Honestly I’m surprised they are as high as they are. The country is in a mess, the past 12 months have been abysmal and Sunak doesn’t have what it takes.
There's a substantial body of centre-right opinion in this country and an awful lot of older voters are heavily invested in the current system (which is essentially a massive engine for the transfer of wealth from wage earners to property owners and the retired.) There's no way on God's Earth that the Tories are going to do anything like this badly when people actually have to vote for a Government. Hard to say whether this is going to end in a Hung Parliament or a small Labour majority, but I'm still leaning towards the former. I don't think it'll be as bad for the Tories as '97 - socio-economic inequality has increased and the population has aged since then, both factors which mitigate against a Labour landslide.
I'm afraid that you are living in a fantasy land my friend.
Keir Starmer has done pretty much everything to ensure that the constituency to which you refer will feel relatively safe under Labour.
But when you have stories of disabled elderly lying injured in their homes and unable to get an ambulance, or others stranded in corridors in A&E for 48 hours, then you are I'm afraid missing another vital element of concern for people of that age. Not many of them have private health care. And I could add the spiralling costs of food and energy etc. etc.
It is FAR worse than 1997 when the economy was booming. Now it's tanking. Everything that could go wrong, is.
It will be a bloodbath at the election on a scale you have never seen before. It will re-write the annals and reset 'precedent' until the next event comes along to rewrite precedent.
An immense shellacking is undoubtedly what this Government deserves but they're not going to get it. There's much truth in what you say, but OTOH this is an administration by, of and for older voters - one which has buttered them up with big pension increases almost every year and has a proven track record for frustrating the development of new homes and, therefore, ensuring a long-term trend of ever-rising prices. There's a very big constituency of retired homeowners and late middle-aged heirs who therefore have a vested interest in keeping them in place.
Nor do I believe that the dire state of public services is necessarily the handicap that everyone thinks it is: just as with Covid, there are a certain number of poor blighters who really suffered from or died with it, and therefore a cohort of enraged survivors and relatives who will never forgive the Conservatives for their handling of the situation - but that's not most people. Most older voters (and especially the better off ones, who are likely on average to be fitter and may be able to afford private care to queue jump for routine operations,) have not ended up spending years in agony waiting to get their dodgy joints fixed, or been stranded outside a hospital for 40 hours in the back of an ambulance. For them, it's still "the economy, stupid," and they have been insulated from all the worst effects of the post-2008 incomes disaster by a combination of the triple lock, skyrocketing house prices and older style, more generous occupational pensions.
There are a lot of people who have done very nicely, thank you out of the Conservative years, and that's before getting on to the culture wars horror show. Much of the population still thinks Brexit was the right decision. Much of the population still wants the boat people problem to go away, and not by adopting the "just let them all in" solution that it'll be all too easy to convince them that Labour would be in favour of. Yes, Keir Starmer has managed his affairs as LOTO quite competently, and substantial gains seem to be nailed on - but as for an epochal victory, I just don't buy it. The minted old gits will weigh their options come election time, and stick with the devil they know. Watch.
I had my nephews over for Xmas, both in their 20s, and they clearly perceive all this from the other side. The younger one was telling me that everyone he knows is thoroughly disengaged from politics, blaming 'the system' as much as the Tories, and have basically concluded that politics and politicians are somewhere between corrupt and a waste of time.
Therefore there's a big disaffacted constituency whose instinct is not to bother - engaging some of these is the explanation why Corbyn managed to come in off the radar in 2017. It is hard to see Starmer doing the same.
I expect there will be a big drop in the number of people voting vs 2019. Remember that the reason Brexit won in 2016 and the Tories won in 2019 was a swathe of non-voters deciding to engage with the political system. I did my usual polling station rounds for both (and the elections in-between) and the numbers turning out were off the scale. Then when you sample the boxes from said shithole polling stations they were predominantly Tory.
Those people are most likely not to vote next time. So regardless of anything else you can take a chunk of votes off the Tory tally. Then we have the remaining Breciteer believers who think the Tories have betrayed them. If FUKUK do stand as threatened, watch a smaller but likely critical chunk defect to them as they did in 2019. Seats like Stockton North didn't go Tory thanks to Farage.
But for the rest? They may not like politics or politicians, but they dislike a broken country even more. And its only the remaining Fans of Fabricant in denial about just how utterly and totally fucked this country is. Everyone else is massively fed up, knows it is getting worse and worse with no end in sight, and rightly blames the Tories.
Top Tip for Tories - wake up and smell reality. Your denial of the state of fuck is a big part of why growing numbers want to hurt you. Major won in 1992 - remember the slogan? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. At the moment the Tories are in denial that there is hurt, and it isn't working either.
