The Wales poll is a 9.5% swing since the general election (the equivalent of the Conservatives having a 25% lead over Labour across the whole of the UK).
Just think how big the lead would be if TM the PM was any good!
Actually despite what I and many pbers think, for whatever reason Frau Merkel may appears to be bizarrely popular with many traditional non-tory voters. Perhaps after blair and Cameron, having a boring less flash leader is what they want. Not sure a better politician would poll better.
It does appear to be the case. I don't quite get it, but it seems to be there if the polling she is getting is anywhere close to accurate, and it isn't all down to Corbyn and Brexit, as you need the right person to take advantage of those factors.
On a positive note - it looks like this election will once and for all destroy the far left's assertion that the country wants far leftyism. This will either kill Labour as it stays far left, or, more likely, kill the far left in Labour who then recover. But all roads to salvation lie through Mboto Gorge.
Who will it destroy the assertion for? Those outside the far left alreayd knew that, while the true far left will still find the split party, the media, the system, to blame, for the people not realising what a is good for them (I Have seen comments comparing it directly to kidnap victims being brainwashed).
The question is will the sensible labour figuers have the strength to remove the far left from their party once and for all if events are as bad as they seem.
Given Corbyn will still be a Lab MP, it's hard to see that all of them are got rid of.
There will be a leadership election when Corbyn refuses to resign. He will either lose or Labour will split.
What is the medical term for dying of popcorn overdose?
Popcorbynitis
Marks and Spencer are selling a Chateau Corbin if you need to celebrate/ drown your sorrows, only £36 a bottle.
I am guessing the tasting notes will say something like - not smooth, rather bitter in fact. This vintage hasn't got better with age, is the same difficult to drink red as when it was produced 30 years ago.
I see there's also a Welsh local elections poll which put labour ahead according to @britainelects
Presumably local election results which are not as bad for labour as the GE polls will be good for Corbyn's chances on being defenestrated mid-campaign at least?
So (at least a few) tories should vote labour in the locals....?
#SaveJez
No. They will take it as read that all is rosy in the garden.
What is the medical term for dying of popcorn overdose?
Popcorbynitis
Marks and Spencer are selling a Chateau Corbin if you need to celebrate/ drown your sorrows, only £36 a bottle.
I am guessing the tasting notes will say something like - not smooth, rather bitter in fact. This vintage hasn't got better with age, is the same difficult to drink red as when it was produced 30 years ago.
Strapline: In the land of the blind Corbyn, the one-eyed Corbin is king
I keep seeing posters say "in reality the tories won't get 50% as the polls say they will only get 45% on te day". Why? What rules says they can't? Or even go higher?
On a positive note - it looks like this election will once and for all destroy the far left's assertion that the country wants far leftyism. This will either kill Labour as it stays far left, or, more likely, kill the far left in Labour who then recover. But all roads to salvation lie through Mboto Gorge.
Who will it destroy the assertion for? Those outside the far left alreayd knew that, while the true far left will still find the split party, the media, the system, to blame, for the people not realising what a is good for them (I Have seen comments comparing it directly to kidnap victims being brainwashed).
The question is will the sensible labour figuers have the strength to remove the far left from their party once and for all if events are as bad as they seem.
Given Corbyn will still be a Lab MP, it's hard to see that all of them are got rid of.
There will be a leadership election when Corbyn refuses to resign. He will either lose or Labour will split.
Has to be right. No party could withstand such humiliation in its heartlands. Another question is, if he does quit to avoid a split, can they somehow force/encourage him out, or at least force out the members who swelled the ranks and kept him impregnable for so long?
Neath could be in trouble if the remaining kippers switch to the Tories.
These opinion polls that have the Kippers in single figures aren't allowing for the fact they aren't going to stand in a load of seats... sub 5 a possibility
Do we have a firm number on number of seats contested?
No, the national party are discussing it with each regional branch.
Rees Mogg, Hoey, Rosindell wont be opposed, so I guess people similar to that wont be either
I think these polls will scare Labour's remaining core to vote for them to leave some remnant of a post-corbyn party. That's most likely what I will do. I've never voted Labour before, but my seat is now a marginal, and I think I will vote Labour just to try and stop tories on 400+ seats
On a positive note - it looks like this election will once and for all destroy the far left's assertion that the country wants far leftyism. This will either kill Labour as it stays far left, or, more likely, kill the far left in Labour who then recover. But all roads to salvation lie through Mboto Gorge.
Who will it destroy the assertion for? Those outside the far left alreayd knew that, while the true far left will still find the split party, the media, the system, to blame, for the people not realising what a is good for them (I Have seen comments comparing it directly to kidnap victims being brainwashed).
The question is will the sensible labour figuers have the strength to remove the far left from their party once and for all if events are as bad as they seem.
