UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

[IceAgeComing]

the title of the old thread actually would work for this one

[IceAgeComing]

The thing is that if they negotiate for a softer Brexit (will they'll surely have to on the base of this result - doesn't mean that they'd get one naturally) it'd probably lead to an election right after since the DUP are unlikely to vote for Single Market access so they'd be reliant on the other opposition votes to get that.

[IceAgeComing]

A truly fair map would be one that favors Conservatives.

well the current map massively favours the Tories, so thanks for supporting changes to the boundary rules to ensure equality.

[IceAgeComing]

Going back the boundary things very quickly - yes, Wales has more seats that its entitled to.  That was an intentional malapportionment created when Wales did not have the Assembly in order to give it a bigger say in UK politics - Scotland had the same thing until 2005.  It was something created a long time ago - before Labour existed, I'm pretty sure.  When the Assembly gained primary legislative powers the plan has been to move towards equality for everywhere in the UK: had the Tories not made the decision to tamper with the rules that the boundary commission use in order to gain a political advantage (and mean that the boundaries drawn are actually worse; since the commission don't have the leeway that they need to produce good seats in a lot of places) then we'd have had a review by now and that discrepency would be fixed.  As it is, the 2012 review was killed by the Liberals because of the Tories deciding not to do Lords reform, and the current review will most likely be killed by the DUP since the Northern Ireland draft seats are TERRIBLE not just for them, but for Unionists more widely.

The sensible thing to do would be to move towards a compromise set of rules (650 seats, 10% threshold would work; the latter is basically as many seats as we have now, the latter is a threshold between the old one and the new one) and let a review go through - the involvement of all parties in the creation of new rules would give the commission's next review a mandate that the Zombie review and the current one did not have.

[IceAgeComing]

the election results quite clearly show that a divide still exists between traditional protestant areas and traditional catholic ones - the Tory success in Lanark and Hamilton East suggests that very strongly, as does Labour's regain of lots of traditional working class areas which have a traditional catholic history.  The locals also show it - right down to the local authorities where the sectarian divide was Catholic=Labour, Protestant=SNP...

[IceAgeComing]

well for Westminster elections the whole Protestant/Catholic thing stopped really being particularly relevant in the late 60s or early 70s - I mean I imagine that the hardcore Orange vote was probably Tory for a long time but pretty much every working class seat in Scotland went Labour - the ones in the central belt held by the Tories were broadly affluent middle class places (EastRen, Glasgow Cathcart was this until the construction of new estates caused by slum clearage swung the seat towards Labour, Glasgow Hillhead before the university vote went strongly Labour/Liberal; they also often had a few Ayrshire seats as well) which would also go Tory in England - I think that this also applied for Edinburgh as well.  There are sectarian divides in some local councils, but they often are localised and not always consistent, the collapse of the Tories in Working Class Scotland sometimes meant that it disappeared entirely, and sometimes the SNP became the proxy for the Tories (although never encouraged by the national party, really).

[IceAgeComing]

in preferred prime minister polling you ought to clarify, which while good for Labour, isn't exactly something particularly important.  It shows how far May has fallen in but a few months though

[IceAgeComing]

He's Mayor of London, rightly or wrongly voters might blame him too.

Housing is a matter for the borough councils, not the Mayor.

I hope enough people knows the difference.

The electoral calendar helps. London borough councils are up next year, Khan in 2020.

I'm ashamed to admit the local government dynamics in England is very confusing to me.

It's simple, surely?

There are some counties that have elected councils, and then elected local authorities underneath them

Some counties don't have an elected administration, but have unitary authorities making them up.

Some counties, like Hampshire, are a mix of both, with a county council that doesn't actually cover the whole county, and some unitary authorities

London has a mayor and an assembly, but also boroughs underneath it.

And then there are this city region things.

And who the actual  thought this mess was a good idea?

The original system was drawn up under Heath and was actually simpler than what went before but that was two-tier everywhere in the UK (outside NI which was always different and the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland where unitary authorities were always much more sensible).  It started to get more complex when Thatcher abolished the GLC and the Metropolitan Counties (because they were almost all Labour dominated and protested vigorously against Central government, which certainly motivated the reduction of local government power) and then when Major started to gradually move some bits towards Unitary authorities while some didn't, it just got even more complex from there.  Outside of England its a lot more simple since Scotland and Wales both changed en masse to unitary authorities in 1995 and gained the devolved parliaments in 1999: and NI also reformed all at once a few years back.

