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Post by adlai52 on Aug 14, 2023 8:30:12 GMT
2010 was the first election since 1983 where Labour support was not overstated at all by polling. And since then the same has happened in 2017. I think Labour did benefit quite significantly from general fears about a Tory government in 2010. Obviously, it wasn't enough to win, but it probably prevented a Tory majority. Hasn't it also been suggested that Labour may have clung on (either being the largest party in a hung parliament or getting enough seats to have made a coalition with the Lib Dems more plausible) without the Cleggmania nonsense? It prevented the "don't let the Tories cut your public services" message from being properly aired. The feeling from Conservatives at the time was that 'Cleggmania' diluted the 'time for change' narrative Cameron was pushing and may have cost them votes that could have swung enough seats to deliver a Conservative majority, including picking up more seats from the LibDems. That said, the seats where the LibDems did pile up votes in 2010 included a lot of Labour seats, building on the progress they made in 2005 - seats like Sheffield Central were very close, although they still fell short in places like Newcastle North, City of Durham, the Liverpool seats etc... An interesting counterfactual would be what if Ming Campbell remained leader - how that would impact the dynamic of the campaign in 2010 and who that ends up benefitting. |
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Aug 14, 2023 8:40:30 GMT
That puts others on 20% plus. Show your working. Lib Dems low teens, SNP/plaid 4%, NI parties 2%, Greens+fringe candidates whatever left Yes, its not inherently implausible even if slightly on the high side on balance. Though move Tories mid 30s and Labour low 40s in that scenario to Tories low 30s Labour mid 40s, and you still have a landslide. |
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stb12
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Post by stb12 on Aug 14, 2023 10:14:58 GMT
Cleggmania or the Cleggasm as it was also known was a rather patchy phenomenon. My constituency was completely unaffected by it, being replaced by a Goldsmithasm. Zac Goldsmith did seem to be really good fit for the seat, but Brexit and his run for Mayor appeared to diminish that quite quickly |
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Post by swanarcadian on Aug 14, 2023 10:32:02 GMT
Cleggmania or the Cleggasm as it was also known was a rather patchy phenomenon. My constituency was completely unaffected by it, being replaced by a Goldsmithasm. Zac Goldsmith did seem to be really good fit for the seat, but Brexit and his run for Mayor appeared to diminish that quite quickly Goldsmith should never have forced that by-election. He might well have prevented the Lib Dem bandwagon from rolling enough to still be an MP today. |
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stb12
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Post by stb12 on Aug 14, 2023 10:33:51 GMT
Zac Goldsmith did seem to be really good fit for the seat, but Brexit and his run for Mayor appeared to diminish that quite quickly Goldsmith should never have forced that by-election. He might well have prevented the Lib Dem bandwagon from rolling enough to still be an MP today. He’d boxed himself in with a personal commitment to do so over Heathrow if I remember right, so if he hadn’t done it would have been used against him as well |
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Post by swindonlad on Aug 14, 2023 10:35:39 GMT
I think it will close before the election, this talk of less than 100 Tory MPs is something I can't see happening. Although I don't think they will beat / be far away from their 1997 number of seats.
If the Tories get to 165, Labour will get say 400 seats leaving 85 for the others. LD & SNP in the 25 - 35 category each, with PC & Green staying where they are now.
