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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The future’s not orange. The Lib Dems look set to miss out
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The future’s not orange. The Lib Dems look set to miss out
Pedants are quick to point out that for Labour to be decimated at the next election, they would need to lose only one in ten seats, while current polling shows them doing far worse than this. So in the interests of accuracy, I record that on 8 June I expect to see Labour crushed, marmalised and eviscerated. With the Conservatives having established close to a two power standard in most of the polling, we can expect to see swathes of red seats turn blue.
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Have to say, I don't understand why anyone is caught up on Thrasher's NEV of 38%. Seems pretty clear that the Tories over performed, and hence the current polling, rather than the NEV, is likely to be closer to the truth.
Excellent article Mr Meeks, many thanks. – Over the past year or so, the Lib Dems have racked up some startling results, most notably in Richmond, but also in many of the by-elections generated by Labour MPs either standing down or falling off the perch. Thursday’s relatively poor local election results was a surprise for many I suspect, as the promised gains failed to materialise. On reflection this does not bode well for them at GE2017 although I still anticipate modest net gains to almost double their present tally of MPs. One thing is for certain IMHO, draping the EU flag around the party’s shoulders has and will again, fail to produce the much hoped for dividends.
It'd be great if google docs could create a diagram for seats changing hands like the one showing the change in council control in this Guardian article - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2017/may/04/local-and-mayoral-elections-2017-live-results-tracker
Actually, just google add ons for this, and look what came up. I guess I need to check this out:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-started-with-Power-Map-88A28DF6-8258-40AA-B5CC-577873FB0F4A
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/custom/uploads/2017/04/remain-sankey.png
As usual, when you're not writing about you know what.......
That was truly heroic...'About 50.....when I checked earlier it was 100...'
Will Labour politicians and voters meekly spend the next four weeks striding towards the cliff?
When is the right time to start the infighting? Discuss
The results were mixed. We lost seats but we are closing the gap on the Conservatives.
http://labourlist.org/2017/05/we-are-closing-the-gap-on-the-tories-corbyn-on-labours-results/
Perhaps even tim didn't realise quite how bonkers he really is.
I do take Mr Meeks views seriously - even if he thinks I don't.
But personally I cannot conceive of gains exceeding losses for the Orange Team. For heavens sake they lost more local government seats on Thursday than they gained.
And, whilst they held on to all but one and a half of their county seats in Tim Farron's own constituency hold on is the operative word. The hold on results were so so, but look at Kendal which was Liberal and Labour when Michael Jopling was the MP. A paper candidate got over 700 votes in Kendal Castle, without setting foot in the division.
Also, whilst we were fortunate with our Tory candidate in 2015 this time we have been able to select one of our own, James Airey, a Kirkby Lonsdale lad, went to the same state school as me.
I would have liked to have seen me take my county division and us take two more, but any assumptions that Farron is safe are greatly misplaced. Yes he must be the odds-on bet, but in 1983, 1987 and even 1992 Michael Jopling got well over 10,000 majorities. Of course that was a generation ago but the views of the locals are the same as their parents.
They like Theresa May - and they hate the Lib Dem election material with all its overt nastiness. In this constituency the Lib Dems have always been the nasty party and a lot of the voters know that.
I think @AlastairMeeks does put a bit too much emphasis on Brexit though. There are a lot of other issues on the national political agenda. Heathrow expansion in West London, May's strange obsession with grammar schools, STP related hospital closures, air polution, public transport, the appalling state of Britain's mental health care. Brexit matters, but is not the only thing that matters.
So, despite being a Leave voting area, I think Lamb will be safe in North Norfolk for example. LDs gained two seats Councillors in his constituency yesterday. All politics is local.
He offering something that appears to be legally impossible and it appears to 100% unlikely that he will ever be empowered to produce what he is offering.
Some will undoubtedly support the LibDems as a protest vote but with all of the incoming flak from Junker et al, the electorate at large seem to be adopting a WWII mentality, which will act to counter this.
There is also the problem of Farron himself. In addition to his religiosity and views on gay sex, there is the matter of his regional accent. This won’t necessarily be noticed in his constituency, but I suspect that southern ears may not associate it with leadership.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3487035/britains-secret-underground-city-cold-war-nuclear-attack/?CMP=Spklr-_-Editorial-_-TheSun-_-News-_-TwImageandlink-_-Reply-_-TWITTER
Fascinating underground works.
Nowt to do with me ....
Inability to manage a fun time in an alcoholic beverages manufacturer springs to mind.
I can see a small problem here.
High profile so will get above average media attention but associated with all the reasons voters fell out of love with them. A drag on renewal and regeneration and fresh appeal.
In todays Daily Mail
"British motorists will be fined up to £640 for speeding in Europe this summer under a controversial EU law that comes into force tomorrow.
UK drivers caught by speed cameras in France, the Netherlands and at least 12 other EU countries can be traced by police from those nations for the first time.
But the system will only work one way because a quirk of the law means Europeans caught speeding in Britain cannot be hunted by UK police."
The article goes on to explain, much lower down, that it is the fault of the UK law, freely made by the UK parliament that we cant prosecute EU drivers who speed.
Its all Europe's fault!!!
I can see it depending on the retread - they might have tanked their reputations since.
