Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2023 19:08:25 GMT
Bucks has been glaringly bad for the LDs for years - until Chesham & amersham. A decent chance of holding on to that I think in parliamentary elections, absolutely - but they used to control Aylesbury Vale council for quite a long period. Although many LD votes in these sorts of places are Tories who don't like the Tory council, or do like their LD cllrs. I'm sure I remember someone here mentioning a LD cllr somewhere in the home counties who admitted to having voted Tory at GEs whilst sitting as a LD cllr? |
|
|
|
Post by greenhert on Feb 12, 2023 21:24:01 GMT
With regard to London, these are excellent examples of LD underperformance. Especially Putney. It used to be even worse for them - in 1983, the Alliance share of the vote in Putney was one of the lowest in England. It has been remarked upon previously in the Almanac of British Politics, by Robert Waller, that the demographics of Putney and neighbouring Richmond Park are not all that different (although Richmond Park lacks a really large council estate such as Roehampton), and yet politically they have been poles apart for decades. The Lib Dems were quite close to catching Labour for a distant second place in 2010 but of course they collapsed again in 2015, as with almost everywhere else In Putney, the Liberal Democrats were never close to catching Labour for a distant second place even in 2010, partly due to the Liberal Democrats never having any real areas of strength in Wandsworth. |
|
|
|
Post by batman on Feb 12, 2023 21:28:07 GMT
actually you're right, it was not as close as I recalled for 2nd.
|
|
|
|
Post by heslingtonian on Feb 12, 2023 21:48:24 GMT
Bucks has been glaringly bad for the LDs for years - until Chesham & amersham. A decent chance of holding on to that I think I wonder how well they'd have done in Beaconsfield in 2019 had Grieve not run as an independent. I also nominate South West Hertfordshire. It will be interesting to see how they do in Beaconsfield at the next GE as Joy Morrissey has been a very populist, Brexity MP which I don't see as likely to endear herself to a good percentage of her voter base. |
|
|
|
Post by heslingtonian on Feb 12, 2023 21:50:58 GMT
The disparity between the almost total dominance of the Lib Dems in Watford and Three Rivers at a local level and their relatively unimpressive Parliamentary results in Watford and South West Hertfordshire is a constant enigma.
|
|
mrtoad
Labour
He is a toad. Who knows what a toad thinks?
Posts: 424
|
Post by mrtoad on Feb 12, 2023 21:53:53 GMT
Was just coming here to say Watford, given how dominant they have been in local elections for how long, without it feeding through at all at Parliamentary level. Bedford a bit the same.
Wandsworth in general is much worse than it 'should' be for them - only one council ward victory in the borough's entire post-1964 electoral history (Earlsfield, 1982). But they did win there in the 2019 European Parliament election.
|
|
|
|
Post by michaelarden on Feb 13, 2023 12:19:54 GMT
Wandsworth in general is much worse than it 'should' be for them - only one council ward victory in the borough's entire post-1964 electoral history (Earlsfield, 1982). But they did win there in the 2019 European Parliament election. And apparently targeted Putney and Battersea in the GE later that year on the back of it! |
|
|
|
Post by batman on Feb 13, 2023 12:57:33 GMT
I don't think they fought much of a campaign in those constituencies, there was little evidence of one. They appeared to concentrating, much more logically, on the neighbouring LD-held seats. Plus (highly controversially) Kensington, and also Chelsea & Fulham which is also a neighbouring constituency to both of those.
|
|
Georg Ebner
Non-Aligned
Roman romantic reactionary Catholic
Posts: 9,797 
|
Post by Georg Ebner on Feb 24, 2023 19:03:08 GMT
Problematic is, i think, that the thread's title does not say, whether we take tactical voting into account.
For example: The Lib.dem.s have clearly underperformed in the MidLands (and once in London), but probably only/mostly because of getting squeezed in the many Con.&Lab.-marginals there.
|
|
|
|
Post by mattbewilson on Feb 24, 2023 22:05:59 GMT
Was just coming here to say Watford, given how dominant they have been in local elections for how long, without it feeding through at all at Parliamentary level. Bedford a bit the same. Wandsworth in general is much worse than it 'should' be for them - only one council ward victory in the borough's entire post-1964 electoral history (Earlsfield, 1982). But they did win there in the 2019 European Parliament election. I don't think naturally either are necessarily Lib Dem territory. Maybe 15 years ago when the Lib Dems had both captured working class and middle class voters. Now though they seem to be a more middle class party. Their success in both seem to be local personalities rather anything to do with party politics |
|
|
|
Post by November_Rain on Apr 1, 2023 15:20:12 GMT
I am surprised a few of the Birmingham seats have never had Lib Dem MPs. Birmingham Hall Green (despite it's boundary mutations) is a prime example, especially as the SDP did get good results in 1983, 1987 and 2010. The Lib Dems have had councillors in one of the Hall Green wards historically, as well as Moseley where they had a revival in 2022.
|
|
|
|
Post by johnhemming on Apr 1, 2023 15:25:28 GMT
I was the Liberal candidate for Hall Green in 1983.
