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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » ORB/Indy poll finds that 76% think that LAB less electable now than it was on May 7th
An ORB poll for the Independent carried out over the weekend finds that 76% of those who had a view believe that LAB is less electable now than it was at the general election.
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Much for Labour depends on a change of mood among members/supporters. Most are in denial about the election result and don't want to consider why Labour lost. Witness the comments on the article above and watch it get rubbished on here.
https://medium.com/@PatrickRuffini/trumped-up-polls-c0d351831cfa
"The gloomy findings came as an analysis by the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society found that the party must broaden its appeal to people who voted Conservative in May to have any chance of returning to office at the next election."
Quite simply most of their findings and specifically their conclusions are utterly frightening for Labour.
I know that if someone asked me "if X is more electable than it was" I'd immediately assume that there was some doubt about it, which would tend to bias me towards "less"
I can’t recall a similar post general election poll on a party that has lost power and is going through the process of finding a new leader.
Labour hadn't just lost power though. They have already been in opposition for five years.
I can understand how a Previous Governments is likely to become further out of favour during the new governments honeymoon period but that is not the case here though.
All the other candidates are just bland and have had nothing to recommend them so far. Can anyone remember anything that the others have said that is of import?
Its not looking good. Dan Hodges might be right again. The only way for Labour to recover is to elect the unelectable.
What Axelrod famously derided as "vote Labour and win a microwave" showed Labour had learned nothing from the rise of the SNP and near-loss of the union after the disastrous negativity of Better Together. There was no reason to vote Labour. No sense of aspiration. In the leadership campaign, the reason for the rise of Corbyn is not what he saying, but that at least he is saying something.
"Historically, Labour has been slow to seek medical treatment. Some of us naively thought that, having been brought back from four defeats in 1997, it would never need to go through such a long exile again. Now, if Labour is only defeated again in 2020 and 2025 it will have got off lightly"
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ed-milibands-vanity-has-doomed-labour-for-a-generation-10408697.html
Oh dear. Someone told them.
Life is now boring again.
They are quite simply the modern equivalent of the "end of the world is nigh" sandwich board nutter ringing a bell and shouting at passer by's
Either Labour bats for the poor, in which case it alienates too much of the "centre ground", or else it doesn't - in which case it's utterly pointless as a Party. Class politics (at least within Britain) are finished. Labour is an idea whose time has gone. The Tories are in power for a generation or even longer.
You wouldn't have said that if the situation was reversed and the Tories were deep in the doodoo.
Perhaps if it started there, it might have a chance.
I can understand why some in Labour might want to clutch onto a straw that all their policy was fine, and they just lost due to campaigning incompetence, but that would be delusion.
perhaps considering reducing inequality and the most effective means of doing so would be productive
So....... Mr Decrepit ...what's your point?
They have a problem but there are several possible ways out.
They can elect one of the faceless two. Safe, but they'll bore the population rigid after Jezza's injection of novelty, risking the left wing and young going off to those non-boring Greens for the adrenaline rush.
They could elect Liz. Unlikely, safe and even more boring, but slow progress might put them in a position to compete in 2020.
They could elect Jezza, ride the Jezzagasm with wildly changing polls, before crashing and burning in 2020. Then from the Phoenix arises a Mr sensible and boring like Atlee.
I can't see them disappearing, though.
I think it was after the 2001 election that the Tories said that their problem was that they weren't getting their message across. No, the pundits said, the Tory problem was that their message was getting across and the voters didn't like it.
In 2015, the Labour message came across loud and clear ... vote for us cos we're not nasty Tories. It wasn't enough.
Given that most people think we need to reduce overspending substantially - what will Labourites accept? EdM resolutely refused to accept anything and just went for spending the same *bankers bonus 9x or more* or the *mansion tax* way beyond what it could possibly generate.
Kidding yourself that voters don't notice such things is daft. Yet I don't see any of the leadership candidates bar Kendall [and Hattie passim] being willing to accept that *tough decisions* aren't always populist apple pie.
Andy and Yvette remind me of Roger McGough:
The Leader
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I'm the leader
I'm the leader
OK what shall we do?