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Post by finsobruce on Aug 14, 2023 10:47:19 GMT
Zac Goldsmith did seem to be really good fit for the seat, but Brexit and his run for Mayor appeared to diminish that quite quickly Goldsmith should never have forced that by-election. He might well have prevented the Lib Dem bandwagon from rolling enough to still be an MP today. "Take gun, apply to foot". |
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Post by jakegb on Aug 14, 2023 11:29:04 GMT
Zac Goldsmith did seem to be really good fit for the seat, but Brexit and his run for Mayor appeared to diminish that quite quickly Goldsmith should never have forced that by-election. He might well have prevented the Lib Dem bandwagon from rolling enough to still be an MP today. I think he would held far more comfortably in 17 - similar to Winchester in that election, perhaps? Nr 10,000 majority. In 2019 - with Brexit being such a high stake issue - I could still see him being swept away in a strong remain-leaning tide. What with Dominic Raab having his majority reduced by 20,000 in formerly true blue Esher and Walton. |
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Post by swanarcadian on Aug 14, 2023 11:44:41 GMT
I think it will close before the election, this talk of less than 100 Tory MPs is something I can't see happening. Although I don't think they will beat / be far away from their 1997 number of seats. If the Tories get to 165, Labour will get say 400 seats leaving 85 for the others. LD & SNP in the 25 - 35 category each, with PC & Green staying where they are now. Not since Oct 74 have the Conservatives won between 200-300 seats in a general election, which is an interesting fact in itself. I hope we can at least get to the 200 mark. If we are to be defeated then limiting the scale of it matters enormously, and not just for our party’s sake. |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Aug 14, 2023 11:57:20 GMT
I think it will close before the election, this talk of less than 100 Tory MPs is something I can't see happening. Although I don't think they will beat / be far away from their 1997 number of seats. If the Tories get to 165, Labour will get say 400 seats leaving 85 for the others. LD & SNP in the 25 - 35 category each, with PC & Green staying where they are now. Not since Oct 74 have the Conservatives won between 200-300 seats in a general election, which is an interesting fact in itself. I hope we can at least get to the 200 mark. If we are to be defeated then limiting the scale of it matters enormously. Though they were between 200 and 299 seats from 3rd September 2019 until the dissolution of Parliament on 6th November. (At the end of the 2010-15 Parliament the Conservatives had 301 voting MPs receiving the party whip) |
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Post by willpower3 on Aug 14, 2023 12:02:47 GMT
I think it will close before the election, this talk of less than 100 Tory MPs is something I can't see happening. Although I don't think they will beat / be far away from their 1997 number of seats. If the Tories get to 165, Labour will get say 400 seats leaving 85 for the others. LD & SNP in the 25 - 35 category each, with PC & Green staying where they are now. For the Lib Dems I can see them getting to 1997 levels in terms of seats and Davey (like Ashdown) stepping down at some point in the next Parliament to a younger successor (who hopefully isn't too partial to the bottle!). |
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nodealbrexiteer
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non aligned favour no deal brexit!
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Aug 14, 2023 17:06:23 GMT
I think it will close before the election, this talk of less than 100 Tory MPs is something I can't see happening. Although I don't think they will beat / be far away from their 1997 number of seats. If the Tories get to 165, Labour will get say 400 seats leaving 85 for the others. LD & SNP in the 25 - 35 category each, with PC & Green staying where they are now. Not since Oct 74 have the Conservatives won between 200-300 seats in a general election, which is an interesting fact in itself. I hope we can at least get to the 200 mark. If we are to be defeated then limiting the scale of it matters enormously, and not just for our party’s sake. Just out of interest is there a rough level of seats you think it's important for the main opposition to have to keep a government 'honest'? |
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graham
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Post by graham on Aug 14, 2023 20:09:29 GMT
To add to the main point of this thread, it might be worth recalling that at the peak of the Winter of Discontent in January and February 1979 the Labour Government fell 19%/20% behind the Tories but managed to narrow that margin to 7% by the GE held on May 3rd.
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Post by batman on Aug 14, 2023 22:17:39 GMT
That may have been partly assisted by the fact that Callaghan's personal ratings tended to be better than Thatcher's. The Tories don't have that in their favour this time.
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Post by uthacalthing on Aug 14, 2023 22:38:37 GMT
The critical issue is not how many Tories survive, it is which Tories survive. That will determine the direction of the subsequent pivot.
If it pivots to what will be clumsily described as the left then a new party to the supposed right emerges with the purpose of making the Wet Tory party unelectable in a FPTP landscape by skimming off 20% of their vote.
