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Why I have doubts about Labour winning a majority – politicalbetting.com
Why I have doubts about Labour winning a majority – politicalbetting.com
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Marr’s latest video for the NS makes some interesting points
George Ford spared Englands blushes but note - another red card and another tryless performance. The top seeds wont be losing any sleep after watching that...
What we (this site) could really do with is a well-reasoned extensive article or articles as to why Labour are likely to win a majority.* It's all rather lop-sided at the top at the moment, despite the voting intention opinion polling, which is the baseline for any betting, giving Labour convincing leads and the Conservatives languishing in the 20's.
As you know, I don't believe that the starting point of 202 MPs is legitimate. The 2019 'Get Brexit Done' vote was an abnormal, atypical, General Election so it's a fallacy to use that, and the subsequent required seat gain, as a benchmark. There is no guarantee or even likelihood that the 2019 Cons voters who so dramatically followed Boris' Brexit Bandwagon are going to return to the fold, or indeed any fold. This is all the more true given the mess up of Brexit and polling which consistently now demonstrates my point that Brexit voting no longer equates to party allegiance.
It can be argued that Labour need a net gain of just c. 30 seats from the last true General Election in June 2017 in order to win an outright majority.
(*And no, I'm not going to write it. Too much else to do.)
I could go on in this vein. We need some threads putting the extensive reasons why Labour are likely to win an outright majority!
Plus if we accept your premise that 2017 is the baseline we should use well Labour ended on 262 seats which means they would need 64 net gains for a majority.
I'm not dissing your arguments. It's just that they represent about 20% of the overall and this site badly needs the other 80% to be put. Otherwise it's unbalanced and, for a betting site, that's not good.
You're right about the 66 gains though. I was thinking of % swing.
By the way ... Scotland.
Scotland
Argentina were indeed woeful but I think we have to see what England do with 15 men before jumping to conclusions about them.
If I get this finished then in a fortnight or so I might offer an article. Honoured to be asked to be honest.
xx
The greater warning is arguably not psephological. It's more a warning to Labour in government about what happens when centrist metropolitan lefties forget their core vote. You'd have thought with Brexit they might have learned. Beware of Labour Londoners!
According to your thesis the government is so discredited with everyone you meet that its overwhelming defeat is nailed on.
There is no way that a peripheral issue like ULEZ - that affects relatively few people and was forced on outer London by the Tories in the first place - should have derailed a significant Labour win there, and allow the representative of said government to claim the seat, when along with the rest of us its voters have a list of grievances a mile long.
That it did, should make any sensible person stop and think.
Dove 72+hr protection deodorant
SEVENTY TWO HOURS?!?!
And a PLUS for those who want more than three days without washing
This leaves me with so many very unpleasant questions that I never wanted to ask
The only thing it might answer is who washes their towel just once a year
My brother does and he is very angry about ulez. If you lived there you would know this. My brother says he will never again vote for Sadiq Khan. I mention this because the mainstay of your premise is wrong. It might affect relatively few people but in reality it has affected virtually all people living in outer London.
Labour had a swing of there of iirc 6.5%
On the same night at Selby they had a swing of 23%
Local factor
It also puts the Labour challenge into perspective. Blair started off close in terms of seats and won big. Cameron, like Starmer, started over 100 seat short and didn’t quite make it. Winning 123 extra seats is hard, really hard. The red wall will produce some easy wins as will Scotland but there is still a long way to go.
It may well happen. The government looks hapless and SKS doesn’t scare people like Corbyn. It is time for a change. But personally I think it’s going to be close.
I love it when the brain plays tricks on us like this.
I'm not really saying that we should 'ignore' it. That would be exaggerated.
I'm merely suggesting, for I believe sound reasons, that it's a shaky foundation and that the June 2017 is a safer benchmark of the last true General Election. December 2019 was an aberration. An unusual set of circumstances leading to a unique sole-issue Get Brexit Done vote, galvanised by Boris who reached parts no other has or can.
