If Remain win narrowly there is a small but not insignificant chance that UKIP lead the polls by September thanks to furious Leave voters flocking to them from both the Tories and Labour
If my expectation is correct, and Remain wins narrowly, I think there will be a lot of buyer's remorse.
I'm expecting buyer's remorse either way. Particularly if it's Leave, and then as soon as negotiations begin it becomes clear there's no serious support around any of the alternatives. Getting 50% wanting out of what we currently have is very different from getting 50% support for any vision of the relationship between the UK and Europe afterwards.
Excellent thread as others have said - useful insight behind the headlines.
'The Leaders of Scottish Labour over a generation were -and are - to blame!'
Brown won 39 more seats in Scotland than Miliband, it was under his watch that its Scottish presence collapsed in Westminster and he resigned accordingly as did the party's Scottish Leader Jim Murphy
But the odds on a second referendum must be long. The only credible ways I can see one occurring is if a Conservative Leaver gets the top job, or if UKIP gains sufficient electoral power (not necessarily a swathe of MPs, but being a big enough threat to shift the terms of debate) to force it into manifestos.
I don't want another referendum until the UK government decides it will campaign for Leave.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
Did his review ever see the light of day? I remember all that bollocks by Ed about commissioning all those long term reviews and I don't remember any stand out policies from the GE campaign that showed any real novel thinking.
I seem to recall it was "parked". You can read what i think is the final version online:
To support Phil's article, John Pienaar on R4 today reported hearing from Labour (REMAIN) Mps that they were finding a surprising number of LEAVE supporters on the doorstep. Since Pienaar is known to be close to Labour (offered a job in Ed's time), why would it be in REMAIN's interest to mislead John on that? Having heard that and read Phil's report I am now prepared to also state that I have also found >50% of Labour voters supporting LEAVE on doorstep in canvassing. Albeit in working class areas and running at 60/40 for LEAVE where they have an opinion.
If Labour voters break anything like 60/40 LEAVE then LEAVE wins.
Imho We're going to see an unprecedented working class turnout for leave. People who don't vote ever ever. The Labour remain 70/30 in polls is all ABC1 liberal luvvies.
All those AB1 Luvvies will turn out to vote too
Maybe.
Remain MPs might be misleading Pienaar, as the most important thing now is to make sure Remainers don't think it is in the bag and therefore don't bother voting. Leave will win this on turn-out of their more passionate supporters. As I keep saying complacency from Remain is a disaster.
My bets remain on leave.
All the betting should be on Leave as it plainly has a better than 18% chance of winning.
You're both somewhat missing the point (that'll make me popular)!
Hyufd: approximately 70% of Liberals who had no Liberal candidate to vote for voted Conservative. This was probably helped by the de jure existence of the Liberal National party until 1965, and by the liberal nature of much of the Conservative leadership. By contrast, Labour were viewed, not wholly unfairly, as a bunch of anti-democratic weirdos whom no self-respecting Liberal should even talk to.
Justin - your points are irrelevant simply because it is now socially much more acceptable not to vote at all. Turnout was 77% in 1959, 66% in 2015. Therefore, voters are much less likely to make a forced choice anyway. If we had only 2 candidates in large numbers of constituencies we'd just have even lower turnout.
I think we have to see the 1959 election in context though. The Conservatives had a large majority, had just had a giveaway budget, rationing was being forgotten, consumer goods were becoming readily available, unemployment was low and so was inflation. Add to that a divided, factional and inept Labour Party and it's hardly surprising they did badly. This year, coming off a hung parliament with an uneasy coalition, five years of economic doom and gloom mood music, a united Labour Party and a simple message that they thought people liked, and their performance was dismal (again ultimately those Liberal voters that everyone confidently predicted would go Labour split evenly with the Tories).
On topic, that was a really interesting article and it looks as though Labour are making the exact mistake they made in Scotland- hitching their star to a course a large chunk of their loyallest voters do not support. I think @SeanT's comment on Corbyn's blunder is correct. The man continues to prove he has the political antennae of a stunted wood louse and the principles of a flip-flop.
Can I just mention that the author accepts that the increase in Labour's REMAIN vote "reflects Corbyn’s accession rather than his recent conversion to the EU cause."
Perhaps the decrease in Labour's LEAVE vote also reflects Corbyn's accession rather than his recent conversion to the EU cause? Otherwise we'd be saying that Corbyn is personally a net positive for the Labour Party, which sounds, as they say on other parts of the internet, problematic.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Is this Lord Owen chap in some way related to a David Owen, who left Labour to form the SNP in the 1980s in major part because of the party's anti-eu policies?
He's always had a very distinct eurosceptic tint. I believe it's one of the main reasons he refused to buy into the Liberal merger.
To support Phil's article, John Pienaar on R4 today reported hearing from Labour (REMAIN) Mps that they were finding a surprising number of LEAVE supporters on the doorstep. Since Pienaar is known to be close to Labour (offered a job in Ed's time), why would it be in REMAIN's interest to mislead John on that? Having heard that and read Phil's report I am now prepared to also state that I have also found >50% of Labour voters supporting LEAVE on doorstep in canvassing. Albeit in working class areas and running at 60/40 for LEAVE where they have an opinion.
If Labour voters break anything like 60/40 LEAVE then LEAVE wins.
Imho We're going to see an unprecedented working class turnout for leave. People who don't vote ever ever. The Labour remain 70/30 in polls is all ABC1 liberal luvvies.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
Did his review ever see the light of day? I remember all that bollocks by Ed about commissioning all those long term reviews and I don't remember any stand out policies from the GE campaign that showed any real novel thinking.
I seem to recall it was "parked". You can read what i think is the final version online:
To support Phil's article, John Pienaar on R4 today reported hearing from Labour (REMAIN) Mps that they were finding a surprising number of LEAVE supporters on the doorstep. Since Pienaar is known to be close to Labour (offered a job in Ed's time), why would it be in REMAIN's interest to mislead John on that? Having heard that and read Phil's report I am now prepared to also state that I have also found >50% of Labour voters supporting LEAVE on doorstep in canvassing. Albeit in working class areas and running at 60/40 for LEAVE where they have an opinion.
