Talking of the far-right, the BNP are contesting just one seat at the election, in Hornchurch & Upminster. The National Front aren't contesting any seats.
The LDs problem is simple, most centre left Remainers have gone back to Labour in seats where they are best placed to beat the Tories under FPTP while most 2017 Tory Remainers have stuck with the blues over fear of Corbyn. Leave voters of course would never vote LD anyway as they oppose the LDs stop Brexit policy.
However while nationally the LDs are polling no higher than 13% ie the Liberal voteshare in 1979 pre SDP Liberal Alliance, in some seats they are likely to do much better in Remain areaa where they are seen as the main challengers to the Tories e.g. Cheltenham, St Albans, Richmond Park, Kensington, Cities of London and Westminster and Finchley and Golders Green or Labour e.g. Sheffield Hallam.
Part of the problem too is still the legacy of the Coalition, of which Swinson was part, which means Labour voters will not back the LDs because of the legacy if austerity. I expect Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger though to have perhaps the biggest pro LD swings of the night as both were Labour MPs during the Coalition years and thus untainted by the Coalition and more likely to squeeze the Labour vote.
Indeed if Chuka wins Cities of London and Westminster (and the Labour vote there is much bigger than the Tory lead on current polls) he would be ideally placed to lead the LDs as an ex member of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, untainted by the Coalition and if Labour lose again under Corbyn and replace him with another hard left leader like Pidcock then the LDs get their chance. Umunna looks like a PM, Pidcock does not and Umunna could present himself as a UK Macron or Obama at the subsequent general election after 15 years of Tory rule.
Swinson might even lose her seat to the SNP on current polling speeding up that process but it will be close, in my view she is better placed to lead the LDs at Holyrood if that proves the case, she is more likely to appeal to Scottish Unionists and Tories against the SNP where there is no risk of stopping Brexit than she is UK centre left voters against Corbyn.
I'd like to go back to an LD MP, in Harrogate and Knaresborough. However, there's no way I'm going to do anything that may risk Corbyn. Plus Swinson's head girl, holier than thou, persona is a real turn off nationality. Shallow, yes, but true none the less.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
The LDs problem is simple, most centre left Remainers have gone back to Labour in seats where they are best placed to beat the Tories under FPTP while most 2017 Tory Remainers have stuck with the blues over fear of Corbyn. Leave voters of course would never vote LD anyway as they oppose the LDs stop Brexit policy.
However while nationally the LDs are polling no higher than 13% ie the Liberal voteshare in 1979 pre SDP Liberal Alliance, in some seats they are likely to do much better in Remain areaa where they are seen as the main challengers to the Tories e.g. Cheltenham, St Albans, Richmond Park, Kensington, Cities of London and Westminster and Finchley and Golders Green or Labour e.g. Sheffield Hallam.
Part of the problem too is still the legacy of the Coalition, of which Swinson was part, which means Labour voters will not back the LDs because of the legacy if austerity. I expect Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger though to have perhaps the biggest pro LD swings of the night as both Labour MPs during the Coalition years and this untainted by the Coalition and more likely to squeeze the Labour vote.
Indeed if Chuka wins Cities of London and Westminster (and the Labour vote there is much bigger than the Tory lead on current polls) he would be ideally placed to lead the LDs as an ex member of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, untainted by the Coalition and if Labour lose again under Corbyn and replace him with another hard left leader like Pidcock then the LDs get their chance. Umunna looks like a PM, Pidcock does not and Umunna could present himself as a UK Macron or Obama at the subsequent general election after 15 years of Tory rule.
Swinson might even lose her seat to the SNP on current polling speeding up that process but it will be close, on my view she is better placed to lead the LDs at Holyrood if that proves the case, she is more likely to appeal to Scottish Unionists and Tories against the SNP where there is no risk of stopping Brexit than she is UK centre left voters against Corbyn.
The LDs problem is simple, most centre left Remainers have gone back to Labour in seats where they are best placed to beat the Tories under FPTP while most 2017 Tory Remainers have stuck with the blues over fear of Corbyn. Leave voters of course would never vote LD anyway as they oppose the LDs stop Brexit policy.
However while nationally the LDs are polling no higher than 13% ie the Liberal voteshare in 1979 pre SDP Liberal Alliance, in some seats they are likely to do much better in Remain areaa where they are seen as the main challengers to the Tories e.g. Cheltenham, St Albans, Richmond Park, Kensington, Cities of London and Westminster and Finchley and Golders Green or Labour e.g. Sheffield Hallam.
Part of the problem too is still the legacy of the Coalition, of which Swinson was part, which means Labour voters will not back the LDs because of the legacy if austerity. I expect Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger though to have perhaps the biggest pro LD swings of the night as both Labour MPs during the Coalition years and this untainted by the Coalition and more likely to squeeze the Labour vote.
Indeed if Chuka wins Cities of London and Westminster (and the Labour vote there is much bigger than the Tory lead on current polls) he would be ideally placed to lead the LDs as an ex member of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, untainted by the Coalition and if Labour lose again under Corbyn and replace him with another hard left leader like Pidcock then the LDs get their chance. Umunna looks like a PM, Pidcock does not and Umunna could present himself as a UK Macron or Obama at the subsequent general election after 15 years of Tory rule.
Swinson might even lose her seat to the SNP on current polling speeding up that process but it will be close, on my view she is better placed to lead the LDs at Holyrood if that proves the case, she is more likely to appeal to Scottish Unionists and Tories against the SNP where there is no risk of stopping Brexit than she is UK centre left voters against Corbyn.
The LDs problem is simple, most centre left Remainers have gone back to Labour in seats where they are best placed to beat the Tories under FPTP while most 2017 Tory Remainers have stuck with the blues over fear of Corbyn. Leave voters of course would never vote LD anyway as they oppose the LDs stop Brexit policy.
However while nationally the LDs are polling no higher than 13% ie the Liberal voteshare in 1979 pre SDP Liberal Alliance, in some seats they are likely to do much better in Remain areaa where they are seen as the main challengers to the Tories e.g. Cheltenham, St Albans, Richmond Park, Kensington, Cities of London and Westminster and Finchley and Golders Green or Labour e.g. Sheffield Hallam.
Part of the problem too is still the legacy of the Coalition, of which Swinson was part, which means Labour voters will not back the LDs because of the legacy if austerity. I expect Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger though to have perhaps the biggest pro LD swings of the night as both were Labour MPs during the Coalition years and thus untainted by the Coalition and more likely to squeeze the Labour vote.
Indeed if Chuka wins Cities of London and Westminster (and the Labour vote there is much bigger than the Tory lead on current polls) he would be ideally placed to lead the LDs as an ex member of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, untainted by the Coalition and if Labour lose again under Corbyn and replace him with another hard left leader like Pidcock then the LDs get their chance. Umunna looks like a PM, Pidcock does not and Umunna could present himself as a UK Macron or Obama at the subsequent general election after 15 years of Tory rule.
Swinson might even lose her seat to the SNP on current polling speeding up that process but it will be close, in my view she is better placed to lead the LDs at Holyrood if that proves the case, she is more likely to appeal to Scottish Unionists and Tories against the SNP where there is no risk of stopping Brexit than she is UK centre left voters against Corbyn.
Good analysis HYUFD.
Thanks
Yes, more posts like this please, Huyfd.
Yes, it is refreshing to see some actual thinking from HY, instead of the usual ill founded party spin.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
Off beat, slightly What's up in Cantebury? Seems like Tories are taking it back? Winchester, despite voting 58% remain, is too Blue, to switch to LD. Just like Blackburn or Preston
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Conservative posters pretty much disappeared in the 1990s and haven't returned, even when they started winning elections again. The only place you see them now is in the occasional field.
because of unpleasantness towards the people displaying them, they largely disappeared
Off beat, slightly What's up in Cantebury? Seems like Tories are taking it back? Winchester, despite voting 58% remain, is too Blue, to switch to LD. Just like Blackburn or Preston
That’s a seat they held for 13 years and were a clear second in last time. If they can’t profit from the current situation there, they can’t anywhere.
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Conservative posters pretty much disappeared in the 1990s and haven't returned, even when they started winning elections again. The only place you see them now is in the occasional field.
because of unpleasantness towards the people displaying them, they largely disappeared
As already noted, you could regard that as an example of rising intolerance towards certain opinions that large numbers of people hold.
