Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
The golf club bores and retired blazers are absolutely still voting Tory.
In some ways a Cons victory in B&S may not be the worst thing. A case of losing the battle to win the war. Why so? Because the meme is now set: the tories only care about the red wall. This is going down like a lead balloon in the south. Today's newspapers, across the spectrum, are full of it and the Co-Chair of the tory party + up to 100 tory MP's are saying the same thing.
That message, that the tories only care about the red wall, could lose them the next election.
Yes there is definitely an element of this. Cash is being flung at the red wall and the blue south think they are paying. Whats worse is that developers money is being flung at the Tory party and their new planning laws are not liked in leafy country seats.
I expect the Tories to take the seat, with the gorgeous one acting as spoiler for Labour (and like BJO and others then celebrating Labour's defeat). Liar will then go on thinking that he can do what he likes, and thus the rot really sets in for southern voters.
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
While I am not Johnson's greatest fan as leader or PM he clearly has achieved a degree of popularity among lower income voters in the north and elsewhere which is really quite extraordinary. Indeed in the main he seems to do better the more strident is the criticism he receives on social and a fair bit of the national media. Could it be that they don't really understand the folk they are endlessly preaching to?
I'm not sure it is quite that, but there do seem to be (at least) three components to blue strength in the wall formerly known as red.
Boris is charismatic. He learned, or at least honed his craft on television. We think we know him in the same way we presume to know anyone off the telly. He is like Presidents Trump and Reagan in this respect, or Arnie as Governor of California. Take away the mass media and Boris has made an awful lot of speeches, like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, but unlike most recent politicians. He has the easy charm of Tony Blair.
This is anecdotal, and from the South rather than the North, but I have overheard people turning away any criticism of Boris, with something along the lines of, "you're only complaining about that because it is Boris". We sometimes read on this very PB that such and such criticism can be dismissed because the person making it is suffering from Boris derangement syndrome.
There is also the sense that Boris is "on our side". Or at least, that Labour is not "on our side". This is partly about the culture war CCHQ is fighting but also that Boris won the fight for Brexit and now is leading the fight against the pandemic, and no doubt partly because Keir Starmer's Labour does not seem to stand for anything at all.
I think this is valid. There is a perception, whatever PBers may say, that the PM is a leader and SKS does not have that. Partly this is obviously because of the situation, all the Covid and brexit wins have his stamp on them, partially because his many enemies in the media want him to “own” what they see as those failings. SKS does not have this. Indeed he is seen as weak and when people vote in a GE they look for a party who is led by someone with leadership qualities. Whether these perceptions are fair or not doesn’t matter. These things matter. Of course things can and will change and we have a long way to go until the GE but that is how it looks to me now.
Johnson's 'hero' is Churchill, and he appears to like to be compared to him. However, Churchill lost to the charisma-light Attlee in 1950, although I would suggest that at the time Churchill was far, far more popular than Johnson is now.
By that time Attlee had had the chance to prove himself, as indeed he had by the post war election through being in the wartime cabinet.
Churchill was also 75 and had also very nearly died of a serious stroke the previous year, which was more widely known than Tory central office thought/hoped.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
And why are the odds on LP winning most seats in next GE as low as 2/1? Ridiculously short.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
He won't get to the general election. We're 2 years away from it, they'll want time to bed in the new leader. Its just a question of timing when they move on him.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
He won't get to the general election. We're 2 years away from it, they'll want time to bed in the new leader. Its just a question of timing when they move on him.
What will be the issue that triggers sufficient letters going in though? Failure to honour 19 July - is that what you are thinking? Otherwise I fail to see it.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
Very well said.
Anyone who has the gaul to use the term One Nation, while opposing housing for the young and immigrants, or jobs in the North, is the worst kind of hypocrite.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Are we really being assaulted by Delta? The 17 May unlocking was always predicted to produce more new infections and if not Delta then one of the former variants surely?
Seems to me that the uptick in infections is largely in cities*; to be more exact in particular cohorts in cities populated by close-knit groups who for one reason or another have not been vaccinated. *And universities.
Wimbledon Carshalton and Wallington Winchester Esher and Walton Guildford Eastbourne Wokingham Surrey South West Cheltenham Lewes
And if this meme really takes off, which I think it will, there are a raft of other seats that could be under threat.
Where does this leave Labour? I don't know to be honest.
It leaves Scottish Labour grinning like a Cheshire cat.
This is fantastic news for progressive opponents of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The more their English bosses chase votes in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire et al the easier it is to continue peeling away centre-left SLD voters.
Without tactical voting the SLDs would be extinct.
Given the LibDems are benefiting from unionist tactical voting, it's unclear that their specific policy platform has any impact on their Scottish electoral success (or otherwise).
Tactical voting is, by its very nature, short-term. Eventually all declining parties, irrespective of tactical votes, fall back to their very core. The problem for the SLDs is that they have no core. They have no throbbing heart. They have no raison d’être.
Unionist tactical votes are a false dawn for the SLDs, because one day those voters will all go “home”. And when that happens, the vacuum at the core will dissolve in a wee fart.
That is, I'm afraid, very wishful thinking.
Between 1983 and 2010 the primary axis in Scottish voting was Tory, anti-Tory. From 2015, it is unionist-nationalist.
The unionist vote isn't going to fragment, indeed it's more likely to go in the opposite direction, and become ever more concentrated.
If you are right, then the SLDs truly are screwed. Only one party has muscular Unionism as its USP, and that isn’t the SLDs.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
It’s perfectly normal for the government to lose seats in by-elections. It’s just that in recent years the Tories have made a habit of winning them from a rudderless Labour Party. As the headline poll shows, they’re likely to pick up one more next week.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Have you ever been to Alberta? Social distancing there isn't a restriction, its a way of life.
England population density 426 per sq km (2016, would be higher now) Alberta population density 6 per sq km
Not a typo. Six.
The UK government should do the same, but to compare us to Alberta is farcical.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Re: planning reform - shifting baseline syndrome. Our green and pleasant land is not as green and pleasant as it was without planning to turn even more of the green into grey concrete. I thought the CP was environmentally-minded these days? They are going to get a big kicking if they don't look at this again.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Are we really being assaulted by Delta? The 17 May unlocking was always predicted to produce more new infections and if not Delta then one of the former variants surely?
Seems to me that the uptick in infections is largely in cities*; to be more exact in particular cohorts in cities populated by close-knit groups who for one reason or another have not been vaccinated. *And universities.
I know, but from the point of view of unlocking it doesn't matter whether or not the upswing in cases is caused by Delta or not. Its very presence has been enough to generate a panic and extend the emergency by a minimum of one month, with the risk that it now drags out for very much longer than that.
Businesses and the public probably wouldn't have to labour under the present restrictions, which are less bad than earlier in the Spring but onerous nonetheless, for four more weeks without Delta. It's also put rocket fuel into the cause of the Zero Covidians: if they can now just find enough excuses and dodgy projections to get us through until September then we'll probably be stuck with the rules until next year.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
Caribbean religion alert:
Small (510), unweighted sample.
I’m rather surprised that Survation have allowed their good name to be associated with non-dom Harmsworth and his henchmen. If forced to deal with such people one should insist on applying the most stringent professional standards. Maybe the other polling companies did insist… and lost the job?
(There is a link to the detailed tables at the bottom, but at time of writing it doesn’t work.)
Is this a case of choosing the poll you like or do not like
Survation are as reputable as any other polling company
Indeed why would Mike use it as a thread header
I have no horse in this race. Both the Conservatives and Labour are disgraceful organisations, with dire leaders.
However, as a former market research professional, I have residual fondness for the sector, and am genuinely disappointed when an otherwise reputable pollster allows their good name to be associated with typical DM guff.
Mike, like any media owner, knows that a shouty poll sells. Personally, I usually find the tasty bits are deep in the tables, and missed by 99.9% of readers.
The poll is legitimate, the presentation is selective. The Johnson/Starmer head to heads are a lot more nuanced than the headlines suggest and owe a lot to high Don't Knows for Starmer. For example, on trust/distrust it's Johnson 39/51 and Starmer 32/44 and on intelligent/not intelligent it's Johnson 73/20 and Starmer 67/16. That's not to say Starmer's numbers are good - they are far from that - but they are not as bad as you might initially imagine. He is more meh than anything else.
“Meh” might just be good enough. Governments lose, oppositions don’t win.