Given Corbyn will still be a Lab MP, it's hard to see that all of them are got rid of.
There will be a leadership election when Corbyn refuses to resign. He will either lose or Labour will split.
If Labour splits the Liberals might be able to become the opposition again !
Neath could be in trouble if the remaining kippers switch to the Tories.
These opinion polls that have the Kippers in single figures aren't allowing for the fact they aren't going to stand in a load of seats... sub 5 a possibility
Do we have a firm number on number of seats contested?
No, the national party are discussing it with each regional branch.
Rees Mogg, Hoey, Rosindell wont be opposed, so I guess people similar to that wont be either
One could easily come up with a list of 12 pro-Leavers, or one could come up with a list of 60. Interesting to see but thanks for the info.
Mr. S, actually, there was a bigger one at the very start of the 15th century. A massive Turkish army was poised to conquer Constantinople, when Tamerlane and his horde of Mongols rolled up, smashed the Turks, and gave the Sultan an exciting new career as a foot stool. The city was free for another half-century.
Mr. Observer, many in the opinion-making, chatterati class, though.
"Some of the cross tabs are interesting. Just on a third, 32%, of Conservative voters at the last general election are in the Brexit was wrong camp. That seems a very high proportion given the huge emphasis being put on this by Mrs May and other polling that has the voting intention figures moving sharply to the Tories."
Suggests to me that it is entirely possible that most or all of the hard core Continuity Remainers have switched to the Lib Dems already, and that everyone still saying they will vote Conservative is not necessarily content with the Brexit decision, but rates the need to return Mrs May to office (or, at the very least, to keep Corbyn and Sturgeon a million miles from the levers of power in London) as a higher priority. If so, then the Yellows will have to work very hard to take seats from the Tories, and will find it doubly difficult where there's not a substantial Remain majority and/or decent sized blocs of potentially friendly Labour and Green voters to help them out a bit.
The Wales poll is a 9.5% swing since the general election (the equivalent of the Conservatives having a 25% lead over Labour across the whole of the UK).
This makes the Welsh figures sound quite plausible, when you think about it: the GB-wide leads over Labour have been coming out in the low 20s, and those are inclusive of inner London and other surviving Labour core territories where the Tories are often very weak indeed.
Furthermore...
* Welsh Labour have been in power, with a chequered record, ever since 1999. They misplaced about a fifth of their entire vote in the last Assembly election. The signs of decline have been apparent for some time. * Plaid Cymru, who are an eccentric cross between a Welsh language defence group and a quite left-wing Socialist Party, have not had the same sort of impact as the SNP, or anywhere remotely like it. With the odd exception - Leanne Wood's spectacular victory in the Rhondda last year, and one or two other Assembly near misses - they do not poll especially well outside of the language belt. * More generally - the language belt aside - Welsh voting patterns are more like those of Yorkshire than of Scotland. Even though the Tories were eliminated in Wales in 1997, they never acquired the same toxic taint as in Scotland, and have been able to rebuild steadily since. Nor is there any significant independence movement in Wales. Nor did it vote to Remain in the EU. * Although I've yet to see tables, the headline changes from the last Welsh Barometer in January suggest both direct Lab to Con voter migration, and indirect movement: I would suggest that at least the greater part of the collapsing Ukip vote, which appears to be moving almost entirely to the Tories as elsewhere, is comprised of fed up ex-Labour supporters whom, having broken their previous voting patterns, now find the final step to backing Mrs May somewhat easier than might otherwise have been the case.
In any event, these changes are spectacular, and hopefully there will be further Welsh research during the campaign to help us to verify whether these numbers are about right for the Tories, or fall into the "too good to be true" category.
As for Labour, with Scotland already gone, if it can't even hold onto Wales any more then, well, it's heading - in terms of both geographic extent and vote share, if not seat count - for a worse defeat than John Major in 1997, isn't it? Labour losing most of the seats in Wales is rather like the Tories losing most of the seats in Buckinghamshire - something that you would normally expect to see only during an extinction level event.
On a positive note - it looks like this election will once and for all destroy the far left's assertion that the country wants far leftyism. This will either kill Labour as it stays far left, or, more likely, kill the far left in Labour who then recover. But all roads to salvation lie through Mboto Gorge.
Who will it destroy the assertion for? Those outside the far left alreayd knew that, while the true far left will still find the split party, the media, the system, to blame, for the people not realising what a is good for them (I Have seen comments comparing it directly to kidnap victims being brainwashed).
The question is will the sensible labour figuers have the strength to remove the far left from their party once and for all if events are as bad as they seem.
Given Corbyn will still be a Lab MP, it's hard to see that all of them are got rid of.
There will be a leadership election when Corbyn refuses to resign. He will either lose or Labour will split.