Off beat, slightly What's up in Cantebury? Seems like Tories are taking it back? Winchester, despite voting 58% remain, is too Blue, to switch to LD. Just like Blackburn or Preston
I'm inclined to agree. I do sympathise with the Revoke approach and part of me likes the idea, but my sensible half thinks it's a pretty appalling trammelling of the democratic process. It's incredibly illiberal.
Much as the right wing media deride it, Jeremy Corbyn's position finally reached on Brexit is very astute. Stay neutral and offer a free vote - a good deal vs Remain. It's a much better stance than going straight to Revoke.
She could have said: the LDs' strong preference is for Revoke, but that the official policy is to achieve this through a referendum in order to respect the democratic vote in 2016.
That would probably have been better as things turned out, but the problems with that approach would have been:
* If you're trying to flip Tories of the Hammond persuasion, you need to obey the laws of arithmetic in your tax and spending plans. But you have to compete against Lab and Con who are no longer bothered by such trifles. This is much easier if you actually plan to end Brexit, which gives you a huge pot of free money compared to the baseline where you rip up all your trading arrangements in exchange for Sovereignty.
* If you're going to have a referendum, you need a Leave option. Corbyn's plan is to have another negotiation, so you can't really counter that with TMay's deal (or, as it later turned out, Boris's). So you need to promise a renegotiation. But the voters are sick of negotiations, and the resulting proposal is quite ridiculous: PM Jo "Bollocks to Brexit" Swinson goes off and negotiates a better kind of Brexit, then expects Leave voters to accept that democracy is being served by a vote on Remain vs Swinson's Brexit. This isn't quite so bad with Corbyn, because although he says he wants to stay in the EU, there's a strong suspicion that he's lying.
Guildford has a larger Tory majority than Winchester and a smaller Remain advantage. The idea of it falling surely rests on Anne Milton having a large personal vote that will be drawn mostly from Tory defectors? Someone with local knowledge would be best placed to comment on whether or not this is plausible.
Guildford is down the road from me and the only one of the seats in your post that I know much about. For what it's worth, Labour activists who I talked to two weeks ago think the LibDems will win, and they wryly deride an early report by a journalist that it was a 4-way marginal (Con/LD/Lab/Milton). They say Milton has a reasonable personal vote but will also come nowhere near winning - the YouGov estimate for her of 8% IIRC sounds plausible. Result last time was Con 54, LD 23, Lab 19.
A problem for the LibDems is that Surrey is target-rich in a GOOD year, so their activists are dispersed fighting seats which looked promising a couple of months ago but aren't working out. Lacking enough canvass data, they are using human wave tactics - I've had 6 LibDem leaflets delivered to me, mostly by hand, and I'm a reasonably well-known Labour councillor in what if we're honest is a Tory safe seat (Surrey SW). The LDs need to concentrate on Guildford and I'm not sure they have enough central direction to make that decision effective. Overall I think the Tories should be 4-7 favourites in Guildford but the LibDems shouldn't be longer than 2-1.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
Yes, here's Boris trying to defend his past comments about the children of single mothers and refusing to say how many children he has:
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Conservative posters pretty much disappeared in the 1990s and haven't returned, even when they started winning elections again. The only place you see them now is in the occasional field.
because of unpleasantness towards the people displaying them, they largely disappeared
As already noted, you could regard that as an example of rising intolerance towards certain opinions that large numbers of people hold.
Graffiti on a bridge in Gloucester invites people to ‘burn the Tories.’ At least, I think that’s what it means to say. The person in question was apparently not so hot with the old SPaG and invited people to ‘bun the Tories.’
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Can't say that I was impressed with Lib Dems standing down to favour Greens in Bristol West, given the illiberality of much of the Green Party's politics.
It may be that Swinson looked at the cash pile, and decided that she had to cut her cloth to contest a smaller number of seats. The Remain Alliance provides cover for the weakened finances.
Given that the Greens are a fringe party niche of protest, some LDs might be happy to clap along with the evangelistic messages. Should Labour implode after another GE failure, Swinson might be able to reshape the LDs as a pro-European, centre party, but it does depend on how far Labour move away from Corbyn's programme of failure.
The only way to avoid a Tory majority and get a second referendum is for the LibDem vote to collapse in Tory/Lab marginals. The Tories had hoped that the Remain vote would be split so they could come through the middle. As a LibDem I'm glad our vote has collapsed in our non-target seats. I just hope it is well up in our target seats. The fact that our national share is down is fine.
Like the Tory national vote share benefitting from Brexit candidates standing down, but only in seats the Tories already hold, not seats they need to win.
I think any hopes that the MRP is wrong would have to concern factors like those.
I was surprised that the MRP showed the LDs falling short in Winchester, Guildford and Cheadle, and only neck-and-neck in Cheltenham.
I don't think we should be surprised if the margin of error of the predictions for individual seats is very large - indeed YouGov show it as very large in their plots.
But I think the default expectation now has to be that the errors for individual seats will cancel one another to give an accurate prediction for the overall seat totals. Unless there are systematic errors regarding tactical voting, or the handling of the selective Brexit stand-down, or similar.
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Conservative posters pretty much disappeared in the 1990s and haven't returned, even when they started winning elections again. The only place you see them now is in the occasional field.
because of unpleasantness towards the people displaying them, they largely disappeared
As already noted, you could regard that as an example of rising intolerance towards certain opinions that large numbers of people hold.
Its like being at a football match and finding yourself surrounded by the other teams supporters. you keep schtum.
Layla Moran would have been a good choice too IMO.
Sorry, I don't think the Leader is the problem. I like Davey and Moran but I don't think they would have done any better.
(Btw, if you want to see lots of Yellow Peril posters and boards, drive through Oxford West and Abingdon constituency. I think you get fined for not showing one.)
Part of the problem is that great uncle Vince clung on for at least a year too long, doing less than not very much. Had Swinson had more time to refine her public image, it’s not impossible that she’d have done somewhat better. I’m old enough to remember even Thatcher being pretty dire in public at the start of her leadership.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
That coverage happened because he ducked the Andrew Neil interview.
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Combination of reasons: shine has come off Corbyn, Boris better than May (for some), the country desperate to see the end of Brexit.
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Indeed, something doesn’t add up. Isn’t 250£ the tell of a post disseminated by a Russian disinformation operation?
Did I just see somebody who quoted Der Sturmer to attack the Jews accuse somebody else of being ‘far right?’ ..
I was quoting Israeli Jewish friends with whom I lived. Their point was intellectually astute and one that behoves a considered response. Don't isolate Antisemitism from other forms of insidious racism, which are also on the increase. If you do, you risk playing into the hands of the very people you most oppose and fear. Antisemitism is a scourge but, for all the horrendous history, it's one form of an evil not an isolated or 'special' one.
It's a brilliant point. Sadly not originally mine
No you stupid person, it was originally made by Julius Streicher. And as you are clearly also a fluent liar as well as a thoroughly unpleasant racist, I do not for a second believe your claims about ‘Jewish friends.’ You may be unaware that was part of his original trope as well, and it was equally unconvincing then. I don’t think somebody who describes vile mass murderers’ views as ‘brilliant’ is in a position to accuse anyone else of being far right.
You're being pointlessly abusive this morning, ydoethur. Whoever may have made the point in the past in whatever context, it's a perfectly reasonable view, which I also share, that anti-semitism is a particular case of a general problem that many people readily identify with a tribe and hate people from other tribes. That doesn't mean that anti-semitism becomes a smaller problem, simply that there is a general attitude issue that also needs to be tackled.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
Oh, did he mess that one up? I did see a few clips of him telling Trump not to interfere when he's in the UK next week, and a few bits on climate and NHS which didn't seem too controversial. I'm sure his team are happy about the grilling Corbyn got from Neil, which led the news for two days, but that shouldn't mean their own man should not do the same. I expect his opponents will go hard on him for that, and deservedly so. I really dislike the way the modern media treat politicians, but Neil is an old-school master of his trade and should be shown respect by anyone leading a political party at election time.
