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There is zero chance of turnout dropping below 10% in Stoke Central. It'll almost certainly be around 30-35%.
But I'm sure you can come up with some obtuse reference to the 1568 Parliament which will 'prove' Labour are going to win the next election.
Not when Labour are facing sub 200 seats.
The imponderable is how many Kipper-leaning voters will actually bother to vote without a strong ground game, and we don't really know. Incidentally, the 2015 Stoke result was intriguing because it appears superficially that 17-18% of the electorate switched from LibDem to UKIP. In reality there must have been more complex changes in there, but I wonder if there was a certain amount of grouping around "most promising non-Tory rival to Labour" going on, with the LibDem vote in Stoke in 2010 being more of a protest vote than a centrist vote.
UKIP may have lost the battle but it won the war too, the UK is leaving the EU and May's Tories have now adopted so much of the UKIP platform they are effectively redundant. Only if May backtracks or compromises on free movement and access to the single market in the Brexit negotiations will UKIP still have a role (of course that is perfectly possible)
We've heard lots of guff from those who have not been to Stoke, meanwhile no media report has been in any way positive for Labour locally. I've not read a good word from the press about the candidate. Putting your report through the same betting filter that I apply to my own post canvassing optimism I conclude a few things:
LDs/Tories have no chance
Labour are not popular if people are talking about voting elsewhere - the socially normal behaviour has been broken by Brexit
This will be a close result - I'm calm about my UKIP long position.
Corbyn was approx 5 or 6 (?) nominations short last time - ie in terms of genuine supporters.
So next time, any "Corbyn Mark 2" candidate is going to have to get extra nominations from more centrist Lab MPs. Could Long-Bailey do that?
I would have thought Lab MPs would be concerned that she doesn't have anything like the necessary gravitas to look like a credible PM.
1) 40 MPs backed Corbyn in the no confidence vote, so if all those would nominate Miss Long-Bailey, she'd be on the ballot.
2) If Corbyn told the PLP he would stand down as Leader if they agreed to nominate his chosen candidate, they'd bite his hand off.
That makes her awesome.
The depressing thing is that she's younger than me, no way can a major party be led by someone younger than me.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38947451
Maybe other people have spontaneously decided to use that on her behalf.
So BMG focus grouped, Rebecca Bailey-Long, Angela Raynor, and John McDonnell.
RBL da best,
Raynor - but the responses to her were “overwhelmingly negative”.
McDonnell split opinion - Some said he looked “posh” and “confident”, others thought he looked “timid” and “nervous”.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/secret-labour-search-for-corbyn-heir-mkmskppr6
I want to party.
Another broken promise then]
Labour get absolutely smashed whilst led by Corbyn.
He changes his position more often than I change socks :-)
The longer the mad left retain control the worse it will get for Labour.
For starters, some may just have felt that Corbyn deserved a bit more time.
MPs are going to be increasingly thinking about the next GE - I think there will be concern that Long-Bailey doesn't look like a credible PM - she looks very young and everything she says comes across as extremely simplistic - she doesn't have anywhere near the gravitas to be PM.
I know that Labour's pool of leadership talent is small, but allowing JC to pick RLB (or someone equally poor) would be pointless and stupid.
The train is coming
The train is coming
The train is coming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsCR05oKROA
The Hamburg court said that it stands by its order, issued last May, which prohibited republication of parts of a poem by German comic Jan Boehmermann.
The satirist, who is barred for repeating the majority of the verses, says he will appeal the verdict."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38934027