Next UK General Election thread

[vileplume]

Sample Size 1648, Scotland 167, so pretty decent for Scotland

Lab - 329 (Majority) in Swingometer

Which is totally faulty given it shows Lab gaining 10 seats over SNP in Scotland with SNP at 27 overall with only 8 seat losses.

Scotland Cross-tab is more interesting though -

Lab - 36%
SNP - 31%
Tory - 25%
Lib-Dem - 5%

Which gives the following seats in Swingometer -

Lab - 36 (+29)
Tory - 14 (+1)
SNP - 4 (-31)
Lib-Dem - 5(+1)

Lab is getting much more than 10 seats with this performance in Scotland but at 31% SNP will not go down to 4 seats (that is kinda absurd).

But Labour's seat to vote thing is getting better, more uniform, translating to seats properly. Surely Lab will pick up 20-25 odd seats if they get 35-40% of the vote in Scotland. I also expect bandwagon effect, whoever is stronger between SNP & Labour will get the lion's share of left wing voters. Voters will chose 1 party in most seats & double down on that to stop the Tories.

Yougov's seat prediction model (whether by fluke or not) was surprisingly good. I think if it was done here it would give Lab over 340 seats.

Anyways look at the age based polarization -

18-24 - 15/73
25-49 - 30/56
50-64 - 38/41
65+  - 66/19

Tories are done when they lose even the 50-64 old voter demographic. It is just that the 65+ dinosaurs live in a different world pro- Margaret Thatcher type world which has gone away.

As more older people die & young people come in, this will be a bloodbath & a demographic disaster for the Tories !

In the short term it may create problems that is true but 'demographic disaster' is far over blowing it for the same reason that the 'demographics is destiny' argument that changing demographics will create a permanent Democratic majority in the US will never come to pass. Generational churn may indeed force the Tories to move left but the next Labour government (whenever that may be) will eventually become unpopular and upset enough of their own voters that the Tories will win again even after the baby boomers are gone. Politics is cyclical and the idea that the young generation (and the generations after them) will remain heavily Labour all through their lives even with an unpopular Labour government (all governments become unpopular eventually) is just silly.

[vileplume]

Well the swings in London had a lot to do with young people and remain voters, and Hillingdon has substantially less of those than the rest of the city. Also, the minority population there tend to be middle class Hindus, who tend to be friendly to the Tories. So it isn't the most obvious Labour target.

I would also be very hesitant to predict how London as a whole will swing before Brexit gets settled -especially as swings in London quite often contrast quite markedly to the rest of the country

If I am not mistaken I believe the Tories won the Hindu vote whereas the Sikhs and Muslims went overwhelmingly Labour and I believe Blacks also went heavily Labour.  I think Conservatives won the Jewish and Chinese vote but both are probably too small to know.  I know in Canada, the Tories won the Hindu vote in 2011, although lost it to the Liberals in 2015 while amongst Sikhs and Muslims they've always languished in third place.

True London swings differently, but I've always found except for the Eastern edge ridings like Orpington, the Tories in London tend to be more centrist than elsewhere, otherwise more pro-European, more socially liberal (I believe most London Tories voted for Gay Marriage).  That being said also being wealthier than most of the country I've found Labour tends to do better there when more centrist but maybe that is changing as Corbyn is no moderate and he did very well in London unlike say Michael Foot who did quite poorly there.

The reason why Labour did extremely well in London was more because of:
a) Brexit
b) The Tories playing the 'culture war card'
c) The extreme polarisation of the electorate by age (London having a much younger age profile than average).

Only the age factor can really be attributed to Corbyn (though it was probably more caused by a combination of points a) and b) along with the Tories not doing anything much to help the young over their 7 years in power).

I think it's likely that if a left wing Labour government wins power next time London will be the place that swings against Labour first and most sharply, particularly if the Tories move away from 'Mayism'. This is because whilst London may be very socially liberal it is most certainly capitalist through and through (especially places where Labour did well this time like Battersea). The rich yuppies who voted Labour 'because it's cool' this time would turn on a Corbyn government very quickly. In contrast under a left wing Labour government Labour will probably do relatively better in working class nationalist places e.g. Mansfield.