***** Betting Post ***** I notice that the spread-betting firm Spreadex currently has a mid-spread price of 70.8 seats (Sell at 66.6 - Buy at 75 seats) as regards their Conservative Majority market. As such this majority is slightly higher even higher than the forecast figure of 68 arrived at in YouGov's MRP forecast issued on Wednesday - despite the general direction of travel, supported by several subsequent polls, suggesting that support for Labour was showing a discernible increase. Furthermore, Spreadex's own market as regards Total Conservative Seats currently has a mid-spread of 347 seats (Sell at 343 - Buy at 351), which therefore suggests a Conservative majority of 44 seats, i.e. fully 26.8 seats fewer than their own Conservative Majority market, referred to above, which seems rather strange ... am I missing something here? As ever, DYOR.
The only way to avoid a Tory majority and get a second referendum is for the LibDem vote to collapse in Tory/Lab marginals. The Tories had hoped that the Remain vote would be split so they could come through the middle. As a LibDem I'm glad our vote has collapsed in our non-target seats. I just hope it is well up in our target seats. The fact that our national share is down is fine.
Like the Tory national vote share benefitting from Brexit candidates standing down, but only in seats the Tories already hold, not seats they need to win.
I think any hopes that the MRP is wrong would have to concern factors like those.
I was surprised that the MRP showed the LDs falling short in Winchester, Guildford and Cheadle, and only neck-and-neck in Cheltenham.
I don't think we should be surprised if the margin of error of the predictions for individual seats is very large - indeed YouGov show it as very large in their plots.
But I think the default expectation now has to be that the errors for individual seats will cancel one another to give an accurate prediction for the overall seat totals. Unless there are systematic errors regarding tactical voting, or the handling of the selective Brexit stand-down, or similar.
The counter-argument is that, if it's going to struggle anywhere, the MRP might not fully pick up the effect of a seat specific localised campaign - because it works from a very small local sample supplemented by projecting in demographic trends from lots of other seats. Compared with 2017 the LibDems have more active campaigns (even in longshots, as NP highlights above) and more seats that are still potentially in play.
I'm inclined to agree. I do sympathise with the Revoke approach and part of me likes the idea, but my sensible half thinks it's a pretty appalling trammelling of the democratic process. It's incredibly illiberal.
Much as the right wing media deride it, Jeremy Corbyn's position finally reached on Brexit is very astute. Stay neutral and offer a free vote - a good deal vs Remain. It's a much better stance than going straight to Revoke.
She could have said: the LDs' strong preference is for Revoke, but that the official policy is to achieve this through a referendum in order to respect the democratic vote in 2016.
That would probably have been better as things turned out, but the problems with that approach would have been:
* If you're trying to flip Tories of the Hammond persuasion, you need to obey the laws of arithmetic in your tax and spending plans. But you have to compete against Lab and Con who are no longer bothered by such trifles. This is much easier if you actually plan to end Brexit, which gives you a huge pot of free money compared to the baseline where you rip up all your trading arrangements in exchange for Sovereignty.
* If you're going to have a referendum, you need a Leave option. Corbyn's plan is to have another negotiation, so you can't really counter that with TMay's deal (or, as it later turned out, Boris's). So you need to promise a renegotiation. But the voters are sick of negotiations, and the resulting proposal is quite ridiculous: PM Jo "Bollocks to Brexit" Swinson goes off and negotiates a better kind of Brexit, then expects Leave voters to accept that democracy is being served by a vote on Remain vs Swinson's Brexit. This isn't quite so bad with Corbyn, because although he says he wants to stay in the EU, there's a strong suspicion that he's lying.
Well, quite.
I think the issue is not the policy, so much as the way it was presented. She could have said ‘we really don’t expect a majority, but if it were to happen, it could only do so as a result of a massive swing in public opinion against Brexit. In those circumstances we feel revoke would be democratically justified’... and all the bollocks about it being ‘antidemocratic’ would be revealed as such.
Did I just see somebody who quoted Der Sturmer to attack the Jews accuse somebody else of being ‘far right?’ ..
I was quoting Israeli Jewish friends with whom I lived. Their point was intellectually astute and one that behoves a considered response. Don't isolate Antisemitism from other forms of insidious racism, which are also on the increase. If you do, you risk playing into the hands of the very people you most oppose and fear. Antisemitism is a scourge but, for all the horrendous history, it's one form of an evil not an isolated or 'special' one.
It's a brilliant point. Sadly not originally mine
No you stupid person, it was originally made by Julius Streicher. And as you are clearly also a fluent liar as well as a thoroughly unpleasant racist, I do not for a second believe your claims about ‘Jewish friends.’ You may be unaware that was part of his original trope as well, and it was equally unconvincing then. I don’t think somebody who describes vile mass murderers’ views as ‘brilliant’ is in a position to accuse anyone else of being far right.
You're being pointlessly abusive this morning, ydoethur. Whoever may have made the point in the past in whatever context, it's a perfectly reasonable view, which I also share, that anti-semitism is a particular case of a general problem that many people readily identify with a tribe and hate people from other tribes. That doesn't mean that anti-semitism becomes a smaller problem, simply that there is a general attitude issue that also needs to be tackled.
Yes there is. Starting with Labour members quoting Nazi ideas with approval. One of the issues with Labour’s antisemitism is that they refuse to see when they are being antisemitic. But being hypocritical enough to then accuse other people of being far right...
Winchester: My verdict, to stick with Tories. Huge rural area, although 60/40 remain, has been a Tory safe seat for decades. Given a option between Remain and possiblity of Corbynstas marching through, most are going to vote Tory.
Off beat, slightly What's up in Cantebury? Seems like Tories are taking it back? Winchester, despite voting 58% remain, is too Blue, to switch to LD. Just like Blackburn or Preston
Go wrong? I was reading only yesterday that in some constituencies the Lib Dems had leapt from a distant third place and pushed one of the other parties out of contention.
Yeah there’s this “election expert” who’s been writing to people to tell them that I think
We could still be looking at a successful night for the Lib dems if tactical voting takes place. Look at 1997,where they lost vote share but doubled seats. In 2017 they gained seats while losing votes. Conversely they gained votes and lost seats in 2010. So they are very susceptible to tactical voting.
In terms of breaking through and overtaking Labour, this was never going to happen while the Labour Party itself didn't split. And we saw when the 7 MPs left in February that it was never going to split.
The only way for the Lib Dems to breakthrough is for an FPTP election result to deliver a hung parliament and have one of the big two accept PR as a price of forming a government, without a referendum.
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
Oh, did he mess that one up? I did see a few clips of him telling Trump not to interfere when he's in the UK next week, and a few bits on climate and NHS which didn't seem too controversial. I'm sure his team are happy about the grilling Corbyn got from Neil, which led the news for two days, but that shouldn't mean their own man should not do the same. I expect his opponents will go hard on him for that, and deservedly so. I really dislike the way the modern media treat politicians, but Neil is an old-school master of his trade and should be shown respect by anyone leading a political party at election time.
He struggled on trust and his early years article on single mothers trying to talk about anything else rather than answer the question.
Morning all. A Norwich South update. I'm baffled by the greens lack of effort in the seat, which used to be one of the 3 or 4 they talked up the most and still has good council representation. Placards and posters almost non existent, no canvass (I usually get them twice even for council elections). Its bizarre. There is little enthusiasm for Lewis but enough that he is very comfortable and the LDs are also invisible but have done some leafleting, the Tories are doing their usual Norwich south secret squirrel under the radar, shore up the core stuff. Lab/con/ld/green/bxp 50/25/12/8/5 perhaps.
Bojo called other chickens and big girls blouse. Why does he not turn up for a simple interview? As long as he's present and even rambles on, it doesn't matter. Being absent, gives a very bad impression, like he has something to hide. Unnecessarily losing votes
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
You should see Barnes. A sea of orange.
Glad to hear it. There aren't really any target seats for any party in Leics, with Loughborough the onlyone to change in recent years. General elections are rather perfunctory here as a result.
It seems really subdued in Loughborough. I'm out in one of the villages, and have had one leaflet from the 3 main parties and one from the Greens. There is a Tory poster on a stack in one of the fields on the main road and a couple of Lib Dem diamonds in the windows of some well known sandal wearers, but that's it. The Labour candidate seems a decent fella (I met him in our local CoOp). The Tory candidate is a Nicky Morgan acolyte. The Lib Dem? Don't even know their name. The Green is a young lad, only 22 and a student. I've recently joined the Greens and if I had more time I'd be dropping leaflets-maybe next time. Overall, I really can't get a feel for what's happening, but if I had to guess, I'd say Labour is ahead by millimetres.