On the basis of the last three national elections (Euro 2014, GE 2015, local 2017) also a losing slogan.
Though I cannot say I've found Farron's offputting, as a southerner, while admitting accent privilege is a thing. A lot of people would do a double take if they were going into brain surgery and the surgeon had a thick cockney or Liverpudlian accent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4478574/Nazis-killed-40-000-Alderney-chemical-weapons-island.html
Huge, if true......
Few predicted the scale of the 2015 massacre. Even now people seem to disbelieve it.
Maybe 8-10 seats is the new normal. At least until Labour recovers sufficiently to do the heavy lifting of taking down the Tories.
Good article, Mr. Meeks.
Does anyone know the % vote shares yesterday for Scotland?
I think after the election, analysis will show Theresa May has done especially well amongst former LibDem voting ladies of a certain age. Yesterday was about pot-holes. June 8th is who do you want steering the country through the shoals of Brexit and beyond. Through happy circumstance - or crafty design - the Prime Minister appears to be striking just the right tone.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/videoplayer/vi3012802841
The electorate, quite frankly, is guilty of blatant anti-Corbyn bias.
Ever since he became Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has had to put up with the most appalling treatment from voters. Again and again they have rubbished his views, sneered at his appearance and accused him of incompetence.
The time has come to say: enough is enough. To put it bluntly, the public need to get out of the Westminster bubble and start listening to Labour party members. Jeremy Corbyn has an overwhelming mandate, and the public should respect it, and unite behind his leadership. Constant criticism by voters does nothing but undermine him.
Sadly, these latest results show that the electorate will stop at nothing to damage Jeremy Corbyn....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2017/05/06/electorate-guilty-blatant-anti-corbyn-bias/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39822355
Keith House @CllrKeithHouse
Lib Dems win all seven County seats in Eastleigh constituency #Mike4Eastleigh #Lib Dems on the up!
2:18 AM - 5 May 2017 · Eastleigh, England
In Scotland it was the former Tory shire seats that formed the backbone of their strength and indeed the starting point for the SNP surge which is obviously another complication for them in seeking to recover.
When the Tories are rampant then life gets tough for Lib Dems who always seem more attractive to disaffected moderates than lefties. What we saw on Thursday is the Lib Dem vote going up but the Tory vote going up more on the back of the UKIP collapse. It is quite hard to see the GE being that different and I expect them to recover no more than a small handful of the seats they lost to Cameron with real possibilities of losses the other way.
The Lib Dems will recover when the Tories start to falter. Until then they need to just hang in there and hope. 10-15 is a narrow range and for me the risk is more on the downside than the up.
Tories had to do it to ditch the disastrous IDS, and achieved a decent result in 2005 because of it. It also won them the 1992 election - they were going down to defeat until Heseltine intervened, in my view.
For Labour, there will have to be infighting on and beyond 9 June if they are to have any chance of recovery in 2022. If there was a serious way to ditch Corbyn in the next few days, the time for infighting would be now... but there isn't, and wise Labour MPs just need to keep their heads down and rally their local troops.
https://twitter.com/trumptonlabour/status/860633606892466177
They have not used Corbyn as a case for them being an alternative Sensible Left offering. They have a leader who has not broken through with the public (I have seen more of Clegg on the media in recent weeks than Farron). His "I'm a bit of a Eurosceptic too" on Marr was just risible, coming from the arch-Europhile. But it was a cack-handed acknowledgement of how badly the Brexit position goes down in the SW. The results in the locals down here show just how far adrift the LibDems mindset of Mark Senior was when they were crowing that they would sweep all before them. Take control of Devon again my arse!
The LibDems may make the odd gain, but probably have the odd set-back too. They are currently a side-show. Being equal handed against both large party is not the way to go. One of their opponents is very strong right now, one very very weak. It doesn't take a strategic genius to work out where their efforts should be focussed if they want to be a force again.
@bbcnickrobinson: "He is leader of Labour Party & will continue to be...not all views of him are negative" Campaign coordinator @IanLaveryMP on @BBCr4today
They knew within six months that Jeremy Corbyn and his clique were going to bring electoral disaster and they knew they had but one chance to reverse what would be an electoral mauling. They had to pass a vote of no confidence and resign en masse.
However thanks to the new procedure for electing leaders which had been introduced by Ed Miliband it meant that in the event of the leader being a sociopath the vote of three quarters of the MPs could be ignored and in this case that's what happened.
1900-2017.
The Labour Party
R.I.P
'You Gave Us The NHS'
5/1 on the Lib Dems does not look enticing to me.
However, the collapse of UKIP (from 13% to <5%), with the Tories going from 37% to >45%) will result in a landslide victory under FPTP (over 400 seats), in the way that the SNP benefitted from in GE2015 north of the border when they won 50% of the Scottish votes.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/astonishing-tory-ferguslie-park-super-triumph/
The left are falling into the trap of political martyrdom, "We are right, why can't the stupid public see that!".
Rookie mistake and typical of ideologues.
"Why will the biased BBC not report losing seats and control of councils as the major triumph it clearly was?"
And this is a TREMENDOUS idea...
@farrochie: @LeanneWood @BBCWales @Plaid_Cymru @LeanneWood - you need a WingsOverWales. Scotland has #liedetector @WingsScotland