Oh and as a side note the electoral districts aren't called ridings over here they're called constituencies .

[vileplume]

Luton is to London what Brampton is to Toronto?

Depends what Brampton is like (I don't know a lot about specific areas of Canada). Luton is an extremely grotty town with high rates of crime, unemployment and poverty, though there are a few more middle class bits in the east. The kind of place where you wouldn't feel safe walking alone down the street at night time. It is probably the worst town in the south of England, the worst bits being on par with some of London's most run down suburbs.

To address Pariochial Boy's point Luton and Slough vote Labour because they are nothing like most of the rest of the home counties and instead have much more in common with rundown London suburbs.

Towns like Stevenage and Crawley are swing constituencies primarily because they are much less deprived and have larger middle class elements and in Stevenage's case it contains very Tory areas outside the borough boundary like Knebworth.

The culture of the home counties isn't really changing though save for becoming a bit more ethnically diverse. People buying homes who have been priced out of London aren't changing the makeup of the home counties as these people are a primarily bourgeois, Tory demographic anyway. Plus the phenomenon of middle class Londoners upping sticks for the home counties has been going on for decades. In fact these people being priced out of London is why the Tories are having such trouble in many London suburbs where they used to be strong a generation ago because the only people left are the ethnically diverse poor living in social housing or rented properties (a monolithically Labour demographic) and the super rich (many are foreign nationals so can't vote).


I would note that the home counties are and never have been uniformly affluent or middle class. Many of the medium sized towns e.g. St Albans, Aylesbury, Guildford, Wycombe etc. have fairly grotty parts to them.

[vileplume]

True although I would argue Burlington, Whitby-Oshawa, and Newmarket-Aurora are fairly white too and those all went Liberal last federal election although it's true in 2011 when Tories federally got a similar vote share to what the British Tories did in 2017 the Tories got over 50% in those ridings nonetheless its probably true if it were NDP vs. Tories which is a more apt comparison, the Tories probably would have easily held those.  In the US its true the suburbs are more racially diverse today although back in the 80s during the Reagan era places like Long Island suburbs, Collar counties of Chicago were similarly overwhelmingly white and did vote heavily Republican then.  Also the GOP is a lot more extreme than the British Tories so I expect most American suburbs if you had a battle between John Kasich as GOP and Bernie Sanders as Democrat would go heavily GOP which is probably the best comparison.  Trump vs. Clinton would be more akin to Nigel Farage vs. Vince Cable and I suspect most of the London Commuter belt would back Vince Cable in that case, but could be wrong.

The main difference is the Canadian Liberal Party is actually a massive force at the national level whilst their British equivalent the Liberal Democrats have a measly 12 seats and are a political non-entity in vast swathes of the country. If hypothetically the Lib Dems were going to win a majority (as ludicrous as that sounds) with the Tories and Labour occupying the same positions as the Canadian Tories and the NDP respectively the British political map would more clearly resemble the Canadian one as the Lib Dems would have to win many seats in the home counties (they wouldn't win all of them but they'd win a substantial number) as well as metropolitan lefty seats in order to achieve this. They used to able to compete in working class seats like Ashfield but given the direction they've gone in the last few years I doubt they'd win there even if they somehow got a majority.

Your comparison of Trump vs. Clinton to a hypothetical Farage vs. Cable are broadly correct though I would note that parts of the London commuter belt are right wing reactionary leaning such as Essex and Kent and consequently would back Farage though more liberal-conservative areas like Surrey would indeed vote for Cable. In a David Cameron vs. Jeremy Corbyn style presidential election Surrey would probably be the most Tory county in the country as it contains a lot of cameroonite conservatives and very few areas that would be open to socialism. Whereas Corbyn would do better in Kent and Essex due to them having more working class, anti-establishment areas (not that he'd get anywhere close to winning either).

[vileplume]

Luton is to London what Brampton is to Toronto?