[IceAgeComing]

The Callaghan government arguably started some of the things that Thatcher would take a lot, lot further - admittedly that's partially because it was one of the conditions of the IMF bailout, but interesting none the less.

Considering the narrow ideological differences in the 90s (a consensus that liberal economic policies were a good thing; limited state involvement in the economy, that sort of thing) Labour certainly were centre-left in the 90s - indeed, the Blair government did a few things which had been Labour policy for years but which they'd never managed especially in that first term (the Minimum Wage is a big one; they spent more money on basic services than the Tories ever would have; going more broadly than economics you have the Repeal of Section 48 and the equalisation of the age of consent; devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; all sorts of radical stuff - and this becomes a lot clearer when you look at the 1997 Tory manifesto and some of the stuff they would have implemented had they somehow won that election).  Where the Blair government falls down in my eyes is after that: partially because of foreign policy but also because that's when I'd argue that they weren't really a party of the left in any significant way - certainly to the right of the Tories (as became clear VERY quickly) but willing to start some of the things that the Tories would later take further (I'm thinking especially of welfare reform here, especially for the disabled).

[IceAgeComing]

It looks like the reason that they didn't mandate STV probably was because of the army of Labour councillors in safe wards that are almost guaranteed their seats under FPTP but not necessarily under STV; since it'd be all but impossible for Labour to take every seat in a larger, STV ward.  That's why I'd expect the councils to go for STV to be the ones where you have a lot more competition to begin with, which probably aren't the ones that actually need the thing.

[IceAgeComing]

The big issue really are the Brexit talks: I don't see the Tories pushing the Prime Minister out right in the middle of these time critical negotiations unless they've agreed some kind of transitional arrangements and later talks - and if so good luck getting the Tory party to agree to the sort of terms that the EU would make for that.  I'm pretty sure May will stand down around May 2019 with a contest after that - although if Labour suddenly end up a long way ahead they might act sooner, especially since the government doesn't have an overall majority and if I was Labour after the talks period end I'd be pushing for an election as hard as possible for as long as May stays around after that.

That is actually really quite bad for the Tory party; since it basically means that we will have the deep leadership conflicts that are clearly already happening continue on for at least another year, and they can't do the thing of challenging her without giving the opposition a huge amount of ammunition - much more than Labour gave the Tories when they challenged Corbyn last year.  If they push the Prime Minister out during the talks, you can guarantee that Labour will not stop talking about that for as long as they can...

[IceAgeComing]

Besides its a silly comparison: there's been a reduction in the number of by-elections in time (62 between 1959-1964; 30 between 1974O-1979, 24 between 1987-1992; 18 between 1992-1997; 14 between 2005-2010, and 21 between 2010-2015 - but that includes two by-elections where Tory MPs stood down after defecting to UKIP and a few where Sinn Fein MPs stood down to either end double jobbing or to contest Dail seats so I'd to loath to include them: also limiting my sample to parliaments that went at least four and a half years although the shortest lasting of these was the 1974-79 one) as MPs are typically younger, tend to live longer and are also healthier than they once were.

There's also the factor that the main difference between this parliament and the 1992-1997 one is that then the Tories went in to the parliament with a majority of over 20 which generally is workable in most cases and only lost that late in their term after eight by-election losses (four to the Liberals, three to Labour, one to the SNP: they retained no Tory-held by-election seats) and three defections (Alan Howarth to Labour, Emma Nicholson to the Liberals, and George Gardiner technically to the Referendum Party although he never spoke in parliament as a Referendum Party MP) while in this one they need to get a few opposition votes to pass anything, and the deal with the DUP isn't a coalition or anything strong: its supply and confidence and that's no guarantee for ordinary legislation.  Even in the 1992-1997 parliament it took until October 1996 for them to officially lose their majority for good (technically lost it a few times before that as they suspended the whip from Tory MPs, but they still mostly voted with the government in this time) and then they got through the next few months with support from the UUP.  The DUP aren't likely to pull their support from the Tories until after March 2019 but once they do the government is defeated: and the DUP - especially the parliamentary DUP which is incredibly old and very very odd - are exactly the sort of party that would probably pull their support over something incredibly odd.