Being boring, predictable and uninspiring (or “meh” as you put it) might soon make Starmer seem like a godsent safe haven for English voters disgusted with the Tory revolution. After all, revolutions usually have counter-revolutions, and they are never pretty events for the erstwhile revolutionaries.
No, I cannot see Starmer making headway. He is a terrible campaigner and communicator and while I suspect he is a decent bloke with sound values seems devoid of any inspirational ideas.
Good to have you back by the way.
Thank you! But I’m not sure I’m “back”. Life moves on and PB is not the forum it once was. I can’t see me wasting too many hours arguing with folk on an obscure blog. I’m having far too much real-world fun! Just what doctors like to see
I defer to your greater knowledge of Starmer. Like most folk, I’ve hardly seen the guy in action.
Incidentally, fun times in Scandinavia. On Monday at 10am our PM is facing a vote of no confidence, and four of the eight parliamentary parties (V, SD, M, KD, ie enough) are saying they’re going to fell him.
Why? Long story, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was a Social Democrat/Green coalition government legislating for the gradual abolition of rent control. The Left Party (renamed Communists) hit the roof.
Yes, the Tory political hegemony of the Johnson fan boys can make PB a pretty repetitive place, but that will change. All political careers end in failure, and Johnson will not be the exception to that. Once he is not seen as an election winner, there is nothing to him, no hinterland of support at all. PB might well be interesting then.
Who will be forming a new government if the Swedish coalition falls? A different coalition or new elections.
Probably extra GE (the normal one is next autumn). Which will probably result in a Moderate (Con)/Christian Democrat minority government propped up by the far-right Sweden Democrats. Not pretty.
I’ve still to decide who to vote for. I left my old party M three years ago.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Re: planning reform - shifting baseline syndrome. Our green and pleasant land is not as green and pleasant as it was without planning to turn even more of the green into grey concrete. I thought the CP was environmentally-minded these days? They are going to get a big kicking if they don't look at this again.
This country is overwhelmingly green and pleasant too. Concrete is miniscule.
Just what proportion of the country do you think is green and which proportion is concrete in your eyes?
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
Wimbledon Carshalton and Wallington Winchester Esher and Walton Guildford Eastbourne Wokingham Surrey South West Cheltenham Lewes
And if this meme really takes off, which I think it will, there are a raft of other seats that could be under threat.
Where does this leave Labour? I don't know to be honest.
It leaves Scottish Labour grinning like a Cheshire cat.
This is fantastic news for progressive opponents of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The more their English bosses chase votes in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire et al the easier it is to continue peeling away centre-left SLD voters.
Without tactical voting the SLDs would be extinct.
Given the LibDems are benefiting from unionist tactical voting, it's unclear that their specific policy platform has any impact on their Scottish electoral success (or otherwise).
Tactical voting is, by its very nature, short-term. Eventually all declining parties, irrespective of tactical votes, fall back to their very core. The problem for the SLDs is that they have no core. They have no throbbing heart. They have no raison d’être.
Unionist tactical votes are a false dawn for the SLDs, because one day those voters will all go “home”. And when that happens, the vacuum at the core will dissolve in a wee fart.
That is, I'm afraid, very wishful thinking.
Between 1983 and 2010 the primary axis in Scottish voting was Tory, anti-Tory. From 2015, it is unionist-nationalist.
The unionist vote isn't going to fragment, indeed it's more likely to go in the opposite direction, and become ever more concentrated.
If you are right, then the SLDs truly are screwed. Only one party has muscular Unionism as its USP, and that isn’t the SLDs.
Naturally, but if they’ve stayed all this time they’re not going to switch to the SNP just because they offer muscular unionism.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Have you ever been to Alberta? Social distancing there isn't a restriction, its a way of life.
England population density 426 per sq km (2016, would be higher now) Alberta population density 6 per sq km
Not a typo. Six.
The UK government should do the same, but to compare us to Alberta is farcical.
I have indeed. The province is three times the size of the UK, but OTOH the people aren't spread out all over the place in little villages. Most of them live in Calgary and Edmonton. So, the population density comparison is meaningless. Fundamentally, one large Western metropolis is much like another.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
"The Telegraph has been told “nearly 100” Conservative MPs, including Cabinet ministers, are part of a WhatsApp group titled “Planning Concern” to air their grievances on the reforms."
Wimbledon Carshalton and Wallington Winchester Esher and Walton Guildford Eastbourne Wokingham Surrey South West Cheltenham Lewes
And if this meme really takes off, which I think it will, there are a raft of other seats that could be under threat.
Where does this leave Labour? I don't know to be honest.
It leaves Scottish Labour grinning like a Cheshire cat.
This is fantastic news for progressive opponents of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The more their English bosses chase votes in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire et al the easier it is to continue peeling away centre-left SLD voters.
Without tactical voting the SLDs would be extinct.
Given the LibDems are benefiting from unionist tactical voting, it's unclear that their specific policy platform has any impact on their Scottish electoral success (or otherwise).
Tactical voting is, by its very nature, short-term. Eventually all declining parties, irrespective of tactical votes, fall back to their very core. The problem for the SLDs is that they have no core. They have no throbbing heart. They have no raison d’être.
Unionist tactical votes are a false dawn for the SLDs, because one day those voters will all go “home”. And when that happens, the vacuum at the core will dissolve in a wee fart.
That is, I'm afraid, very wishful thinking.
Between 1983 and 2010 the primary axis in Scottish voting was Tory, anti-Tory. From 2015, it is unionist-nationalist.
The unionist vote isn't going to fragment, indeed it's more likely to go in the opposite direction, and become ever more concentrated.
If you are right, then the SLDs truly are screwed. Only one party has muscular Unionism as its USP, and that isn’t the SLDs.
I moved north of the wall with the understanding that independence looks inevitable. If the SCUM want to become the last bastion of the union (supporting their leader who binned off NI and the Union with it) then let them.
The battle for the SLDs has to be what kind of Scotland we want, not trying to fight for the kind of Scotland that England wants. I agree that the party is a bit quiet at the moment and that is true nationwide. Lets see how that can be changed.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
Who did you vote for before you voted Tory? UKIP?
Yes, and before that Labour 1997-2010.
This is a good article. However, the southern seats are more diverse than perhaps John Harris imagines: there is a demographic shift of sorts, as old people die and new people move in, but it is just simply not the case that these places have been overtaken by liberal remainers. It is a different thing to the cultural shift in the north where people overcame years of cultural resistance to vote conservative for the first time in 2019. I think we will see lib dem /labour / green gains, but the left are hampered by fragmentation, mutual conflict and their proven inability to really work with each other; and of course this will all work enormously to the tories advantage for the foreseeable future.
How very odd to omit the use of the word 'Conservative' from the title of the thread header? Apparently they have become 'the party that lost 20%..' I cannot puzzle that one out. Not noted yesterday, for obvious reasons were some good local results for the Tories in the SW and Scotland. For me the in B & S Survation poll is a big surprise - I expected it to be way closer and maybe in 2 weeks, it will be. Either way the fact that so much of the news is focusing on Keir Starmer's troubles should be very worrying for Labour and a huge relief for the Tories. In C & A a huge LD success and a poor result for the government. I think the T. Villiers analysis on this may be correct but if so it should be resisted. The country needs more homes in many places and the NIMBY tendency,while understandable, is not going to help any government, now or for the future.
There's a conflict between system optima (more homes) and local optima (no additional stress on local services).
But here's the thing: there are areas of the UK with more than adequate numbers of homes. Those areas, though, don't have jobs or opportunities. While the UK population has increased markedly in the last 30 years, the populations of Salford and Sunderland have declined. Some places, like Bolton, have seen their populations drop by a quarter in the last century.
A successful government would bring the North up, so that the South didn't need to build too many new homes. Win, win.
Unfortunately not being a subscriber to the Spectator-I loathe it almost as much as the Telegraph-I have no idea who the former insider is! If anyone here is a subscriber (I promise not to tell anyone) can they tell me the author of the article?
You can get the full Spectator experience for free by drinking brake fluid while reading unherd.com.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
To play Devil's Advocate for a moment, how is the Government meant to moderate house prices if supply is fundamentally constricted? Getting a lot more houses built ought to help, and that's what the Nimbies are dead set against.
Of course, after this reversal I'd be surprised if the Government didn't simply forget about housing affordability and cave to the Nimbies. After all, said supply and demand problems are most acute in the South rather than the North. From an electoral point of view, forgetting about house building in the Home Counties is a no-brainer: dumping the policy does little or no harm to your support further away from London, whilst shoring it up amongst your middle aged and elderly supporters closer to the capital. Southern Millennials aren't going to vote for you anyway so why bother with them?
