But Labour are making no gains. Once again, you're not seeing the bigger story that the opposition is not on course to win. Government loses midterm is a fairly expected result and governments come back from it. Opposition loses midterm is what we expect from parties that aren't going to win.
We're on course for a 1992 style result with the Tories getting a working majority under a busted flush leader and completely unruly and undisciplined backbenchers worried about losing their majorities in 4 or 5 years.
The Tories are not going to get 43% of the vote in 2024.
The other thing to note, going into the last General Election it was Tories +UKIP making something like nearly 60% before Tories (Cummings) done that truly brilliant thing of corralling the UKIP to the Tories, like a cowboy stealing someone else’s heard.
Since that moment that huge % has basically halved. Quite a fight on their hands to fight back in the next two years?
It’s one way of looking at it?
The combined Tory + UKIP/BXP share was never near 60%!
Looking at where the likely transfers will go in the NI results it looks like game over for the DUP .
Sinn Fein to have the largest share of the vote and most assembly members . And in Michelle O’Neil they have a very charismatic and charming First Minister .
I'm so glad Phillip Thompson isn't around to see what has befallen the DUP. All this after Boris blessed them with the most masterly deal in the history of negotiations. A political utopia awaited them. What went wrong?
But Labour are making no gains. Once again, you're not seeing the bigger story that the opposition is not on course to win. Government loses midterm is a fairly expected result and governments come back from it. Opposition loses midterm is what we expect from parties that aren't going to win.
We're on course for a 1992 style result with the Tories getting a working majority under a busted flush leader and completely unruly and undisciplined backbenchers worried about losing their majorities in 4 or 5 years.
The Tories are not going to get 43% of the vote in 2024.
1992 style result, not actually 1992. David Cameron got a similar working majority with just 37% on less favourable boundaries.
Yes but the LD vote had collapsed and Labour got only 30%. Labour is now polling significantly higher than that and the biggest gains today have been from the LDs
The first thing the conservative mps should do on Monday is to act and elect a new leader and PM
The only reason I disagree with you Big_G is because that's the first thing they should have done the morning after the North Shropshire by-election.
Owen Paterson scandal should have been enough.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse wouldn't persuade this lot to act.
They're more spineless and dishonest than the board of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
Just looking at the breakdown of the Woking results and they should send a shudder through the Conservative Party. The LibDems didn't just take the council, these results are not even close.
Heathlands, my ward, flipped 1500 LibDem votes to 1000 Conservative with another 400 Green.
I am almost speechless. Those Surrey Conservative MPs are in big trouble. They include Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Grayling.
Those of you betting on Hunt to be next tory leader ... if you wait until after the election he might not even be an MP.
Surrey is no longer safe Tory certainly, it is now a swing Tory v LD county.
Most of Essex and much of the Midlands however have moved from swing areas to reasonably safe Conservative
One of the principal reasons Boris has a large majority is that he was able to trade off the mountains of votes that they won in the south of England for a lot of votes in the midlands and the North, greatly increasing their vote efficiency. Which is an extremely cunning plan until your base becomes so hollowed out it falls over, just as Scotland did for Labour.
OK but what policy choices, specifically, are turning off voters in Surrey?
I don't live there so I can't really say but if you look at the areas who have now voted Lib Dem and those who voted remain there seems to be quite a close correlation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36618907 Those who voted to leave have stayed more with the Tories. The divisions of the referendum are still with us. The challenge of the government is to move past those issues but instead they seem to double down on them.
Because of Brexit, it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever vote Tory again.
Brexit is a total irrelevance, Covid and Ukraine will impact your life, Brexit is just yesterday's noise
This is absolutely true but it is not how people feel about it and that determines how they vote. To take some obvious examples people claim we have high inflation because of Brexit but our inflation is actually lower than the EZ or the US. People claimed that we would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs but we have record employment and record vacancies. People claimed that Brexit would cause a recession but last year we had the highest growth in the G7. People continue to claim that our exports to the EU are being hammered and yet: UK’s good exports to the EU grew by 20% compared to the same quarter five years ago (Q2 2016) UK’s sales to the EU in Q2 2016: £32.1 billion UK’s sales to the EU five years later, in Q2 2021: £38.56 billion
People believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts. And they have every right to. That is democracy and there is no point in crying about it.
