General Election 2019: Labour dials up broadband nationalisation

The Christmas election just keeps on giving. Speaking at the University of Lancashire, Jeremy Corbyn metamorphosed into a father Christmas figure, announcing that his party would provide free fibre optic broadband for every home and business in the country. The Labour party kicked off their electioneering this morning by announcing new plans to nationalise British broadband provider, Openreach, which is currently operated privately by British Telecoms.

Corbyn said that this process would be managed by a British Broadband Service and would be financed by £20 billion of investment levied from big tech companies such as Google and Facebook. Corbyn promised that “when our manifesto arrives next week, it’s going to knock your socks off”, and that this was only the first “sneak preview” of much more to come. Labour have hinted that they could also nationalise Virgin Media, Sky, and TalkTalk.

One reason why Labour has unveiled this policy today is because they wish to combat the view that socialism is a dead ideology from the past. They are trying to hit back against accusations that Labour are not offering new solutions for the modern economy, but only a tired model from the twentieth century. They are hoping to counter the association of nationalisation with Cuban caudillos and crusty commissars. Good luck with that…

Ironically, the aesthetics of the presentation today at the party press conference were remarkably reminiscent of the New Labour PR operation. There were smart suits, red ties and white shirts, and a crisp, clean backdrop. Rebecca Long-Bailey was particularly sharply dressed, looking like a city worker while reinforcing the Corbyn message.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, speaking after Corbyn in Lancaster today, said that this policy was not about going back to the 1970s – instead, nationalising broadband would herald the “public ownership of the future”. He expressed concerns that Britain would be lagging behind in what he called a “technology revolution” and what he called the “fourth industrial revolution”. This last comment was a reference to Klaus Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. This was McDonnell channelling “Davos Man”. He also announced that Labour would introduce a comprehensive “charter of digital rights” to establish greater data protections.

McDonnell urged viewers to see a recent Ken Loach film, Sorry We Missed You, to see what is going on in the “gig economy”.  He concluded by saying that that the gig economy is a project being pursued by the Tories which has led to “a torn social fabric” and a “climate emergency”.

This is a policy which, along with the attendant buzzwords in the speech, might have popular potential among voters. In fact, McDonnell himself said in the Q&A after his speech that this was a policy devised in response to complaints about poor broadband that he and others had heard frequently at public meetings. The UK also does have a broadband issue – data from the OECD shows that less than 2% of people in the UK who have fixed broadband also have fibre access.

Bashing the broadband providers is probably in touch with public opinion, but nationalising the industry is another matter. Polling on what the British public think of nationalisation suggests that re-nationalising industries which have previously been in public ownership in the past, such as railway and energy companies, enjoys majority support.

However, the polls on the particular case of broadband are less favourable from Labour’s perspective.  When YouGov polled people on telephone and internet providers in 2017, 53% believed that these services should be run by the private sector. YouGov have conducted a new poll today in light of Labour’s announcements – it shows that while the idea of rolling out free broadband is widely supported, those polled were almost evenly split when it came to the question of whether nationalisation should be the solution. 

The feasibility of such an ambitious project has also been called into question. BT has charged that Labour’s proposals could cost as much as £100 billion, and Neil McRae, the head network architect at the company tweeted earlier that “Labour’s plans” amounted to “broadband communism!”. There are also immediate lessons here about how damaging such announcements can be for a company’s stocks: BT’s shares fell by 3% following Labour’s announcement. TalkTalk shares have also gone down by similar margins.

In another twist of irony today, the Guardian has a good piece covering a whole host of potential difficulties with the policy, ranging from the practical difficulties of rolling out broadband infrastructure to the possible consequences of nationalisation.

A fully modernised Labour message might be tricky to accomplish. Corbyn and McDonnell cut their political teeth in the 1970s and 1980s protesting for the cause of unions and especially mining industry unions. McDonnell apparently did not see the irony when, in the same breath as talking about climate change, he also quoted poetry about the lives of coal miners. Some habits, clearly, die harder than others. An old dog can struggle to learn new tricks.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has been making more media appearances. This morning, he was interviewed on BBC Breakfast by Naga Munchetty, who asked him whether he is “relatable”. In particular, she pointed to a video showing Johnson testing out his mopping skills in Derby last week, suggesting that his technique was left wanting.

This was quite a flippant line of enquiry. The truth is that there is very little evidence to show that a successful politician has to be “relatable”, whatever this truly means beyond the dinner circles of the London boroughs. In light of recent polling, the suggestion that Johnson might be out of touch with working voters is also odd – two days ago, a poll conducted by ComRes for the Daily Telegraph showed that a 43% of those questioned who were categorised as working class intend to vote for the Tories, against just 28% for the Labour party.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats continue to become more Cameronian in their style. Two days ago, their pledges to tackle knife crime were reminiscent of David Cameron’s “hug a hoodie” pitch from 2006. Today, the emulation act continued as Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman proclaimed his party to be the “party of business” and “fiscal responsibility” against the “fiscal incontinence” of Labour and the Conservatives. In a fascinating turnaround from the coalition government of 2010-2015, Davey is now taking the Tories to task for being too lax in their fiscal policy, and not too tight.