Of course, not building enough homes will do serious damage to the Tories in the long run, because frustrated renters are liable to keep on voting for the Left as they age (rather than turning to defend their own interest as property owners.) But why would Boris Johnson care about what will be someone else's problem in twenty years' time when he has another election to win in three years' time?
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
I agree that Leave / Remain is the new divide in politics (and have been arguing thus for ages). I don't think its only that with Tory voters. "Remain" isn't just the EU for them, its for Conservative government and policies.
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m For what it’s worth, I haven’t spoken to anyone from any party who thinks Labour is doing as well in Batley & Spen as today’s poll suggests.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
It is worth looking at the polling which suggests that the Tories are vastly more popular than any other party in the South outside London. It is not straightforward to jump from LDs getting single figures in poll after poll to "LDs will sweep the south of England" in a single leap. The most recent poll gave them 5% nationally.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
Indeed, the stamp duty holiday has happened alongside another hefty rise in house prices. It can't be proved, but the simplest model is that house sellers extracted all the value of the tax cut by increasing prices. Because they could.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
To play Devil's Advocate for a moment, how is the Government meant to moderate house prices if supply is fundamentally constricted? Getting a lot more houses built ought to help, and that's what the Nimbies are dead set against.
Of course, after this reversal I'd be surprised if the Government didn't simply forget about housing affordability and cave to the Nimbies. After all, said supply and demand problems are most acute in the South rather than the North. From an electoral point of view, forgetting about house building in the Home Counties is a no-brainer: dumping the policy does little or no harm to your support further away from London, whilst shoring it up amongst your middle aged and elderly supporters closer to the capital. Southern Millennials aren't going to vote for you anyway so why bother with them?
Of course, not building enough homes will do serious damage to the Tories in the long run, because frustrated renters are liable to keep on voting for the Left as they age (rather than turning to defend their own interest as property owners.) But why would Boris Johnson care about what will be someone else's problem in twenty years' time when he has another election to win in three years' time?
Indeed. I think this is precisely what is going to happen. Personally I thought the new planning reforms were 'dead man walking' the minute they were published.
Are we seeing as situation where the core vote of both parties is saying: 'Hey, what about us? You need to change!'
It was quite illuminating, hearing C&A voters on the news vox pop moaning about "all the money going up north". That won't exactly hurt the Tories in the blue wall....
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
While I am not Johnson's greatest fan as leader or PM he clearly has achieved a degree of popularity among lower income voters in the north and elsewhere which is really quite extraordinary. Indeed in the main he seems to do better the more strident is the criticism he receives on social and a fair bit of the national media. Could it be that they don't really understand the folk they are endlessly preaching to?
I'm not sure it is quite that, but there do seem to be (at least) three components to blue strength in the wall formerly known as red.
Boris is charismatic. He learned, or at least honed his craft on television. We think we know him in the same way we presume to know anyone off the telly. He is like Presidents Trump and Reagan in this respect, or Arnie as Governor of California. Take away the mass media and Boris has made an awful lot of speeches, like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, but unlike most recent politicians. He has the easy charm of Tony Blair.
This is anecdotal, and from the South rather than the North, but I have overheard people turning away any criticism of Boris, with something along the lines of, "you're only complaining about that because it is Boris". We sometimes read on this very PB that such and such criticism can be dismissed because the person making it is suffering from Boris derangement syndrome.
There is also the sense that Boris is "on our side". Or at least, that Labour is not "on our side". This is partly about the culture war CCHQ is fighting but also that Boris won the fight for Brexit and now is leading the fight against the pandemic, and no doubt partly because Keir Starmer's Labour does not seem to stand for anything at all.
I think this is valid. There is a perception, whatever PBers may say, that the PM is a leader and SKS does not have that. Partly this is obviously because of the situation, all the Covid and brexit wins have his stamp on them, partially because his many enemies in the media want him to “own” what they see as those failings. SKS does not have this. Indeed he is seen as weak and when people vote in a GE they look for a party who is led by someone with leadership qualities. Whether these perceptions are fair or not doesn’t matter. These things matter. Of course things can and will change and we have a long way to go until the GE but that is how it looks to me now.
Johnson's 'hero' is Churchill, and he appears to like to be compared to him. However, Churchill lost to the charisma-light Attlee in 1950, although I would suggest that at the time Churchill was far, far more popular than Johnson is now.
By that time Attlee had had the chance to prove himself, as indeed he had by the post war election through being in the wartime cabinet.
Churchill was also 75 and had also very nearly died of a serious stroke the previous year, which was more widely known than Tory central office thought/hoped.
Are we talking about different elections? Churchill was 65 on entering Number 10 so would have been 70 at the 1945 election. Had he had a stroke during the war? He'd had a mild heart attack in America. Churchill's major stroke came during his second term and was the subject of the ITV drama, Churchill's Secret, with Michael Gambon.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
Who did you vote for before you voted Tory? UKIP?
Yes, and before that Labour 1997-2010.
Strange a UKIPer feeling shame for having voted Tory! As Ena Sharples once said "There's nowt so queer as folk".
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
It is worth looking at the polling which suggests that the Tories are vastly more popular than any other party in the South outside London. It is not straightforward to jump from LDs getting single figures in poll after poll to "LDs will sweep the south of England" in a single leap. The most recent poll gave them 5% nationally.
Oh I agree with that. The by-election is a key moment; but in itself is not at all decisive or even predictive.
Rather, a necessary building block.
Four takeaways for me. 1. The planning stuff is toxic in the shires. 2. Labour voters are now happy to vote LD 3. It is feasible for LDs to target c. 25 gains in ‘24 4. No lockdown backlash; Reform came nowhere
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
I agree that Leave / Remain is the new divide in politics (and have been arguing thus for ages). I don't think its only that with Tory voters. "Remain" isn't just the EU for them, its for Conservative government and policies.
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
Quite. I think the people with big family houses and SUVs simply want to maintain their privilege. Conservatism with a small c.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
I agree that Leave / Remain is the new divide in politics (and have been arguing thus for ages). I don't think its only that with Tory voters. "Remain" isn't just the EU for them, its for Conservative government and policies.
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
If leave/remain is a long term new divide - and it might be - then more or less 100% of the interesting policy initiative rests on Lab/LD. What is their policy going to be (substance not unicorns) to attract remainers with a meaningful offer.
A policy of 'we oppose Brexit but want you to put us in government to run it' is not a charismatic vote winner.
Until this decision is made on the centre left they will struggle. And the difficulty shows up how signally they failed from 2016-2019 to agree and implement a line alternative to TM or Boris. I felt they should coalesce around 'Norway for Now' but they failed to agree on anything. Ending up looking like NI unionists, answering every question except What do you want?
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
No.
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
Indeed, the stamp duty holiday has happened alongside another hefty rise in house prices. It can't be proved, but the simplest model is that house sellers extracted all the value of the tax cut by increasing prices. Because they could.
It was/is entirely a whizz to prop up house prices.
Possibly defensible during a pandemic-induced economic collapse?
Second like the Conservatives.....it'll be tight though. My feelign is CCHQ will have been fighting on two fronts C&A and B&S and so will lose both.
Why "and so"?
Presumably because they're incompatible. You can't stoke up this red wall vote at the same time as appeal to your southern base. The values and policies are diametrically opposed.
It's very Janus Johnson though.
When the Janus LibDems have just won C&A?
We support trains! (But not here!) Build more houses! (But not here!)
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
Who did you vote for before you voted Tory? UKIP?
Yes, and before that Labour 1997-2010.
Strange a UKIPer feeling shame for having voted Tory! As Ena Sharples once said "There's nowt so queer as folk".
Most of the ex-ukippers I know come from working class ex labour voting backgrounds. The tories were anathema to them. However, under Johnson, they were the only party who were supporting the referendum vote. Politically, there is nowhere else for them to go.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m For what it’s worth, I haven’t spoken to anyone from any party who thinks Labour is doing as well in Batley & Spen as today’s poll suggests.
Hodges is an embarassing counter-indicator.
I was confident about Labour, until Galloway’s spoiler antics. I now think Tory gain.
(Feel free to ignore this post; I was confident of a Tory win in C&A and only started reconsidering on the day of the poll after some of the knocking up reports and a review of Twitter activity).