Maybe people try and justify it and find reasons to support their beliefs. I do not. I disagreed profoundly with how the referendum was set up, the language used during the campaign, the behaviour of the Conservatives / ERG / Leavers afterwards, etc.
I do not give a d*mn about finding reasons after the event.
The thing that crystallised it for me was the insult to my European friends and colleagues. My countryfolk had told them to piss off, and many of them now have gone home.
I will not be voting Conservative again, at least not until they repudiate Brexitism. I don't expect that soon.
This is ridiculous. We told them we did not want to be part of an undemocratic, quasi-Federal political union. We did not tell them to “piss off”
Immigration was the major driver of the Brexit vote, and my friends and colleagues were EU immigrants. I don't blame them for taking it personally.
Factually wrong, as is often the case with you. Polls at the time, and afterwards, had sovereignty as the major driver for a Leave vote.
Lord Ashcroft did the biggest poll of all. 12,000 people
“Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”
"Sovereignty" is a pc way of saying "Immigration" though. It's a nice, noble sounding thing c.f. border control which sounds rather harsh and specific. Therefore the 1st concern is often a cypher for the 2nd. Plus many of the Leave respondents wouldn't understand the questions. So I'd be a bit skeptical of that poll.
Just looking at the breakdown of the Woking results and they should send a shudder through the Conservative Party. The LibDems didn't just take the council, these results are not even close.
Heathlands, my ward, flipped 1500 LibDem votes to 1000 Conservative with another 400 Green.
I am almost speechless. Those Surrey Conservative MPs are in big trouble. They include Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Grayling.
Those of you betting on Hunt to be next tory leader ... if you wait until after the election he might not even be an MP.
Surrey is no longer safe Tory certainly, it is now a swing Tory v LD county.
Most of Essex and much of the Midlands however have moved from swing areas to reasonably safe Conservative
One of the principal reasons Boris has a large majority is that he was able to trade off the mountains of votes that they won in the south of England for a lot of votes in the midlands and the North, greatly increasing their vote efficiency. Which is an extremely cunning plan until your base becomes so hollowed out it falls over, just as Scotland did for Labour.
OK but what policy choices, specifically, are turning off voters in Surrey?
I don't live there so I can't really say but if you look at the areas who have now voted Lib Dem and those who voted remain there seems to be quite a close correlation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36618907 Those who voted to leave have stayed more with the Tories. The divisions of the referendum are still with us. The challenge of the government is to move past those issues but instead they seem to double down on them.
Because of Brexit, it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever vote Tory again.
Brexit is a total irrelevance, Covid and Ukraine will impact your life, Brexit is just yesterday's noise
This is absolutely true but it is not how people feel about it and that determines how they vote. To take some obvious examples people claim we have high inflation because of Brexit but our inflation is actually lower than the EZ or the US. People claimed that we would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs but we have record employment and record vacancies. People claimed that Brexit would cause a recession but last year we had the highest growth in the G7. People continue to claim that our exports to the EU are being hammered and yet: UK’s good exports to the EU grew by 20% compared to the same quarter five years ago (Q2 2016) UK’s sales to the EU in Q2 2016: £32.1 billion UK’s sales to the EU five years later, in Q2 2021: £38.56 billion
People believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts. And they have every right to. That is democracy and there is no point in crying about it.
Maybe people try and justify it and find reasons to support their beliefs. I do not. I disagreed profoundly with how the referendum was set up, the language used during the campaign, the behaviour of the Conservatives / ERG / Leavers afterwards, etc.
I do not give a d*mn about finding reasons after the event.
The thing that crystallised it for me was the insult to my European friends and colleagues. My countryfolk had told them to piss off, and many of them now have gone home.
I will not be voting Conservative again, at least not until they repudiate Brexitism. I don't expect that soon.