The Libdems won't grow as a party until they learn that the party they have to defeat first is Labour and then Conservatives. They have had two opportunities (2015 and 2019) and flunked them both. The utter stupidity of pacts and advocating tactical voting kills them.
I don't think that true. Replacing the Tories in the suburbs and market towns of Remania looks the best targets for seats. Look where LD council seats are. Replacing the inner city and old coalfield bastions of Labour is a tall order.Lab looks set to retain 80-90% even with a Marxist manifesto and led by Wolfie Smith's less capable brother.
No, philiph has it right.
The Lib Dems cannot replace the Tories when they're offering the exact opposite policies. Sure, they might gain some localist / tactical votes but that'd all come crashing down again, as in 2010-11, as soon as the Lib Dems were faced with real power.
The only way to a genuine breakthrough is to replace the main party nearest to them. I agree that the ex-coalfields aren't the place to start (though note that not all that long ago the LDs ran Newcastle and Sheffield), but that doesn't mean that there aren't other routes.
Guildford has a larger Tory majority than Winchester and a smaller Remain advantage. The idea of it falling surely rests on Anne Milton having a large personal vote that will be drawn mostly from Tory defectors? Someone with local knowledge would be best placed to comment on whether or not this is plausible.
Guildford is down the road from me and the only one of the seats in your post that I know much about. For what it's worth, Labour activists who I talked to two weeks ago think the LibDems will win, and they wryly deride an early report by a journalist that it was a 4-way marginal (Con/LD/Lab/Milton). They say Milton has a reasonable personal vote but will also come nowhere near winning - the YouGov estimate for her of 8% IIRC sounds plausible. Result last time was Con 54, LD 23, Lab 19. A problem for the LibDems is that Surrey is target-rich in a GOOD year, so their activists are dispersed fighting seats which looked promising a couple of months ago but aren't working out. Lacking enough canvass data, they are using human wave tactics - I've had 6 LibDem leaflets delivered to me, mostly by hand, and I'm a reasonably well-known Labour councillor in what if we're honest is a Tory safe seat (Surrey SW). The LDs need to concentrate on Guildford and I'm not sure they have enough central direction to make that decision effective. Overall I think the Tories should be 4-7 favourites in Guildford but the LibDems shouldn't be longer than 2-1.
It always raises a smile to hear of activists spending their time and effort inadvetently targeting members of other parties with leaflets and door knocking. You know their canvassing records are poor when they're trying to win over local councillors! I agree with you that Guildford is the closest seat to winnable for the LDs in a sea of safe blue seats, they should have everyone in the area helping in that seat. In spending their efforts trying to unseat John Redwood or Michael Gove, they could lose the best opportunity they have for a win.
I'm inclined to agree. I do sympathise with the Revoke approach and part of me likes the idea, but my sensible half thinks it's a pretty appalling trammelling of the democratic process. It's incredibly illiberal.
Much as the right wing media deride it, Jeremy Corbyn's position finally reached on Brexit is very astute. Stay neutral and offer a free vote - a good deal vs Remain. It's a much better stance than going straight to Revoke.
She could have said: the LDs' strong preference is for Revoke, but that the official policy is to achieve this through a referendum in order to respect the democratic vote in 2016.
That would probably have been better as things turned out, but the problems with that approach would have been:
* If you're trying to flip Tories of the Hammond persuasion, you need to obey the laws of arithmetic in your tax and spending plans. But you have to compete against Lab and Con who are no longer bothered by such trifles. This is much easier if you actually plan to end Brexit, which gives you a huge pot of free money compared to the baseline where you rip up all your trading arrangements in exchange for Sovereignty.
* If you're going to have a referendum, you need a Leave option. Corbyn's plan is to have another negotiation, so you can't really counter that with TMay's deal (or, as it later turned out, Boris's). So you need to promise a renegotiation. But the voters are sick of negotiations, and the resulting proposal is quite ridiculous: PM Jo "Bollocks to Brexit" Swinson goes off and negotiates a better kind of Brexit, then expects Leave voters to accept that democracy is being served by a vote on Remain vs Swinson's Brexit. This isn't quite so bad with Corbyn, because although he says he wants to stay in the EU, there's a strong suspicion that he's lying.
Well, quite.
I think the issue is not the policy, so much as the way it was presented. She could have said ‘we really don’t expect a majority, but if it were to happen, it could only do so as a result of a massive swing in public opinion against Brexit. In those circumstances we feel revoke would be democratically justified’... and all the bollocks about it being ‘antidemocratic’ would be revealed as such.
Even then, it would be the utmost hypocrisy for the Lib Dems to claim a democratic mandate on the basis of a minority vote under FPTP, given their consistent denunciation of the system over all the years it has acted to their disadvantage.
Can't say that I was impressed with Lib Dems standing down to favour Greens in Bristol West, given the illiberality of much of the Green Party's politics.
It may be that Swinson looked at the cash pile, and decided that she had to cut her cloth to contest a smaller number of seats. The Remain Alliance provides cover for the weakened finances.
Given that the Greens are a fringe party niche of protest, some LDs might be happy to clap along with the evangelistic messages. Should Labour implode after another GE failure, Swinson might be able to reshape the LDs as a pro-European, centre party, but it does depend on how far Labour move away from Corbyn's programme of failure.
I thought that the LibDems' coffers were overflowing with Remain donations.
What went wrong for the LDs? A few things, but ultimately thingd have gone wrong because their support being so high was a mirage. In a GE situation the choice before us is constrained and people reacted, and support evaporated. But theres still been a recovery, and chance of 15-20.
Mr. Battery, but against two disliked candidates wasn't necessarily a bad idea.
The problem was that the Don't Knows broke against her.
They broke against her when it seemed like she spent all her time attacking Corbyn. When most of her voters either had come directly from Labour or preferred a Labour Government, that was never going to work.
Morning all. A Norwich South update. I'm baffled by the greens lack of effort in the seat, which used to be one of the 3 or 4 they talked up the most and still has good council representation. Placards and posters almost non existent, no canvass (I usually get them twice even for council elections). Its bizarre. There is little enthusiasm for Lewis but enough that he is very comfortable and the LDs are also invisible but have done some leafleting, the Tories are doing their usual Norwich south secret squirrel under the radar, shore up the core stuff. Lab/con/ld/green/bxp 50/25/12/8/5 perhaps.
Isn't the simple truth that The Greens will do as badly as ever in the General Election, despite the heightened awareness and concern as regards Climate Change and that they don't have a cat in hell's chance of increasing their Parliamentary representation beyond the Sussex Downs?
Bojo called other chickens and big girls blouse. Why does he not turn up for a simple interview? As long as he's present and even rambles on, it doesn't matter. Being absent, gives a very bad impression, like he has something to hide. Unnecessarily losing votes
Agreed. At least Corbyn, whom I utterly despise, took his medicine. Johnson is the leader of our country. He plans to lead it through turbulent times largely of his own making. If he won’t face Andrew Neil in a single interview, what chance he will stare down Sophie in 't Veld* in trade negotiations?
*Apologies for almost certainly spelling this wrongly.
The usual excellent Saturday morning thread from David. I am old enough (just) to remember when General Elections were fights between the Tories and Labour. The Liberals didn't contest every seat and were largely restricted to the celtic fringes of Northern Scotland and Devon and Cornwall with the odd extra rural seat like the Scottish Borders and Rochdale. Ironically with a veritable "explosion" in the number of parties offering their wares, the Liberals have lost their key attraction of being "neither of the above".
In under a decade Scotland has gone from being the fiefdom of the Scottish Labour Party to a battle between the SNP and SCons with the former particularly strong in the industrial and urban heartlands and the latter in the suburban and rural heartlands. In Wales we are seeing the old Lab v Con fight and across most of England it is the same.
My view on the election campaign is that the Liberals should have gone into it as Liberal DEMOCRATS. They should have called on a 2nd Brexit referendum in which they would campaign for revoke. Jo Swinson should have said "I know I cannot be PM but if you elect enough of my MPs, I can soften the extreme offerings of either a Johnson or Corbyn government". That way many waverers could have felt comfortable about voting Liberal. However she has overcooked her goose and as a result on the 13th there is a strong possibility the Liberals could actually be seen as going backwards.