It was Murdoch that lost it for us, we need to be more like the SNP, we need to get people to turn out, voters were ignorant to the tories policies, etc etc
One comparison is, as Mike suggests, with the Tories post-1997 or -2001, but the Conservatives went on to lose both following elections (in one case, having had to replace the leader in the interim, into the bargain). A better comparison, from a positive angle, would be during the post-2005 Tory contest, or the 1994 Labour one, both of which produced winners.
But as others have noted, what this leadership election has shown even more that the paucity of quality on offer, is that Labour is suffering a severe crisis of identity. What is it for? Corbyn at least has an answer, even if that answer would render Labour unelectable. Kendall too has an answer, if one which is seemingly massively out of step with what Labour members want. But the two that should be the front-runners? Nothing. If elected, what would they do? What would they promote? What is their vision? I can't believe that you can get so far without actually believing something and without the skills to say what it is - so the only conclusion I can draw is that they're too scared to do so.
Umm.
"none of Labour's leadership candidates has engaged the public."
One has, but you're right. In different circumstances, they could have had a selection from Alan Johnson, Alastair Darling, Dan Jarvis and a couple of token white women ... Caroline Flint (she'd like that), Angela Eagle, and a token black woman (not Diane).
Even the Badger has an interesting back story.
But we ended up with the three stooges and a clown courtesy of Gordon and Ed.
And it's not going to go away: one of the farcicles will get elected.
https://www.politicshome.com/party-politics/articles/story/andy-burnham-ed-milibands-manifesto-was-best-i-have-ever-stood
Labour had a role: it was to provide a voice, be a fighting force for the underprivileged, the unhealthiest, the under-educated, the unemployed, the oppressed in Britain. It then decided that it was going to extend that to not just Britain, but to invite the underprivileged, the unhealthiest, the under-educated, the unemployed, the oppressed from around the world to come and make their life here. Without even asking the consent of those we already had here in such large numbers. And without making provision for additional health and housing and education for this huge inflow. For what was perceived by many as naked partisan advantage. To rub the noses of the right in multiculturalism.
Well, guess what? Their existing voter base felt rejected. It was like Labour had gone all Mormon - and told their existing wife to welcome his two new brides into their cramped home. That was always going to go well.
And then the financial crisis came, which finally put an end to creating jobs in the public sector. And then the credit card bill hit the doormat - the one they had lent to a crazed Scotsman who they were too afraid of to take it off him - and who had then pissed a trillion pounds up a wall, on a spending bender of mind-blowing proportions.
But it would all be OK again, because the nerdy guy who couldn't even eat a bacon butty without looking like a melted waxwork was going to show he had listened to people in the park and learnt - absolutely nothing.
Is it any wonder Labour has a brand across its forehead saying "UNFIT TO GOVERN"?
And they were caught with none of Max Clifford's fabrications, which helped Labour so much pre-1997.
The Sun has really got a whole trunkful of stories and mind-bleach pix out of this expose.
Sure, they're all for "helping the poor" and "investing in public services" but they haven't thought beyond the superficial as to what that means. So in practice, they'd sit at their desks and take decisions as they get handed briefing papers.
That might be fine if it was the 19th century and the UK was well positioned in the global race. It's not adequate today.
Nicely put. You're not a fan, then?
"The name "Labour" is old-fashioned. It says brawn, not brain. We need a proper Social Democratic Party, combining Lib Dems, Labour and Greens. None of the contenders for Labour leadership will resonate with the public. Someone outside parliament might be the answer. Talks should begin."
"We might not like to admit it, but 90% of it is down to the leader. It was UKIP for me last time because Farage was the only leader who answered yes-or-no questions with yes-or-no answers - it almost didn't matter what his answers actually were - at least he seemed to know his own mind. Next time, if Labour have any sense and elect him, it'll be Jeremy Corbyn - for the same reason."
"Having read in the Guardian for years that anyone who votes for UKIP is a racist, why would the Labour Party want those 4 million votes back?"
" Try going to work in blazing summer sunshine and watching the local chav family getting ready for a day of fun in the sun with the Stella.
Makes someone stupid enough to work wonder why they bother, and when they get their monthly payslip, they get a reminder of how much tax they paid to fund it."
"Unfortunately for Labour, standing up for the British Working Class is mutually exclusive to attracting the unskilled immigrant or benefit scrounger vote."