If you take May’s polling in April 2017 as being accurate, 2019 is about what you would expect not the next election but the one after that to look like.
2017 can then be explained by the ineptitude of May’s campaign. And 2019 as the backwash.
If you want to force the analysis on to more favourable terms for your thesis you could point out 2019 was essentially a 1992 style result, with 1992 being affected by early tactical voting.
Voter: ”The Conservatives?! You’ve got to be having a laugh, mate. Brexit’s turned into a fiasco, the economy is going down the toilet, my bills are sky high, my mortgage/rent is almost unaffordable, that Sunak keeps going on about the boats but he can’t stop them coming, that Home Secretary’s a joke; what about the NHS, have you tried to get a doctor’s appointment recently? Those Tory MPs, they’re all at each other’s throats and only in it for themselves, that Johnson was a lying crook, the next PM was an imbecile, now we have the wally in charge - I can’t wait to see them gone and won’t be voting Tory in a million years!”
HY: ”But what about ULEZ?”
Voter: ”Oh yeah, ULEZ. Put me down as a definite, then…”
It's very typical of sassenachs to ignore or overlook what is going on up there.
Take 30 seats off your 120 @TSE to start with?
Japan v Chile - a very easy win for Japan - 20+ pts
South Africa v Scotland - this one will be very interesting - Scotland are on very good form and this is a must win game for them. But I dont think they will do it. South Africa to win but by 6 pts only with Scotland getting losing bonus point.
Wales v Fiji - this is very unpredictable - Wales were terrible in 6N but Gatland has now steadied the ship. We never saw a full Wales side in the warm up games and this is first time we will have an almost full side. Fiji are on top form especially after beating England and this game could go either way. But 'in Gatland we trust'. Wales by 5 (or Fiji by 5....or....??).
I'm putting part of a lengthy line of reasoning so keep it civil. This is a betting site and I'm pretty convinced of my arguments. But not conclusively so.
Edit - I am also dubious about Labour winning 30 seats in Scotland. That’s over half and while they’ve closed down the SNP they’re still behind in every poll. Twenty would be more plausible, but it’s still a tough ask.
There are three or four related questions which arise.
1) Does the country need a clear and strong Labour majority to do the stuff the country needs (Andrew Marr video yesterday) or is a Labour party relying on others better
2) What happens to America and how do we and the EU respond
3) What happens if the result is something like Tories and DUP 320 seats, SF and Speaker 8 seats, seven other parties 322 seats
4) What are the betting implications
Andrew Marr latest, with slightly apocalyptic tone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rSstwTur6Y
I am not wholly convinced, though. My doubts arise because it seems to me that TSE is using data on Labour's strengths relative to 1997 to argue against a 1997-style *seat gain*, when I would think the appropriate argument would be to argue against a 1997-style *majority*. The latter argument I would certainly buy, I think there is little chance Labour wins a three figure majority.
The key thing here is that Labour did so badly in 2019, as is evident in the top chart. Also, as one sees in the chart, Labour did badly in 2015, largely owing to Scotland. That is why they face this mountain to climb. But surely some of those seat losses will unwind even if Labour were not 10-20 points ahead of the Tories in the polls. Corbyn is gone. We are not "getting Brexit done". And the SNP bubble has burst. So that's maybe 70 seats coming back even if Labour and the Tories were going into the election pretty much level pegging.
That leaves Labour needing maybe 50 or 60 odd additional seats. Based on polling and net leader satisfaction data that seems achievable. For me, a small but workable Labour majority seems the most likely outcome, although it's not nailed on.
But then they did achieve a Selby style swing in Selby!
IMHO all baselines are off (except the factual one of what happened last time) because we have not had a GE post Brexiting, post Jezza, post Ukraine, post Covid, post SNP self immolation, and post the Boris/Truss/Tory meltdown.
It is worth bearing in mind that the SNP’s last several campaigns have been extremely well funded. Right now they seem to be on their uppers and it is not easy to see where the money is going to come from.