Jo Swinson should have insisted that each of the defectors stood down and faced a byelection the way UKIP did with Douglas Carswell at Clacton and Mark Reckless at Rochester. Even if they had failed to hold, their actions would have been seen by most voters as the right thing to have done. Sarah Wollaston's position of having supported a bill to make defectors face a mandatory by-election and then refuse to face one herself has been seen by a great many voters as simply two-face and self-serving. She knew she would lose!
The only comfort for Jo Swinson IF she holds her seat and that frankly is a BIG IF, is that her only likely rival, the very intelligent Layla Moran, while a fantastic speaker does look goofy and more a research scientist than a future female statesman.
Talking locally, over the last few days I have seen the number of SCon posters in Easter Ross rise rapidly and speaking to Tory friends, they are very upbeat. I am not predicting Andrew Sinclair will take the seat for the SCons but I would be very surprised if the result doesn't look similar to Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber 1992 where the difference between 1st and 4th was only 1700 votes though personally this time I think it will be 3 parties and Labour at best will be a long way behind and possibly lose its deposit. Considering the majority of this seat was Labour from 1966 until 1981 when Bob MacLennan defected to the SDP, that is an incredible fall for the Labour party, the "official" opposition.
Thanks for header. Yes, not looking good for the LDs. I think they were always going to struggle once Labour embraced Ref2. If Labour had not done that, there was IMO every chance of the LDs polling well into the 20s and winning a lot of seats. As it is, no. Back to the drawing board.
Winchester: My verdict, to stick with Tories. Huge rural area, although 60/40 remain, has been a Tory safe seat for decades. Given a option between Remain and possiblity of Corbynstas marching through, most are going to vote Tory.
It went Lib Dem by a big margin under Blair but yes, I agree. Even that was under Mark Oaten - a rather right wing Lib Dem.
People tend to focus on the big city with the liberal upper middle class there, but there's also the suburbs and villages and market towns around Winchester, some as blue as it gets, and the Tories generate an awful lot of votes there.
Re Andrew Neil. If the weekend polls show a tightening race I think he'll do it. Around 8 to 10 lead and holding firm or increasing and he will bunk it. As for the tagged terrorist and any effect, boris it must be remembered does seem somewhat immune/insulated against historic failings of the Tory government.
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
You should see Barnes. A sea of orange.
was it ever thus...
Barnes ward is very Tory. It has three Tory local councillors and no LibDem. However it has gone orange.
The LDs problem is simple, most centre left Remainers have gone back to Labour in seats where they are best placed to beat the Tories under FPTP while most 2017 Tory Remainers have stuck with the blues over fear of Corbyn. Leave voters of course would never vote LD anyway as they oppose the LDs stop Brexit policy.
However while nationally the LDs are polling no higher than 13% ie the Liberal voteshare in 1979 pre SDP Liberal Alliance, in some seats they are likely to do much better in Remain areaa where they are seen as the main challengers to the Tories e.g. Cheltenham, St Albans, Richmond Park, Kensington, Cities of London and Westminster and Finchley and Golders Green or Labour e.g. Sheffield Hallam.
Part of the problem too is still the legacy of the Coalition, of which Swinson was part, which means Labour voters will not back the LDs because of the legacy if austerity. I expect Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger though to have perhaps the biggest pro LD swings of the night as both were Labour MPs during the Coalition years and thus untainted by the Coalition and more likely to squeeze the Labour vote.
Indeed if Chuka wins Cities of London and Westminster (and the Labour vote there is much bigger than the Tory lead on current polls) he would be ideally placed to lead the LDs as an ex member of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, untainted by the Coalition and if Labour lose again under Corbyn and replace him with another hard left leader like Pidcock then the LDs get their chance. Umunna looks like a PM, Pidcock does not and Umunna could present himself as a UK Macron or Obama at the subsequent general election after 15 years of Tory rule.
Swinson might even lose her seat to the SNP on current polling speeding up that process but it will be close, in my view she is better placed to lead the LDs at Holyrood if that proves the case, she is more likely to appeal to Scottish Unionists and Tories against the SNP where there is no risk of stopping Brexit than she is UK centre left voters against Corbyn.
Good analysis HYUFD.
Thanks
Yes, more posts like this please, Huyfd.
Yes, it is refreshing to see some actual thinking from HY, instead of the usual ill founded party spin.
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Indeed, something doesn’t add up. Isn’t 250£ the tell of a post disseminated by a Russian disinformation operation?
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Indeed, something doesn’t add up. Isn’t 250£ the tell of a post disseminated by a Russian disinformation operation?
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Indeed, something doesn’t add up. Isn’t 250£ the tell of a post disseminated by a Russian disinformation operation?
-- The only Russian connection I have, is a love for Vodka--
On topic: Where did the LD's go wrong? Megalomania. They are not "Jo Swinson's Lib Dems". That makes it look like the election is about electing her. The focus is on the wrong place. They should be remembering that it is the voter who matters, not Jo Swinson. Perhaps they should have put "Your Lib Dems" at the top? "Vote Jo Swinson" has too many shades of similarity to "Vote Theresa May"
Morning all. A Norwich South update. I'm baffled by the greens lack of effort in the seat, which used to be one of the 3 or 4 they talked up the most and still has good council representation. Placards and posters almost non existent, no canvass (I usually get them twice even for council elections). Its bizarre. There is little enthusiasm for Lewis but enough that he is very comfortable and the LDs are also invisible but have done some leafleting, the Tories are doing their usual Norwich south secret squirrel under the radar, shore up the core stuff. Lab/con/ld/green/bxp 50/25/12/8/5 perhaps.
Isn't the simple truth that The Greens will do as badly as ever in the General Election, despite the heightened awareness and concern as regards Climate Change and that they don't have a cat in hell's chance of increasing their Parliamentary representation beyond the Sussex Downs?
Very true but here in Norwich there has always been a total wash of green placards In the studenty areas even for euros and local elections. I've seen a couple of green boards up only this time. They have several seats on Norwich council. Its like they cant be arsed!
From Fraser Nelson no less (not a phrase you see very often): "There’s no sign of bold Boris. He looks at times as if he is fighting the last campaign, terrified of messing things up as Theresa May did." "Ducking the Andrew Neil interviews braved by all other leaders risks giving a sense of complacency, as if he thinks victory is in the bag and that he doesn’t need to say anything more to earn votes." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/28/fear-tories-may-yet-blow-election/
Oh, I hadn't realised Johnson had ducked Andrew Neil. I am not a fan of the farcical debates and 'gotcha' journalism, but a candidate for the highest office in the land really should be able to sit down for an hour with an intelligent and well-researched journalist, to justify themselves to the voters. Not a good look from the PM.
Did you see the coverage of his LBC phone in with Ferrari it’s no wonder they won’t let him go on Neil.
Oh, did he mess that one up? I did see a few clips of him telling Trump not to interfere when he's in the UK next week, and a few bits on climate and NHS which didn't seem too controversial. I'm sure his team are happy about the grilling Corbyn got from Neil, which led the news for two days, but that shouldn't mean their own man should not do the same. I expect his opponents will go hard on him for that, and deservedly so. I really dislike the way the modern media treat politicians, but Neil is an old-school master of his trade and should be shown respect by anyone leading a political party at election time.
He struggled on trust and his early years article on single mothers trying to talk about anything else rather than answer the question.
I've seen it now, not a total car-crash but certainly didn't help his struggle with basic trust issues. Still no excuses for not giving Andrew Neil an hour of his time.
I think the strategy was kind of exploded when Boris came back with a deal. That cut away the whole "only party not offering immediate economic armageddon" position, which would otherwise have attracted quite a few ex-Tories and potentially given them enough support to say, "realignment is happening". It also made the "revoke" line much less tenable, because Brexit is looking like less of an instant catastrophe.
I think this is a fair point. People have swiveled to attacking Boris for possibly no dealing at the end of next year, a fair thing to be very worried about, but the immediacy of the threat is gone, theres no prospect of there being no withdrawal agreement if Boris wins. Boris's deal, bad or not, fundamentally changed the shape of the election. Like Labours' position of tissue thin neutrality it gives an excuse to old supporters to stick with them despite misgivings .
It's first past the post, stupid. People voting to stop Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson leading the country for the next five years is what will do for the LibDems.
Hi Guys, Just joined, no particular party leanings tbh. More interested in the betting aspect of this election. Please don't label me as some Russian bot or hot, not that intelligent.
