UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[rc18]

I was all too ready to gang up on the IG, since I do strongly suspect that at least Umunna's concern for antisemitism is a pretext and that the only thing he really cares about is making sure a real left-wing party will never win power in the UK (Berger is of course a different story and I do have a lot of sympathy for her), but Horus' posts in this thread and the general atmosphere that seems to be emanating out of it are pretty much proving them right. Congrats, people.

Yeah, this. And what totally  i n g ridiculous is that Labour is managing to bring itself down by failing to deal with a bunch of obsessives who have got way too involved in the "Israel" thing, which is an issue that a) Real life people, you know , the ones Labour are supposed to stand for, who are more worried about the state of housing, schools, whatever don't actually care about b) Britain's position on is totally irrelevant anyway.

Welcome to the modern Left. The Labour Party is no longer a party of the working class; at the last election the Conservatives had more lower social-grade voters than Labour. It's not surprising you fixate on irrelevant issues when your voters are the ones with no real problems and wish to virtue signal as a kind of atonement for their privilege. This situation of course is unsustainable, because the virtue signallers are precisely the people who have most to lose from a Corbynite old school "real socialism".

This is of course one of the things Orwell warned about.

It clearly didn't, if you look at disadvantaged constituencies and see the share of labour vote to conservative vote.

? Bit simplistic, there's whole swathes of blue England which are distinctly working class.

Labour's vote increased in urban areas (which are often a mix of poor and wealthy) in London and university towns, largely driven by the middle-class, and declined in most uniformally poor areas such as parts of the North. There's a reason why it was places like Canterbury, an affluent liberal university city, that flipped in the election. Same for the likes of Battersea and Kensington, those well known bastions of salt-of-the-earth ex-miners and factory workers...

Polling was pretty consistent that the Tories were doing better with C2DE voters.

Sorry to break it to you but the person wearing a flat cap and is a Corbynite "real socialism" supporter is more than likely an affluent hipster who's the son of doctors.

[StateBoiler]

The anti-Semitism might be a (valid) excuse, but think Corbyn's euroscepticism is more to blame here for the actual break.

"The Remain Coalition" in the UK Parliament has 8 breakaway Labourites, 3 breakaway Tories, the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP.

[jaichind]

YouGov poll
LAB 26
CON 38
LAB 26
TIG 14
LD 7

I recall back in the 1980s when SDP got started they polled well into the 20s and then 30s

I wonder if TIG will form alliance with LIB.

[rc18]

YouGov poll
LAB 26
CON 38
LAB 26
TIG 14
LD 7

I recall back in the 1980s when SDP got started they polled well into the 20s and then 30s

I wonder if TIG will form alliance with LIB.

TBH the polls are probably a bit meaningless until they decide what they are for rather than just what they are against. They are a motley bunch.

[vileplume]

I was all too ready to gang up on the IG, since I do strongly suspect that at least Umunna's concern for antisemitism is a pretext and that the only thing he really cares about is making sure a real left-wing party will never win power in the UK (Berger is of course a different story and I do have a lot of sympathy for her), but Horus' posts in this thread and the general atmosphere that seems to be emanating out of it are pretty much proving them right. Congrats, people.

Yeah, this. And what totally  i n g ridiculous is that Labour is managing to bring itself down by failing to deal with a bunch of obsessives who have got way too involved in the "Israel" thing, which is an issue that a) Real life people, you know , the ones Labour are supposed to stand for, who are more worried about the state of housing, schools, whatever don't actually care about b) Britain's position on is totally irrelevant anyway.

Welcome to the modern Left. The Labour Party is no longer a party of the working class; at the last election the Conservatives had more lower social-grade voters than Labour. It's not surprising you fixate on irrelevant issues when your voters are the ones with no real problems and wish to virtue signal as a kind of atonement for their privilege. This situation of course is unsustainable, because the virtue signallers are precisely the people who have most to lose from a Corbynite old school "real socialism".

This is false. The ABC1C2DE categorisation is not fit for purpose nowadays, it was designed for the era of 50 years ago. For example the majority of pensioners (who are now the true base of the Tory party) are classified towards the lower end of the spectrum even though as a group they have a lot of disposable income and/or a lot of assets. In contrast young professionals who live in the large cities (a group the Tories struggle with) are classified as AB despite the fact that many are actually very hard up as most of their income goes on rent/bills. It is true Labour has been struggling in post-industrial areas but the type of people who have stopped voting Labour are for example people who come from a working class background, bought their council house in the 80s, are retired, comfortably off and fairly financially secure. On top of these there have been new middle class housing developments in working class areas (see for example North East Derbyshire). The type of people who tend to live on these new developments on the peripheries of cities tend to have fairly high incomes, work in the private sector, own their own homes and tend to be ideologically conservative. The truly poor in these areas do not vote Tory and are still strongly Labour, young people from a deprived background are one of the most Labour demographics in the country for example.