If Labour splits the Liberals might be able to become the opposition again !
I did warn you to expect pretty sensational figures with Labour losing 10 seats. At the very least I am now expecting Wales labour to distance itself totally from Corbyn and run its own campaign. Carwyn is not the most charasmatic but he does need to impose himself on this election.
On a positive note - it looks like this election will once and for all destroy the far left's assertion that the country wants far leftyism. This will either kill Labour as it stays far left, or, more likely, kill the far left in Labour who then recover. But all roads to salvation lie through Mboto Gorge.
Don't be ridiculous. If the media were only playing fair Jeremy would be cruising to victory on the back of a staggeringly successful and popular set of policies. It is all a terrible conspiracy. Or something.
Labour still faces the problem of squaring support from the working class with support from liberal metropolitan types.
And it's lost seats (assuming it does so in the near future) at every election following 1997 (five in a row). Corbyn's a major problem, but not the only one.
As I said before, if the Lib Dems see what's in front of them, there's a small chance they could depose Labour as the major party of the left. Doubt it'll happen, though.
There really aren't that many liberal metropolitan types around. They are important in a few seats only. Whether people live in cities, towns or villages in the north, the south or the midlands they mostly want and aspire to the same things. This is something that Labour has allowed itself to completely forget. If this was not such a pivotal moment in the history of our country, gifting the Tories untrammelled power for a few years might not be a bad thing if it allowed either Labour to see sense or for something to develop in its place. But the thought of this government being given free rein to inflict whatever kind of Brexit it chooses without any kind of serious scrutiny is genuinely worrying.
IMHO the Brexit situation isn't like that at all. The Conservatives can't just decide what they want to do. They have to fight it out with the EU representatives and the EU27 Heads of Government.
The Wales poll is a 9.5% swing since the general election (the equivalent of the Conservatives having a 25% lead over Labour across the whole of the UK).
Just think how big the lead would be if TM the PM was any good!
Define "Good", Mr. Sam. Some might argue that a politician who can lead their party to what looks to be an overwhelming victory in a GE is by definition a good politician.There is still lots of time to go, of course, and all the usual caveats but if the polls are to be believed the Conservative lead looks unassailable.
Quite what is going on is beyond me. I thought that the Conservatives would pick up a few votes from the C2DEs who found their voice at the referendum, that TM would prove popular amongst the ladies from all social groups and that Corbyn who cause a chunk of the Labour vote to stay at home. However, the scale of the Conservative lead, especially when you consider the movements in Scotland and Wales, suggests that something else is happening.
Labour still faces the problem of squaring support from the working class with support from liberal metropolitan types.
And it's lost seats (assuming it does so in the near future) at every election following 1997 (five in a row). Corbyn's a major problem, but not the only one.
As I said before, if the Lib Dems see what's in front of them, there's a small chance they could depose Labour as the major party of the left. Doubt it'll happen, though.
There really aren't that many liberal metropolitan types around. They are important in a few seats only. Whether people live in cities, towns or villages in the north, the south or the midlands they mostly want and aspire to the same things. This is something that Labour has allowed itself to completely forget. If this was not such a pivotal moment in the history of our country, gifting the Tories untrammelled power for a few years might not be a bad thing if it allowed either Labour to see sense or for something to develop in its place. But the thought of this government being given free rein to inflict whatever kind of Brexit it chooses without any kind of serious scrutiny is genuinely worrying.
IMHO the Brexit situation isn't like that at all. The Conservatives can't just decide what they want to do. They have to fight it out with the EU representatives and the EU27 Heads of Government.
So they don't have free rein to choose anything.
That's obviously true, but we must also remember that Theresa May is (a) NOT a rabid right-winger and (b) is likely to return to office with a very large majority. I know what her Parliamentarians will let her get away with is, to an extent, governed by the composition of the additional intake from what we must assume to be the forthcoming demolition job on the first 20-30% of the Labour defence list; HOWEVER... most of the existing Parliamentary Conservative Party voted, like their leader, to Remain.
Obviously pro-EU people didn't want us to quit the bloc and still don't want it, but there are much worse candidates, from their point of view, to manage this process than Theresa May.
I did warn you to expect pretty sensational figures with Labour losing 10 seats. At the very least I am now expecting Wales labour to distance itself totally from Corbyn and run its own campaign. Carwyn is not the most charasmatic but he does need to impose himself on this election.
They will try. The great question is: how successful will they be, if at all?
We ought also to note that the decline of Welsh Labour is, in any event, not all Corbyn's fault. They've been on the slide for a while - it's just that, faced with a heavily split Opposition and with a very efficient distribution of votes under FPTP for both Westminster and the Assembly, people have tended not to notice.
Comments
Or is that a yet?