If Labour voters break anything like 60/40 LEAVE then LEAVE wins.
Imho We're going to see an unprecedented working class turnout for leave. People who don't vote ever ever. The Labour remain 70/30 in polls is all ABC1 liberal luvvies.
All those AB1 Luvvies will turn out to vote too
Maybe.
They probably will because they always do, but they're priced in.
The question is whether people who don't vote in elections because "they're all the same" will turn out this time.
Precisely.
Also "All those AB1 Luvvies" is a rather generous description for 75ish%
To support Phil's article, John Pienaar on R4 today reported hearing from Labour (REMAIN) Mps that they were finding a surprising number of LEAVE supporters on the doorstep. Since Pienaar is known to be close to Labour (offered a job in Ed's time), why would it be in REMAIN's interest to mislead John on that? Having heard that and read Phil's report I am now prepared to also state that I have also found >50% of Labour voters supporting LEAVE on doorstep in canvassing. Albeit in working class areas and running at 60/40 for LEAVE where they have an opinion.
If Labour voters break anything like 60/40 LEAVE then LEAVE wins.
Imho We're going to see an unprecedented working class turnout for leave. People who don't vote ever ever. The Labour remain 70/30 in polls is all ABC1 liberal luvvies.
All those AB1 Luvvies will turn out to vote too
Maybe.
My bets remain on leave.
Hedging your bets there
We should have guessed that Theresa May would adopt an 'indefinite leave to remain' policy.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
I would argue that even in the 1950s there was always a strong Tory base in the working class. Look at their strength in Lancashire or Sunderland, or Sheffield, down in many cases to the 1970s.
The one election in the last hundred years where the working class unambiguously voted Labour was 1945. Even then, they were probably less significant in the Labour victory than the middle class (it has never been helpful to organised Labour that the working class has always actually been comparatively small in this country, certainly never approaching 50% of the population). That is why 1950 and 1951 were such a shattering emotional blow to the Labpur left, from which some of them literally never recovered - they could not believe that the workers had rejected them in favour of another party whom they saw (as one particularly idiotic man said) as 'lower than vermin.'
It is really beginning to look as if Brexit decuded to let remain shoot their bolts early and have a policy of give them the rope to hang themselves with and waited until purdah started before letting rip with their big guna in terms of issues to debate.
It's the smart PR approach to keep your big stuff for when the audience is paying most attention. But it takes some steel. That's not 100/70/30 days out - but the final 3 weeks. I think Remain believed early carpet bombing would give them an unassailable lead/demoralise their opponent.
Well, that hasn't worked out as planned. It's all to play for.
The nazis tried the same at Stalingrad. Flattened the place by carpet bombing in the hope of demoralising the Russians into giving up.
The Russians didnt and then the nazis discovered that the civilian free ruins made holding the line much easier for the Russians.
Abiding to the Daily Stormer, an American neo-Nazi blog: "It is also an established fact that Taylor Swift is secretly a Nazi and is simply waiting for the time when Donald Trump makes it safe for her to come out and announce her Aryan agenda to the world."
I won't ask why you were perusing the Daily Stormer...
Probably for the same reason I follow Nick Griffin, The EDL, Britain First, and The KKK.
The output is hysterical.
There's a better gag about a Jew reading Der Stürmer in Vienna in 1930's in this discussion from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. See from 41:09.
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
I would argue that even in the 1950s there was always a strong Tory base in the working class. Look at their strength in Lancashire or Sunderland, or Sheffield, down in many cases to the 1970s.
The one election in the last hundred years where the working class unambiguously voted Labour was 1945. Even then, they were probably less significant in the Labour victory than the middle class (it has never been helpful to organised Labour that the working class has always actually been comparatively small in this country, certainly never approaching 50% of the population). That is why 1950 and 1951 were such a shattering emotional blow to the Labpur left, from which some of them literally never recovered - they could not believe that the workers had rejected them in favour of another party whom they saw (as one particularly idiotic man said) as 'lower than vermin.'
The urban working class in England and Wales voted Labour in 1945. In the countryside and Scotland it was more complicated.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
From 1945-1970 probably at least 33% of working class voters voted Conservative. There's been a big switch of upper middle class voters away from the Conservatives since 1970.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
Good old Priti, she cares so much about public services used by ordinary people that she has consistently voted to cut them and will continue to do so. And such is her regard for ordinary people working in the public sector that she supports freezing their wages. And as for ordinary people who are members of trades unions ...
It is remarkable that the one single, positive, voter-friendly aspect of Corbyn's election, that the new leader is EU-agnostic - is not being exploited by Labour.
Instead, Corbyn has been forced to pretend (badly) that he's pro-European, thereby further damaging the party with the voters it can least afford to lose, the remaining WWCs.
Bravo, Labour, bravo. Always able to convert a cock-up into a calamity.
Yes, very much a missed opportunity for Labour.
It can be explained in terms of Corbyn's perceived insecurity and his wanting to secure his position as leader. He has been quite prepared to seek conflict with the parliamentary party on issues where he considers that he has the membership on his side, even where his stance is clearly not (in your words) "voter friendly" (e.g. Syria, Trident renewal). The converse is that he has not been prepared to seek conflict with the parliamentary party on the EU as he considers that the membership would also be against him, even where such as stance would be "voter friendly" (at least for much of Labour's lost working class vote).
The outcome of Corbyn's stance: his leadership is more than ever secure with the membership, and Labour's grip on its traditional working class base is more insecure than ever.
Caroline Ansell MP for my town has also just come out for Leave according to local reports.
Caroline Ansell 28 May 2016:
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
In an ideal world, relatively few British voters want Brexit. They want an EU that devolves power back to national governments. But that is an EU which is not, and never will be, on offer.