[IceAgeComing]

Also another new MP who is embarrassment is Laura Pidcock who said she won't hang out with Tories.  From what I've read on her she seems like a real left wing firebrand and SJW, sort of Britain's version of Niki Ashton here in Canada.

The other nutty one but has been around for a long time is Dennis Skinner who seems to be fairly far out there.  Ironically his constituency has become more competitive so the Tories might have a shot at it if he resigns or dies (he is in his 80s now).

I mean; 'not hanging out with Tories' isn't exactly something that's going to annoy a significant amount of Pidcock's constituents - especially those that vote for her.  Also its hardly surprising that the 2017 Labour intake is going to tend to have a few left wingers in it - that's been the trend of the last few elections after all!

Also assuming that Skinner has got a strong personal vote is likely to be a mistake: indeed the story from the campaign was that the national Labour party were a little worried about Bolsolver and were not at all happy with the quality of the data from the seat: so I don't think that even they really know whether Skinner departing (which at this point will only be his choice) would benefit or hurt them.

[IceAgeComing]

The thing is; I don't know whether removing her would have been particularly popular. 

Also remember that the election was held after Article 50 was triggered so the two year negotiation clock had already been triggered (and that further shows the arrogance of the election call really; if she believed that she had any risk of losing then she'd not have risked it because of that fact), by the time that the Tories would have elected their next leader it'd have been late September at the earliest before a new Prime Minister would be in place (I'm assuming that there'd have been a need for a Party Members vote in this hypothetical leadership election and that you'd not have the other person withdraw after MPs vote) and then you've got three months of a lame duck Prime Minister trying to negotiate very important things with the EU while future government policy on those issues remains up in the air because no one knows who the Prime Minister will be.  That strikes me as being something that, if you look beyond pure partisan interests for a moment, is not really in the national interest regardless of what you think of Brexit.  Add in that the Tory bench is, well, hardly stacked with talent there's no guarantee that some fresh face would do any better.

Here's what I think likely happened: when it became clear that the best the Tories could have hoped for was to retain a slim majority (and they failed even that) agreements were made by the prominent figures in the party that'd go for the leadership - and possibly with the agreement or knowledge of the Prime Minister or her close staff - that she'd stay around, lead the Brexit negotiations and then leave in mid 2019 and have a leadership election then.  Means that you don't have an awkward and very costly leadership challenge right in the middle of the Brexit negotiations which would be toxic for the party and give Labour lots of ammunition to use in the next election ("instead of getting the best Brexit deal, they decided to fight amongst themselves and look at how bad it went!", that sort of thing) plus it'd rip the party right down the middle on the issue and that's not what you really want when you're governing as a minority.  Also conveniently means that the Tories have a scapegoat for Brexit being terrible as well...

In terms of who'd win, well, the Tory election system is designed to make sure that the two most boring candidates go through so you'd probably end up with the final round being David Davis vs Amber Rudd or something equally uninspiring.  This isn't the Labour party system where party members and supporters have more choice, the MPs will knock the ballot down to two which hurts the chances of someone like a Boris winning.

[IceAgeComing]

In the most respectful manner possible: it is incredibly stupid to think that the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (who I actually like!) is someone that's going to appeal to old folk in "the hinterlands" - which isn't really a useful description for a fair few of the seats on that list; certainly not in comparison to many, many other seats that Labour still hold.  Indeed; when you look at the actual election results bar a few areas (the West Midlands outside Birmingham and bits of the North East) that swung to the Tories generally; most of the country showed an overall swing to Labour and the seats gained by the Tories were oddities that had other factors to explain them.

[IceAgeComing]

The idea of talking about parties having a "solid floor of 38%" when in the last fifty years both parties have only gotten above that twice and there have been a fair few elections where both failed is really very silly.  Making BOLD PREDICTIONS about a situation that has only existed for six months really is the sort of thing that will leave you with egg on your face later on.  I mean just look at the predictions of a "new multi-party British politics" that were made after 2015...