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Look at the 'South outside London' polling. Tories streets ahead. This is all overdone.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
Good take by the excellent John Harris. However, just notice how as the Tories develop a stance more popular with the north, the poor, the working class in general and their aspirations, the de haut en bas Guardian leads the charge against them.
I felt dirty voting Tory for the first time in Dec 2019, but knowing the Golf club bores, retired majors in blazers and bored middle class housewives in the Home Counties are still on the other side has made me a lot happier about it
There will be a lot in the Red Wall here thinking the same thing. I can guarantee it.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
He won't get to the general election. We're 2 years away from it, they'll want time to bed in the new leader. Its just a question of timing when they move on him.
Theres no way Boris goes quietly before he has been PM longer than May, that's the bare minimum.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m For what it’s worth, I haven’t spoken to anyone from any party who thinks Labour is doing as well in Batley & Spen as today’s poll suggests.
Hodges is an embarassing counter-indicator.
I was confident about Labour, until Galloway’s spoiler antics. I now think Tory gain.
(Feel free to ignore this post; I was confident of a Tory win in C&A and only started reconsidering on the day of the poll after some of the knocking up reports and a review of Twitter activity).
Oddly enough I think Labour for this. I might even go and have a bet on them. I just think the Tory vote will be suppressed enough, alongside LDs doing a quid pro quo to give labour it by default. FWIW I am terrible at political betting.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
We will be reaching a Rogerdamus crescendo of dire predictions based on his view from his lush apartment in France.
Seems the Labour Party vote is more or less holding up in Batley and Spen compared with 2019 but the Heavy Woolen independents have moved en-masse to the Conservatives. Which is not surprising. The Conservatives essentially is the Heavy Woolen party these days, which I suspect is a source of their issues in Chesham & Amersham.
Or to put it another way B&S was lost to Labour by 2019 and it was only an accident that they held onto the seat in that election.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
But they are outnumbered by the Little Englanders who think BoZo is their guy, who will stick it to Johnny Foreigner.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing.
Which might work had the number of Europeans who applied for settled status not been nearly double the number they thought would - 5 million!
In any case I suspect the returnees were mainly the young living in multiple occupancy households.....no sign of property prices falling because of reduced demand.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
I agree that Leave / Remain is the new divide in politics (and have been arguing thus for ages). I don't think its only that with Tory voters. "Remain" isn't just the EU for them, its for Conservative government and policies.
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
If leave/remain is a long term new divide - and it might be - then more or less 100% of the interesting policy initiative rests on Lab/LD. What is their policy going to be (substance not unicorns) to attract remainers with a meaningful offer.
A policy of 'we oppose Brexit but want you to put us in government to run it' is not a charismatic vote winner.
Until this decision is made on the centre left they will struggle. And the difficulty shows up how signally they failed from 2016-2019 to agree and implement a line alternative to TM or Boris. I felt they should coalesce around 'Norway for Now' but they failed to agree on anything. Ending up looking like NI unionists, answering every question except What do you want?
Ultimately, it depends on how Brexit works in reality and in public perception. If in 2023/4, it's perceived as a success, it's architects will be rewarded. If it's a flop, the public mood will be for a Braprochment, no matter how awkward, and that will be under a different government. We don't know where the UK will be on that range- though I will tediously point out that the whole idea of Brexit is most popular with the retired who don't have to worry about making the damn thing work. There was that poll this week saying 30% rejoin, 40% stay out, leaving 30% unaccounted for. Until that 30% breaks one way or another, the sore will continue to run.
“I was going door-to-door at the start of the campaign and everything seemed normal. Then the Lib Dems absolutely carpet bombed the seat with opposition to planning and HS2 leaflets with quotes from Theresa May on them.”
Good old Theresa!
The fact that it was announced that she was actively campaigning in the seat is clearly a factor we should have taken into account.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
Very well said.
Anyone who has the gaul to use the term One Nation, while opposing housing for the young and immigrants, or jobs in the North, is the worst kind of hypocrite.
I think that in the eyes of some, the historic mission of the Conservatives is to pursue the interests of the upper middle classes of the South East, not the hoi polloi.
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Mostly agree. Brexit went across traditional political divides, and Boris is less popular in the south with a certain sort of Tory. But three, qualifications: Tories don't like Labour governments much and come a GE that's the choice; polling is strong for Tories in the south outside London; and Boris is the man of moment to get Brexit done but he won't be in place for ever.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Look at the 'South outside London' polling. Tories streets ahead. This is all overdone.
Now? Sure - where else would they go? Point is that C&A is a pathfinder election - look what you could do instead. We finally get Labour voters accepting that in voting Labour in Guildford they're voting for a Tory MP so lets vote LD instead, combined with small c Tories utterly fed up with the clown car that is the Blue Labour Cult.
So yes, the Tories will still win swathes of the south. But they reached their peak and you can see the way out for so many of those seats. Remember that once the scales fall from voters eyes change can be rapid and brutal. As Labour have experienced in Scotland. As the Tories have experienced in Scotland...
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
Caribbean religion alert:
Small (510), unweighted sample.
I’m rather surprised that Survation have allowed their good name to be associated with non-dom Harmsworth and his henchmen. If forced to deal with such people one should insist on applying the most stringent professional standards. Maybe the other polling companies did insist… and lost the job?
(There is a link to the detailed tables at the bottom, but at time of writing it doesn’t work.)
Is this a case of choosing the poll you like or do not like
Survation are as reputable as any other polling company
Indeed why would Mike use it as a thread header
I have no horse in this race. Both the Conservatives and Labour are disgraceful organisations, with dire leaders.
However, as a former market research professional, I have residual fondness for the sector, and am genuinely disappointed when an otherwise reputable pollster allows their good name to be associated with typical DM guff.
Mike, like any media owner, knows that a shouty poll sells. Personally, I usually find the tasty bits are deep in the tables, and missed by 99.9% of readers.
The poll is legitimate, the presentation is selective. The Johnson/Starmer head to heads are a lot more nuanced than the headlines suggest and owe a lot to high Don't Knows for Starmer. For example, on trust/distrust it's Johnson 39/51 and Starmer 32/44 and on intelligent/not intelligent it's Johnson 73/20 and Starmer 67/16. That's not to say Starmer's numbers are good - they are far from that - but they are not as bad as you might initially imagine. He is more meh than anything else.
Yes, but another way of presenting the findings regardless of net was that more in B&S distrust Johnson than Starmer and more think he is less intelligent.
JH is always interesting and tries to look beyond his own biases. An increasingly rare attribute
The key paragraph: "Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Isn’t it just a long winded way of saying Leavers are voting Tory and Remainers Lib Dem?
I agree that Leave / Remain is the new divide in politics (and have been arguing thus for ages). I don't think its only that with Tory voters. "Remain" isn't just the EU for them, its for Conservative government and policies.
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
If leave/remain is a long term new divide - and it might be - then more or less 100% of the interesting policy initiative rests on Lab/LD. What is their policy going to be (substance not unicorns) to attract remainers with a meaningful offer.
A policy of 'we oppose Brexit but want you to put us in government to run it' is not a charismatic vote winner.
Until this decision is made on the centre left they will struggle. And the difficulty shows up how signally they failed from 2016-2019 to agree and implement a line alternative to TM or Boris. I felt they should coalesce around 'Norway for Now' but they failed to agree on anything. Ending up looking like NI unionists, answering every question except What do you want?
Ultimately, it depends on how Brexit works in reality and in public perception. If in 2023/4, it's perceived as a success, it's architects will be rewarded. If it's a flop, the public mood will be for a Braprochment, no matter how awkward, and that will be under a different government. We don't know where the UK will be on that range- though I will tediously point out that the whole idea of Brexit is most popular with the retired who don't have to worry about making the damn thing work. There was that poll this week saying 30% rejoin, 40% stay out, leaving 30% unaccounted for. Until that 30% breaks one way or another, the sore will continue to run.
I suspect, as I said at the time, the last 30% will be the “fuck off! Haven’t we had enough of you asking this shite?” Grouping.
Given the LDs now figure they are on the up and are now the party of the remain tories but don’t have a visible leader figure, perhaps now is the time for David Cameron to join them? He is the leader those tories who turned them over in C&A would support.
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
It was Cameron that lost these nice tories - he who eviscerated local government, introduced the hated planning reforms, etc. And gambled on Brexit.
“I was going door-to-door at the start of the campaign and everything seemed normal. Then the Lib Dems absolutely carpet bombed the seat with opposition to planning and HS2 leaflets with quotes from Theresa May on them.”
Good old Theresa!