This is ridiculous. We told them we did not want to be part of an undemocratic, quasi-Federal political union. We did not tell them to “piss off”
Immigration was the major driver of the Brexit vote, and my friends and colleagues were EU immigrants. I don't blame them for taking it personally.
Factually wrong, as is often the case with you. Polls at the time, and afterwards, had sovereignty as the major driver for a Leave vote.
Lord Ashcroft did the biggest poll of all. 12,000 people
“Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”
"Sovereignty" is a pc way of saying "Immigration" though. It's a nice, noble sounding thing c.f. border control which sounds rather harsh and specific. Therefore the 1st concern is often a cypher for the 2nd. Plus many of the Leave respondents wouldn't understand the questions. So I'd be a bit skeptical of that poll.
Just looking at the breakdown of the Woking results and they should send a shudder through the Conservative Party. The LibDems didn't just take the council, these results are not even close.
Heathlands, my ward, flipped 1500 LibDem votes to 1000 Conservative with another 400 Green.
I am almost speechless. Those Surrey Conservative MPs are in big trouble. They include Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Grayling.
Those of you betting on Hunt to be next tory leader ... if you wait until after the election he might not even be an MP.
Surrey is no longer safe Tory certainly, it is now a swing Tory v LD county.
Most of Essex and much of the Midlands however have moved from swing areas to reasonably safe Conservative
One of the principal reasons Boris has a large majority is that he was able to trade off the mountains of votes that they won in the south of England for a lot of votes in the midlands and the North, greatly increasing their vote efficiency. Which is an extremely cunning plan until your base becomes so hollowed out it falls over, just as Scotland did for Labour.
OK but what policy choices, specifically, are turning off voters in Surrey?
I don't live there so I can't really say but if you look at the areas who have now voted Lib Dem and those who voted remain there seems to be quite a close correlation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36618907 Those who voted to leave have stayed more with the Tories. The divisions of the referendum are still with us. The challenge of the government is to move past those issues but instead they seem to double down on them.
Because of Brexit, it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever vote Tory again.
Brexit is a total irrelevance, Covid and Ukraine will impact your life, Brexit is just yesterday's noise
This is absolutely true but it is not how people feel about it and that determines how they vote. To take some obvious examples people claim we have high inflation because of Brexit but our inflation is actually lower than the EZ or the US. People claimed that we would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs but we have record employment and record vacancies. People claimed that Brexit would cause a recession but last year we had the highest growth in the G7. People continue to claim that our exports to the EU are being hammered and yet: UK’s good exports to the EU grew by 20% compared to the same quarter five years ago (Q2 2016) UK’s sales to the EU in Q2 2016: £32.1 billion UK’s sales to the EU five years later, in Q2 2021: £38.56 billion
People believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts. And they have every right to. That is democracy and there is no point in crying about it.
Maybe people try and justify it and find reasons to support their beliefs. I do not. I disagreed profoundly with how the referendum was set up, the language used during the campaign, the behaviour of the Conservatives / ERG / Leavers afterwards, etc.
I do not give a d*mn about finding reasons after the event.
The thing that crystallised it for me was the insult to my European friends and colleagues. My countryfolk had told them to piss off, and many of them now have gone home.
I will not be voting Conservative again, at least not until they repudiate Brexitism. I don't expect that soon.
This is ridiculous. We told them we did not want to be part of an undemocratic, quasi-Federal political union. We did not tell them to “piss off”
Immigration was the major driver of the Brexit vote, and my friends and colleagues were EU immigrants. I don't blame them for taking it personally.
Factually wrong, as is often the case with you. Polls at the time, and afterwards, had sovereignty as the major driver for a Leave vote.
Lord Ashcroft did the biggest poll of all. 12,000 people
“Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”
"Sovereignty" is a pc way of saying "Immigration" though. It's a nice, noble sounding thing c.f. border control which sounds rather harsh and specific. Therefore the 1st concern is often a cypher for the 2nd. Plus many of the Leave respondents wouldn't understand the questions. So I'd be a bit skeptical of that poll.