This idea that "LABOUR SHOULD BE LEADING BY 25%!!!" is also very silly if you look at the polling history in the UK.  We're still only six months removed from the election: generally significant anti-government swings tend to happen after that, if they happen at all.  The only exception to this was 1992 but that was a government that won an election in a way that no one expected them to and who had been in government for thirteen years before so a little different to today.  There's also the fact it we got a snap election the polls tend to move as people quickly start paying attention more: in 2017 that led to  Labour's dramatic rise which resulted in them removing the Tory majority.  Add in the very divided situation as well as Brexit and the situation isn't there for either party to really open up a large lead in the polls at the moment.  Considering that we aren't going this year (my prediction is autumn 2019 but I could be wrong) and I think that most people aren't anticipating a General Election and that as much as there has been plenty of talk no one has actually experienced the harms that Brexit will cause and so there's not been a dramatic swing in the polls.  The notable thing will be to see what happens in the Local Elections in May: they are a set that the Tories will be dreading (London Boroughs, the Metropolitan Boroughs and some other rural councils that elect by thirds, the former will get all of the attention and the Tories have been shellacked in London in every election since 2014) but if they do alright in those then its a sign that, in local government at least, the Tories aren't dead in lots of areas where they did awfully in 2017.

I mean we're also assuming here that the government gets to choose when to go: post-Brexit - especially if its a No Deal one or something that leads to a hard Irish border - the DUP may well decide to bring the government down whenever they want: or if something happens to some Tory MPs and we get a few by-elections that they lose then they might even lose their majority with the DUP.  The latter isn't likely in 2019 and would need to be a longer term thing but considering the size of the majority it is a possibility and unlike in 1996/7 the Tories don't really have anyone on the opposition benches other than the DUP to work with; the SNP don't vote on lots of England-only issues unless they have a financial consequence for the Scottish government but they'd vote for a motion of no confidence as would Plaid and the Green: there's Lady Hermon who traditionally has voted with Labour but doesn't like Corbyn but that's one possible vote and then you have the Liberals who have been burned by backing a Tory government already this decade and probably wouldn't do so again.  All in all, its a hard situation and if they are doing terribly in the polls later on I could see the DUP putting the squeeze on to get more ou of them.

[IceAgeComing]

There's a difference between topline voting intention and the opinions of the public though.  The issue with the voting intention thing is that, well, people tend to say that they are more likely to vote than they actually are and that tends to make polling elections very difficult.  To use the last two elections as an example: in 2015 they thought that a lot more younger people would vote than actually did while in 2017 the polls that missed by miles assumed a 2015 turnout pattern while those that didn't miss (Survation was the big one again; if only because they hadn't changed their methodology a whole lot since 2015 after they got close then as well which meant they weren't doing dodgy things like weighting the votes of younger people down arbitrarily) picked up on the fact that young people were more likely to vote in 2017.  It does leave a lot of questions on the table for the polling industry about how they should do the topline intentions stuff - yougov's model was very good and perhaps that's the future for election-time polling, I don't know.

For questions that aren't voting related though that's less of a factor since the likelihood of a person to turnout doesn't affect their opinion of the government.  Those questions aren't seeking only the opinions of those who vote but also the public at large who might be less likely to vote as that's the more useful data.

You're overestimating the amount that normal people follow politics.  Like I'll use the example of my Mum: she pays attention to the news a little bit and knows what's going on in the world but doesn't exactly follow it overly closely and had a rather negative view of Corbyn - although not a strong dislike; I think that she was just hearing the negative stuff on the BBC and parroting it a bit.  However when the election was called she paid a lot more attention to the news and what the people were saying and now she's a lot more positive on Corbyn: indeed she's very much a fan now.  Part of this is the fact that during election time the broadcast media rules on news and impartiality are a lot stricter so she was getting a much more balanced position when she was paying attention closer and that changed her mind significantly.  From my experience that's the way that these things go: people who might swing around a bit (my Mum was Labour forever but voting Lib Dem in 2005 and SNP in 2015) might say in midterm periods that they'll vote a certain way but that is solidified during a campaign because people aren't really thinking about it until an election comes around.  So might people swing around a bit more?  In terms of voting intentions sure; although considering where we are in the life of the government the historical trend is that they'll go down pretty hard in the next few years.  In terms of how people perceive the leaders I don't think so: I think that people's opinions of the leaders were solidified greatly during the campaign and it'll take something significant happening to swing those figures dramatically.  I certainly don't see May's figures ever improving significantly: she was found out during the campaign and it'd take a lot to dramatically improve the public's opinion of her.  I think that Corbyn is a divisive figure and so I don't think that he'll ever be beloved, but nor do I see his numbers falling dramatically.