The fact that it was announced that she was actively campaigning in the seat is clearly a factor we should have taken into account.
To be fair to Mrs May, she’s always seen herself as a public servant, was well known for turning up to campaign for any local council by-election within 50 miles of Maidenhead, even when she was Home Secretary.
Covid sitrep: Was not planning on doing another one but things are definitely changing on the ground in some NHS hospitals. Vaccination has been a huge help but we are seeing more patients admitted to hospital and to ICU. Frustrating but there are reasons to be hopeful 1/11:
Interesting to see Conservative supporters who dismissed their government's gross dishonesty as irrelevant - they seem to be doing something right, look at the polls - castigate successful Lib Dems for lacking principle.
Are we seeing as situation where the core vote of both parties is saying: 'Hey, what about us? You need to change!'
It was quite illuminating, hearing C&A voters on the news vox pop moaning about "all the money going up north". That won't exactly hurt the Tories in the blue wall....
The C&A types would prefer all the money to go into higher house prices.
If they get their wish it will result in all the young people going up north.
“I was going door-to-door at the start of the campaign and everything seemed normal. Then the Lib Dems absolutely carpet bombed the seat with opposition to planning and HS2 leaflets with quotes from Theresa May on them.”
Good old Theresa!
The fact that it was announced that she was actively campaigning in the seat is clearly a factor we should have taken into account.
To be fair to Mrs May, she’s always seen herself as a public servant, was well known for turning up to campaign for any local council by-election within 50 miles of Maidenhead, even when she was Home Secretary.
Its one of the few things I admire her for....I'm not sure that extends to the current Conservative cabinet
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Look at the 'South outside London' polling. Tories streets ahead. This is all overdone.
Now? Sure - where else would they go? Point is that C&A is a pathfinder election - look what you could do instead. We finally get Labour voters accepting that in voting Labour in Guildford they're voting for a Tory MP so lets vote LD instead, combined with small c Tories utterly fed up with the clown car that is the Blue Labour Cult.
So yes, the Tories will still win swathes of the south. But they reached their peak and you can see the way out for so many of those seats. Remember that once the scales fall from voters eyes change can be rapid and brutal. As Labour have experienced in Scotland. As the Tories have experienced in Scotland...
I think that's taking a bit much from a single by-election. I remember when the LibDems repeatedly triumphed in re-elections in the 80s but then those wins were completely forgotten at the next election, when the Conservatives thrashed them. I think we could be going back to that pattern.
“I was going door-to-door at the start of the campaign and everything seemed normal. Then the Lib Dems absolutely carpet bombed the seat with opposition to planning and HS2 leaflets with quotes from Theresa May on them.”
Good old Theresa!
The fact that it was announced that she was actively campaigning in the seat is clearly a factor we should have taken into account.
To be fair to Mrs May, she’s always seen herself as a public servant, was well known for turning up to campaign for any local council by-election within 50 miles of Maidenhead, even when she was Home Secretary.
Its one of the few things I admire her for....I'm not sure that extends to the current Conservative cabinet
She always used to marshal at Maidenhead Half Marathon as well.
It'll be interesting to see what the Tories do about planning reform. They could simply declare that, because a load of Europeans went home because of the Plague and aren't coming back, the population has declined and eased the pressure on housing: a convenient pretext for dropping the whole thing. "We are listening to you, O angry Nimbies! Barratt boxes full of smelly poor people shall not despoil your view!"
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Have you ever been to Alberta? Social distancing there isn't a restriction, its a way of life.
England population density 426 per sq km (2016, would be higher now) Alberta population density 6 per sq km
Not a typo. Six.
The UK government should do the same, but to compare us to Alberta is farcical.
This post underlines the point made up thread by @StuartDickson …. PB is diminished by those who spend the day making fatuous comments looking for an argument…
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Mostly agree. Brexit went across traditional political divides, and Boris is less popular in the south with a certain sort of Tory. But three, qualifications: Tories don't like Labour governments much and come a GE that's the choice; polling is strong for Tories in the south outside London; and Boris is the man of moment to get Brexit done but he won't be in place for ever.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
What really makes a break out in the south possible is the reality that Labour will not win the next general election. Fear of Corbyn absolutely drove people back into the Con camp, but Jezbollah has gone, Labour have gone as a threat and Con isn't the same Con that they used to like.
As for the working north, I know many punters on Teesside who are openly giddy about how brilliant it is that Labour have gone and the Tories are doing things. Well ok promising things they are already backtracking on. They will at the very least give the Tories the benefit of the doubt at the next election rather than reverting back to status quo ante and voting Labour.
Are we seeing as situation where the core vote of both parties is saying: 'Hey, what about us? You need to change!'
It was quite illuminating, hearing C&A voters on the news vox pop moaning about "all the money going up north". That won't exactly hurt the Tories in the blue wall....
The C&A types would prefer all the money to go into higher house prices.
If they get their wish it will result in all the young people going up north.
Internal FOM seems to work as badly as the EU version - one way. It would be great if more southerners were attracted up North
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Look at the 'South outside London' polling. Tories streets ahead. This is all overdone.
Now? Sure - where else would they go? Point is that C&A is a pathfinder election - look what you could do instead. We finally get Labour voters accepting that in voting Labour in Guildford they're voting for a Tory MP so lets vote LD instead, combined with small c Tories utterly fed up with the clown car that is the Blue Labour Cult.
So yes, the Tories will still win swathes of the south. But they reached their peak and you can see the way out for so many of those seats. Remember that once the scales fall from voters eyes change can be rapid and brutal. As Labour have experienced in Scotland. As the Tories have experienced in Scotland...
The key in the south is not the Labour vote but the soft Tory, Remainer vote. It stuck with Johnson in 2019 because it really didn't want Corbyn. If Labour has a less threatening leader and/or does not look like winning it frees up a lot of people not to vote Tory.
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
While I am not Johnson's greatest fan as leader or PM he clearly has achieved a degree of popularity among lower income voters in the north and elsewhere which is really quite extraordinary. Indeed in the main he seems to do better the more strident is the criticism he receives on social and a fair bit of the national media. Could it be that they don't really understand the folk they are endlessly preaching to?
I'm not sure it is quite that, but there do seem to be (at least) three components to blue strength in the wall formerly known as red.
Boris is charismatic. He learned, or at least honed his craft on television. We think we know him in the same way we presume to know anyone off the telly. He is like Presidents Trump and Reagan in this respect, or Arnie as Governor of California. Take away the mass media and Boris has made an awful lot of speeches, like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, but unlike most recent politicians. He has the easy charm of Tony Blair.
This is anecdotal, and from the South rather than the North, but I have overheard people turning away any criticism of Boris, with something along the lines of, "you're only complaining about that because it is Boris". We sometimes read on this very PB that such and such criticism can be dismissed because the person making it is suffering from Boris derangement syndrome.
There is also the sense that Boris is "on our side". Or at least, that Labour is not "on our side". This is partly about the culture war CCHQ is fighting but also that Boris won the fight for Brexit and now is leading the fight against the pandemic, and no doubt partly because Keir Starmer's Labour does not seem to stand for anything at all.
I think this is valid. There is a perception, whatever PBers may say, that the PM is a leader and SKS does not have that. Partly this is obviously because of the situation, all the Covid and brexit wins have his stamp on them, partially because his many enemies in the media want him to “own” what they see as those failings. SKS does not have this. Indeed he is seen as weak and when people vote in a GE they look for a party who is led by someone with leadership qualities. Whether these perceptions are fair or not doesn’t matter. These things matter. Of course things can and will change and we have a long way to go until the GE but that is how it looks to me now.
Johnson's 'hero' is Churchill, and he appears to like to be compared to him. However, Churchill lost to the charisma-light Attlee in 1950, although I would suggest that at the time Churchill was far, far more popular than Johnson is now.
By that time Attlee had had the chance to prove himself, as indeed he had by the post war election through being in the wartime cabinet.
Churchill was also 75 and had also very nearly died of a serious stroke the previous year, which was more widely known than Tory central office thought/hoped.
Are we talking about different elections? Churchill was 65 on entering Number 10 so would have been 70 at the 1945 election. Had he had a stroke during the war? He'd had a mild heart attack in America. Churchill's major stroke came during his second term and was the subject of the ITV drama, Churchill's Secret, with Michael Gambon.
The post said 1950. He had a major stroke in 1949, and a second one in 1953.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
It's not just down south. The Batley & Spen poll has Labour ahead in the 18-54 age demographic, but miles behind in the 54+ one.