The Boundaries have changed over the years.
|
|
|
|
Post by November_Rain on Apr 1, 2023 15:33:11 GMT
I was the Liberal candidate for Hall Green in 1983. The Boundaries have changed over the years. I think that is what has contributed to their under-performance. The constant changes. Isn't Sparkhill now in Hall Green? |
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Apr 1, 2023 15:58:42 GMT
I was the Liberal candidate for Hall Green in 1983.The Boundaries have changed over the years. The constant changes. Isn't Sparkhill now in Hall Green? Bit harsh!  |
|
Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,025
Member is Online
|
Post by Sibboleth on Apr 1, 2023 16:00:09 GMT
'Hall Green' is a name that the Boundary Commission tends to like, but it would be a mistake to assume that there's more than a very faint continuity between successive constituencies of that name. The same is true of some of the other longstanding constituency names in Birmingham, especially Ladywood.
|
|
iang
Lib Dem
Posts: 1,813
|
Post by iang on Apr 1, 2023 16:03:04 GMT
Even when we held the HG ward itself back in the 80s/90s, unlike Yardley, we were never able to threaten any of the other wards in the constituency. The demographics of the seat have changed a fair bit since then along with boundary changes, I think
|
|
|
|
Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 1, 2023 16:08:43 GMT
The new Perry Barr (assuming revised recommendations are adopted) is a very different animal to the original seat of that name.
|
|
iang
Lib Dem
Posts: 1,813
|
Post by iang on Apr 1, 2023 16:31:44 GMT
That's another place where we have held the eponymous ward for ages, but never really threatened to break out beyond it (although we did hold all the wards that bordered it in Sandwell until 2010)
|
|
|
|
Post by johnhemming on Apr 2, 2023 10:18:18 GMT
I was the Liberal candidate for Hall Green in 1983. The Boundaries have changed over the years. I think that is what has contributed to their under-performance. The constant changes. Isn't Sparkhill now in Hall Green? The reason I said I was the Liberal Candidate was that it was not the SDP in 1983. In 1983 the constituency was Brandwood, Billesley and Hall Green. I fought the Brandwood ward, Paul Tilsley came second in the Billesley Ward in 1984 and Mick Wilkes won the Hall Green ward. The seat was then allocated to the SDP to select a candidate and I concentrated on building my business (although I was a paper candidate in Small Heath in 1987). The Lib Dems were in a good position for 2010 with the constituency being Hall Green, Moseley, Springfield and Sparkbook. We had won Sparkbrook (2/1) in 2004 and we held all three seats in Moseley and Hall Green. We had 2/3 of the seats in Springfield in 2004. However, the anti Labour vote was split between Lib Dem and Respect in 2010. We came close in Hodge Hill in the by-election when Terry Davies went off to the Council of Europe. |
|
|
|
Post by islington on Apr 2, 2023 13:59:27 GMT
Although it is true that the sectors of the electorate to which Labour and the Tories tend to appeal gradually change over time - so that the big parties' respective core support looks different now to what it did, say, fifty years ago - the fact is that at any particular time they do expect to do relatively well with certain categories of voter (and in seats where those voters predominate) and less well with others. Therefore it's possible to identify performance that exceeds, or falls short of, this expectation.
Not so with the Lib Dems. It's very difficult to identify any electorally significant type of voter to whom they might be expected to appeal. Therefore it's hard to point to any type of seat where they have an expectation of success to fall short of.
I'm not saying that Lib Dems can't succeed, because of course they can and do from time to time. But these successes represent an opportunistic exploitation of essentially transient circumstances, which is why they are essentially unpredictable and also, I suggest, why they tend not to last very long.
So I suggest that the question posed by this thread is essentially meaningless as regards the Lib Dems, whereas it's possible to comment on threads asking a similar question about Labour and the Tories because their respective political profiles create a clear expectation of success in certain areas.
|
|