Just nine Labour MP's for Leave out of a couple of hundred seems pretty unrepresentative when the Labour Leave vote could easily be in excess of three million.
I would seriously question the Labour notion that Remain protects workers' rights when I see the industrial unrest in France and Greece, all arising from erosion of rights.
I suspect that many working class Labour supporters know it instinctively as they have seen access to services, housing and wages all come under pressure from the effects of migration and cheap labour, whether it bases here or somewhere else.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
It's amazing isn't: even at the current accelerated pace, it works take a decade for them to reach even 3% of the population.
Disingenuous in the extreme.
You are making Southam Observer's slight of hand in classifying their children as non-migrants, despite being dual nationals, the same race, same religion and having a whole host of foreign relatives.
I would argue that even in the 1950s there was always a strong Tory base in the working class. Look at their strength in Lancashire or Sunderland, or Sheffield, down in many cases to the 1970s.
The one election in the last hundred years where the working class unambiguously voted Labour was 1945. Even then, they were probably less significant in the Labour victory than the middle class (it has never been helpful to organised Labour that the working class has always actually been comparatively small in this country, certainly never approaching 50% of the population). That is why 1950 and 1951 were such a shattering emotional blow to the Labpur left, from which some of them literally never recovered - they could not believe that the workers had rejected them in favour of another party whom they saw (as one particularly idiotic man said) as 'lower than vermin.'
Now of course the social structure of British cities was different in the 50s. There was only about 1 car per 12 people; it's 1 per 2-3 people nowadays. So a lot more professionals did not drive and outside London that meant they had to live near their (city-centre) offices. Sectarianism was stronger in urban areas too, and in the 50s it was a net positive for the Conservatives and the Unionists (reversing to net negative by the 60s).
I have come to believe that Labour kept the working classes in 1950 and 1951 and maybe all the way up to 1966, but lost the middle classes who wanted to change the government after 14 years. The reason is, exactly as you say, that their numbers were small in the UK by 1945 relative to other countries, so Labour could lose while keeping their heartland. The biggest swings in 1950 and 1951 were in the suburbs of London, not the classic working-class Labour heartlands around the coalfields or in their more recent inner-city gains in the North and central London. I think all of the top 25 straight-fight swings in 1950 were in the London suburban belt, except Woolwich East/West and Fulham West. Edward Heath won the biggest swing I can identify; over 13.5 per cent in Bexley. They stayed competitive in most of those seats until 1970. The biggest swing in the North was in Altrincham and Sale.
Labour's heartland was the working class and even there they didn't win a huge majority most of the time. Being an English Conservative was (is?) like playing politics on easy mode.
You're both somewhat missing the point (that'll make me popular)!
Hyufd: approximately 70% of Liberals who had no Liberal candidate to vote for voted Conservative. This was probably helped by the de jure existence of the Liberal National party until 1965, and by the liberal nature of much of the Conservative leadership. By contrast, Labour were viewed, not wholly unfairly, as a bunch of anti-democratic weirdos whom no self-respecting Liberal should even talk to.
Justin - your points are irrelevant simply because it is now socially much more acceptable not to vote at all. Turnout was 77% in 1959, 66% in 2015. Therefore, voters are much less likely to make a forced choice anyway. If we had only 2 candidates in large numbers of constituencies we'd just have even lower turnout.
I think we have to see the 1959 election in context though. The Conservatives had a large majority, had just had a giveaway budget, rationing was being forgotten, consumer goods were becoming readily available, unemployment was low and so was inflation. Add to that a divided, factional and inept Labour Party and it's hardly surprising they did badly. This year, coming off a hung parliament with an uneasy coalition, five years of economic doom and gloom mood music, a united Labour Party and a simple message that they thought people liked, and their performance was dismal (again ultimately those Liberal voters that everyone confidently predicted would go Labour split evenly with the Tories).
On topic, that was a really interesting article and it looks as though Labour are making the exact mistake they made in Scotland- hitching their star to a course a large chunk of their loyallest voters do not support. I think @SeanT's comment on Corbyn's blunder is correct. The man continues to prove he has the political antennae of a stunted wood louse and the principles of a flip-flop.
I agree with most of that. In Scotland though more Labour voters voted Yes than will vote Leave in EU ref. Almost no Tories voted Yes in Scotland while at least half will vote Leave in EU ref, so even if Labour loses a few voters to UKIP it is not likely to be as many as they lost to the SNP and not as many as the Tories will lose to UKIP
Just nine Labour MP's for Leave out of a couple of hundred seems pretty unrepresentative when the Labour Leave vote could easily be in excess of three million.
I would seriously question the Labour notion that Remain protects workers' rights when I see the industrial unrest in France and Greece, all arising from erosion of rights.
I suspect that many working class Labour supporters know it instinctively as they have seen access to services, housing and wages all come under pressure from the effects of migration and cheap labour, whether it bases here or somewhere else.
Rights will follow.
The French & Belgians are losing rights British workers never enjoyed. The emasculation of the trade unions that traditionally looked after the intetests of working class people in the UK has nothing to do with the EU.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
It's amazing isn't: even at the current accelerated pace, it works take a decade for them to reach even 3% of the population.
Disingenuous in the extreme.
You are making Southam Observer's slight of hand in classifying their children as non-migrants, despite being dual nationals, the same race, same religion and having a whole host of foreign relatives.
0/10, Smithson Jr.
See me.
EU immigrants are largely the same race as the British and usually have the same religion.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
It's amazing isn't: even at the current accelerated pace, it works take a decade for them to reach even 3% of the population.
Disingenuous in the extreme.
You are making Southam Observer's slight of hand in classifying their children as non-migrants, despite being dual nationals, the same race, same religion and having a whole host of foreign relatives.
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
It's amazing isn't: even at the current accelerated pace, it works take a decade for them to reach even 3% of the population.
