the eastern and southern sides by the fire of the 2nd
Highland L.I., now on the western edge of Polygon Wood, and of
the 1st Northamptonshires, who had come up to Glencorse Wood,
south-west of the Nonne Bosch, and with other units of the 2nd
and 3rd Infantry Brigades had filled the gap which extended
thence to the Menin road. Thus those of the 1st Guard Regiment
who had pushed straight on westward were prevented from
penetrating any further. The King’s, to whom this account gives
the credit for the Oxfordshire’s counter-attack, had been engaged
with the 3rd Guard Regiment further to the north, completely
defeating their attacks on the Polygon, but not making any
counter-attack. It is worth recalling that at the critical moment of
the battle of Waterloo it was the 2nd Oxford and Bucks L.I., then
52nd Light Infantry, who played the chief part in the defeat of
Napoleon’s Guard.
The defeat of the 2nd Guard Grenadiers does not appear to have
been the work of the 2nd Oxford and Bucks L.I., but of the other
battalions, chiefly from the 2nd and 3rd Infantry Brigades, who
were pushed forward rather earlier between Glencorse Wood and
Inverness Copse.
[111] The author must be thankful for minor mercies if he can
reckon 11th November as a day of great success. The gain of
ground at Veldhoek was trifling in extent and value, and though
‘Hill 60’ and the wood north of Wytschaete were more important
points, there is no doubt that the throwing of the German Guard
into the struggle had been expected to produce a break-through.
The ‘numerical superiority’ once again attributed to the Allies was
about as unreal as the alleged strength of the positions, hastily
dug, imperfectly wired and almost wholly lacking supporting
points and communications, which had such a much more
formidable character in the eyes of the Germans than they ever
possessed in reality. The gallantry and vigour with which the
German Guard pushed its attack will be readily admitted, but the
honours of 11th November 1914 go to the weary men who after
three weeks of incessant fighting met and drove back these fresh
and famous troops.
[112] This statement is not true. After an attack on 13th
November in which prisoners were taken from the 4th (German)
Division, the 9th and 15th Infantry Brigades drew back from the
eastern edge of the Herenthage Wood to a line about 200 yards
in rear (night 13th-14th November). This line was strongly
attacked next day, and the Herenthage Château fell for the time
into German hands, only to be recovered by the 2nd King’s Own
Yorkshire L.I., while a further counter-attack by a company of the
Northumberland Fusiliers, assisted by a gun of the 54th Battery
R.F.A., ousted the Germans also from the stables of the Château.
Further to the British right the 7th and 15th Infantry Brigades
successfully repulsed vigorous attacks.
[113] The surprise came in 1917 in spite of this.
[114] One reason why the G.O.C. Fourth Army came to this
decision on 17th November is omitted. An attack in force had
been attempted on this day by his 4th Division, but the 7th and
15th Infantry Brigades, holding the line attacked, had proved
equal to the occasion, had driven the Germans back, recovering
some advanced trenches carried by the first rush and inflicting
heavy losses. This discouraging reception undoubtedly assisted
Duke Albert in making his decision.
[115] It was the U-boats that came to a speedy end.
[116] See remarks in Introduction.
[117] The first use of gas by the Germans on this occasion might
have been mentioned.
[118] It is not to be read in this monograph. See Introduction.
[119] 4th and Guard Cavalry Divisions (see page 64).
[120] 3rd and 7th Cavalry Divisions (see page 90).
 INDEX
Albert of Würtemburg, Duke, 6;
see also Army, Fourth.
Antwerp: value of, to Entente, 3;
capture of, 5;
retreat from, 7 (note).
Army, Fourth (German): formation of, 6;
advance of, through Belgium, 19;
dispositions on 20th Oct., 20;
task of, 25, 27;
attack on 3rd Nov., 98;
attack on 10th Nov., 104;
order of battle of, 131.
---- Sixth (German): position of right wing of, 7;
failure of attacks of, 25;
attack on 11th Nov., 112.
Army Group Fabeck: constitution of, 60;
plan for, 60;
assembly of, 63;
artillery of, 63;
attack on 30th Oct., 67;
attack on 31st Oct., 73;
alteration of plan,91;
reinforcement of, 92;
offensive on 11th Nov. of, 111;
order of battle of, 132.
---- —— Linsingen: composition of, 103;
task of, 103;
offensive of, 111;
 order of battle of, 133.
Army Headquarters (German), meetings at, 25, 26.