Honestly I’m surprised they are as high as they are. The country is in a mess, the past 12 months have been abysmal and Sunak doesn’t have what it takes.
There's a substantial body of centre-right opinion in this country and an awful lot of older voters are heavily invested in the current system (which is essentially a massive engine for the transfer of wealth from wage earners to property owners and the retired.) There's no way on God's Earth that the Tories are going to do anything like this badly when people actually have to vote for a Government. Hard to say whether this is going to end in a Hung Parliament or a small Labour majority, but I'm still leaning towards the former. I don't think it'll be as bad for the Tories as '97 - socio-economic inequality has increased and the population has aged since then, both factors which mitigate against a Labour landslide.
I'm afraid that you are living in a fantasy land my friend.
Keir Starmer has done pretty much everything to ensure that the constituency to which you refer will feel relatively safe under Labour.
But when you have stories of disabled elderly lying injured in their homes and unable to get an ambulance, or others stranded in corridors in A&E for 48 hours, then you are I'm afraid missing another vital element of concern for people of that age. Not many of them have private health care. And I could add the spiralling costs of food and energy etc. etc.
It is FAR worse than 1997 when the economy was booming. Now it's tanking. Everything that could go wrong, is.
It will be a bloodbath at the election on a scale you have never seen before. It will re-write the annals and reset 'precedent' until the next event comes along to rewrite precedent.
An immense shellacking is undoubtedly what this Government deserves but they're not going to get it. There's much truth in what you say, but OTOH this is an administration by, of and for older voters - one which has buttered them up with big pension increases almost every year and has a proven track record for frustrating the development of new homes and, therefore, ensuring a long-term trend of ever-rising prices. There's a very big constituency of retired homeowners and late middle-aged heirs who therefore have a vested interest in keeping them in place.
Nor do I believe that the dire state of public services is necessarily the handicap that everyone thinks it is: just as with Covid, there are a certain number of poor blighters who really suffered from or died with it, and therefore a cohort of enraged survivors and relatives who will never forgive the Conservatives for their handling of the situation - but that's not most people. Most older voters (and especially the better off ones, who are likely on average to be fitter and may be able to afford private care to queue jump for routine operations,) have not ended up spending years in agony waiting to get their dodgy joints fixed, or been stranded outside a hospital for 40 hours in the back of an ambulance. For them, it's still "the economy, stupid," and they have been insulated from all the worst effects of the post-2008 incomes disaster by a combination of the triple lock, skyrocketing house prices and older style, more generous occupational pensions.
There are a lot of people who have done very nicely, thank you out of the Conservative years, and that's before getting on to the culture wars horror show. Much of the population still thinks Brexit was the right decision. Much of the population still wants the boat people problem to go away, and not by adopting the "just let them all in" solution that it'll be all too easy to convince them that Labour would be in favour of. Yes, Keir Starmer has managed his affairs as LOTO quite competently, and substantial gains seem to be nailed on - but as for an epochal victory, I just don't buy it. The minted old gits will weigh their options come election time, and stick with the devil they know. Watch.
I had my nephews over for Xmas, both in their 20s, and they clearly perceive all this from the other side. The younger one was telling me that everyone he knows is thoroughly disengaged from politics, blaming 'the system' as much as the Tories, and have basically concluded that politics and politicians are somewhere between corrupt and a waste of time.
Therefore there's a big disaffacted constituency whose instinct is not to bother - engaging some of these is the explanation why Corbyn managed to come in off the radar in 2017. It is hard to see Starmer doing the same.
I expect there will be a big drop in the number of people voting vs 2019. Remember that the reason Brexit won in 2016 and the Tories won in 2019 was a swathe of non-voters deciding to engage with the political system. I did my usual polling station rounds for both (and the elections in-between) and the numbers turning out were off the scale. Then when you sample the boxes from said shithole polling stations they were predominantly Tory.
Those people are most likely not to vote next time. So regardless of anything else you can take a chunk of votes off the Tory tally. Then we have the remaining Breciteer believers who think the Tories have betrayed them. If FUKUK do stand as threatened, watch a smaller but likely critical chunk defect to them as they did in 2019. Seats like Stockton North didn't go Tory thanks to Farage.
But for the rest? They may not like politics or politicians, but they dislike a broken country even more. And its only the remaining Fans of Fabricant in denial about just how utterly and totally fucked this country is. Everyone else is massively fed up, knows it is getting worse and worse with no end in sight, and rightly blames the Tories.
Top Tip for Tories - wake up and smell reality. Your denial of the state of fuck is a big part of why growing numbers want to hurt you. Major won in 1992 - remember the slogan? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. At the moment the Tories are in denial that there is hurt, and it isn't working either.