Your point about Kensington is also false. The northern part of the constituency is extremely deprived and very ethnically diverse giving Labour a very solid base vote. On top of this the Tory voting south has been rapidly depopulating due to a large proportion of the housing stock being bought up by foreign nationals who can't vote, as second homes or as an investment. The wealthy, owner occupiers that there are left in south Kensington are still very strongly Tory/anti-Labour, look at how badly Labour got crushed in wards like Bromton and Hans Town and Queen's Gate in the 2018 council elections for example.

Canturbury is more interesting. In contrast to most of the other Kent seats it has been moving towards Labour for sometime now but it was a huge shock when the Corbyn surge actually flipped it. The primary reason for this is that Canturbury used to be a military town and places with ties to the armed forces tend to lean further to the right than their demographics would otherwise suggest look for example at Portsmouth and Plymouth with their ties to the navy. However this heritage is mostly gone now and Canturbury has transformed into a university town and the university keeps on rapidly expanding. It's not just the students but the huge increase in public sector workers that have come with the university expansion that has transformed Canterbury. Whitstable in the north of the constituency also has a growing arty/alternative population. It is correct to say that the Tories do much worse than they 'should' do amongst well paid public sector workers e.g. doctors primarily due to their 'private=good, public=bad' dogma however most of the new public sector workers as well as the students don't tend to have much disposable income and a lot will rent.

It is completely disingenuous to imply Labour are a party of the comfortably-off middle class (though it's true many of the activists will be) or that the Tories are a party of the working class. The two biggest predictors as to whether someone will vote Tory are age and if they own and live in their own home (especially if they have no mortgage). However these two factors connect: financial security. Older people are much more financially secure than the young and people who own their own home have a large amount of wealth tied up in assets (their home) which especially in and around London has exploded in vale in recent years and on top of this they don't lose ~half (or potentially even greater than that) of their monthly income in extortionate rent payments. Home ownership falling is probably the biggest long term problem for the Tories and is the main reason for their increasing weakness in the cities. In contrast many young Labour voters in the cities might on paper have good jobs but seen as most of them rent by the end of the month many are struggling.

I can't find the chart right now but Labour only won 2 seats of the 20% least deprived constituencies  and by contrast the Tories only won 1 of the 10% most deprived. Poverty is highest in the inner cities even in areas that appear to be fairly wealthy hence it is unsurprising that these areas are Labour's base.

[Intell]

I was all too ready to gang up on the IG, since I do strongly suspect that at least Umunna's concern for antisemitism is a pretext and that the only thing he really cares about is making sure a real left-wing party will never win power in the UK (Berger is of course a different story and I do have a lot of sympathy for her), but Horus' posts in this thread and the general atmosphere that seems to be emanating out of it are pretty much proving them right. Congrats, people.

Yeah, this. And what totally  i n g ridiculous is that Labour is managing to bring itself down by failing to deal with a bunch of obsessives who have got way too involved in the "Israel" thing, which is an issue that a) Real life people, you know , the ones Labour are supposed to stand for, who are more worried about the state of housing, schools, whatever don't actually care about b) Britain's position on is totally irrelevant anyway.

Welcome to the modern Left. The Labour Party is no longer a party of the working class; at the last election the Conservatives had more lower social-grade voters than Labour. It's not surprising you fixate on irrelevant issues when your voters are the ones with no real problems and wish to virtue signal as a kind of atonement for their privilege. This situation of course is unsustainable, because the virtue signallers are precisely the people who have most to lose from a Corbynite old school "real socialism".

This is of course one of the things Orwell warned about.

It clearly didn't, if you look at disadvantaged constituencies and see the share of labour vote to conservative vote.

? Bit simplistic, there's whole swathes of blue England which are distinctly working class.

Labour's vote increased in urban areas (which are often a mix of poor and wealthy) in London and university towns, largely driven by the middle-class, and declined in most uniformally poor areas such as parts of the North. There's a reason why it was places like Canterbury, an affluent liberal university city, that flipped in the election. Same for the likes of Battersea and Kensington, those well known bastions of salt-of-the-earth ex-miners and factory workers...

Polling was pretty consistent that the Tories were doing better with C2DE voters.

Sorry to break it to you but the person wearing a flat cap and is a Corbynite "real socialism" supporter is more than likely an affluent hipster who's the son of doctors.