But they are not equally distributed around the country - and thus putting huge pressure on certain resources in certain locations.
Another way of looking at it - in 10 years the total immigration (EU and non EU) would mean that the Equivalent population of Scotland had come to live in England.
Caroline Ansell MP for my town has also just come out for Leave according to local reports.
Caroline Ansell 28 May 2016:
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
In an ideal world, relatively few British voters want Brexit. They want an EU that devolves power back to national governments. But that is an EU which is not, and never will be, on offer.
It will certainly never be on offer until we've got a vote to leave. Eurocrats have shown time and again that the pay no heed to anything they don't like until poked aggressively in the eye by democracy.
Brown won 39 more seats in Scotland than Miliband, it was under his watch that its Scottish presence collapsed in Westminster and he resigned accordingly as did the party's Scottish Leader Jim Murphy
It was Brown blocking (and then knifing in the back) Wendi Alexander's call of "bring it on" to the notion of a first term Indy Ref that brought Labour to this situation. In my view there was nothing Milliband could possibly do.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
From 1945-1970 probably at least 33% of working class voters voted Conservative. There's been a big switch of upper middle class voters away from the Conservatives since 1970.
I wonder. At the moment, only 37 per cent of the population as a whole votes Conservative. So the 2015 working-class Conservative figure has got to be less than 33. But I don't think the Conservatives have lost support since the 1960s among the working class - like you, I think they lost support among professionals, who have been growing as a share of the electorate. So for those reasons, I would sell 33 per cent Conservative support among working-class voters in 1945-70.
I was channel hopping on the radio this morning. Did I hear (on Pienaar's Politics?) that time after time, Labour MPs out on the stump are hearing their voters are going for Leave?
"Figures released last week show that there were 270,000 EU nationals settling in the UK last year. The net total of EU migrants – the difference between the numbers arriving and those leaving during the year – reached a record of 184,000 in 2015.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
It's amazing isn't: even at the current accelerated pace, it works take a decade for them to reach even 3% of the population.
Disingenuous in the extreme.
You are making Southam Observer's slight of hand in classifying their children as non-migrants, despite being dual nationals, the same race, same religion and having a whole host of foreign relatives.
0/10, Smithson Jr.
See me.
Laughable.
How about a refutation rather than the usual sneering?
Incidentally, I believe your calculation assumes a zero EU-born population to start with, excludes citizens of the Irish Republic and, of course, takes no account of citizens from outside the EU.
If this attitude continues, I will have to call your parents in.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
From 1945-1970 probably at least 33% of working class voters voted Conservative. There's been a big switch of upper middle class voters away from the Conservatives since 1970.
I wonder. At the moment, only 37 per cent of the population as a whole votes Conservative. So the 2015 working-class Conservative figure has got to be less than 33. But I don't think the Conservatives have lost support since the 1960s among the working class - like you, I think they lost support among professionals, who have been growing as a share of the electorate. So for those reasons, I would sell 33 per cent Conservative support among working-class voters in 1945-70.
Far less than 37% of the population votes Tory. It's around 25% of the total electorate, isn't it?
Brown won 39 more seats in Scotland than Miliband, it was under his watch that its Scottish presence collapsed in Westminster and he resigned accordingly as did the party's Scottish Leader Jim Murphy
It was Brown blocking (and then knifing in the back) Wendi Alexander's call of "bring it on" to the notion of a first term Indy Ref that brought Labour to this situation. In my view there was nothing Milliband could possibly do.
Regardless Brown held Labour's seats in Scotland while Miliband lost them so Miliband went
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
I confined the analysis to the VI of those who voted in 2015, ignoring those who did not vote. So it's not following YouGov methodology, just using their raw data to establish trends, based on comparisons between how people said they voted in May 2015 when asked in May 2015 and how the same people say they would vote now.
For the record, the UKIP 2015 voters (who in case you missed the point are not the main focus of the article) were 12.5% of the sample of 1527 voters, almost identical to their 2015 vote share.
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Caroline Ansell MP for my town has also just come out for Leave according to local reports.
Caroline Ansell 28 May 2016:
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
In an ideal world, relatively few British voters want Brexit. They want an EU that devolves power back to national governments. But that is an EU which is not, and never will be, on offer.
It will certainly never be on offer until we've got a vote to leave. Eurocrats have shown time and again that the pay no heed to anything they don't like until poked aggressively in the eye by democracy.
This is the supposedly impossible outcome that dare not speak its name, that none of us is ever supposed to contemplate, let alone refer to. We are told repeatedly that this is an "In" or "Out" referendum, binding for all time (or for as long as makes no difference). That there is absolutely no possibility of any further negotiation (ha-ha) and that LEAVE means LEAVE come what may. Personally, I don't believe that for a second, and, importantly, neither I suspect does the German Government nor for that matter a majority of EU Governments. It's possible that we will find out in due course.
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
Wrong.
Polls don't claim to report on voting intention for local elections.
You're both somewhat missing the point (that'll make me popular)!
Hyufd: approximately 70% of Liberals who had no Liberal candidate to vote for voted Conservative. This was probably helped by the de jure existence of the Liberal National party until 1965, and by the liberal nature of much of the Conservative leadership. By contrast, Labour were viewed, not wholly unfairly, as a bunch of anti-democratic weirdos whom no self-respecting Liberal should even talk to.
Justin - your points are irrelevant simply because it is now socially much more acceptable not to vote at all. Turnout was 77% in 1959, 66% in 2015. Therefore, voters are much less likely to make a forced choice anyway. If we had only 2 candidates in large numbers of constituencies we'd just have even lower turnout.
I think we have to see the 1959 election in context though. The Conservatives had a large majority, had just had a giveaway budget, rationing was being forgotten, consumer goods were becoming readily available, unemployment was low and so was inflation. Add to that a divided, factional and inept Labour Party and it's hardly surprising they did badly. This year, coming off a hung parliament with an uneasy coalition, five years of economic doom and gloom mood music, a united Labour Party and a simple message that they thought people liked, and their performance was dismal (again ultimately those Liberal voters that everyone confidently predicted would go Labour split evenly with the Tories).