If it pivots to the right, the clumsily described hard-right Thatcherite party is unelectable until the nation is in total despair and willing to consider the possibility that they, the electorate, have been fucking idiots all along, fully deserve what has happened to them, and need to take their medicine
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graham
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Post by graham on Aug 14, 2023 23:15:08 GMT
That may have been partly assisted by the fact that Callaghan's personal ratings tended to be better than Thatcher's. The Tories don't have that in their favour this time. But that was pretty well a constant. Perhaps the big jump in the Tory lead in the opening months of 1979 is comparable to the huge jump in Labour's lead under Liz Truss in Sept/Oct 2022 - in that it was probably a short term exaggeration which was likely to be at least partially reversed. Given that Labour only lost by 7% post Winter of Discontent, it seems unlikely the party would have trailed the Tories by more than 2% had the election been held in Autumn 1978. Such a 2.5% swing to Labour from the May 79 outcome would have ensured a Hung Parliament. |
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Post by afleitch on Aug 15, 2023 7:59:01 GMT
The critical issue is not how many Tories survive, it is which Tories survive. That will determine the direction of the subsequent pivot. If it pivots to what will be clumsily described as the left then a new party to the supposed right emerges with the purpose of making the Wet Tory party unelectable in a FPTP landscape by skimming off 20% of their vote. If it pivots to the right, the clumsily described hard-right Thatcherite party is unelectable until the nation is in total despair and willing to consider the possibility that they, the electorate, have been fucking idiots all along, fully deserve what has happened to them, and need to take their medicine I mean, it did the reverse after 1997 and only won from the centre in 2010. Post 2019 it's shifted right, doing 'populism while unpopular' while also forcing said 'medicine' down people's throats at great expense to everyone. Labour are banking on the Tories to be out of office for at least ten years, by which point the oldest millennials, who have been trending away from the Tories each election since they could vote, will be over 50. The Tories will be a decaying pensioners interest group and Labour's challenges, particularly from younger voters, will come from the left. The alternative for the Tories is to admit the day after the moving van leaves Downing Street is that they were, in fact, absolutely blind drunk since Brexit and work to fix that on day one. |
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Post by willpower3 on Aug 15, 2023 8:15:41 GMT
The critical issue is not how many Tories survive, it is which Tories survive. That will determine the direction of the subsequent pivot. If it pivots to what will be clumsily described as the left then a new party to the supposed right emerges with the purpose of making the Wet Tory party unelectable in a FPTP landscape by skimming off 20% of their vote. If it pivots to the right, the clumsily described hard-right Thatcherite party is unelectable until the nation is in total despair and willing to consider the possibility that they, the electorate, have been fucking idiots all along, fully deserve what has happened to them, and need to take their medicine I mean, it did the reverse after 1997 and only won from the centre in 2010. Post 2019 it's shifted right, doing 'populism while unpopular' while also forcing said 'medicine' down people's throats at great expense to everyone. Labour are banking on the Tories to be out of office for at least ten years, by which point the oldest millennials, who have been trending away from the Tories each election since they could vote, will be over 50. The Tories will be a decaying pensioners interest group and Labour's challenges, particularly from younger voters, will come from the left. The alternative for the Tories is to admit the day after the moving van leaves Downing Street is that they were, in fact, absolutely blind drunk since Brexit and work to fix that on day one. The Tories didn't move to the centre in 2010, the nation had moved to the right, accepting the need for a dry economic programme in the midst of the circumstances that had arisen. The 2010 election was not dissimilar to 1979, except that the Tories had to form a Coalition and the subsequent government wasn't as transformational as that of Thatcher. |
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Post by afleitch on Aug 15, 2023 8:16:33 GMT
In terms of narrowing, if the Tories go on the last possible date, we are currently in late November 1995 in terms of distance from the 1997 election. You forget how relatively few polls there were. Labour's lead was heftier (less 'others') but the Tories were in the mid to high 20's as they are now.
They were also starting to climb up.
While the electorate is more volatile, it would take a lot, historically, for the Tories to lessen the scale of their defeat.
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Post by woollyliberal on Aug 15, 2023 8:23:11 GMT
The critical issue is not how many Tories survive, it is which Tories survive. That will determine the direction of the subsequent pivot. If it pivots to what will be clumsily described as the left then a new party to the supposed right emerges with the purpose of making the Wet Tory party unelectable in a FPTP landscape by skimming off 20% of their vote. If it pivots to the right, the clumsily described hard-right Thatcherite party is unelectable until the nation is in total despair and willing to consider the possibility that they, the electorate, have been fucking idiots all along, fully deserve what has happened to them, and need to take their medicine A more likely outcome is that they double down on being a hard right UKIP type party, as unable to be Thatcherite as they are now. |
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