politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If LAB’s vulnerable on Brexit how come the majority of its GE1
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If LAB’s vulnerable on Brexit how come the majority of its GE17 gains from CON were in Leave areas?
One of the ongoing narratives over the past year has been that Labour is particularly vulnerable on Brexit because about two-thirds of its constituencies voted leave in the referendum in June 2016.
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Labour -- and especially Jeremy -- very successfully turned the election into one that was not about Brexit, but about austerity and the divide between rich and poor.
It was a very unusual election. It was Jeremy’s Finest Hour.
Corbyn won those 15 Leave seats only because he committed to end free movement and leave the single market. Plus of the 64 seats Labour needs for a majority, 36 are Tory Leave seats
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour
And clearly, the EU is not the decisive factor in most peoples votes, either way.
Of the 28 gains Labour made from the Tories, 15 voted leave. Which is 53.6%.
That is a statistically significant difference.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42411144
Any other Labour leader would have achieved no more than 35%.
But Jezza's misfortune was that he wasn't facing Cameron and Osborne - if had been he would now be PM.
The Tories stealing Grannies house came up lots and on the side of the many not the few was extremely popular
...there would have been no election in 2017.
Can we please bear in mind that it was the gibes about her being unelected plus Corbyn's apocalyptically bad polling ratings that led May to call the election. Had Cooper been leading it is hard to imagine Labour would have been in the low 20s in the polls.
Now imagine that all those older voters turn out in large numbers in 2022, and add to that a perception that Labour is trying to stop Brexit or trying to water it down.....................
Its not as if he's going to make the difference to Liverpool being able to win anything worthwhile.
But that would have needed a plan and for others to know that an election was coming. Clearly May wanted to keep it a secret and so no one else was allowed to know,
Corbyn will be unable to resist going into GE2022 (or sooner) with the triumphalist, one more push and we're over the line attitude (as demonstrated by his overconfidence backstage at Glastonbury), and the actual fear of a hard left socialist government will bring the middle classes and marginal seats back to the Tories in their droves.
The issues of student debt and unaffordable housing cut across the Leave / Remain divide.
And what Corbyn was offering was an alternative (which EdM wasn't in 2015).
I find no evidence to support your contention.
Will the next generation follow that trajectory or will they become more bitter at being kept on the margin? Time will tell.
It would be foolish to think that the polls today are relevant to the next election in the same way Theresa May was wrong to assume that the polls in April would guarantee her a big win in June.
Are we going to get one on the investigation into the Remain campaign’s finances?
Barry McElduff, Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone, filmed himself dancing around with a loaf of Kingsmill bread on his head, on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre.
In the same way there are a group of voters who have/had a bias (rightly or wrongly) against Labour because of the 1970's we could have a voting group who have a bias (rightly or wrongly) against Conservatives because of the 2010's.
The idea of Brexit tearing apart the Labour voting group has always been an optimistic one. It is not the big issue the same way it is for the Conservative coalition, it is very important to a small section of Labours vote many of whom would possibly vote Labour or abstain anyway.
Considering its greater importance to their voters I think that the Conservatives will lose more voters in the next election due to Brexit, I can't see many of those who voted Conservative just to secure Brexit doing so again...
As an often, although less so nowadays, LD voter I’ve no doubt the money should have been paid back.
But, at the very least it seems likely that in a GE campaign, based on current polling, the Conservatives would make it known that a Corbyn government would likely rely on SNP support and we all know that did for Ed Miliband within English constituencies.
I still think there are a great many middle class remainers who are natural Conservative voters who are extremely turned off by the current government. However with Brexit done and dusted by 2022 and a new leader in place, I find it hard to believe that turkeys will vote for Christmas, which is what the middle classes would be doing if they let Corbyn in.
Now?
He's too marmite - elections are won at least in part by being able to get your opponents to abstain - even if, for example, in '97 as a Conservative I couldn't bring myself to vote for Blair, I could imagine myself abstaining. Corbyn however - even if the Tories elected a senile codger who'd been caught on tape buggering squirrels I would still vote for the Conservative candidate to keep Corbyn out.