C2DE includes retirees and old people, who aren't by any means disadvantaged. You look at that index my age, you see a meaningful class divide.

Yes the class divide was much weaker in 2017, however, it does not mean it did not exist. Hell if you account the swing from (UKIP+Con) -> Labour, you will see basically a non-existent swing to the tory.

Battersea and Canterbury were won not by wealthy voters voting labour en masse but by younger students (not wealthy and financially unstable) turning to labour in huge numbers. Kensington was predominately through increased turnouts in the social deprivation of poorer areas. Sure wealthier voters swung labour but these seats weren't won based on that.

The labour base is still very much poorer and disadvantaged than the conservative base, especially accounting for the cost of living. To state otherwise is factually wrong.

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting chart. Do you know how they measured deprivation?

[YL]

Interesting chart. Do you know how they measured deprivation?

The standard way (in England): the Index of Multiple Deprivation.  You can see the 2015 figures mapped (at a much finer scale than constituency) here and the constituency data is here.

It's always worth pointing out that this says very little about how wealthy the non-deprived people in an area are.  Kensington is the classic example; it's actually quite deprived according to the IMD, but of course it is also very wealthy.  Even the bits of it where the wealth is (the south) don't have that low deprivation.

[Silent Hunter]

Derek Hatton has been suspended from Labour.

[Horus]

Derek Hatton has been suspended from Labour.

"But labour doesn't care about anti-Semitism"

They suspended the guy over a 7 year old tweet.

[Tintrlvr]

YouGov poll
LAB 26
CON 38
LAB 26
TIG 14
LD 7

I recall back in the 1980s when SDP got started they polled well into the 20s and then 30s

I wonder if TIG will form alliance with LIB.

Not much different than the current 21% for TIG+LD, which is an inevitable formal or informal alliance (especially now that some really Lib Dem-y Tories have joined TIG) even if no merger happens.

Also polling was a lot sparser then so you weren't getting polls within a day or two of the initial announcement. In early February 1981, right after the announcement that they were leaving but before the SDP was officially launched, hypothetical SDP+Lib was polling in high teens to low twenties, right where TIG+LD is now.

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting chart. Do you know how they measured deprivation?

The standard way (in England): the Index of Multiple Deprivation.  You can see the 2015 figures mapped (at a much finer scale than constituency) here and the constituency data is here.

It's always worth pointing out that this says very little about how wealthy the non-deprived people in an area are.  Kensington is the classic example; it's actually quite deprived according to the IMD, but of course it is also very wealthy.  Even the bits of it where the wealth is (the south) don't have that low deprivation.

Cool. Thanks

[jaichind]

YouGov poll
LAB 26
CON 38
LAB 26
TIG 14
LD 7

I recall back in the 1980s when SDP got started they polled well into the 20s and then 30s

I wonder if TIG will form alliance with LIB.

Not much different than the current 21% for TIG+LD, which is an inevitable formal or informal alliance (especially now that some really Lib Dem-y Tories have joined TIG) even if no merger happens.

Also polling was a lot sparser then so you weren't getting polls within a day or two of the initial announcement. In early February 1981, right after the announcement that they were leaving but before the SDP was officially launched, hypothetical SDP+Lib was polling in high teens to low twenties, right where TIG+LD is now.

Interesting.  Thanks for sharing.  I got the impression that SDP-LIB polled very well after SDP's formation mostly because LIB-SDP won some by-elections right after SDP's formations on very large swings against both CON and LAB.

[Blair]

They did poll in the mid 40s, and high 50s in 198(2?) when Thatcher was at the height of unpopularity, and Labour were well Labouring.

Of course the usual disclaimers apply (FPTP, lack of brand, lack of candidates, no policies etc etc) but this has finally made Westminster wake up to how bad both leaders have been performing, and its much harder to have business as usual if both parties are terrified they're going to get MPs poached.

[Silent Hunter]

Derek Hatton has been suspended from Labour.

"But labour doesn't care about anti-Semitism"

They suspended the guy over a 7 year old tweet.

Only arguably because it made them look bad.

[136or142]

I've been following Anna Soubry on Twitter since either the 2015 election or the 2017 election.  She's very impressive. She'd make a good leader for either this rump group or in a partnership with the Liberal Democrats.

I know Sinn Fein don't take their seats in Parliament, but with these 3 defections the Conservative and the DUP non-coalition now have 325 of the 650 seats in Parliament - a minority.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

I've been following Anna Soubry on Twitter since either the 2015 election or the 2017 election.  She's very impressive. She'd make a good leader for either this rump group or in a partnership with the Liberal Democrats.