Are we seeing as situation where the core vote of both parties is saying: 'Hey, what about us? You need to change!'
It was quite illuminating, hearing C&A voters on the news vox pop moaning about "all the money going up north". That won't exactly hurt the Tories in the blue wall....
The C&A types would prefer all the money to go into higher house prices.
If they get their wish it will result in all the young people going up north.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
It's not just down south. The Batley & Spen poll has Labour ahead in the 18-54 age demographic, but miles behind in the 54+ one.
Otherwise known as “the ones who vote”. I still think Labour are likeliest to win but a lot of those older voters are the people who would have voted Labour all through the thatcher years. That is one of the hardest echelons to move so it shows more voting mobility. Which is always good news for the yellow peril.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
It's not just down south. The Batley & Spen poll has Labour ahead in the 18-54 age demographic, but miles behind in the 54+ one.
Otherwise known as “the ones who vote”. I still think Labour are likeliest to win but a lot of those older voters are the people who would have voted Labour all through the thatcher years. That is one of the hardest echelons to move so it shows more voting mobility. Which is always good news for the yellow peril.
Yep - Labour is buggered for as long as the Tory lead is so big among the oldies. And the Red Wall is full of oldies. I think Labour would win B&S were it not for Galloway. He is clearly eating into a big chunk of the party's usual support, even as Labour is actually managing to take a few votes from the Tories.
Are we seeing as situation where the core vote of both parties is saying: 'Hey, what about us? You need to change!'
It was quite illuminating, hearing C&A voters on the news vox pop moaning about "all the money going up north". That won't exactly hurt the Tories in the blue wall....
The C&A types would prefer all the money to go into higher house prices.
If they get their wish it will result in all the young people going up north.
Internal FOM seems to work as badly as the EU version - one way. It would be great if more southerners were attracted up North
They already are and have been in increasing numbers for the last two decades.
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Mostly agree. Brexit went across traditional political divides, and Boris is less popular in the south with a certain sort of Tory. But three, qualifications: Tories don't like Labour governments much and come a GE that's the choice; polling is strong for Tories in the south outside London; and Boris is the man of moment to get Brexit done but he won't be in place for ever.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
What really makes a break out in the south possible is the reality that Labour will not win the next general election. Fear of Corbyn absolutely drove people back into the Con camp, but Jezbollah has gone, Labour have gone as a threat and Con isn't the same Con that they used to like.
As for the working north, I know many punters on Teesside who are openly giddy about how brilliant it is that Labour have gone and the Tories are doing things. Well ok promising things they are already backtracking on. They will at the very least give the Tories the benefit of the doubt at the next election rather than reverting back to status quo ante and voting Labour.
A bit is missing here. In GEs people vote for a government. If the Tories don't win you get a Labour led government. There are no alternatives. In 2010 LDs were voting LD with two acceptable possible governments - that led by Brown and that led by Cameron. By 2015 LDs had decided that coalition was terrible.
It is too early to say what possible LD voters will do in the next GE, but it will depend upon a complex equation involving a Tory government versus something of a rainbow alliance, including the SNP and led by Labour. Don't bet the farm on C&A, Wokingham etc preferring government by Ian Blackmore and Richard Burgon to government by the Tories.
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Mostly agree. Brexit went across traditional political divides, and Boris is less popular in the south with a certain sort of Tory. But three, qualifications: Tories don't like Labour governments much and come a GE that's the choice; polling is strong for Tories in the south outside London; and Boris is the man of moment to get Brexit done but he won't be in place for ever.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
What really makes a break out in the south possible is the reality that Labour will not win the next general election. Fear of Corbyn absolutely drove people back into the Con camp, but Jezbollah has gone, Labour have gone as a threat and Con isn't the same Con that they used to like.
As for the working north, I know many punters on Teesside who are openly giddy about how brilliant it is that Labour have gone and the Tories are doing things. Well ok promising things they are already backtracking on. They will at the very least give the Tories the benefit of the doubt at the next election rather than reverting back to status quo ante and voting Labour.
A bit is missing here. In GEs people vote for a government. If the Tories don't win you get a Labour led government. There are no alternatives. In 2010 LDs were voting LD with two acceptable possible governments - that led by Brown and that led by Cameron. By 2015 LDs had decided that coalition was terrible.
It is too early to say what possible LD voters will do in the next GE, but it will depend upon a complex equation involving a Tory government versus something of a rainbow alliance, including the SNP and led by Labour. Don't bet the farm on C&A, Wokingham etc preferring government by Ian Blackmore and Richard Burgon to government by the Tories.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
It's not just down south. The Batley & Spen poll has Labour ahead in the 18-54 age demographic, but miles behind in the 54+ one.
Otherwise known as “the ones who vote”. I still think Labour are likeliest to win but a lot of those older voters are the people who would have voted Labour all through the thatcher years. That is one of the hardest echelons to move so it shows more voting mobility. Which is always good news for the yellow peril.
Yep - Labour is buggered for as long as the Tory lead is so big among the oldies. And the Red Wall is full of oldies. I think Labour would win B&S were it not for Galloway. He is clearly eating into a big chunk of the party's usual support, even as Labour is actually managing to take a few votes from the Tories.
I have come to the view that the Tories will scrape it by a nose, but nowhere near certain enough to back at these prices. Unlike LDs at C&A.
The formula is simple: Galloway is standing, Heavy Woollens aren't, fracas of Batley Grammar. That's the difference.
There is a certain kind of Conservative which I generally categorize as "nice Tories", these people beleive in public service, they are active in teams and clubs, some are active in local projects, planting trees or the local town twinning activities. The kind of people who become local magistrates for example, or volunteer in the citizens advice bureaux. They tend to be better educated, often running their own businesses. Affluent but aware that they are lucky and keen to put something back. These people have been the backbone of the Conservatives in the Home counties. They are low-key, hard-working kinds of people, and almost quintessentially English middle class.
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
Mostly agree. Brexit went across traditional political divides, and Boris is less popular in the south with a certain sort of Tory. But three, qualifications: Tories don't like Labour governments much and come a GE that's the choice; polling is strong for Tories in the south outside London; and Boris is the man of moment to get Brexit done but he won't be in place for ever.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
What really makes a break out in the south possible is the reality that Labour will not win the next general election. Fear of Corbyn absolutely drove people back into the Con camp, but Jezbollah has gone, Labour have gone as a threat and Con isn't the same Con that they used to like.
As for the working north, I know many punters on Teesside who are openly giddy about how brilliant it is that Labour have gone and the Tories are doing things. Well ok promising things they are already backtracking on. They will at the very least give the Tories the benefit of the doubt at the next election rather than reverting back to status quo ante and voting Labour.
A bit is missing here. In GEs people vote for a government. If the Tories don't win you get a Labour led government. There are no alternatives. In 2010 LDs were voting LD with two acceptable possible governments - that led by Brown and that led by Cameron. By 2015 LDs had decided that coalition was terrible.
It is too early to say what possible LD voters will do in the next GE, but it will depend upon a complex equation involving a Tory government versus something of a rainbow alliance, including the SNP and led by Labour. Don't bet the farm on C&A, Wokingham etc preferring government by Ian Blackmore and Richard Burgon to government by the Tories.
For every Burgon there is a Bridgen.
True. Every grey cloud has a grey lining. And for every Francois there is a Pidcock.
Wimbledon Carshalton and Wallington Winchester Esher and Walton Guildford Eastbourne Wokingham Surrey South West Cheltenham Lewes
And if this meme really takes off, which I think it will, there are a raft of other seats that could be under threat.
Where does this leave Labour? I don't know to be honest.
It leaves Scottish Labour grinning like a Cheshire cat.
This is fantastic news for progressive opponents of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The more their English bosses chase votes in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire et al the easier it is to continue peeling away centre-left SLD voters.
Without tactical voting the SLDs would be extinct.
Given the LibDems are benefiting from unionist tactical voting, it's unclear that their specific policy platform has any impact on their Scottish electoral success (or otherwise).
Tactical voting is, by its very nature, short-term. Eventually all declining parties, irrespective of tactical votes, fall back to their very core. The problem for the SLDs is that they have no core. They have no throbbing heart. They have no raison d’être.
Unionist tactical votes are a false dawn for the SLDs, because one day those voters will all go “home”. And when that happens, the vacuum at the core will dissolve in a wee fart.
I don't think that we can discount the effect of a Scottish national leader. For all her faults, Swinson was Scottish and represented a Scottish seat, albeit clearly a Scottish tradition that is anathema to you.