Plus it must be painting a plastic coating onto your pores. Ugh.
In February 1982 the split was Con 33 Lab 32 Alliance 34.
That in itself was a fairly rapid reversal from October/November 1981 where the Alliance was clocking 50%. Indeed, the following month, even before the Falklands War, the Conservatives had retaken the lead.
Polls often change, and can change very rapidly.
In January 2009, to extend your analogy, Cameron's Tories had a lead of 44-30 over Labour and that lead was increasing. Didn't help at the general election.
The clock had hit 80mins and Ireland got possession and all they needed to do was kick the ball out and game over. Instead they kept playing and pushing for a try which they got to ensure they won by over 80 points rather than high 70s. One of the pundits was saying “that just shows the mentality of this team, they just want to score tries”.
That is fair enough and fine but you had a situation where they had millions of points already, they were playing in baking hot sun and there is every possibility one of their players could have got injured and missed other key group games for absolutely no real benefit.
A really hard focussed team would have booted that ball out asap and got into the changing rooms to prepare for next match. I don’t know whether it was over exuberance or hubris but they will need to be a lot more pragmatic if they want to win the whole thing.
Opinion polling is useful for keeping morale up and giving us anoraks lots to talk about, but this far out from a general election (bearing in mind, we don't have even have a reliable steer on the date yet) it's not really useful for predicting the outcome.
Heck, even Michael Howard managed an 11 point lead in one opinion poll.
The real issues facing Labour are logistical. How and where does it target its efforts? What topics are going to be most salient (and that will vary by area)? Where and how is Starmer himself going to be most useful and where would it be better to have local politicians front up? What adverts do they want and where do they put them? Labour's advertising team is clearly in very good shape and manipulating social media with genuine elan, which may help with younger voters, but they dominate that demographic already. How do they cut through to voters in middle age which is where the swing is likely to be?
Resource being finite and the input needed being very large, there is every reason to think that Labour will struggle to gain 124 seats. For me, NOM is the likeliest outcome and Conservatives largest party may well be value.
Interesting reporting by Sky News re Rwanda policy:-
The UK is leading the way with its Rwanda deportation scheme as other European countries look at "similar solutions" to tackle illegal immigration, the prime minister has said.
Rishi Sunak also said he discussed illegal immigration during a "meeting and a drink" with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni as world leaders attend the G20 summit in Delhi. Mr Sunak said they discussed how they can "work together" to tackle the "shared challenge" of illegal immigration in Europe.
The Conservative government wants to send tens of thousands of migrants more than 6,000 miles away from the UK to Rwanda as part of a £120m deal agreed with the east African country in 2022.Critics have claimed the policy breaks international human rights laws, and no one has been sent to the country yet after ongoing legal challenges in the courts.
Mr Sunak has said he will do "whatever is necessary" to get the removal flights going after a Court of Appeal ruling in June said the scheme is unlawful.
Speaking about the Rwanda policy to reporters in Delhi, Mr Sunak said on Saturday: "I've always said that this is a global issue, this issue of illegal migration. It is only growing in importance and will require global coordination to resolve. I have said Britain would be tough but fair, and where Britain leads others will follow. We have been willing to take bold and radical action to tackle this problem.
"I said that other countries would look at similar solutions, and you can start to see that they are with the news from Austria this week, and more broadly across Europe.
"You can just see this issue growing and growing in salience, and I think that we have been out in front leading the conversation on this and the need to look at this differently and look at radical solutions."
Mr Sunak's comments come after Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer raised the possibility of deporting illegal immigrants to Rwanda, where their cases for asylum cases would be processed. Gerhard Karner, Austria's interior minister, has called for the EU to introduce "asylum procedures in safe third countries" and referred to a model "Denmark and Great Britain are also following".
10 parties won at least 1 seat last time. Plus 1 Speaker. 8 don't vote: 7 SF + 1 Speaker. Only the DUP (8 seats) have more than a 0% chance of keeping the Tories in power after the 2024 GE.