I know Sinn Fein don't take their seats in Parliament, but with these 3 defections the Conservative and the DUP non-coalition now have 325 of the 650 seats in Parliament - a minority.

Arguably 324 given that Bercow (the Speaker) doesn’t really count.

[Tintrlvr]

They did poll in the mid 40s, and high 50s in 198(2?) when Thatcher was at the height of unpopularity, and Labour were well Labouring.

Of course the usual disclaimers apply (FPTP, lack of brand, lack of candidates, no policies etc etc) but this has finally made Westminster wake up to how bad both leaders have been performing, and its much harder to have business as usual if both parties are terrified they're going to get MPs poached.

Right, the acceleration was pretty fast. They were in the low 30s when the SDP officially launched in late March 1981 and had reached the 40s by summer 1981, peaking in the 50s in the winter of 1981-2, shortly before the Falklands War.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

They did poll in the mid 40s, and high 50s in 198(2?) when Thatcher was at the height of unpopularity, and Labour were well Labouring.

Of course the usual disclaimers apply (FPTP, lack of brand, lack of candidates, no policies etc etc) but this has finally made Westminster wake up to how bad both leaders have been performing, and its much harder to have business as usual if both parties are terrified they're going to get MPs poached.

Right, the acceleration was pretty fast. They were in the low 30s when the SDP officially launched in late March 1981 and had reached the 40s by summer 1981, peaking in the 50s in the winter of 1981-2, shortly before the Falklands War.

Wiki’s page on polls for the 1983 election, for reference.

[YL]

I've been following Anna Soubry on Twitter since either the 2015 election or the 2017 election.  She's very impressive. She'd make a good leader for either this rump group or in a partnership with the Liberal Democrats.

I know Sinn Fein don't take their seats in Parliament, but with these 3 defections the Conservative and the DUP non-coalition now have 325 of the 650 seats in Parliament - a minority.

Arguably 324 given that Bercow (the Speaker) doesn’t really count.

It's a bit more complicated than that.  There are also three Deputy Speakers, who are usually counted with their parties, but by convention also don't vote.  Two of them (Lindsay Hoyle and Rosie Winterton) are Labour, and one (Eleanor Laing) is a Tory.  (Bercow being an ex-Tory means this balances out at least as far as Lab vs. Con is concerned.)

The current state of the parties given on the Parliament website is
Con 314 (this doesn't include Bercow, but does include Laing)
Lab 247 (this includes both Hoyle and Winterton)
SNP 35
Independent 19 (this includes the 11 TIGgers)
LD 11
DUP 10
Sinn Féin 7
Plaid 4
Green 1
Speaker 1
Vacant 1 (Newport West)

But actually the situation with the Deputy Speakers means that there are effectively 313 Tories and 245 Labour.

If you exclude Sinn Féin, the Speaker and Deputies, the Newport West vacancy, and Fiona Onasanya (Ind, Peterborough; currently in jail) then there are 637 voting MPs, and the Tories and DUP have 323 between them, a working majority of 9.

[IceAgeComing]

The Newport by-election will make that number 8 again since I don't think that's a place where the Tories have much of a chance (although it needs a 6.5% swing so its not rock-solid) and if Onasanya doesn't resign or doesn't have her sentence extended then that goes down to 7 when she's back.  The difference between 8 and 9 is academic really - you'd need five MPs to defect to deprive the government of their majority - but one less than that reduces that number to 4 which doesn't look like much but with this small a majority that difference really could be key.

This assumes that TIG would vote to defeat the government on a Confidence Vote though which isn't at all clear at this point.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The anti-Semitism might be a (valid) excuse, but think Corbyn's euroscepticism is more to blame here for the actual break.

Which was always my main issue when it comes to Corbyn.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Are things finally starting to crack?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/21/theresa-may-faces-ministerial-revolt-over-no-deal-brexit

[Silent Hunter]

I think this may well go down to the wire.

[Blair]

Are things finally starting to crack?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/21/theresa-may-faces-ministerial-revolt-over-no-deal-brexit

Last time they briefed it was going to be 40 resignations. Lots of Tory backbenchers still haven't got the message that Grieve (and Sourby and co) got which is that the only way to get the PM to do anything is to rebel, and keep rebelling.

We got lots of boasting last time, and not a single Tory resigned or rebelled who wasn't a usual suspect- so I'm not holding my breathe, and look forward to Richard Harrington, Nicky Morgan and the other useful idiots saying 'Lets give the PM one more chance'.

Interesting question- who is more naive, Tory remainers expecting the PM to act in the national interest, or Labour remainers expecting a lifelong eurosceptic to back a people's vote?