Good points too. Boris had delivered Brexit and sticking with investment in public services which was what most of the new Tory voters in 2019 wanted despite personal faults.
They then overthrew him with Truss whose more libertarian slash tax, including for the rich line while not cutting spending sent the markets into free fall and lost the Tory reputation for economic competence.
Now we have Rishi who is more competent but the return to Cameron and Osborne era austerity he and Hunt are pursuing, including even ruling out a payrise for nurses in line with the national average (even if pensioners, the lowest paid and those on benefits have been protected) has turned off the redwall.
There has also been further leakage to RefUK. Under Boris they were only on 1 to 3%, now they are on up to 8%
On your first point, in what way has Boris delivered "Brexit"? We left the EU, but that isn't the Brexit people were voting for. Some wanted more money for the NHS - record waits and a broken system Many wanted less migrants - a runaway catastrophe continues in the channel Most wanted more money and opportunities - and face the cost of living disaster Specialist groups wanted beneficial improvements - and all the Brexit-voting farmers and fishing communities are pretty well united about how things are worse now. And almost all of them wanted to Take Back Control of their lives, sticking it to the man. And yet here we are with most services broken and the man saying "you will pay"
People didn't care about the EU. They just wanted to make things better. And its got worse...
If you were looking for a weasally defence couldn’t you argue that anyone who was not sent to a concentration camp (a simplification) but was around at the time “survived the Holocaust”?
I see Goodwin is involved somehow which immediately makes it dodgy.
If you look at Lab+LD+Green and Tory+ Reform the PP numbers are pretty much in line with those from other pollsters. The exceptions are Opinium and Techne which reallocate DKs based on previous voting record and so tend to get a higher Tory and lower Labour number. For me, the combined bloc results are always the most interesting to look at - but that’s because I think tactical voting will play a big part at the next election.
Indeed. Lab+LD+Green=62%; Tory+Reform=27% Progressive are trouncing the right by more than 2 to 1.
However given the LDs were in government with the Tories ten years ago they can't really be included in either block
Of course they can. It only worked because Cameron wanted the Tories to at least appear more progressive.
It worked because Orange Book LDs have more in common economically with the Tories than Labour.
They are just socially liberal and pro EU too, which the Cameron era Tories too were then.
Most social democrats now vote Starmer Labour, the LDs now are largely a rump party of economic and social liberals who just dislike Brexit
So.. Liberals, you mean.
Economically and socially liberal is not exactly a rump point of view.
It is a view held by about 8% of the population (albeit over represented on PB), hence the LDs current poll rating and their voteshare in 2015 and 2017 (slightly boosted to 11% in 2019 because of Corbyn but that extra 3% now returned to Labour under Starmer)
Good morning everyone. Managing to contribute again, although circumstances are quite difficult. As a centre-left voter who has always been an enthusiast for European unity, I would find it quite hard to vote Labour, given Keir Starmer’s apparent policies. I think my alternatives are LibDem or Green! And the last time I voted Green, in a council election, my candidate won, defeating a long, established Conservative!
Good to hear you are on mend OKC, best wishes for 2023
Honestly I’m surprised they are as high as they are. The country is in a mess, the past 12 months have been abysmal and Sunak doesn’t have what it takes.
There's a substantial body of centre-right opinion in this country and an awful lot of older voters are heavily invested in the current system (which is essentially a massive engine for the transfer of wealth from wage earners to property owners and the retired.) There's no way on God's Earth that the Tories are going to do anything like this badly when people actually have to vote for a Government. Hard to say whether this is going to end in a Hung Parliament or a small Labour majority, but I'm still leaning towards the former. I don't think it'll be as bad for the Tories as '97 - socio-economic inequality has increased and the population has aged since then, both factors which mitigate against a Labour landslide.
I'm afraid that you are living in a fantasy land my friend.
Keir Starmer has done pretty much everything to ensure that the constituency to which you refer will feel relatively safe under Labour.
But when you have stories of disabled elderly lying injured in their homes and unable to get an ambulance, or others stranded in corridors in A&E for 48 hours, then you are I'm afraid missing another vital element of concern for people of that age. Not many of them have private health care. And I could add the spiralling costs of food and energy etc. etc.
It is FAR worse than 1997 when the economy was booming. Now it's tanking. Everything that could go wrong, is.
It will be a bloodbath at the election on a scale you have never seen before. It will re-write the annals and reset 'precedent' until the next event comes along to rewrite precedent.
An immense shellacking is undoubtedly what this Government deserves but they're not going to get it. There's much truth in what you say, but OTOH this is an administration by, of and for older voters - one which has buttered them up with big pension increases almost every year and has a proven track record for frustrating the development of new homes and, therefore, ensuring a long-term trend of ever-rising prices. There's a very big constituency of retired homeowners and late middle-aged heirs who therefore have a vested interest in keeping them in place.