All parties do better in Scotland when the national leader is Scottish. Brown held onto SLAB seats that would just be a dream now.
The converse is that those 4 SLD seats do look vulnerable with Davey in charge.
Their issue is they are neither social or democratic and as long as they are a southern England party , their only hope is tactical votes from other similar London based parties adherents. They are a zombie party in Scotland.
Russia has reported 17,906 new cases, including a record 9,120 in Moscow, pushing the national infection tally up to 5,299,215 since the pandemic began.
Reuters reports that the government task force confirmed 466 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 128,911. The state statistics agency, which keeps separate figures, has said Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths in the year to April.
The details of this poll in the Daily Mail are a horror show for Starmer
Boris even leads on trustworthy and the NHS
Starmer only leads on understands workers by 38 to 33
Best PM
Boris 55 Starmer 18 DK 23
Best for North
Boris 40 Starmer 32 DK 28
Strong
Boris 54 Starmer 24
Trustworthy
Boris 39 Starmer 32
Intelligent
Boris 73 Starmer 67
Charismatic
Boris 60 Starmer 23
Understands workers
Boris 33 Starmer 38
Has a clear stand
Boris 50 Starmer 32
And Best policies
Brexit
Boris 57 Starmer 17
Covid
Boris 55 Starmer 21
Economy
Boris 55 Starmer 21
NHS
Boris 45 Starmer 30
While I am not Johnson's greatest fan as leader or PM he clearly has achieved a degree of popularity among lower income voters in the north and elsewhere which is really quite extraordinary. Indeed in the main he seems to do better the more strident is the criticism he receives on social and a fair bit of the national media. Could it be that they don't really understand the folk they are endlessly preaching to?
I'm not sure it is quite that, but there do seem to be (at least) three components to blue strength in the wall formerly known as red.
Boris is charismatic. He learned, or at least honed his craft on television. We think we know him in the same way we presume to know anyone off the telly. He is like Presidents Trump and Reagan in this respect, or Arnie as Governor of California. Take away the mass media and Boris has made an awful lot of speeches, like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, but unlike most recent politicians. He has the easy charm of Tony Blair.
This is anecdotal, and from the South rather than the North, but I have overheard people turning away any criticism of Boris, with something along the lines of, "you're only complaining about that because it is Boris". We sometimes read on this very PB that such and such criticism can be dismissed because the person making it is suffering from Boris derangement syndrome.
There is also the sense that Boris is "on our side". Or at least, that Labour is not "on our side". This is partly about the culture war CCHQ is fighting but also that Boris won the fight for Brexit and now is leading the fight against the pandemic, and no doubt partly because Keir Starmer's Labour does not seem to stand for anything at all.
A very good summation. I just struggle with the idea that he has charm. Still less that he has the charm of Tony Blair. It's a bit like that line they use about the Kray twins "They're great lads. They look after their own". There are some who'll agree but there are a hell of a lot who hear it and want to retch
The Krays were choir boys compared to the thugs currently running the UK.
Any tory who turns around after this result and says, 'ah but it's far worse for Labour' is living a delusion.
This is a catastrophic result for Johnson's Conservatives. We passed peak Boris on May 25th and I would not now bet on him winning the next General Election.
You're being ridiculous.
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as Tory 367 Lab 177 SNP 48 LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
A strange calculation. If support for Johnson starts to peel away starting from its peak on May 25th and reaching a crescendo of loathing sometime next year the voters will find a way to eject the Tories by the next election. They always do
But there's no evidence of support for Johnson peeling away or reaching a crescendo of loathing.
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
A Johnson party that predominantly holds seats in the Midlands and North is not the Conservative Party that so many people in the south recognise. Your argument is the same as Labour's vs the WWC - of course you will vote for us, where else will you go?
Look at the 'South outside London' polling. Tories streets ahead. This is all overdone.
Now? Sure - where else would they go? Point is that C&A is a pathfinder election - look what you could do instead. We finally get Labour voters accepting that in voting Labour in Guildford they're voting for a Tory MP so lets vote LD instead, combined with small c Tories utterly fed up with the clown car that is the Blue Labour Cult.
So yes, the Tories will still win swathes of the south. But they reached their peak and you can see the way out for so many of those seats. Remember that once the scales fall from voters eyes change can be rapid and brutal. As Labour have experienced in Scotland. As the Tories have experienced in Scotland...
I think that's taking a bit much from a single by-election. I remember when the LibDems repeatedly triumphed in re-elections in the 80s but then those wins were completely forgotten at the next election, when the Conservatives thrashed them. I think we could be going back to that pattern.
Certainly possible. My point is that there is always a breakout event. For the Tories attacking the Blue Wall seats like Mansfield and Copeland showed the way. Alternately for a fizzled breakout the other way look at Labour in Canterbury.
If change comes it can come quickly. Both the LibDems and Labour have had dozens of southern seats so we know it can happen. C&A may prompt another wave, it may not. Had the Tories held the seat then it wouldn't even be a consideration.
Former Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire David Gauke, expelled from the party by Johnson over Brexit, said: “There is a realignment going on in British politics and that has favoured the Conservatives: it gave them a big majority the last time around because the first stage of this was the fall of the red wall.
“But there are a group of seats – up to 30 or 40 – where the Conservative vote is not Johnsonian, considers the government to be pretty populist, not focused on the interests of taxpayers, not sufficiently pro-business, and that vote is soft. And it’s vulnerable.”
Highlighting Tory losses in his local area at recent local elections in “very prosperous, middle-class commuter areas”, such as Hitchin, Harpenden and Bishops Stortford, he added, “the current trajectory of the Conservative party is not particularly sympathetic to those areas, and the local residents are not particularly sympathetic to what the Conservative party has become”.
This is code for: The Tory government is doing slightly more than is comfortable to make older very rich people in the south allow their children not be homeless, and is giving attention to extremely common people in northern places that hang monkeys and don't matter. This will never do. When we speak of One Nation Tories we don't mean giving attention to people who keep coal in the bath, or young people being allowed to buy a house. So vote Liberal.
Very well said.
Anyone who has the gaul to use the term One Nation, while opposing housing for the young and immigrants, or jobs in the North, is the worst kind of hypocrite.
was the spelling of gall a freudian slip or deliberate
Comments
Lets say theoretically you're right and the Tories lose 23 seats in the South to the Lib Dems.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 15 Hartlepool-style seats primarily from Labour due the collapse of the Brexit Party.
As it stands the Tories are set to gain 10 seats from the new boundaries.
Put all that together and you'd end up with an increased Tory majority of 84 as the new baseline.
If the next election ends up as
Tory 367
Lab 177
SNP 48
LD 35
Then who is PM? Who is happiest?
I expect the Tories to take the seat, with the gorgeous one acting as spoiler for Labour (and like BJO and others then celebrating Labour's defeat). Liar will then go on thinking that he can do what he likes, and thus the rot really sets in for southern voters.
Elsewhere, my friend in Calgary reports that the Government of Alberta is getting ready to dump almost all the Covid shit on July 1st. Social distancing and almost everything else is going: they'll only be continuing isolation for positive cases, some protections for care homes, and they're looking at whether to retain masks in some limited circumstances. Their vaccination levels aren't nearly as good as ours yet, but they're not being assaulted by Delta, which has caused all the trouble over here. Meanwhile, we may not even get so far come July 19th this year, and possibly not next either at the rate things keep going wrong, and with how utterly desperate a large fraction of our scientific community is to draw the agony out. Testament to our Government's ongoing uselessness.
Anyone who has the gaul to use the term One Nation, while opposing housing for the young and immigrants, or jobs in the North, is the worst kind of hypocrite.
Seems to me that the uptick in infections is largely in cities*; to be more exact in particular cohorts in cities populated by close-knit groups who for one reason or another have not been vaccinated. *And universities.
England population density 426 per sq km (2016, would be higher now)
Alberta population density 6 per sq km
Not a typo. Six.
The UK government should do the same, but to compare us to Alberta is farcical.
Businesses and the public probably wouldn't have to labour under the present restrictions, which are less bad than earlier in the Spring but onerous nonetheless, for four more weeks without Delta. It's also put rocket fuel into the cause of the Zero Covidians: if they can now just find enough excuses and dodgy projections to get us through until September then we'll probably be stuck with the rules until next year.
Vote Tory and get the £££.