What will they do when Johnson capitulates to India and loads more visas get issued . Of course you won’t hear a peep from the right wing hate papers as they’re too embarrassed to admit they sold a pack of lies to their readers !
I guess the major source of discrepancy in interpretation of the results is whether they are traditional "mid-term" ones. If they are, then those who are shrugging them off for the Tories definitely have a point. But for me, so much has changed since 2015 that talking about what is happening now in terms of what happened before is a mistake: the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit, Corbyn, covid and a cost of living squeeze that's only just begun have altered the landscape to a huge extent. Politics will be seen very much in terms of pre- and post-2015 in years to come, I reckon. Obviously, I could be totally wrong. It has been known ;-)
I rate you as a pundit after calling the Brexit referendum here accurately in advance.
Just looking at the breakdown of the Woking results and they should send a shudder through the Conservative Party. The LibDems didn't just take the council, these results are not even close.
Heathlands, my ward, flipped 1500 LibDem votes to 1000 Conservative with another 400 Green.
I am almost speechless. Those Surrey Conservative MPs are in big trouble. They include Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Kwasi Kwarteng, Chris Grayling.
Those of you betting on Hunt to be next tory leader ... if you wait until after the election he might not even be an MP.
Surrey is no longer safe Tory certainly, it is now a swing Tory v LD county.
Most of Essex and much of the Midlands however have moved from swing areas to reasonably safe Conservative
One of the principal reasons Boris has a large majority is that he was able to trade off the mountains of votes that they won in the south of England for a lot of votes in the midlands and the North, greatly increasing their vote efficiency. Which is an extremely cunning plan until your base becomes so hollowed out it falls over, just as Scotland did for Labour.
OK but what policy choices, specifically, are turning off voters in Surrey?
I don't live there so I can't really say but if you look at the areas who have now voted Lib Dem and those who voted remain there seems to be quite a close correlation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36618907 Those who voted to leave have stayed more with the Tories. The divisions of the referendum are still with us. The challenge of the government is to move past those issues but instead they seem to double down on them.
Because of Brexit, it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever vote Tory again.
Brexit is a total irrelevance, Covid and Ukraine will impact your life, Brexit is just yesterday's noise
This is absolutely true but it is not how people feel about it and that determines how they vote. To take some obvious examples people claim we have high inflation because of Brexit but our inflation is actually lower than the EZ or the US. People claimed that we would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs but we have record employment and record vacancies. People claimed that Brexit would cause a recession but last year we had the highest growth in the G7. People continue to claim that our exports to the EU are being hammered and yet: UK’s good exports to the EU grew by 20% compared to the same quarter five years ago (Q2 2016) UK’s sales to the EU in Q2 2016: £32.1 billion UK’s sales to the EU five years later, in Q2 2021: £38.56 billion
People believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts. And they have every right to. That is democracy and there is no point in crying about it.
Maybe people try and justify it and find reasons to support their beliefs. I do not. I disagreed profoundly with how the referendum was set up, the language used during the campaign, the behaviour of the Conservatives / ERG / Leavers afterwards, etc.
I do not give a d*mn about finding reasons after the event.
The thing that crystallised it for me was the insult to my European friends and colleagues. My countryfolk had told them to piss off, and many of them now have gone home.
I will not be voting Conservative again, at least not until they repudiate Brexitism. I don't expect that soon.
This is ridiculous. We told them we did not want to be part of an undemocratic, quasi-Federal political union. We did not tell them to “piss off”
Immigration was the major driver of the Brexit vote, and my friends and colleagues were EU immigrants. I don't blame them for taking it personally.
Factually wrong, as is often the case with you. Polls at the time, and afterwards, had sovereignty as the major driver for a Leave vote.
Lord Ashcroft did the biggest poll of all. 12,000 people
“Nearly half (49%) of leave voters said the biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. One third (33%) said the main reason was that leaving “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”
"Sovereignty" is a pc way of saying "Immigration" though. It's a nice, noble sounding thing c.f. border control which sounds rather harsh and specific. Therefore the 1st concern is often a cypher for the 2nd. Plus many of the Leave respondents wouldn't understand the questions. So I'd be a bit skeptical of that poll.