Depends what Brampton is like (I don't know a lot about specific areas of Canada). Luton is an extremely grotty town with high rates of crime, unemployment and poverty, though there are a few more middle class bits in the east. The kind of place where you wouldn't feel safe walking alone down the street at night time. It is probably the worst town in the south of England, the worst bits being on par with some of London's most run down suburbs.

To address Pariochial Boy's point Luton and Slough vote Labour because they are nothing like most of the rest of the home counties and instead have much more in common with rundown London suburbs.

Towns like Stevenage and Crawley are swing constituencies primarily because they are much less deprived and have larger middle class elements and in Stevenage's case it contains very Tory areas outside the borough boundary like Knebworth.

The culture of the home counties isn't really changing though save for becoming a bit more ethnically diverse. People buying homes who have been priced out of London aren't changing the makeup of the home counties as these people are a primarily bourgeois, Tory demographic anyway. Plus the phenomenon of middle class Londoners upping sticks for the home counties has been going on for decades. In fact these people being priced out of London is why the Tories are having such trouble in many London suburbs where they used to be strong a generation ago because the only people left are the ethnically diverse poor living in social housing or rented properties (a monolithically Labour demographic) and the super rich (many are foreign nationals so can't vote).


I would note that the home counties are and never have been uniformly affluent or middle class. Many of the medium sized towns e.g. St Albans, Aylesbury, Guildford, Wycombe etc. have fairly grotty parts to them.

Yeah, that's sort of what I was getting at re the difference between Slough/Luton and Stevenage/Crawley (although both of those towns are mega grotty in the centre )

As for the trends in London, another thing is that people living in private rented properties (especially younger, and often highly educated voters) have swung heavily towards Labour in recent elections (thank you housing crisis...). IIRC, this was a demographic that was evenly split, even voted Tory in the not too distant past, but went Labour in 2015 and heavily Labour this year. The swing in Battersea is probably a good indicator of this, as Clapham is more or less the heartland of post-uni professionals in private rented housing; Tooting as well, which has gentrified in recent years but stayed in the Labour camp.

Indeed they are but Luton is on a whole other level.

Rented housing is a big cause of the Tories woes in outer London (the likes of Battersea are different which I'll mention in the next paragraph). The Tories have collapsed in places like Enfield primarily because a lot of previously owner occupied properties have been sold off to private landlords who then let them out as houses of multiple occupancy (i.e. let out each room individually) whilst their former residents move to the home counties/retire to the south coast. In a relatively short space of time a socially mixed but nevertheless 'respectable' area has become much more working class, housing primarily poorer young people who can't afford central London rents. I can't see the likes of Enfield coming back any time soon for the Tories, ironically perhaps the only thing that could would be the policy sometimes floated on the left of letting people buy their homes in installments off their landlord (effectively 'right to buy' of private property).

As for places like Battersea the people who rent in places like this are young middle class metropolitan yuppy types who have good jobs in the city, big business. These people were put off the Tories this election for very specific reasons e.g. Brexit, culture war etc. Thus as these issues eventually get supplanted by other ones and if the Tories move away from Mayism the Tories will likely recover in places like Battersea whereas demographic change has probably permanently sunk them in Enfield. Plus a Corbyn government is likely to become very unpopular in Battersea (wheras it might be surprisingly popular in places like Thanet in Kent) due to Battersea being a wealthy capitalist kind of place and many of these rich yuppies aren't going to like Corbyn's Labour's economic policies in practice.

As for the point about Tooting remaining Labour despite gentrification I would point out it had been moving towards the Conservatives prior to Brexit and Tories playing the culture war card. I think like Battersea it will likely eventually go back to where it was pre-Brexit (i.e. Labour seat that can be close in a good Tory year) assuming Labour stays on the left and the Tories ditch Mayism. Though the reason why the Tories will find it difficult to ever take it is because parts of the south of the seat (Graveney, Furzedown wards) are similar to Mitcham in character which like Enfield has gone massively downhill in recent decades. Other parts are more like Streatham which is lower-middle class, arty, left-liberal, 'muesli belt' in nature which is obviously bad demographically for the Tories.