On topic, that was a really interesting article and it looks as though Labour are making the exact mistake they made in Scotland- hitching their star to a course a large chunk of their loyallest voters do not support. I think @SeanT's comment on Corbyn's blunder is correct. The man continues to prove he has the political antennae of a stunted wood louse and the principles of a flip-flop.
There is no real evidence from the 1950s/60s that turnout was much influenced by the intervention of a Liberal candidate. As it happens, turnout has been recovering somewhat since the 2001 election and hopefully that will continue. Nevertheless it has to be true - in pure mathematical terms - that parties were much more likely to obtain circa 45% of the national vote when only two parties were in the field in most constituencies.This was most obviously the case in the elections of 1951 & 1955 when the Liberals only fought 109 & 110 seats respectively. Regardless of turnout, Tory and Labour % vote shares were bound to be very high in both elections - albeit artificially so.
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Romanians are 8x more likely to commit crime than Britons, according to the stats.
Caroline Ansell MP for my town has also just come out for Leave according to local reports.
Caroline Ansell 28 May 2016:
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
In an ideal world, relatively few British voters want Brexit. They want an EU that devolves power back to national governments. But that is an EU which is not, and never will be, on offer.
It will certainly never be on offer until we've got a vote to leave. Eurocrats have shown time and again that the pay no heed to anything they don't like until poked aggressively in the eye by democracy.
This is the supposedly impossible outcome that dare not speak its name, that none of us is ever supposed to contemplate, let alone refer to. We are told repeatedly that this is an "In" or "Out" referendum, binding for all time (or for as long as makes no difference). That there is absolutely no possibility of any further negotiation (ha-ha) and that LEAVE means LEAVE come what may. Personally, I don't believe that for a second, and, importantly, neither I suspect does the German Government nor for that matter a majority of EU Governments. It's possible that we will find out in due course.
I suspect the largest bloc of the population would be those who would accept that the EU as is holds no attraction and would be prepared to see us leave it rather than maintain the status quo, but IDEALLY want us to stay in an EU that faces up to its fundamental democracy deficiency and inherently corrupt/broken bureaucracy. Which of course was what Cameron promised.
But we now have a referendum where both sides are terrified of this largest bloc of voters...
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
Mr. Urquhart, that would make the ending of a Terminator film a bit less exciting.
"Quick, John! Destroy Skynet!"
"I can't, that would violate the European convention on human rights!"
Skynet is an American company, not sure how the ECHR applies to them.
Plus if you've seen Terminator: Genisys, no way John Connor will destroy Skynet
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
From 1945-1970 probably at least 33% of working class voters voted Conservative. There's been a big switch of upper middle class voters away from the Conservatives since 1970.
I wonder. At the moment, only 37 per cent of the population as a whole votes Conservative. So the 2015 working-class Conservative figure has got to be less than 33. But I don't think the Conservatives have lost support since the 1960s among the working class - like you, I think they lost support among professionals, who have been growing as a share of the electorate. So for those reasons, I would sell 33 per cent Conservative support among working-class voters in 1945-70.
But, the Conservative vote was about 46% on average overall from 1945-1970. So, I think a floor of 33% among working class voters is plausible.
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
At the PCC elections UKIP stood in 34 of the 40 constituencies and averaged a smidgen under 16%. That would seem to indicate the online polls are closer to reality than the phone polls.
Caroline Ansell MP for my town has also just come out for Leave according to local reports.
Caroline Ansell 28 May 2016:
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
In an ideal world, relatively few British voters want Brexit. They want an EU that devolves power back to national governments. But that is an EU which is not, and never will be, on offer.
It will certainly never be on offer until we've got a vote to leave. Eurocrats have shown time and again that the pay no heed to anything they don't like until poked aggressively in the eye by democracy.
This is the supposedly impossible outcome that dare not speak its name, that none of us is ever supposed to contemplate, let alone refer to. We are told repeatedly that this is an "In" or "Out" referendum, binding for all time (or for as long as makes no difference). That there is absolutely no possibility of any further negotiation (ha-ha) and that LEAVE means LEAVE come what may. Personally, I don't believe that for a second, and, importantly, neither I suspect does the German Government nor for that matter a majority of EU Governments. It's possible that we will find out in due course.
We've been given a choice of Leave or More Europe. Given that choice, I must vote Leave.
this article is written by someone who wants Labour to support Brexit, and it shows.
I worry that the analysis is slightly partial. Greens switching to Labour are described as being due to Corbyn, not Europe. But maybe that means Leavers switching from Labour are due to Corbyn, not Europe. Indeed, I would say the latter hypothesis is highly likely to be true, because there has been no great collapse in Labour polling numbers since the increased prominence of the referendum.
Mr. Borough, Cruddas seems like a fairly intelligent chap. Which is probably why he's being totally ignored by Corbyn et al.
IIRC Crudas was ignored by Ed M's team as well, even though they commissioned him to do the policy and prepare for the manifesto. Metropolitan Labour just does not want to hear his message that there are Labour voters who value "flag, faith, community and family"
I've spoken to several working class Tories who hold fairly socialistic views on the economy but would never consider voting Labour purely because they regard them as soft on benefits and, latterly, immigration.
Well, exactly - the key words being that they are working-class Tories. Apart from the 25 years after the last war, the working class has not been overwhelmingly Labour and some people make the category error of automatically stereotyping those you mention as Labour voters. The largest Conservative majorities under universal suffrage were won in the 1930s, when the UK was far more proletarian than today. Then in the 70s you had Enoch Powell, then Mrs Thatcher. After her, the working class wasn't that important any more and Labour needed many arrows in its quiver to win a majority.