What will they do when Johnson capitulates to India and loads more visas get issued . Of course you won’t hear a peep from the right wing hate papers as they’re too embarrassed to admit they sold a pack of lies to their readers !
I don't think a FTA with India is imminent and it is unlikely to include anything close to free movement
Looking at where the likely transfers will go in the NI results it looks like game over for the DUP .
Sinn Fein to have the largest share of the vote and most assembly members . And in Michelle O’Neil they have a very charismatic and charming First Minister .
I'm so glad Phillip Thompson isn't around to see what has befallen the DUP. All this after Boris blessed them with the most masterly deal in the history of negotiations. A political utopia awaited them. What went wrong?
Sinn Fein ran 34 candidates and the DUP 30 . Both played it safe mindful of splitting the votes too much given the system of transfers . Last time they ended up with 27 and 28 assembly members respectively . Both are likely to do worse than 2017 in terms of the assembly but the DUP will undershoot by more .
Rather different from the PA results CHB posted a few mos ago. But the basic story is much the same.
I think the difference is due to comparison with 2017 or comparison with dissolution. I think some SNP Cllrs defected to ALBA and therefore the comparison with dissolution looks better than with 2017.
Hey ho, you can't win 'em all. Orange tornedo wreaking electoral havoc across Elmbridge and, alas, I was a hapless innocent victim (aren't we all?). 1122 to 1102....
Good
That’s a bit uncalled for - celebrating a fellow poster not winning an election
Mediocre for labour, A mixed bag for the Tories but pretty bad in their heartlands, a good result for the Lib Dems. The greens gained a handful.
Overall the winners last night are the Lib Dems.
Fair summary. It does look as though the Lib-Dems have been forgiven for the coalition and are now back in the game.
Of course the Lib-Dem success will melt away like June snow in the general election...
I think the LDs are on course to get roughly the same number of MPs they got in 1992 - roughly 20.
The difference is that they probably won't get any west country seats, except possibly St Ives. And their gains will be in the more leafy, prosperous and Remainiac parts of the South East.
I guess the major source of discrepancy in interpretation of the results is whether they are traditional "mid-term" ones. If they are, then those who are shrugging them off for the Tories definitely have a point. But for me, so much has changed since 2015 that talking about what is happening now in terms of what happened before is a mistake: the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit, Corbyn, covid and a cost of living squeeze that's only just begun have altered the landscape to a huge extent. Politics will be seen very much in terms of pre- and post-2015 in years to come, I reckon. Obviously, I could be totally wrong. It has been known ;-)
Yeah, I think it's very questionable to assume that it's inevitable that there'll be a swing back to the government come to the next GE. For one, the 2017 GE showed that that the opposition can do better than their 'mid-term' polling suggests. It's also very questionable to assume that all VI Tory 2019 voters who didn't vote yesterday will vote for the Tories yesterday. And then there's the fact that I imagine come a election many of voters who voted Green last night will vote Labour in the marginals Lab need to win. Not a fantastic night for Labour, but really can't see the argument from some PB Tories that it shows Labour is going to lose - particularly, as they rely on 'political rules' which are now redundant post-Brexit.
Comments
https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/what-mattered-most-to-you-when-deciding-how-to-vote-in-the-eu-referendum/#.YnVd0mnTXqt
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1521957860887912448
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqCDCrA4JPs
Round 2
Oliver Coppard 143,476
Clive Watkinson 57,347
Sadly there wasn't an "abolish this pointless post" option. One way ratchet.
The difference is that they probably won't get any west country seats, except possibly St Ives. And their gains will be in the more leafy, prosperous and Remainiac parts of the South East.
It's also very questionable to assume that all VI Tory 2019 voters who didn't vote yesterday will vote for the Tories yesterday. And then there's the fact that I imagine come a election many of voters who voted Green last night will vote Labour in the marginals Lab need to win.
Not a fantastic night for Labour, but really can't see the argument from some PB Tories that it shows Labour is going to lose - particularly, as they rely on 'political rules' which are now redundant post-Brexit.