What the Tories need to do is get Brexit out of the way with, hopefully, the minimum possible damage to the economy. They then need to demonstrate exactly why Labour would be disastrous for the economy - something they failed to do at GE2017, with the chancellor almost completely absent from the campaign. Couple this with a new leader who is from the moderate, liberal centre of the party as opposed to the authoritarian right (May), someone who understands the JAMS and wants to help them without taxing the rest of the economy to death - and you have an election winning formula. Of course if the Tories pick a right wing headbanger to go into 2022 all bets are off, but I'm pretty certain a moderate, centrist candidate from the Tory centre right would decimate a hard left Corbynite Labour party, that would pile up votes in existing strongholds and lose the marginals by a mile.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/15811186.What_is_the_point_of_a_Britain_that_has_simply_lost_its_way_/
Time is running out for Westminster to take seriously Scotland’s growing impatience and the fact that Scots could vote for a different future. Brexit is overshadowing everything, but this will change. There is every prospect that the Scotland question will be reignited, but this time the debate will not just be about nationality, identity, and history, but will embrace the state of Britain, its apparent ungovernability, its broken politics, incompetent government and a Britain where constitutional principles and an effective democracy are sacrificed on the altar of outdated institutions, 19th-century attitudes and tribal politics.
Clegg and the Lib Dems were targeting Tory seats at the start of the coalition.
Only their collapse in the polls stopped them pursuing those seats.
It may be just a short-term movement, but Trump's rating has risen in recent weeks, and the Democrat lead has fallen:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Not sure what that's about = general upbeat Christmas effect?
Yet in 1992 the party kept 18% of the vote and in 1997, aided by the Conservative collapse, won 46 seats which was a huge step forward for the party though in fact meant little with the Labour landslide.
Had IDS not been ousted by the Conservatives in late 2003, who knows what might have happened at the 2005 GE and afterward but, by choosing Howard, the Conservatives began their own journey back toward power.
The late and much lamented Charles Kennedy shone on Iraq but failed to move the party forward in a host of other areas and prospered only during the long period of Conservative weakness until the coming of Cameron. That in turn led to the short-lived convergence of the liberal conservatives and the Orange Bookers which made the Coalition possible.
The problem for the party ultimately was that in drawing votes from former Labour and former Conservative supporters when push came into shove working with one of the parties would alienate the opponents of that party within the LDs. The consequence of getting into Government was political suicide - perhaps but isn't politics about trying to get things done and your ideas for what's best for the country put into effect ? Sitting in futile Opposition with high poll ratings achieving nothing is the alternative and what's the point of that ?
The party will recover - of that I'm certain - but it will take time and above all a bit of luck, that commodity which all politicians need and some seem to have in abundance.
This post was made possible by a generous grant from the makers of sarcasm meters, who are hoping for a major bonus after yours all just exploded.
Edit - more seriously I think the Trumpists are circling the wagons. If they believe he is the victim of a smear campaign they will rally behind him. They will also be deluded of course but that is another story.
As someone once said - It's the economy. Stupid.
The current Labour objective is to establish itself in floating voters' minds as the alternative government. That's why Corbyn reiterates that he expects to be in power before too long - the point is not to act as Mystic Meg but to get people used to the idea. We have a solid 35-40% who are pretty keen to have Labour win: what's needed is the floating non-ideological voters who vary their votes to try each party in turn.
There isn't much we can do to make the Brexit talks succeed or fail, and if they're seen as a wonderful success, thr Tories will win regardless. But after 12 years in power and difficlut Brexit negotiations, an awkward compromise and a divisive Tory leadership contest, it's quite likely that many floating voters will feel "OK, let's try the other lot". With respect, you're not the target voter here - if you voted Tory ever since (and before?) 1997, I don't think it's very likely you'll do anything else in 2022. But the idea that the average swing voter in marginals is zealously centrist and anti-Corbyn is IMO not correct.
Nick's emphasis from the start the Coalition was a one term thing and the Party would retain its independence helped hold the line but the memory of Sir John Simon and the National Liberals cast a long shadow.