Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?
| Author | Paul Webb,Paul Whiteley,Monica Poletti,Tim Bale |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148118815408 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118815408
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(1) 80 –98
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148118815408
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Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did
Labour Party membership
soar after the 2015 general
election?
Paul Whiteley1, Monica Poletti2,
Paul Webb3 and Tim Bale2
Abstract
This article investigates the remarkable surge in individual membership of the Labour Party after
the general election of May 2015, particularly after Jeremy Corbyn was officially nominated as
a candidate for the leadership in June of that year. Using both British Election Study and Party
Members Project data, we explain the surge by focussing on the attitudinal, ideological and
demographic characteristics of the members themselves. Findings suggest that, along with support
for the leader and yearning for a new style of politics, feelings of relative deprivation played a
significant part: many ‘left-behind’ voters (some well-educated, some less so) joined Labour for the
first time when a candidate with a clearly radical profile appeared on the leadership ballot. Anti-
capitalist and left-wing values mattered too, particularly for those former members who decided
to return to the party.
Keywords
Jeremy Corbyn, joining parties, Labour surge, party members, political cynicism, relative
deprivation
Introduction
Researchers have been documenting the decline of grassroots political parties across
advanced democracies for nearly three decades (Dalton, 2005; Heidar, 2006; Katz et al.,
1992; Mair, 1994; Mair and Van Biezen, 2001; Scarrow, 2000; Van Biezen et al., 2012).
This trend, variously attributed both to supply and demand side factors (Van Haute and
Gauja, 2015: 4–6), is important because political parties, even if they are seen by many as
little better than ‘necessary evils’ (see Ignazi, 2017), continue to play a central role in the
1Department of Government, University of Essex, UK
2School of Politics & International Relations, Queen Mary University, London, UK
3Department of Politics, University of Sussex, UK
Corresponding author:
Monica Poletti, Queen Mary University London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK.
Email: m.poletti@qmul.ac.uk
815408BPI0010.1177/1369148118815408The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsWhiteley et al.
research-article2018
Original Article
Whiteley et al. 81
effectiveness of democracy. Notwithstanding the greater participatory rights of party
members (Faucher, 2015; Fisher et al., 2014; Scarrow, 2015; Webb et al., 2017), a decline
in their numbers has important implications for the future of democracy (Dalton and
Wattenberg, 2000; Gauja, 2015; Scarrow, 1996; Webb et al., 2002).
In Britain, however, things have changed. Whether temporary or permanent, all of the
major political parties, with the exception of the Conservatives, have seen a recent reversal
of this decline. Trends in membership for all the major parties over the period 2002 to 2016
appear in Figure 1 and show that in the case of the SNP, UKIP and the Greens, the revival
started in the midterm of the 2010–2015 Coalition Government, while in the case of Labour
and the Liberal Democrats, it followed the 2015 general election. The most striking devel-
opment is undoubtedly the rapid growth in Labour’s membership during the leadership
campaign of 2015 that ended with the election of veteran left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn.
The study of factors that lead people to join parties is certainly not new (see Van Haute
and Gauja, 2015: 8). In this article, however, we try specifically to explain the nature of
the resurgence in Labour Party membership. As of January 2018, Labour had 552,000
members, a massive increase on the 198,000 recorded prior to the 2015 election (see
Audickas et al., 2018).
Such a reversal of Labour’s membership decline has happened before, even if it eventu-
ally turned out to be short-lived, most obviously following Tony Blair’s successful leader-
ship bid in 1994 (Seyd and Whiteley, 2002). The Blair blip, however, did not approach
anything like that seen since 2015. However, while media coverage can give the impression
that those who joined are one homogeneous, predominantly youthful mass, not all of them
share the same profile, as we show below. Most obviously, some have joined the party for
the first time, while others have returned to it after a prolonged absence.
This study comprises two parts. In the first, we use British Election Study (BES)1
data to look at the factors driving the surge in these two types of membership. We test
six related hypotheses examining differences between long-established and returning
members on one hand and new joiners on the other. We then develop two additional
hypotheses, using Party Members Project (PMP)2 data, on the determinants of support
Figure 1. Membership of UK political parties, 2002 to 2018.
Source: Audickas et al. (2018).
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