I would argue that even in the 1950s there was always a strong Tory base in the working class. Look at their strength in Lancashire or Sunderland, or Sheffield, down in many cases to the 1970s.
The one election in the last hundred years where the working class unambiguously voted Labour was 1945. Even then, they were probably less significant in the Labour victory than the middle class (it has never been helpful to organised Labour that the working class has always actually been comparatively small in this country, certainly never approaching 50% of the population). That is why 1950 and 1951 were such a shattering emotional blow to the Labpur left, from which some of them literally never recovered - they could not believe that the workers had rejected them in favour of another party whom they saw (as one particularly idiotic man said) as 'lower than vermin.'
You appear to be implying that even in the 1940s and early 1950s the working class fell well short of being 50% of the electorate. On that basis, what would you suggest was the social breakdown of the residual 50- 60% non-working class at that time?
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
At the PCC elections UKIP stood in 34 of the 40 constituencies and averaged a smidgen under 16%. That would seem to indicate the online polls are closer to reality than the phone polls.
I wouldn't say that either. I would say that you can only compare polls on voting intention in Parliamentary elections with results in Parliamentary elections.
Surely other PBs can confirm this? Maybe they sent out half ticking yes half no. Not sure why the instructions have to be dumbed down to such a level where this is even necessary. The "put an X in the box" instruction at the top is clear enough.
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
At the PCC elections UKIP stood in 34 of the 40 constituencies and averaged a smidgen under 16%. That would seem to indicate the online polls are closer to reality than the phone polls.
It may just indicate that UKIP has a very solid core of voters who are more visible the lower the turnout is.
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Romanians are 8x more likely to commit crime than Britons, according to the stats.
A meaningless statistic unless age profile is taken into account.
As Southam Observer has pointed out ad nauseam, new immigrants are overwhelmingly young.
Strange that Michael Gove has had nothing to say about the statistics.
"MailOnline contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment."
Incidentally, did you spot this amusing typo in the article?
Wiltshire police force saw a surge of 82 per cent while West Murcia, Gloucestershire and Suffolk divisions also saw high increases.
I voted by post on Saturday and didn't notice anything like that. I do agree it'd be wrong if it was real (though I wonder if it would really change any votes).
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Yes - and I'd certainly had the impression that the Romanian population had risen by more than 4% since 2014, so the proportion being arrested for anything appears to be going down?
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
I confined the analysis to the VI of those who voted in 2015, ignoring those who did not vote. So it's not following YouGov methodology, just using their raw data to establish trends, based on comparisons between how people said they voted in May 2015 when asked in May 2015 and how the same people say they would vote now.
For the record, the UKIP 2015 voters (who in case you missed the point are not the main focus of the article) were 12.5% of the sample of 1527 voters, almost identical to their 2015 vote share.
Phil , I understand your methodology , but the problem remains with your source data . If you look at the last Ipsos Mori poll for example , the data tables show just 2 2015 Labour voters switching to UKIP now out over over 200 less than 1% . The Yougov figure as you say is very much higher . Similarly the ICM phone poll this month had just 3 Labour 2015 voters switching to UKIP . Even the ICM online poll had only just over 3% of 2015 Labour voters switching to UKIP .
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Romanians are 8x more likely to commit crime than Britons, according to the stats.
A meaningless statistic unless age profile is taken into account.
As Southam Observer has pointed out ad nauseam, new immigrants are overwhelmingly young.
Strange that Michael Gove has had nothing to say about the statistics.
"MailOnline contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment."
Incidentally, did you spot this amusing typo in the article?
Wiltshire police force saw a surge of 82 per cent while West Murcia, Gloucestershire and Suffolk divisions also saw high increases.
Chief Constable Frank, as Gold Commander of Myrrhcia, was incensed....
An interesting article thanks Phil . The snag is that the figures are based on Yougov online polling which purports to show that UKIP support is well up on May 2015 whereas all actual ballot box polls show that UKIP support is at best static and more likely down a bit on a year ago . Your analysis may not stand up to real election results .
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
At the PCC elections UKIP stood in 34 of the 40 constituencies and averaged a smidgen under 16%. That would seem to indicate the online polls are closer to reality than the phone polls.
With an average turnout of less than 25% it indicates no such thing . Turnout in the local elections was almost 50% higher
The thrust of the piece is that there is a significant proportion of 2015 Labour voters who support Leave minority (a minority of all 2015 Labour voters but nonetheless a very significant one) whose continued support for Labour is in some jeopardy, regardless of where they might have decided to switch or whether they would vote for anyone else. YouGov's record of its online panel's declared vote in 2015 is just about as reliable as it can get, because those records date from surveys conducted in the days immediately following the general election, which is not the case with phone polling. So I think the indication of at least the potential for switching should be worrying for Labour. It should give the party pause for thought about whether it is really prepared to seriously p**s off a group of voters previously prepared to vote for it by associating Labour so explicitly with the "Remain" camp. (It should, but I don't think it will).
All this might be stating what you might very much have been expected to be the case anyway and certainly Gisela Stuart and Frank Field have claimed as much in recent weeks. We now have some (admittedly limited) polling evidence that backs up their claims. There isn't any polling evidence that I'm aware of that contradicts it.
It's not about UKIP per se and whether these polling responses actually translate into votes for UKIP is another matter, although as ever I think you have to be careful in using low turnout local government elections and by-elections as an indication of voting in higher turnout general election (or even drawing comparisons with high turnout local government elections conducted in May 2015).
Yes Phil , you have to be careful about comparing poll responses and council election results but there remains the current conundrum . Phone polls say UKIP support is around 12% , Online polls say it is around 18% . They cannot both be right and whatever the turnout the local elections is some evidence of which is correct and it is not Yougov on whose figures your study is based .
At the PCC elections UKIP stood in 34 of the 40 constituencies and averaged a smidgen under 16%. That would seem to indicate the online polls are closer to reality than the phone polls.
