Data guru for hire

Back in 2014, somebody in the Labour Party thought they'd been very clever when they out-bid Ukip for the services of a freelance "election guru":

The Labour party has hired a Bolton-based betting expert to be its general election data guru after a bidding war with Ukip.

Ian Warren, 44, a self-taught election forecaster, spent the past 10 years working as a sole trader betting on election outcomes in the UK and the US.

Just like blogger Nate Silver across the Atlantic, Warren correctly predicted the electoral college in the 2008 and 2012 American elections, earning big money for his secretive corporate clients and funding his PhD in statistics and criminology at the University of Manchester.

Maybe the phrase "secretive corporate clients" didn't ring any alarm bells in the days before Cambridge Analytica became a household name. So when the guru came up with a cunning plan to outflank Ukip, nobody thought to ask why a supposedly progressive party was being advised to ape a gaggle of extreme nationalist single-issue fanatics with a grand total of one MP who, as we've since discovered, never even had a workable plan for achieving the single goal they were set up to achieve.

No, the "Blue Labour" tendency lapped it up and duly added "very real concerns" about migration to Labour's austerity-lite offer, leaving Ed Milliband to crash and burn:

“While many retain their loyalty to Labour, a sizeable proportion is moving to Ukip,” said Ian Warren, an election data analyst who contributed to the Fabians’ research. “In many constituencies that Labour is targeting in 2015, almost half of all households are comprised of these groups… when asked whether they are comfortable living in close proximity to people from different cultures and backgrounds, they are more likely to say no.”...

...[Tom Watson] said it was very important for the “Blue Labour” agenda championed by Lord (Maurice) Glasman and Jon Cruddas, the policy chief, which is based on “faith, flag and family”, to be an element in its election manifesto.

Yeah, trying to out-Ukip Ukip really worked out well for everybody, didn't it? Thank you, o guru, we are not worthy.

Of course, it would take more than merely being disastrously wrong to dissuade a guru of Warren's stature from lecturing the Labour Party on the folly of not heeding his ineffable wisdom. Maybe the fact that he chose to deliver his lecture from the bully pulpit of Conservative Home should also have rung alarm bells:

One of the most important examples of ‘walking across the aisle’ comes from Mark Reckless in Rochester & Strood; a story which has largely been untold, but which I would like to speak to Mark about.

Mark’s back story is straight from Conservative central casting: Oxford, career as a barrister, Policy Unit at CCHQ, elected MP in 2010. However, in 2014 he defected to UKIP. All of a sudden, he was forced to canvass Labour streets in the hope of peeling voters away from them. I know this, because I did a report for UKIP at the time. The point being that he was now forced to take the time to see the world through the eyes of Labour voters in Strood – a demographic he hadn’t needed to win before.

I haven’t spoken to Mark, but I do know that the campaign team found this experience energising. It’s a pattern other UKIP candidates raised as Conservatives have seen. It’s powerful because, for those candidates and activists, it alters their perspective, forcing them to challenge their own preconceptions. Who knows, for some it may only serve to reinforce them but I know that, for others, the experience has been somewhat cathartic.

So when I witness the partisan and abusive nature of the election of Corbyn [because there's nothing partisan or abusive about Ukip, obvs], you’ll see me slowly walking away from the scene, shaking my head. Having advocated a listening and understanding approach for so long, I wonder whether it might be best to vacate the area for a bit and let both sides tear each other to pieces...

...Because if Labour thinks it can understand UKIP voters by hectoring them it’s going to continue to lose them, and will deserve to do so.

Fast forward to 2018. Mark Reckless has left the sinking ship that is Ukip, a turn of events which Ian Warren might find embarrassing, if he didn't have more important things to worry about right now:

Data based upon demographics, class, finances and ethnicity, was used to identify core groups of Labour voters to be targeted with UKIP-led messaging and was instrumental in deciding where Nigel Farage appeared to speak during the Brexit campaign.

Leave.EU, Cambridge Analytica, the RMT Union and Trade Unions Against EU, and Labour MP Kate Hoey – associated with Labour Leave – gained access to the information via Labour’s 2015 general election data guru before referendum campaigns were officially designated by the Electoral Commission.

Blue Collar workers, struggling families, students, and ethnic minorities were among those specifically designated valuable to tailored social media targeting and doorstep canvassing. The data provided specific postcodes to be targeted on and offline, in order to attract millions of votes across the country – enough to swing the divisive referendum result.

The postcode and demographic briefings are being released in full, in the public interest, to assist any concerned voters in establishing whether they were affected as Labour have remained largely silent on the issue of Cambridge Analytica and concerns over data profiling....

...The huge dataset, based on the information of millions of Labour voters across the country, was allegedly built using Mosaic demographics and the results of party canvassing. It is believed to have been amassed during 2015 by political consultant Ian Warren, before he passed it on in a series of detailed briefings and a postcode targeting spreadsheet in early 2016.

He first met with Cambridge Analytica to discuss the use of the information as part of Leave.EU’s campaign at the end of 2015.

Warren was head-hunted by Labour for the 2015 election campaign after his successful work with UKIP and continued to be closely associated with the party, polling members and working with Owen Smith on his leadership challenge during the remainder of 2016.

This is what Labour's privacy policy says about the personal information the party holds:

"We will never sell or share your personal information with other organisations for their direct marketing purposes without your explicit consent. We may share your data with third parties to perform services on your behalf and to help promote the Labour Party by serving you advertisements and content online about our politicians, campaigns and policies we think you might be interested in.”

Ian Warren insists that he's done nothing wrong, that the data he passed to Leave.EU was "bespoke" data created by himself and that "The data I used to inform this work for Leave.EU is NOT personal data; it is neighbourhood level data." But even if he is completely innocent of having breached data protection laws, it seems to me that he's guilty of having done more to help the people who put forward a failed bid for his services, Ukip, than he did to help the Labour Party, who were actually paying him.

They should ask for their money back, but I guess they'll have to make do with this uncharacteristic piece of humility from the great guru:

I am truly sorry to my friends in Labour for having to read this. There are some decisions I have made that I regret deeply; working with Leave.EU being one. But I have always acted professionally and in good faith, and will do so in the future. I am of course more than happy to speak with the party, and I am sure I will be soon. This whole thing is deeply embarrassing but the party should know one thing – neither I or the Labour party have done anything wrong here.

The cry of an innocent man, unjustly accused, or the squawk of chickens coming home to roost? Time will tell.