Opinion polls are useful – but they’re not a crystal ball

For a Roman general about to commit to battle, every piece of intelligence was vital.  Rather than blindly attack or retreat, he asked the gods.  More specifically, he got a professional augur to open a cage with chicken in, throw some bread at it, and watch how the chicken ate it.  Then, you see, he would know if the gods favoured him. Today, we use opinion polls.

Just before the Caerphilly by-election, Survation predicted Reform would poll 42%, with Plaid Cymru on 38%.  The result?  Plaid polled 47%, Reform 36%.  From 4% behind, Plaid won by 11%.

True, that was a single constituency telephone poll with a small sample size.  But why have people revered divination throughout history?

We didn’t always have opinion polls

The Ancient Greeks preferred the Oracle to chickens.  A priestess would sit on a stool over a crack in the ground that belched out natural petrochemical fumes.  Then she’d speak the word of the gods.

When I was elected Mayor in May 2019, Theresa May was Prime Minister.  Imagine if I’d written a column predicting she’d be gone within weeks, and that bloke from Have I Got News For You would become Prime Minister.  And there’d be this killer virus, right, that would stop us all going outside and we’d be paid to stay at home, but there would be no toilet paper or pasta.  But the scruffy-haired Latin bloke would get convicted for having a big party in Downing Street, so he would be replaced by that angry cheese speech woman, but she’d be beaten by a lettuce.  And get this, a load of Russian tanks would roll into Ukraine, but then get confused and stop, and go back.  Then invade again.  British summers would top 40 degrees Celsius.  Oh, and England will win the European Football Championship – twice.

You would have thought I was huffing the Ancient Greek glue.  Especially if I’d said we would solve street homelessness overnight.  Which we did, in lockdown.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

There is a reason politics and everything flowing from it is so febrile. No one has addressed the root cause of the 2007-8 financial crash.  In the post-war boom profits came from making things.  Developing new products, organising productive new methods of manufacturing.  Profit depended on increasing the skills and productivity of the workforce.  There was at least something of a balance of power between owners and workers, leading to increasing wages and prosperity.  Beveridge’s five giant evils of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness all but disappeared.

Awash with money

Today, profit comes more from owning things and charging rent on them.  Remember how most of the building societies were turned into banks?  Well, most of those bank shares are now owned by very rich people.  Our care homes used to be run by councils.  Now most are owned by private equity.

Britain is awash with money.  But it is not being usefully deployed.  Billionaire wealth has increased tenfold since the 1990’s.  That’s after accounting for inflation.

That’s the cause of austerity.  That’s why we have unemployed GPs and a shortage of GP appointments.  That’s why university leaves you with £53,000 debt just for getting the skills we need to run a modern economy.  That’s why your park no longer gets the grass cut.  That’s why you see homeless people on the street and 3 million people using food banks.  How long before kids have to pay back the loan for their A-Level tuition?

The most recent Find Out Now poll still has Reform in the lead, but puts the Green Party second.  They’re on 18%, ahead of the Tories on 16% and Labour on 15%.  And that’s before the Starmtroopers decided to start a leadership challenge against themselves.

The turmoil will continue

Who would have predicted Labour would be fourth just sixteen months after winning 411 general election seats?  Who would have predicted the Greens would be the opposition?  Will Labour now step aside to stop splitting the progressive vote?

Until someone offers a credible cure for Thatcherism, politics will continue in turmoil.  Polls will rise and fall, leaders will come and go.  At Majority, we’re committed to pluralism and progressive alliances.  We need leaders at every level who can work together, who are competent and networked, and who don’t get snagged in petty disputes.  People who could run the country in the interests of the people who do the work, and run it well.  We run training on community wealth building, on being a candidate, on how to mobilise activists.  And you can be a member of the Greens, or Your Party, or anything else progressive, and still join Majority.

Here’s one prediction I will make.  There will continue to be scandals and panics.  Poverty will remain widespread and climate action will be inadequate.  And nothing will be fixed until we get a team of competent, compassionate leaders who act with integrity.

Featured image via the Canary