Was Sam Gyimah a candidate in the Tory leadership election? I confess I didn’t realise that.
Yes - but quit very early when he discovered he wasn’t going to get more than 3 votes.
Still it was good preparation for joining an unpopular enterprise.
Now that the dust has settles and PBers have calmed down a touch, does anyone think that Mike`s shenanighans will have any effect on ANY constituency outcome? I`m a tad concerned about the effect on my bets that this curve-ball may have.
Indeed , not seen any Lib Dem "Winning here" billboards .. sounds about right.
My poster count is 7 "Winning Here" diamonds on the A6 in Harborough, 1 Lab board in Leicester South. None for any other party. FPTP has always been tough on third parties but LDs are looking to double vote share and gain many near misses to build on for next time. To state the obvious though, we will not know how successful Swinsons strategy has been for another 2 weeks. It is a bit premature to do a post mortem while the patient is still active. All the campaigns have been pretty pisspoor. Probably the BXP has been the most ineffective, but considering how long the parties had to prepare they have all been dire. Revoke was a not unreasonable response to the No Deal threat in September, but should have reverted to a #peoplesvote on the proposed Deal. It would have been interesting to see what NI thought of it.
Perhaps "Winning here" is selected only for seats they are going to win. . In Horsham its something like "There is another way", and I think in Surrey I saw, "working for you"
No, Harborough is not a target seat, and in Rutland and Melton "Winning Here" diamonds are freely available. The 7 I saw were mostly in Oadby, which has a well run LD council, and is an upmarket Leicester suburb. Window and garden election posters are much rarer than previous years everywhere. An expression of our less tolerant times, IMO.
Conservative posters pretty much disappeared in the 1990s and haven't returned, even when they started winning elections again. The only place you see them now is in the occasional field.
because of unpleasantness towards the people displaying them, they largely disappeared
Tsk. Why would anybody want to be unpleasant toward such a marginalised and inoffensive group as the tories?
I can't really disagree with it. As a LibDem I've found myself supporting a lot of Labour policies on an intellectual and pragmatic level and I know I'm not alone. The cry I hear a LOT is 'what do the LD's stand for?' Everyone knows the Brexit policy but, frankly, not everyone is interested in Brexit. In fact most people aren't. I did suggest on here in the run up to the election that this would be the case. The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right. It has ever been thus. Most people have other (far more important) things to worry about.
I've desperately tried to give Jo the benefit. I voted for her. But even I'm finding it quite hard going. I feel quite sorry for her and I still think she may grow in stature and gravitas over time - but she needs ten years. I do wonder if there's an underlying weariness with a female leader. Putting it as 'misogynism' is probably too strong but I wonder if Theresa May has left people wondering if any female leader can quite cut the mustard. I'm not defending that. I think Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults, was the most outstanding political operator of my lifetime: a true giant. And Nicola Sturgeon, again for all her faults, is hardly a pushover.
The other point is one you've mentioned. Much as I and many people dislike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour have run an outstanding campaign. Yes some of their policies are, erm, well 'rather radical.' But bloody hell they've set the agenda and got people talking. If elections are won on seizing the media, then Labour would be miles ahead of the tories who have presented absolutely NOTHING to the country.
Swinson is too young. Maybe that summarises it?
Not really. Swinson is 40 in February. She's a little younger than Blair was when he became Labour leader, a little older than Cameron. Both were PM at 43.
39 is young to be a party leader but not extraordinarily so. I do wonder whether being a woman has something to do with not being given the benefit of doubt for her relative youth but I wonder whether it's also her appearance and sound. These might sound trivial but they're not - at least, not when it comes to how people react.
Corbyn, since becoming leader, has smartened himself up (at Cameron's mother's advice); Thatcher famously took on voice coaching to lower her voice. It makes a difference to how you're seen. Personally, my advice to her would be to drop the cosy dresses and stick on a suit. As with Corbyn, smart-casual doesn't work if you already are struggling on credibility. People have expectations of politicians and you only defy them with very good reason.
What went wrong for the LDs? A few things, but ultimately thingd have gone wrong because their support being so high was a mirage. In a GE situation the choice before us is constrained and people reacted, and support evaporated. But theres still been a recovery, and chance of 15-20.
Too early for this. My hunch is they will do better than the polls due to a reasonable tactical vote.
Swinson made a few errors due to inexperience, but was poorly positioned compared to others to attract switching Labour voters. She is the ghost of coalition.
It's first past the post, stupid. People voting to stop Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson leading the country for the next five years is what will do for the LibDems.
All the leaflets with OGH name on them saying the Lib Dems can win here is because as election day draws near people remember that they only option is to pick the least worst option that can win the seat so probably Lib Dems voters switch to Labour or the Tories.
In my case this was a decision I made months ago - the Lib Dems can't win and the Tories (both their local candidate and their leader) aren't fit to govern.
I can't really disagree with it. As a LibDem I've found myself supporting a lot of Labour policies on an intellectual and pragmatic level and I know I'm not alone. The cry I hear a LOT is 'what do the LD's stand for?' Everyone knows the Brexit policy but, frankly, not everyone is interested in Brexit. In fact most people aren't. I did suggest on here in the run up to the election that this would be the case. The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right. It has ever been thus. Most people have other (far more important) things to worry about.
I've desperately tried to give Jo the benefit. I voted for her. But even I'm finding it quite hard going. I feel quite sorry for her and I still think she may grow in stature and gravitas over time - but she needs ten years. I do wonder if there's an underlying weariness with a female leader. Putting it as 'misogynism' is probably too strong but I wonder if Theresa May has left people wondering if any female leader can quite cut the mustard. I'm not defending that. I think Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults, was the most outstanding political operator of my lifetime: a true giant. And Nicola Sturgeon, again for all her faults, is hardly a pushover.
The other point is one you've mentioned. Much as I and many people dislike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour have run an outstanding campaign. Yes some of their policies are, erm, well 'rather radical.' But bloody hell they've set the agenda and got people talking. If elections are won on seizing the media, then Labour would be miles ahead of the tories who have presented absolutely NOTHING to the country.
"The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right." You really need to reset your political boundaries. Or stop talking bollocks. One or the other.
She’ll only stop talking hillocks whenever her contract expires
The Libdems won't grow as a party until they learn that the party they have to defeat first is Labour and then Conservatives. They have had two opportunities (2015 and 2019) and flunked them both. The utter stupidity of pacts and advocating tactical voting kills them.
I don't think that true. Replacing the Tories in the suburbs and market towns of Remania looks the best targets for seats. Look where LD council seats are. Replacing the inner city and old coalfield bastions of Labour is a tall order.Lab looks set to retain 80-90% even with a Marxist manifesto and led by Wolfie Smith's less capable brother.
No, philiph has it right.
The Lib Dems cannot replace the Tories when they're offering the exact opposite policies. Sure, they might gain some localist / tactical votes but that'd all come crashing down again, as in 2010-11, as soon as the Lib Dems were faced with real power.
The only way to a genuine breakthrough is to replace the main party nearest to them. I agree that the ex-coalfields aren't the place to start (though note that not all that long ago the LDs ran Newcastle and Sheffield), but that doesn't mean that there aren't other routes.
The LibDems have done best recently when Labour is seen to be not too extreme and so bearable in government. That was not the case in 2017. It is even less the case now. Even so, they will get millions more votes than they did two years ago.
O/T This spreadsheet gives the constituency projections from the final version of the 2017 YouGov MRP study, which wasn't quite as accurate as the first version which caught the headlines when it was first published. (They updated it several times in the run-up to polling day). The first version gave party totals of Con 310, Lab 257, whereas the final version had Con 303, Lab 269. The result was Con 318, Lab 262. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b6kLdtrOA4WB1P8y9gqF3TLeasPuQYgIyFgsowUk1PI/edit#gid=0
Fingers crossed, just put 250£ on Tories crossing 350, based on the Youguv result. Still not sure though, what is the difference between June 2017 and Dec 2019. Corbyn was there in June 2017 too and hated with equal venom. Still 40% voted for labour. What has changed, for that to drop to 32% in 2019? A strong leaver? Bojo compared to a remainer May? Or are people are just fed up? Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week. Something does not add up
Indeed, something doesn’t add up. Isn’t 250£ the tell of a post disseminated by a Russian disinformation operation?