Becelaere: Anglo-French counter-attacks at, 55;

XXVII Res. Corps takes, 41.
Belgian population, patriotism of, 100.
---- force, strength of, 12 (note).
Beseler, General von, 5;
see also Corps, III Reserve.
British Fleet, co-operation of, 22 and note, 51 and note, 28
(note), 125.
British force, strength of, 12 (note).

Calais: concentration about, 6;

German objective, 11.
Cavalry, Army (German): objective of, 3;
relief of, near Lille, 64.
Cavalry, Fourth (German) Army, composition of, xvii (note).
---- Sixth (German) Army: composition of, 56, 57;
capture Kruiseik, 57.
Corps (German), III Reserve: captures Antwerp, 5;
screens Fourth Army, 19;
crosses the Yser, 30.
---- —— XV: attack on Zandvoorde, 63;
attack and capture of Gheluvelt, 72;
captures Hill 60, 119.
---- —— XIX, captures Lille, 7.
---- —— XXII Res.-XXVII Res.: formation of, 4;
transport of, 5.
---- —— XXII Res., attacks on Dixmude, 31, 53.
---- —— XXIII Res.: attack on Houthulst Forest, 34;
attack on Langemarck, 99.
---- —— XXVI Res., takes Passchendaele, 40.
---- —— XXVII Res., takes Becelaere, 41.
---- —— II Bavarian, dispositions of, 64.
---- (French) II, arrival of, 62, 64.
---- —— IX, arrival of, 41, 62, 64.

Deimling, General von, wounded,73;

see Corps (German), XV.
Dixmude: topographical, 15;
attack by French Marine division on, 45;
capture of, 108.

Eastern Front, German units leave for, 125.

Emperor, German: proclamation to Fourth Army, 27;
watches attack on Gheluvelt, 73.

Fabeck, General von, see Army Group Fabeck.

French force, strength of, 12 (note).

Gerok, General von, see Group Gerok.

Gheluvelt: attack on, 72;
capture of, 75;
British force holding, 72 (note).
Gloucestershire Regiment at Langemarck, 37 (note).
Group Gerok: formation of, 93;
order of battle of, 133.
---- Urach: formation of, 90;
attack on Wytschaete Park, 95.
Guard (German) Division (von Winckler): marches to Roubaix, 92;
 attack of, 116.
Guards, British Life, cut up, 68 and note.

Kemmel, Mount, topography and importance of, 13, 68, 96, 123.
King’s Liverpool Regiment, counter-attack by, 118 and note 2.

Lille: value to Entente, 3;

capture of, 6.
Linsingen, General Baron von, see Army Group Linsingen.

Messines: importance of, 68;

attack on, 79;
British force holding, 80 (note).

Nieuport: topographical, 15;

attack on 11th Nov., 112.

Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire L.I., counter-attack German

Guard, 118 (note 2).

Plettenberg’s Corps, attack on 11th Nov., 111.

Urach, General von, see Group Urach.

Worcestershire Regiment, counter-attack at Gheluvelt, 75 and

note 3.
Wytschaete: importance of, 68;
German attack on, 78;
Anglo-French counter-attack on, 79;
second German attack, 85;
third attack and capture of, 88;
capture of Park of, 123;
gallant defence by French troops, 87 (note).

Yorkshire L.I. retake Herenthage Château, 124 (note).

Ypres: topographical, 15;
historical, 14;
attack from the north against, 38;
attempt to break through south of, 59;
battle of, begins, 113.
Yser, canal: topographical, 16;
flooding the, 51;
crossed by III Res. Corps, 30.

Zandvoorde: importance of, 67;

capture of, 67.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

at the Edinburgh University Press
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