That would be quite an entertaining spectacle (not the rich lawyers bit obviously). They should actually go for it.
Lab 44.6
Con 23.1
UKIP 19.0
PC 5.7
LD 3.4
Applying today's poll:
Lab 37.7
Con 35.9
UKIP 11.4
PC 6.6
LD 4.9
The seat's been Labour since 1918.
Rees Mogg, Hoey, Rosindell wont be opposed, so I guess people similar to that wont be either
This hasn’t all been down to Corbyn, the rot was there when Gordon Brown was PM imho.
Oh my aching sides.
The polling is utterly delicious but it all feels impossibly too good to be true.
That is a surprisingly high leader rating for Corbyn. I imagine the Labour vote could potentially fall further.
Is there a way to monetise that theory, I don't wonder at all?
But it wasn't UKIP: it was the Tories.
Mr. S, actually, there was a bigger one at the very start of the 15th century. A massive Turkish army was poised to conquer Constantinople, when Tamerlane and his horde of Mongols rolled up, smashed the Turks, and gave the Sultan an exciting new career as a foot stool. The city was free for another half-century.
Mr. Observer, many in the opinion-making, chatterati class, though.
Firstly, on topic:
"Some of the cross tabs are interesting. Just on a third, 32%, of Conservative voters at the last general election are in the Brexit was wrong camp. That seems a very high proportion given the huge emphasis being put on this by Mrs May and other polling that has the voting intention figures moving sharply to the Tories."
Suggests to me that it is entirely possible that most or all of the hard core Continuity Remainers have switched to the Lib Dems already, and that everyone still saying they will vote Conservative is not necessarily content with the Brexit decision, but rates the need to return Mrs May to office (or, at the very least, to keep Corbyn and Sturgeon a million miles from the levers of power in London) as a higher priority. If so, then the Yellows will have to work very hard to take seats from the Tories, and will find it doubly difficult where there's not a substantial Remain majority and/or decent sized blocs of potentially friendly Labour and Green voters to help them out a bit.
(TBC...)
Furthermore...
* Welsh Labour have been in power, with a chequered record, ever since 1999. They misplaced about a fifth of their entire vote in the last Assembly election. The signs of decline have been apparent for some time.
* Plaid Cymru, who are an eccentric cross between a Welsh language defence group and a quite left-wing Socialist Party, have not had the same sort of impact as the SNP, or anywhere remotely like it. With the odd exception - Leanne Wood's spectacular victory in the Rhondda last year, and one or two other Assembly near misses - they do not poll especially well outside of the language belt.
* More generally - the language belt aside - Welsh voting patterns are more like those of Yorkshire than of Scotland. Even though the Tories were eliminated in Wales in 1997, they never acquired the same toxic taint as in Scotland, and have been able to rebuild steadily since. Nor is there any significant independence movement in Wales. Nor did it vote to Remain in the EU.
* Although I've yet to see tables, the headline changes from the last Welsh Barometer in January suggest both direct Lab to Con voter migration, and indirect movement: I would suggest that at least the greater part of the collapsing Ukip vote, which appears to be moving almost entirely to the Tories as elsewhere, is comprised of fed up ex-Labour supporters whom, having broken their previous voting patterns, now find the final step to backing Mrs May somewhat easier than might otherwise have been the case.
In any event, these changes are spectacular, and hopefully there will be further Welsh research during the campaign to help us to verify whether these numbers are about right for the Tories, or fall into the "too good to be true" category.
As for Labour, with Scotland already gone, if it can't even hold onto Wales any more then, well, it's heading - in terms of both geographic extent and vote share, if not seat count - for a worse defeat than John Major in 1997, isn't it? Labour losing most of the seats in Wales is rather like the Tories losing most of the seats in Buckinghamshire - something that you would normally expect to see only during an extinction level event.
NEW THREAD
http://www.liberal.org.uk/
So they don't have free rein to choose anything.
What is difficult to determine is where the Labour floor is?
Every time we think Jezza has reached rock bottom he finds a way to dig a little deeper and this without the Tories trying too hard.
Quite what is going on is beyond me. I thought that the Conservatives would pick up a few votes from the C2DEs who found their voice at the referendum, that TM would prove popular amongst the ladies from all social groups and that Corbyn who cause a chunk of the Labour vote to stay at home. However, the scale of the Conservative lead, especially when you consider the movements in Scotland and Wales, suggests that something else is happening.
Obviously pro-EU people didn't want us to quit the bloc and still don't want it, but there are much worse candidates, from their point of view, to manage this process than Theresa May.
We ought also to note that the decline of Welsh Labour is, in any event, not all Corbyn's fault. They've been on the slide for a while - it's just that, faced with a heavily split Opposition and with a very efficient distribution of votes under FPTP for both Westminster and the Assembly, people have tended not to notice.