With an average turnout of less than 25% it indicates no such thing . Turnout in the local elections was almost 50% higher
To be fair, the number of Romanians has increased from near-zero to whatever.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
Romanians are 8x more likely to commit crime than Britons, according to the stats.
A meaningless statistic unless age profile is taken into account.
As Southam Observer has pointed out ad nauseam, new immigrants are overwhelmingly young.
Strange that Michael Gove has had nothing to say about the statistics.
"MailOnline contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment."
Incidentally, did you spot this amusing typo in the article?
Wiltshire police force saw a surge of 82 per cent while West Murcia, Gloucestershire and Suffolk divisions also saw high increases.
Chief Constable Frank, as Gold Commander of Myrrhcia, was incensed....
With an average turnout of less than 25% it indicates no such thing . Turnout in the local elections was almost 50% higher
They gained seats in the full blown locals, didn't they?
Yes but not as many as they have lost in by elections and through defections in the last 12 months . They have fewer councillors now than 12 months ago .
With an average turnout of less than 25% it indicates no such thing . Turnout in the local elections was almost 50% higher
They gained seats in the full blown locals, didn't they?
Yes but not as many as they have lost in by elections and through defections in the last 12 months . They have fewer councillors now than 12 months ago .
That mixed set of results could imply that they vote when they feel motivated.
They always give you instructions. The hand holding a pen in the position they wish you to vote is a new one as far as I can recollect. Who issued that and why was it ever sanctioned or thought fair. Remain has the top line and has the ticking the box. It's quite simply scandalous.
Remain, when they win, are just stacking up future problems and complaints doing stuff like this and Camugabe should hang his head in shame.
The EU according to Washington Post - interesting to see another viewpoint.
"The E.U. has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament that no one other than its members wants to have more power (which must be subtracted from national legislatures), a capital of coagulated bureaucracies that no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should exist (a European central government administering fiscal policy), and rules of fiscal behavior (limits on debt-to-gross domestic product ratios) that few if any members obey and none have been penalized for ignoring."
With an average turnout of less than 25% it indicates no such thing . Turnout in the local elections was almost 50% higher
So you would rather choose local elections where UKIP stood in far fewer seats. This is the idiocy of NEV.
The calculation of NEV allows for uncontested seats .
It didn't for the PCC elections. The official NEV is 13.68% which is simply the % of the total vote in all 40 PCC elections. It does not take account of the fact that UKIP didn't stand in 6 of those elections. The actual % vote in the 34 constituencies they stood in was 15.84%
Comments
Excellent thread as others have said - useful insight behind the headlines.
'The Leaders of Scottish Labour over a generation were -and are - to blame!'
Brown won 39 more seats in Scotland than Miliband, it was under his watch that its Scottish presence collapsed in Westminster and he resigned accordingly as did the party's Scottish Leader Jim Murphy
http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/uploads/editor/files/One_Nation_Labours_Political_Renewal.pdf
You're both somewhat missing the point (that'll make me popular)!
Hyufd: approximately 70% of Liberals who had no Liberal candidate to vote for voted Conservative. This was probably helped by the de jure existence of the Liberal National party until 1965, and by the liberal nature of much of the Conservative leadership. By contrast, Labour were viewed, not wholly unfairly, as a bunch of anti-democratic weirdos whom no self-respecting Liberal should even talk to.
Justin - your points are irrelevant simply because it is now socially much more acceptable not to vote at all. Turnout was 77% in 1959, 66% in 2015. Therefore, voters are much less likely to make a forced choice anyway. If we had only 2 candidates in large numbers of constituencies we'd just have even lower turnout.
I think we have to see the 1959 election in context though. The Conservatives had a large majority, had just had a giveaway budget, rationing was being forgotten, consumer goods were becoming readily available, unemployment was low and so was inflation. Add to that a divided, factional and inept Labour Party and it's hardly surprising they did badly. This year, coming off a hung parliament with an uneasy coalition, five years of economic doom and gloom mood music, a united Labour Party and a simple message that they thought people liked, and their performance was dismal (again ultimately those Liberal voters that everyone confidently predicted would go Labour split evenly with the Tories).
On topic, that was a really interesting article and it looks as though Labour are making the exact mistake they made in Scotland- hitching their star to a course a large chunk of their loyallest voters do not support. I think @SeanT's comment on Corbyn's blunder is correct. The man continues to prove he has the political antennae of a stunted wood louse and the principles of a flip-flop.
Perhaps the decrease in Labour's LEAVE vote also reflects Corbyn's accession rather than his recent conversion to the EU cause? Otherwise we'd be saying that Corbyn is personally a net positive for the Labour Party, which sounds, as they say on other parts of the internet, problematic.
These numbers are enormous. Back in 2000, there were just 63,000 migrants arriving in Britain from the EU, while the net EU migration figure was just 6,000 – some 30 times lower than today"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/28/the-wealthy-leaders-of-remain-will-never-know-the-devastating-ef/
Has anyone found the EdStone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdStone
Also "All those AB1 Luvvies" is a rather generous description for 75ish%
The one election in the last hundred years where the working class unambiguously voted Labour was 1945. Even then, they were probably less significant in the Labour victory than the middle class (it has never been helpful to organised Labour that the working class has always actually been comparatively small in this country, certainly never approaching 50% of the population). That is why 1950 and 1951 were such a shattering emotional blow to the Labpur left, from which some of them literally never recovered - they could not believe that the workers had rejected them in favour of another party whom they saw (as one particularly idiotic man said) as 'lower than vermin.'
The Russians didnt and then the nazis discovered that the civilian free ruins made holding the line much easier for the Russians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17fw5ZC8ArM
"I have decided with some regret to say I will vote to leave on 23rd June.
I say regret because I had first hoped to remain in a reformed European Union.
The renegotiation deal says everything about today’s EU – that it is only moving in one direction: ever increasing centralisation."