Nor do I believe that the dire state of public services is necessarily the handicap that everyone thinks it is: just as with Covid, there are a certain number of poor blighters who really suffered from or died with it, and therefore a cohort of enraged survivors and relatives who will never forgive the Conservatives for their handling of the situation - but that's not most people. Most older voters (and especially the better off ones, who are likely on average to be fitter and may be able to afford private care to queue jump for routine operations,) have not ended up spending years in agony waiting to get their dodgy joints fixed, or been stranded outside a hospital for 40 hours in the back of an ambulance. For them, it's still "the economy, stupid," and they have been insulated from all the worst effects of the post-2008 incomes disaster by a combination of the triple lock, skyrocketing house prices and older style, more generous occupational pensions.
There are a lot of people who have done very nicely, thank you out of the Conservative years, and that's before getting on to the culture wars horror show. Much of the population still thinks Brexit was the right decision. Much of the population still wants the boat people problem to go away, and not by adopting the "just let them all in" solution that it'll be all too easy to convince them that Labour would be in favour of. Yes, Keir Starmer has managed his affairs as LOTO quite competently, and substantial gains seem to be nailed on - but as for an epochal victory, I just don't buy it. The minted old gits will weigh their options come election time, and stick with the devil they know. Watch.
I had my nephews over for Xmas, both in their 20s, and they clearly perceive all this from the other side. The younger one was telling me that everyone he knows is thoroughly disengaged from politics, blaming 'the system' as much as the Tories, and have basically concluded that politics and politicians are somewhere between corrupt and a waste of time.
Therefore there's a big disaffacted constituency whose instinct is not to bother - engaging some of these is the explanation why Corbyn managed to come in off the radar in 2017. It is hard to see Starmer doing the same.
Top Tip for Tories - wake up and smell reality. Your denial of the state of fuck is a big part of why growing numbers want to hurt you. Major won in 1992 - remember the slogan? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. At the moment the Tories are in denial that there is hurt, and it isn't working either.
That slogan was for 1997 wasn’t it? In 1992 we had the pain but precious little sign yet of anything working, economically.
The Tories are headed for extermination. This should seriously worry them as an actual prospect, now
The same pollster had the Tories on just 14% under Truss.
But we are now several weeks nearer the actual election
With every day that passes, without some kind of revival, the Tories inch nearer the cliff-edge of electoral disaster
I do not believe they can revive now (outside some huge black swan). The choice is between a really bad result (approaching 1997) or something apocalyptic, as happened to the Canadian Tories in 1993
No, there will not be a general election until Spring 2024 at the earliest, maybe even December 2024 or January 2025. That gives the government more time to reduce the deficit, wait for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine to reduce inflation and look at tax cuts for average earners.
The best PM numbers are also much better for Sunak and unless RefUK overtakes them there is zero chance of a Canada 1993 style result for the Tories
The best PM numbers could well be inflated by a polite (if patronising) pulling of peoples' punches because to be strongly critical of Sunak would appear racist. People will remember idiots taking to Twitter to trash the Tory party for racism for daring to reject Sunak in favour of Truss (even though they really wanted Kemi), so clearly it is a feeling that exists.
Comments
Those people are most likely not to vote next time. So regardless of anything else you can take a chunk of votes off the Tory tally. Then we have the remaining Breciteer believers who think the Tories have betrayed them. If FUKUK do stand as threatened, watch a smaller but likely critical chunk defect to them as they did in 2019. Seats like Stockton North didn't go Tory thanks to Farage.
But for the rest? They may not like politics or politicians, but they dislike a broken country even more. And its only the remaining Fans of Fabricant in denial about just how utterly and totally fucked this country is. Everyone else is massively fed up, knows it is getting worse and worse with no end in sight, and rightly blames the Tories.
Top Tip for Tories - wake up and smell reality. Your denial of the state of fuck is a big part of why growing numbers want to hurt you. Major won in 1992 - remember the slogan? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. At the moment the Tories are in denial that there is hurt, and it isn't working either.
Some wanted more money for the NHS - record waits and a broken system
Many wanted less migrants - a runaway catastrophe continues in the channel
Most wanted more money and opportunities - and face the cost of living disaster
Specialist groups wanted beneficial improvements - and all the Brexit-voting farmers and fishing communities are pretty well united about how things are worse now.
And almost all of them wanted to Take Back Control of their lives, sticking it to the man. And yet here we are with most services broken and the man saying "you will pay"
People didn't care about the EU. They just wanted to make things better. And its got worse...