& home counties remainia might get the housing it do badly needs in time too
"Not for the first time, what his party seems to have divined is an overlooked part of the electorate who may soon start to change the political weather. They do not like Boris Johnson, or what he is doing with power. Brexit is still uppermost in their minds. If they are watching GB News, it is only for the laughs. And as people like them now embrace home-working and move in ever-increasing numbers from London to its surrounding areas, they ought to be causing the Conservatives’ cleverer minds no end of concern."
When I read people on here banging on about woke and wanting culture wars I do wonder if they think they live in America. Works over there, not over here.
Which will probably result in a Moderate (Con)/Christian Democrat minority government propped up by the far-right Sweden Democrats. Not pretty.
I’ve still to decide who to vote for. I left my old party M three years ago.
Just what proportion of the country do you think is green and which proportion is concrete in your eyes?
An exchange of some Labour seats to the Tories, with some Tory seats going to the Lib Dems, may be bad news for the MPs in the lost seats but is not bad news for Johnson (unless Uxbridge is one of the lost seats!)
Middle class professionals are looking at an incompetent, divisive, and regressive party and voting with their feet.
Meanwhile, this government has done nothing to moderate house prices, and is actually not at all interested in the well-being of northern monkey-hangers. Laughable to suggest otherwise.
The battle for the SLDs has to be what kind of Scotland we want, not trying to fight for the kind of Scotland that England wants. I agree that the party is a bit quiet at the moment and that is true nationwide. Lets see how that can be changed.
Of course, after this reversal I'd be surprised if the Government didn't simply forget about housing affordability and cave to the Nimbies. After all, said supply and demand problems are most acute in the South rather than the North. From an electoral point of view, forgetting about house building in the Home Counties is a no-brainer: dumping the policy does little or no harm to your support further away from London, whilst shoring it up amongst your middle aged and elderly supporters closer to the capital. Southern Millennials aren't going to vote for you anyway so why bother with them?
Of course, not building enough homes will do serious damage to the Tories in the long run, because frustrated renters are liable to keep on voting for the Left as they age (rather than turning to defend their own interest as property owners.) But why would Boris Johnson care about what will be someone else's problem in twenty years' time when he has another election to win in three years' time?
The key reason why the Blue Labour Cult is doing so well in the former red wall is that it is not remotely Conservative. Perhaps southern remainers simply despite Johnsonism and all it spaffs out?
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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19m
For what it’s worth, I haven’t spoken to anyone from any party who thinks Labour is doing as well in Batley & Spen as today’s poll suggests.
Owen Jones 🌹
@OwenJones84
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14h
Ben Nunn, Keir Starmer’s Director of Communications, has resigned.
The by-election is a key moment; but in itself is not at all decisive or even predictive.
Rather, a necessary building block.
Four takeaways for me.
1. The planning stuff is toxic in the shires.
2. Labour voters are now happy to vote LD
3. It is feasible for LDs to target c. 25 gains in ‘24
4. No lockdown backlash; Reform came nowhere
A policy of 'we oppose Brexit but want you to put us in government to run it' is not a charismatic vote winner.
Until this decision is made on the centre left they will struggle. And the difficulty shows up how signally they failed from 2016-2019 to agree and implement a line alternative to TM or Boris. I felt they should coalesce around 'Norway for Now' but they failed to agree on anything. Ending up looking like NI unionists, answering every question except What do you want?
Possibly defensible during a pandemic-induced economic collapse?
Obviously not sold that way though.
We support trains! (But not here!)
Build more houses! (But not here!)
I was confident about Labour, until Galloway’s spoiler antics. I now think Tory gain.
(Feel free to ignore this post; I was confident of a Tory win in C&A and only started reconsidering on the day of the poll after some of the knocking up reports and a review of Twitter activity).
These are the people, aspirational and quite liberal who are most turned off by the faux upper class rah-rah that comes from Johnson. They loathe his mendacious attitude and while not usually censorious they do feel that Johnson´s personal life is a bit too messy. The have been pragmatically Remain and are increasingly concerned about the economic mess. They want to be left alone and are furious that local government has been eviscerated and the powers of local and county councils, on which many of them have served, have been cut to the bone and the budgets for things like libraries have been taken away. taking planning away from local control is a big redline for these people.
Occasionally in places like Surrey in some local elections they have voted Lib Dem as a "bit of a shot across the bow" to the Tories, but by the time David Cameron became the Tory leader they were fairly confirmed Tories. They sympathised with Theresa May, but were horrified by the hard Brexit that Johnson has rammed through. At this point they are feeling increasingly politically homeless but also increasingly feel that the country is on the wrong track.
I dont think that Johnson can reconnect with these voters, and if the Lib Dems can offer an alternative that speaks to these middle class voters there really is a chance to challenge the Conservative hegemony in the South.
In the end though, it might even be the electoral system that does for the Tories. If the idea that Johnson is gaming the system, the electoral and boundary commissions and so on, in order to establish an unfair advantage or for his own personal benefit, then the shot accross the bows may become a full scale rebellion. The concerns about the economic damage of the combined Brexit-Covid-debt crisis and the idea that the Tories dont care what you think coalesce then you have the beginnings of a 1997 style realignment.
So the by-election has reminded us that the Tories too have their malcontents and that for Johnson there will indeed come one day when "you too must die". The rebellion of the middle classes may waver, but what Chesham and Amersham has reminded us is that the seeming stability of the new Brexit political order is in fact anything but.
https://twitter.com/AgBioWorld/status/1406094215805902850
FWIW I am terrible at political betting.
Or to put it another way B&S was lost to Labour by 2019 and it was only an accident that they held onto the seat in that election.
I would add that his picture is largely a 50+ demographic.
The equivalent cohort underneath, say 30 - 50, grew up under New Labour, were comfortable with Cameron’s Tories but are totally alienated by Johnson wholesale importation of Berlusconi-ism.
In any case I suspect the returnees were mainly the young living in multiple occupancy households.....no sign of property prices falling because of reduced demand.
If in 2023/4, it's perceived as a success, it's architects will be rewarded. If it's a flop, the public mood will be for a Braprochment, no matter how awkward, and that will be under a different government.
We don't know where the UK will be on that range- though I will tediously point out that the whole idea of Brexit is most popular with the retired who don't have to worry about making the damn thing work.
There was that poll this week saying 30% rejoin, 40% stay out, leaving 30% unaccounted for. Until that 30% breaks one way or another, the sore will continue to run.
Also Boris's achievement in being popular with WWC is under appreciated in areas where they are in short supply. Up here where it's grim up north it is palpable. Cumbria has 6 seats, four should by, traditional values, be Labour, (Workington, Copeland, Barrow, Carlisle) and have been. The current figure is zero.
So yes, the Tories will still win swathes of the south. But they reached their peak and you can see the way out for so many of those seats. Remember that once the scales fall from voters eyes change can be rapid and brutal. As Labour have experienced in Scotland. As the Tories have experienced in Scotland...
Sir Keir was at Wembley and it was a boring 0-0
Just coincidences?
Covid sitrep: Was not planning on doing another one but things are definitely changing on the ground in some NHS hospitals. Vaccination has been a huge help but we are seeing more patients admitted to hospital and to ICU. Frustrating but there are reasons to be hopeful 1/11:
https://twitter.com/rupert_pearse/status/1406151036377747462?s=20
Telegraph
If they get their wish it will result in all the young people going up north.
As for the working north, I know many punters on Teesside who are openly giddy about how brilliant it is that Labour have gone and the Tories are doing things. Well ok promising things they are already backtracking on. They will at the very least give the Tories the benefit of the doubt at the next election rather than reverting back to status quo ante and voting Labour.
It is too early to say what possible LD voters will do in the next GE, but it will depend upon a complex equation involving a Tory government versus something of a rainbow alliance, including the SNP and led by Labour. Don't bet the farm on C&A, Wokingham etc preferring government by Ian Blackmore and Richard Burgon to government by the Tories.
The formula is simple: Galloway is standing, Heavy Woollens aren't, fracas of Batley Grammar. That's the difference.
Reuters reports that the government task force confirmed 466 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 128,911. The state statistics agency, which keeps separate figures, has said Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths in the year to April.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/jun/19/coronavirus-live-news-uk-expert-says-third-wave-definitely-under-way-cambodia-reports-highest-daily-deaths
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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49m
If Galloway only gets 6% in Batley I’ll eat his hat.
If change comes it can come quickly. Both the LibDems and Labour have had dozens of southern seats so we know it can happen. C&A may prompt another wave, it may not. Had the Tories held the seat then it wouldn't even be a consideration.