A very polite way of saying that Cameron's so-called "renegotiation" was a complete waste of time, in fact worse still, it was a disgraceful sham.
It can be explained in terms of Corbyn's perceived insecurity and his wanting to secure his position as leader. He has been quite prepared to seek conflict with the parliamentary party on issues where he considers that he has the membership on his side, even where his stance is clearly not (in your words) "voter friendly" (e.g. Syria, Trident renewal). The converse is that he has not been prepared to seek conflict with the parliamentary party on the EU as he considers that the membership would also be against him, even where such as stance would be "voter friendly" (at least for much of Labour's lost working class vote).
The outcome of Corbyn's stance: his leadership is more than ever secure with the membership, and Labour's grip on its traditional working class base is more insecure than ever.
Just nine Labour MP's for Leave out of a couple of hundred seems pretty unrepresentative when the Labour Leave vote could easily be in excess of three million.
I would seriously question the Labour notion that Remain protects workers' rights when I see the industrial unrest in France and Greece, all arising from erosion of rights.
I suspect that many working class Labour supporters know it instinctively as they have seen access to services, housing and wages all come under pressure from the effects of migration and cheap labour, whether it bases here or somewhere else.
Rights will follow.
You are making Southam Observer's slight of hand in classifying their children as non-migrants, despite being dual nationals, the same race, same religion and having a whole host of foreign relatives.
0/10, Smithson Jr.
See me.
I have come to believe that Labour kept the working classes in 1950 and 1951 and maybe all the way up to 1966, but lost the middle classes who wanted to change the government after 14 years. The reason is, exactly as you say, that their numbers were small in the UK by 1945 relative to other countries, so Labour could lose while keeping their heartland. The biggest swings in 1950 and 1951 were in the suburbs of London, not the classic working-class Labour heartlands around the coalfields or in their more recent inner-city gains in the North and central London. I think all of the top 25 straight-fight swings in 1950 were in the London suburban belt, except Woolwich East/West and Fulham West. Edward Heath won the biggest swing I can identify; over 13.5 per cent in Bexley. They stayed competitive in most of those seats until 1970. The biggest swing in the North was in Altrincham and Sale.
Labour's heartland was the working class and even there they didn't win a huge majority most of the time. Being an English Conservative was (is?) like playing politics on easy mode.
Another way of looking at it - in 10 years the total immigration (EU and non EU) would mean that the Equivalent population of Scotland had come to live in England.
Incidentally, I believe your calculation assumes a zero EU-born population to start with, excludes citizens of the Irish Republic and, of course, takes no account of citizens from outside the EU.
If this attitude continues, I will have to call your parents in.
Of the 34 that were able to supply answers, 23 had seen a rise in the arrest of Romanians.
Across England and Wales there were 18,127 arrests of Romanians in 2015, a four per cent increase from 2014, and 7,895 of those were in London."
Romanians are at least eight times more likely to be jailed here than Britons, the figures showed."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3615016/Number-Romanian-crime-suspects-arrested-surged-80-areas-18-000-nationwide.html
For the record, the UKIP 2015 voters (who in case you missed the point are not the main focus of the article) were 12.5% of the sample of 1527 voters, almost identical to their 2015 vote share.
That a migrant population contains its share of ne'er-do-wells doesn't come as a surprise, especially if they have been encouraged to leave by the authorities.
We are told repeatedly that this is an "In" or "Out" referendum, binding for all time (or for as long as makes no difference). That there is absolutely no possibility of any further negotiation (ha-ha) and that LEAVE means LEAVE come what may.
Personally, I don't believe that for a second, and, importantly, neither I suspect does the German Government nor for that matter a majority of EU Governments.
It's possible that we will find out in due course.
Polls don't claim to report on voting intention for local elections.
Is this for real? If it is then it should be examined.
@ElectoralCommUK
#EUreferendum
##voteleave #remain https://t.co/kPeTaNkysP
But we now have a referendum where both sides are terrified of this largest bloc of voters...
Today is different, of course.
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/b1c818d24c1b420496e8b7cf268e9814/the-instructions-on-a-postal-voting-ballot-paper-for-the-2015-uk-general-enb5e2.jpg
Are there members of the EU not members of NATO?
Seems so. Ireland, Cyprus, Austria that I've noted.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/European_defence_integration.svg/2000px-European_defence_integration.svg.png
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/10/31/d1/1031d1cf8fd59598892d3bf1410a29c1.jpg
"put an X in the box" instruction at the top is clear enough.
As Southam Observer has pointed out ad nauseam, new immigrants are overwhelmingly young.
Strange that Michael Gove has had nothing to say about the statistics.
"MailOnline contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment."
Incidentally, did you spot this amusing typo in the article?
Wiltshire police force saw a surge of 82 per cent while West Murcia, Gloucestershire and Suffolk divisions also saw high increases.
Bulgaria turns it sights from migrants entering along its Turkish frontier to its long Greek border https://t.co/nP0p8qicYg
Great video
The chairwoman of Germany's far-left party @dieLinke took a pie to the face over her stance on refugees.
https://t.co/ScQwbho80X
Matthew Bailey
'Don’t know for an answer' – Over half of voters don’t know what 'EEC' stands for... https://t.co/50VjUMkpX1
Remain, when they win, are just stacking up future problems and complaints doing stuff like this and Camugabe should hang his head in shame.
The EU according to Washington Post - interesting to see another viewpoint.
"The E.U. has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament that no one other than its members wants to have more power (which must be subtracted from national legislatures), a capital of coagulated bureaucracies that no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should exist (a European central government administering fiscal policy), and rules of fiscal behavior (limits on debt-to-gross domestic product ratios) that few if any members obey and none have been penalized for ignoring."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/8an-independence-day-for-britain/2016/05/27/9abdb77e-237a-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html
I'm shocked, shocked! Mail reports Seumas Milne deleting passages criticising Russia in briefing to Labour MPs https://t.co/KXZIy5z9uQ