If this kind of behaviour is at all common, it will inflate Corbyn's vote. It probably won't be enough to affect the election result, but it will leave the next Labour leader thinking Corbyn is more popular with the party than he actually is, leading to political miscalculations.
Is there any reliable non-anecdotal evidence of Labour party members betting on their leadership election in significant numbers?
Why are they laughing? Because the only vision on show is from a lunatic whose political thought process got fixed 30 odd years ago when the world was young and the moon had no stain (one of my favourite Tolkien lines).
Kendall has made some tart and relevant observations but that is so far from a coherent platform as to be Miliband like. And the party faithful don't like those observations anyway so it doesn't really matter.
As for Cooper and Burnham...well, words fail me. Blair had a clear direction and program, Cameron had that speech, they look not to offend those who might think they are second best. Just pathetic.
This election is being run for the benefit of party members and affiliates and no-one else. The way it is conducted may cloud the way people view Labour over the coming years, but I suspect it will not. The result and its aftermath are much more likely to do that.
But he won the electorate over by having a vision of a better, kinder, more connected Conservative party that made the more traditional Davies look like a dinosaur (quite an achievement when you consider their respective backgrounds). And of course he had Osborne running his campaign.
As the thread yesterday pointed out this is Labour's point in the sun where they are getting a lot of attention. And it is not helping.
She left her £500k to three charities and now the daughter is getting £164k in the face of her mother's clear desire that she didn't want it.
I hope it's overturned on appeal. If your will is made with sound mind and without coercion it should stand.
I prefer the now famous: 'Vote Labour and get a free owl'.
Howard did the party a great service.
I think I'll offer an alternative view. The choice of leader is nowhere near as important as OGH and others claim it is. The view from some of the Tory-inclined on here that none of the Labour leadership candidates is credible as a Prime Minister and that the Conservatives are in for a generation is, apart from a weak attempt to dispirit those of us not in the Conservative camp, nonsense.
In 1975, there weren't many who saw Margaret Thatcher as a credible Prime Minister and indeed had Callaghan gone to the country in the Autumn of 1978, it's entirely conceivable he would have won the election. The Winter of Discontent and the political collapse of the Government in early 1979 opened the door for the Conservatives but arguably any of a dozen Conservative candidates could have on that election. Thatcher's rise to power was in no way inevitable and she could easily have been consigned to the footnotes of history.
The untimely death of John Smith opened the door for Blair but it's entirely possible John Smith would have defeated John Major anyway given the virtual political collapse of the Conservatives after 1992 and their internecine warfare quite apart from the events of September 1992 which, although with revision and hindsight are now deemed to have been a good thing, were not seen as such at the time and were perceived to have destroyed the Conservative notion of sound economic management.
Cameron too benefited from events well beyond his leadership. Had Brown gone to the polls in the autumn of 2007 (in the tradition of Eden, Macmillan and others, new leader gets new mandate etc) he might well have won and kept Cameron out until 2012 or even later.
The onset of the global financial crisis, which had nothing to do with the choice of Cameron as Conservative leader in 2005, offered a huge opportunity but even then Cameron succeeded in turning huge poll leads in 2008-9 into a not-quite victory in 2010.
In essence, therefore, it's about luck and the failings of others. The LOTO is always defined by the performance of the Government he/she is opposing. The Coalition was a good Government and Labour from 2010-15 had no credible economic alternative narrative so in essence it probably didn't better whether it was one of the Miliband brothers or anyone else who had won the leadership in 2010. Worse for Labour, the Coalition retained its cohesion and for the better part of its life was seen to be in control of events.
Labour's best chance in 2020 will come from Conservative problems which will occur at some point whether self-inflicted or the fault of events and forces wholly outside its control. If the Conservatives implode over the EU or are in some way seen by the electorate to have lost the competence for Government, Labour will benefit (as will other parties).
Rather interesting that your previous post was complaining that if it was David not Ed the nasty Tories , press , public, ol' john cobblly n'all would have done the same whichever brother
That sums up the problem, the world has moved on and people are fed up with Labours class wars. It's why you will not see a chance of power for at least a decade probably longer. You are simply dinosaurs and the XL5 - Corbyynite comet is heading your way.