In a close election a Labour government could need up to 6 other parties to stay in government: LD, Green, SNP, PC, SDLP, Alliance.
Assuming SF get 7 again, 322 seats are needed for a majority of 2.
And whilst others may not have liked her, that's very different from hate. And others may have been repelled by the hatred enough to support her.
(*) hatred becoming trendy is a bad thing IMO.
I don't think I'm being complacent. I don't think a Labour majority is nailed on. But right now polling seems quite stable, the public seem sick of the government and ready to give Labour a go. So a Labour majority is the most likely outcome IMHO.
That said, I have always been in the Labour most seats, small majority if everything goes right, camp. I see 1997 as the exception, not the rule. Governments that have been in power for a long time are generally tough to shift. And we still have tax cuts to come in this Parliament.
This is the UK, not the US. There isn’t some massive incumbency effect.
Seeking something, anything, to cheer themselves up, some Tories believe that they still have a few trump cards in their hand. Dog-eared political playbooks from past elections suggest to them that immigration can be weaponised to their advantage.
For 13 years, Tory leaders have promised to curb immigration and then presided over the opposite, a crowd-pleaser neither with those who wanted the numbers down nor with those who thought the targets were stupid. That is one reason to think that there is now more risk to them than reward in trying to use it as an electoral weapon.
More warnings to the Tories are to be found in insightful new polling and analysis that will be published this week by the thinktank British Future. Its findings strongly suggest that immigration is no longer a trump card for the Conservatives.
It is another rule of competitive politics that you should try to reduce the attention paid to your failures, not attract more of it. The scheme to deport asylum seekers to Africa has so far brought satisfaction only to the Rwandan government, which is better off to the tune of £140m from the British taxpayer before a flight has taken off. The Home Office’s own assessment reckons the bill will be £169,000 per person deported (the true figure will be higher) and that “it is not possible to estimate” whether it will have any deterrent effect on those desperate enough to imperil themselves by crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane.
If the Conservatives seek to make a big issue of immigration at the election, they will be focusing attention on an area where they have relentlessly broken their promises, visibly failed and are deeply mistrusted. That doesn’t look like a winning card.
Why? Because Labour have no positive prospectus, whilst the Conservatives are very much steady as she goes, and keeping Tory voters happy even if everyone else is unhappy.
As to personalities, Sunak comes across as a really great guy, whilst Starmer comes across as rude, aloof and unpleasant. Surpassed only by the foul mouthed Rayner.
For those of us who would like to see this gravy train hit the buffers, it won't. Much like 1992, trebles all round at the Con. Club.
Whereas it is human nature not to want to admit that you were wrong. And in practice it’s common for people who supported the government last time to think, “they can stuff it this time, I’m not going to bother” and for people who stayed at home last time to think “maybe I will turn out and give the other lot a chance this time”. Both lost in the data because the overall number of abstainers stays the same. Both of which put a lag on swing.
It’s a reason why governments that just scrape in can often get a decent majority if they wait a while and then try again.
They have not done so, perhaps apart from housing (which every government promises and fails to improve), and until they do, they don't deserve anything at all.
I don’t see the LDs taking votes from Labour next time, so the Tories need to win Labour switchers back. That is very tough to do, though not impossible. Scotland could well help Labour again, though.
But all of it has to be seen in the context of over 100 Labour gains to get a majority of one. That is a huge ask.
I suppose if it helps the good guys (Conservatives) who are up against the bad guys (everyone else) win an election perhaps the British reputation for fairness is a price worth paying.
Come back to me with a poll from three months before the election and with rare exceptions (2017, again) I'll take it as a good indicator of the result.
The snag here is we don't actually know when the election will be. Logic says in May, but logic and politicians are strangers to each other when eight months more of power is available by delaying.
(I hadn't actually realised HMG were so involved in selecting sites - I 'd thought it was local initiative. Old shops sounded to me very like local initiative and not central government.)