-- The only Russian connection I have, is a love for Vodka--
Well I don't think I've ever seen a UK citizen write any monetary amount with the currency symbol afterwards. That's a very eastern european thing.
I can't really disagree with it. As a LibDem I've found myself supporting a lot of Labour policies on an intellectual and pragmatic level and I know I'm not alone. The cry I hear a LOT is 'what do the LD's stand for?' Everyone knows the Brexit policy but, frankly, not everyone is interested in Brexit. In fact most people aren't. I did suggest on here in the run up to the election that this would be the case. The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right. It has ever been thus. Most people have other (far more important) things to worry about.
I've desperately tried to give Jo the benefit. I voted for her. But even I'm finding it quite hard going. I feel quite sorry for her and I still think she may grow in stature and gravitas over time - but she needs ten years. I do wonder if there's an underlying weariness with a female leader. Putting it as 'misogynism' is probably too strong but I wonder if Theresa May has left people wondering if any female leader can quite cut the mustard. I'm not defending that. I think Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults, was the most outstanding political operator of my lifetime: a true giant. And Nicola Sturgeon, again for all her faults, is hardly a pushover.
The other point is one you've mentioned. Much as I and many people dislike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour have run an outstanding campaign. Yes some of their policies are, erm, well 'rather radical.' But bloody hell they've set the agenda and got people talking. If elections are won on seizing the media, then Labour would be miles ahead of the tories who have presented absolutely NOTHING to the country.
"The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right." You really need to reset your political boundaries. Or stop talking bollocks. One or the other.
She’ll only stop talking hillocks whenever her contract expires
Did I hear correctly that Labour have just made all their call centre staff redundant? That’s hardly a great look just before Yule in the middle of an election campaign they’re fighting partly on workers’ rights.
I can't really disagree with it. As a LibDem I've found myself supporting a lot of Labour policies on an intellectual and pragmatic level and I know I'm not alone. The cry I hear a LOT is 'what do the LD's stand for?' Everyone knows the Brexit policy but, frankly, not everyone is interested in Brexit. In fact most people aren't. I did suggest on here in the run up to the election that this would be the case. The only people really fired up by Brexit are the Far Right. It has ever been thus. Most people have other (far more important) things to worry about.
I've desperately tried to give Jo the benefit. I voted for her. But even I'm finding it quite hard going. I feel quite sorry for her and I still think she may grow in stature and gravitas over time - but she needs ten years. I do wonder if there's an underlying weariness with a female leader. Putting it as 'misogynism' is probably too strong but I wonder if Theresa May has left people wondering if any female leader can quite cut the mustard. I'm not defending that. I think Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults, was the most outstanding political operator of my lifetime: a true giant. And Nicola Sturgeon, again for all her faults, is hardly a pushover.
The other point is one you've mentioned. Much as I and many people dislike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour have run an outstanding campaign. Yes some of their policies are, erm, well 'rather radical.' But bloody hell they've set the agenda and got people talking. If elections are won on seizing the media, then Labour would be miles ahead of the tories who have presented absolutely NOTHING to the country.
I don't know if the campaign has been amazing since it's up against a tory strategy of responding to labour rather than making waves themselves, but in getting attention its definitely effective. Lesson seems to be you have to risk a bad story as you gain support from the attention regardless.
Hi Guys, Just joined, no particular party leanings tbh. More interested in the betting aspect of this election. Please don't label me as some Russian bot or hot, not that intelligent.
Is the actual answer to what’s gone wrong for the Lib Dems actually that the fear of corbyn or the loathing of Johnson is forcing people to vote negatively to stop the other one coupled with limited air time that the lib dems are getting.
O/T This spreadsheet gives the constituency projections from the final version of the 2017 YouGov MRP study, which wasn't quite as accurate as the first version which caught the headlines when it was first published. (They updated it several times in the run-up to polling day). The first version gave party totals of Con 310, Lab 257, whereas the final version had Con 303, Lab 269. The result was Con 318, Lab 262. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b6kLdtrOA4WB1P8y9gqF3TLeasPuQYgIyFgsowUk1PI/edit#gid=0
Is the actual answer to what’s gone wrong for the Lib Dems actually that the fear of corbyn or the loathing of Johnson is forcing people to vote negatively to stop the other one coupled with limited air time that the lib dems are getting.
I think this is a fair point. People have swiveled to attacking Boris for possibly no dealing at the end of next year, a fair thing to be very worried about, but the immediacy of the threat is gone, theres no prospect of there being no withdrawal agreement if Boris wins. Boris's deal, bad or not, fundamentally changed the shape of the election. Like Labours' position of tissue thin neutrality it gives an excuse to old supporters to stick with them despite misgivings .
Yes. The Deal and the Benn Act set this up for Boris. The opposition should have been more ruthless. They should have blocked his Deal and nothing else. Forced Boris to own No Deal or 31 Oct Extension. Either way would have led to a GE defeat for him in fairly short order.
O/T This spreadsheet gives the constituency projections from the final version of the 2017 YouGov MRP study, which wasn't quite as accurate as the first version which caught the headlines when it was first published. (They updated it several times in the run-up to polling day). The first version gave party totals of Con 310, Lab 257, whereas the final version had Con 303, Lab 269. The result was Con 318, Lab 262. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b6kLdtrOA4WB1P8y9gqF3TLeasPuQYgIyFgsowUk1PI/edit#gid=0
Very useful Andy, thanks.
I would have preferred to see the data from the first version since that's the one that most people refer to when they talk about the 2017 MRP. But it doesn't seem to be available, because it was being replaced by newer data.
Hi Guys, Just joined, no particular party leanings tbh. More interested in the betting aspect of this election. Please don't label me as some Russian bot or hot, not that intelligent.
Don't worry. Many of us here have been accused of being in the pay of the Kremlin. I remember when I pointed out the well-established fact that Crimea has a Russian majority, Meeks accused me of obeisance to Kremlin overlords.
Russophobia and anti-Russian sentiment are completely respectable on pb.com.
Comments
Plus Swinson's head girl, holier than thou, persona is a real turn off nationality. Shallow, yes, but true none the less.
What's up in Cantebury? Seems like Tories are taking it back?
Winchester, despite voting 58% remain, is too Blue, to switch to LD. Just like Blackburn or Preston
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ry90s0oDXu6_LhDKNiI6fXaSFJsfMBaAXI6cZ8XhqQ8/edit#gid=0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yw6ebmYBDx1fVI1DAbfSXXUyK7BLNMUGBwoTbqzSOhg/edit#gid=0
* If you're trying to flip Tories of the Hammond persuasion, you need to obey the laws of arithmetic in your tax and spending plans. But you have to compete against Lab and Con who are no longer bothered by such trifles. This is much easier if you actually plan to end Brexit, which gives you a huge pot of free money compared to the baseline where you rip up all your trading arrangements in exchange for Sovereignty.
* If you're going to have a referendum, you need a Leave option. Corbyn's plan is to have another negotiation, so you can't really counter that with TMay's deal (or, as it later turned out, Boris's). So you need to promise a renegotiation. But the voters are sick of negotiations, and the resulting proposal is quite ridiculous: PM Jo "Bollocks to Brexit" Swinson goes off and negotiates a better kind of Brexit, then expects Leave voters to accept that democracy is being served by a vote on Remain vs Swinson's Brexit. This isn't quite so bad with Corbyn, because although he says he wants to stay in the EU, there's a strong suspicion that he's lying.
A problem for the LibDems is that Surrey is target-rich in a GOOD year, so their activists are dispersed fighting seats which looked promising a couple of months ago but aren't working out. Lacking enough canvass data, they are using human wave tactics - I've had 6 LibDem leaflets delivered to me, mostly by hand, and I'm a reasonably well-known Labour councillor in what if we're honest is a Tory safe seat (Surrey SW). The LDs need to concentrate on Guildford and I'm not sure they have enough central direction to make that decision effective. Overall I think the Tories should be 4-7 favourites in Guildford but the LibDems shouldn't be longer than 2-1.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/boris-johnson-refuses-to-answer-how-many-children/
and here struggling to defend the Tories' nurse numbers duplicity:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/boris-johnson-misrepresenting-nurse-figures/
At least, I think that’s what it means to say. The person in question was apparently not so hot with the old SPaG and invited people to ‘bun the Tories.’
