Palantír, Polling, and the Blue Wall: Or Why Seeing Stones Don’t Work
At the Select Committee inquiry into the Government’s handling of Covid, and future lessons, Dawn Butler asked about the involvement of the company Palantír.
The company triggered within me thoughts on ‘seeing stones’: What they tell characters in the Lord of the Rings, what they do not, and what our real-life palantíri reveal about Labour.
The palantíri are a group of at least six stones from ancient times which are used akin to a mirror into the world of the other stones (I’m simplifying).
For example, Aragorn convinced Sauron that he has both the One Ring (a source of significant power* in the Third Age) and is ready to be King, thus fulfilling Sauron’s understanding of the conditions amongst the Race of Men to defeat him.
Long story short, Sauron moves all his armies out of the land of Mordor to battle Aragorn.
Yet the reader knows that Aragorn does not have the One Ring and Sauron’s false understanding, means no one protects Mount Doom, allowing Frodo to destroy the One Ring and, with it, Sauron.
There are other examples of this. In fact, every time the seeing stones are used** characters get the wrong end of the stick and make disastrous decisions.
They see something yes but not quite what is happening in reality.***
So, what are Labour’s seeing stones? Currently there is a Party obsession with polling. Every poll will cause angst, discussion, and multiple ‘hot takes’ over a spate of a few intense Twitter hours.
Like in Tolkien, those of great influence (or, as we call it, Twitter clout) are peering into the World of Man (Joe Public) and discerning what is occurring (polling) and then making poor decisions off the back of it (political ‘tips’).
It is leading to some terrible understandings of what the public think and crucially why.
For example, the public is blowing hot and cold with regards Sir Keir Starmer. One minute he’s more popular than Tony Blair in the 1990s, then he’s as unpopular as Jeremy Corbyn (albeit not at Corbyn’s lowest ebb).
Clearly voters’ minds are malleable in a way they have never been before, and the speed with which they are changing their mind probably has everything to do with the pandemic and nothing to do with the various machinations of Labour Party factionalism.
(It also perhaps has something to do with the greater amount of news voters are consuming. People are engaging with the media in a way that is incomparable to the Before Covid times.)
While this is part of the story — the palantíri within Labour is wrongly confirming a view within the Party that factional matters are more important than wider national matters — it is not the main takeaway that should concern Labour.
Polls which suggest Red Walls seats hardening in their support for Johnson, and an increasing disdain for Sir Keir, while increasing talk of Progressive Alliances (etc etc) are leading to bad conclusions being drawn.
One such instance is that Labour can take on the Blue Wall. Yet, just as the Red Wall did not collapse overnight in December 2019, the Blue Wall’s first major chink was Canterbury in 2017.****
The taking of the seat was considered to be down to a combination of factors — disheartened Tories following May’s campaign, Londoners being pushed out and benefiting from HS1, students getting engaged with Corbynite politics, Lib Dems lending their vote, dissatisfaction with Brexit, the rise in concern over NHS cuts which affected the local K&C Hospital.
All of these are factors probably led to the defeat of one of Britain’s most reactionary MPs, and indeed Labour clinging on in 2019.
However, if it is the first brick to crumble then it is also pretty indicative of the wider problem facing Labour if it were to go down this road.
Polls may suggest a growing weariness among the Hunter-wearing sets, the Lib Dems and the Greens are increasingly picking up votes, and Labour is gaining former Blue Wall council seats. Yet a few council seats here-and-there (often picked up on these impossibly fragile coalitions) does not a wall demolition make, blue or otherwise.
Labour’s past reliance on the Red Wall was simple: it delivered consistent votes for Labour even when similar voters opted for Thatcher. The coalition within each seat got a Labour rosette over the line. Just as the coalition of gin-and-Jag voters within Tory seats kept the party afloat in the post-1997 era.
Ergo are peering into isolated polls which encourage an all out lovebombing of the South, when in fact this would leave Labour totally vulnerable.
To complete the palantír analogy — Boris may appear to have the One Ring but marching all Labour’s troops to fight in Tory Shires in some sort of Hail Mary strategy would leave Labour’s broken heartlands empty with no guaranteed victory outside Mordor/the North.*****
The seeing stones, and indeed all attempts to see the future, are used because they offer comfort to the weary. They can be pushed and pulled into a set of data which mirrors the viewer’s own world view.
For them, it would be so easy to believe the palantír. The calls of Single Market access, the drumbeat of well-meaning liberation politics, the economic policies of the cool Think Tank. It all sounds so welcoming, so comforting, so Labour.
Yet in reality the palantír present only delusions and distractions.
Labour must redouble its efforts to reconstruct the former coalition of C2DE voters, alongside a couple of urban centres in the South and university seats which regularly deliver enough MPs to challenge the intoxicating majesty of the Tory Party.
This does not mean abandoning the more ‘progressive’ elements of any future electoral manifesto — Red Wall voters (so the palantír tells us) are only marginally different from any other demographic — but it does mean abandoning fantasies of Blue Wall demolition.
Sir Keir surely knows this, which is why accusations he is too obsessed with focus groups and polling, becomes more ludicrous by the day.
Labour activists must stop trying to guess the mood of the public via the medium of the palantír and start focussing on shoring up a solid policy offering to the Red Wall.
If it doesn’t — a long boat journey to the Undying Lands beckons.
*No, I don’t care about whether or not the Ring gives power, or the illusion of power, or reveals power imbalances etc etc. That is not the point I’m making.
** Tolkien reserves a sort of narrative rage for those who do use the seeing stones. Saruman and the Steward of Gondor suffer greatly, and Sauron has other challenges with it when he thinks Pippin has the One Ring and not Frodo. In fact, this is linked with the people in Mordor, and around it, who do not really understand the Shire or the Shirefolk, hence why they spend ages looking for Frodo and missing him by a few hours. The 2019 Party looking for voters who hated Thatcher in the North East, anyone?
***The ships are coming to Gondor, but they are in fact commanded by Aragorn not the forces of evil. Thus, your death was a waste of everyone’s time, including your own.
**** Yes, I’m well aware that although Canterbury wasn’t taken in 1997, much of Kent was. However, the seats that were taken then were not ‘Blue Wall’ although they returned Tory MPs. When the media speaking about the Blue Wall, they mean well-heeled places with cosmopolitan outlooks. This is obvious nonsense (and unfair as it rather leaves a lot of Tory seats safe from any wall demolitions) but there we are.
***** Yes, I realise this would make the Leader of the Labour Party Sauron. Oops.