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/10/uk-government-did-not-carry-out-detailed-surveys-before-it-bought-free-schools-sites
'The government failed to carry out detailed surveys that would reveal problems such as asbestos and unstable concrete before buying up sites for its flagship free schools, an Observer investigation has found.
Free schools were launched by Michael Gove in 2010 with the promise that they would transform education in England. More than 650 are currently open. Gove made much of the fact that ministers would be tearing up planning laws to enable groups of teachers, parents and charities to set up schools in old offices, shops and houses.
However, documents seen by the Observer reveal that in some cases there was such haste to open large numbers of these new schools that the government agency tasked with buying the sites purchased “unsuitable” disused buildings without first undertaking the detailed surveys that experts insist are essential.
This led to some refurbishments running millions of pounds over budget while thousands of other state schools struggled with leaking, decaying buildings in urgent need of repair following the government’s axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010. '
PS And yes, some have RAAC.
Money given to Rwanda so far: 140m
Money given to France so far: 63m
Refugees packed off to Kigali with a boot up their arse: 0
Boat arrivals this year: 21,000
Those numbers matter more than whether Italian Fash Karen wants to try the policy on for size.
Yesterday I had, for the first time for years, an electoral communication from the Labour Party. In my inbox.
I pointed out that it was actually irrelevant, because it related to a neighbouring MP, and actually got a chatbot reply.
Your team win the next election, but they don't deserve to.
As with many of Gove's initiatives, it was the right decision to scrap BSF and yet the utterly wrong decision in what to do next.
Form last year:
Under the British system, applicants whose claims for asylum are successful will be told to stay in Rwanda. Austria said that under its proposal successful claimants would be welcome to return to the EU.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4ded2c24-e72b-11ec-9b02-3f136f233710?shareToken=3991a7244e7e00e2b4fed9088b59e04d
On topic. It does still seem absurd for Labour to bounce back from the 2019 disaster so quickly. But there are 650 seats, and someone has to win in each of them. And unless Lib Dems can start winning seats without a massive local "Winning Here" campaign, that's either the red or blue teams.
If there are 100 Libs/Scots/NIites (and that's pretty optimistic for Lib Dems and SNP, about 40 each), that leaves 550. So you need about 225 Conservatives to deny Labour a majority. Right now, it's not easy to see them doing that well.
People don’t like to admit they’re wrong, but also it’s not hard to come up with a reason why your vote in 2024 should be different from your vote in 2019. Brexit has happened. It’s a different Labour leader. It’s a twice different Conservative leader. No-one is getting the option to vote again for a Johnsonian government or a Corbynite one.
Now I know even by quoting Sky's report would be a trigger event for some but then it is a news story whether you agree with 8t or not
Now, against that he has the same problem himself - but, with the advantage of incumbency of MPs and probably a lack of interest in local government (which is falling apart on his watch anyway) it seems a reasonable gamble to take.
However, as you note, he is not a good strategist and this may not occur to him.
In fact, his past record suggests the best argument he will see for holding it in May is that it will be much cheaper.
That Rishi Sunak is trying to elide the two is a great shame, because he's meant to be better than that. Less dishonest.
Isn't he?
Rwanda still isn't a serious immigration policy.
The day in question is Midwinter's Day at the North Pole.
Grrrr....
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour
Taking Broxtowe at 53rd (majority 4.82%)
should mean Tories out of power.
Taking Great Grimsby at 134 doesn't seem improbable. It was Labour held in 2017.
Taking Mansfield at 200th isn't completely ridiculous. It had a 5000+ Lab majority in 2015.
A key figure is 322. This is needed by any grouping for a majority of 2 if SF get 7, as before + 1 Speaker.
This renders a Labour led government very likely. Tories+ DUP (worked well last time didn't it) need 322. That's 314 Tories. If they lose 52/3 seats Tories are out.
If that happened, politics would become frenetic of course.