Went through some of the posts in May-June 2017 and with a similar voting percentage, Tories were predicted to win 400 seats and nearly a 90% chance of majority. That off course dropped dramatically in the last week.
Something does not add up
It may be that Swinson looked at the cash pile, and decided that she had to cut her cloth to contest a smaller number of seats. The Remain Alliance provides cover for the weakened finances.
Given that the Greens are a fringe party niche of protest, some LDs might be happy to clap along with the evangelistic messages. Should Labour implode after another GE failure, Swinson might be able to reshape the LDs as a pro-European, centre party, but it does depend on how far Labour move away from Corbyn's programme of failure.
But I think the default expectation now has to be that the errors for individual seats will cancel one another to give an accurate prediction for the overall seat totals. Unless there are systematic errors regarding tactical voting, or the handling of the selective Brexit stand-down, or similar.
Burnley to beat Crystal Palace at 2.15.
Southampton and Watford to draw at 3.4.
Had Swinson had more time to refine her public image, it’s not impossible that she’d have done somewhat better. I’m old enough to remember even Thatcher being pretty dire in public at the start of her leadership.
I notice that the spread-betting firm Spreadex currently has a mid-spread price of 70.8 seats (Sell at 66.6 - Buy at 75 seats) as regards their Conservative Majority market. As such this majority is slightly higher even higher than the forecast figure of 68 arrived at in YouGov's MRP forecast issued on Wednesday - despite the general direction of travel, supported by several subsequent polls, suggesting that support for Labour was showing a discernible increase.
Furthermore, Spreadex's own market as regards Total Conservative Seats currently has a mid-spread of 347 seats (Sell at 343 - Buy at 351), which therefore suggests a Conservative majority of 44 seats, i.e. fully 26.8 seats fewer than their own Conservative Majority market, referred to above, which seems rather strange ... am I missing something here?
As ever, DYOR.
I think the issue is not the policy, so much as the way it was presented.
She could have said ‘we really don’t expect a majority, but if it were to happen, it could only do so as a result of a massive swing in public opinion against Brexit. In those circumstances we feel revoke would be democratically justified’... and all the bollocks about it being ‘antidemocratic’ would be revealed as such.
One of the issues with Labour’s antisemitism is that they refuse to see when they are being antisemitic. But being hypocritical enough to then accuse other people of being far right...
Huge rural area, although 60/40 remain, has been a Tory safe seat for decades. Given a option between Remain and possiblity of Corbynstas marching through, most are going to vote Tory.
In terms of breaking through and overtaking Labour, this was never going to happen while the Labour Party itself didn't split. And we saw when the 7 MPs left in February that it was never going to split.
The only way for the Lib Dems to breakthrough is for an FPTP election result to deliver a hung parliament and have one of the big two accept PR as a price of forming a government, without a referendum.
The Green is a young lad, only 22 and a student. I've recently joined the Greens and if I had more time I'd be dropping leaflets-maybe next time.
Overall, I really can't get a feel for what's happening, but if I had to guess, I'd say Labour is ahead by millimetres.
The Lib Dems cannot replace the Tories when they're offering the exact opposite policies. Sure, they might gain some localist / tactical votes but that'd all come crashing down again, as in 2010-11, as soon as the Lib Dems were faced with real power.
The only way to a genuine breakthrough is to replace the main party nearest to them. I agree that the ex-coalfields aren't the place to start (though note that not all that long ago the LDs ran Newcastle and Sheffield), but that doesn't mean that there aren't other routes.
I agree with you that Guildford is the closest seat to winnable for the LDs in a sea of safe blue seats, they should have everyone in the area helping in that seat. In spending their efforts trying to unseat John Redwood or Michael Gove, they could lose the best opportunity they have for a win.
The problem was that the Don't Knows broke against her.
But theres still been a recovery, and chance of 15-20.
https://twitter.com/morrisseyhelena/status/1200510218947452929?s=21
*Apologies for almost certainly spelling this wrongly.
In under a decade Scotland has gone from being the fiefdom of the Scottish Labour Party to a battle between the SNP and SCons with the former particularly strong in the industrial and urban heartlands and the latter in the suburban and rural heartlands. In Wales we are seeing the old Lab v Con fight and across most of England it is the same.
My view on the election campaign is that the Liberals should have gone into it as Liberal DEMOCRATS. They should have called on a 2nd Brexit referendum in which they would campaign for revoke. Jo Swinson should have said "I know I cannot be PM but if you elect enough of my MPs, I can soften the extreme offerings of either a Johnson or Corbyn government". That way many waverers could have felt comfortable about voting Liberal. However she has overcooked her goose and as a result on the 13th there is a strong possibility the Liberals could actually be seen as going backwards.
Jo Swinson should have insisted that each of the defectors stood down and faced a byelection the way UKIP did with Douglas Carswell at Clacton and Mark Reckless at Rochester. Even if they had failed to hold, their actions would have been seen by most voters as the right thing to have done. Sarah Wollaston's position of having supported a bill to make defectors face a mandatory by-election and then refuse to face one herself has been seen by a great many voters as simply two-face and self-serving. She knew she would lose!
The only comfort for Jo Swinson IF she holds her seat and that frankly is a BIG IF, is that her only likely rival, the very intelligent Layla Moran, while a fantastic speaker does look goofy and more a research scientist than a future female statesman.
Talking locally, over the last few days I have seen the number of SCon posters in Easter Ross rise rapidly and speaking to Tory friends, they are very upbeat. I am not predicting Andrew Sinclair will take the seat for the SCons but I would be very surprised if the result doesn't look similar to Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber 1992 where the difference between 1st and 4th was only 1700 votes though personally this time I think it will be 3 parties and Labour at best will be a long way behind and possibly lose its deposit. Considering the majority of this seat was Labour from 1966 until 1981 when Bob MacLennan defected to the SDP, that is an incredible fall for the Labour party, the "official" opposition.
People tend to focus on the big city with the liberal upper middle class there, but there's also the suburbs and villages and market towns around Winchester, some as blue as it gets, and the Tories generate an awful lot of votes there.
As for the tagged terrorist and any effect, boris it must be remembered does seem somewhat immune/insulated against historic failings of the Tory government.
Megalomania.
They are not "Jo Swinson's Lib Dems". That makes it look like the election is about electing her. The focus is on the wrong place. They should be remembering that it is the voter who matters, not Jo Swinson. Perhaps they should have put "Your Lib Dems" at the top?
"Vote Jo Swinson" has too many shades of similarity to "Vote Theresa May"
Still it was good preparation for joining an unpopular enterprise.
Boris's deal, bad or not, fundamentally changed the shape of the election. Like Labours' position of tissue thin neutrality it gives an excuse to old supporters to stick with them despite misgivings .
Just joined, no particular party leanings tbh. More interested in the betting aspect of this election. Please don't label me as some Russian bot or hot, not that intelligent.
https://twitter.com/Scouse_ma/status/1192431022278938624
39 is young to be a party leader but not extraordinarily so. I do wonder whether being a woman has something to do with not being given the benefit of doubt for her relative youth but I wonder whether it's also her appearance and sound.
These might sound trivial but they're not - at least, not when it comes to how people react.
Corbyn, since becoming leader, has smartened himself up (at Cameron's mother's advice); Thatcher famously took on voice coaching to lower her voice. It makes a difference to how you're seen. Personally, my advice to her would be to drop the cosy dresses and stick on a suit. As with Corbyn, smart-casual doesn't work if you already are struggling on credibility. People have expectations of politicians and you only defy them with very good reason.
In my case this was a decision I made months ago - the Lib Dems can't win and the Tories (both their local candidate and their leader) aren't fit to govern.
City of Chester @ 2/7 - 100% labour. For those wanting to make some easy money.
This spreadsheet gives the constituency projections from the final version of the 2017 YouGov MRP study, which wasn't quite as accurate as the first version which caught the headlines when it was first published. (They updated it several times in the run-up to polling day). The first version gave party totals of Con 310, Lab 257, whereas the final version had Con 303, Lab 269. The result was Con 318, Lab 262.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b6kLdtrOA4WB1P8y9gqF3TLeasPuQYgIyFgsowUk1PI/edit#gid=0
That’s hardly a great look just before Yule in the middle of an election campaign they’re fighting partly on workers’ rights.
Russophobia and anti-Russian sentiment are completely respectable on pb.com.