[IceAgeComing]

Its also not fair to say that most of the councils up are "Labour strongholds" - while most of the attention will be on the London boroughs (all up this time and while most were won by Labour in 2014 and they may well do better in London than they have since the mid 80s if what we think might happen does happen there still are 600 Tory councillors and nine Tory councils in London and them losing, say, Wandsworth or Westminster would be very important) and Labour gaining control of them would suggest significant shifts in parts of London that the Tories really should be winning) and the Metropolitan Boroughs (all Labour or NOC bar Dudley, Trafford and Solihull which are Tory controlled; don't know what might happen in those but I'd think that Trafford might be interesting to watch for potential Labour gains) you've also got the large number of non-met boroughs that still elect by third and which are voting this year many of which are Tory controlled and also that its a very simplistic way of looking at these elections.

In order for the Tories to form a decent working majority they need seats in wealthier areas of London and other more urban areas and in the last election the key reason why they lost was because richer, younger people voted Labour - and this isn't something that always happen, the ICM post-election polling suggests that it is a post-2010 thing.  To use London as an example here: Labour already did very well in the 2014 Locals so are defending from a very high level so Labour making further gains would be very impressive and show just how weak the Tories are in London - them losing Wandsworth and Westminster which is possible if Labour do well would be highly significant as both are very Tory (the former last was Labour in 1974 and under the 80s was often the London Borough used as an example of good government by the government at the time; the latter has always had a Tory majority council since the creation of Greater London in 1964) and perhaps symbolic of certain communities that the Tories have typically won but who have been alienated by recent changes to the Conservative Party.  You also have the South West London Boroughs and the question of how well the Liberals will do there; and since historically they've built strong local organisations (often not based on any policy basis; nor even deep support considering where the party is in many places which they controlled not so long ago) prior to winning seats in General Elections plus again the level of Lib Dem support, as has been said earlier in the thread, is important in General Elections as typically they take more seats off the Tories than they do Labour.

Sure you have places like Newham which aren't interesting at all (unless the very outside possibility of a Green opposition councillor managing to squeak in interests you for some reason?) but that's always the case in Local Elections - last year was very similar just rather than being lots of London Boroughs with either token or no opposition to Labour it was lots of Tory Counties with token opposition - and you have to naturally focus on the marginal authorities in every election because they're the interesting and important ones.

In relation to Scotland its still really in flux: the SNP have small majorities everywhere and their support falling even a little would cost them most of their seats; lots of which would go to Labour.  You'll never get back to the pre-2015 situation and the SNP will always be a presence in the Central Belt which historically they weren't; but Labour certainly can win in Scotland provided that they don't, well, be what Scottish Labour was.

[IceAgeComing]

There has been a small shift in the polls, although its hardly as significant as many are implying; we've gone from a very small Labour lead of something like 1% to a very small Tory lead of something like 1%. 

The "LABOUR SHOULD BE 20% AHEAD!!!" thing is a silly argument though for a variety of reasons.  Firstly; we're only seven or eight months removed from the General Election and we're still at the point where historically government poll ratings may not have fallen much at all.  Secondly a lot of the issues faced by the government aren't really things that are affecting people now: its about division in the Tory Party (which isn't exactly a new issue; it was a significant reason why she went for an early election) and POTENTIAL problems caused by Brexit which haven't hit yet and people tend to base their votes not on potentials but on the current situation which isn't actually that bad for the government.  Thirdly; we're not that far removed from a General Election which dramatically Polarised people's opinions and unlike most other General Elections in recent history both parties have retained their leaders - indeed the last time this happened was after the 1987 Election (I'm excluding February 1974 because we don't know what would have happened if Labour hadn't gone when they did, plus also it kind of proves the above as well because that was a no change election) and the polls then remained constant with the Tories leading for most of the early term of that government until you get into 1990.  That may well suggest that in the immediate post-election period without dramatic changes to the parties or the major issues - as has happened here - voters are a lot less elastic and generally are less likely to swing away from their party unless the situation dramatically changes.  There's also the fact that we basically have a two party system again and that may well affect the way that many respond to polls: many of those who in the past would have said the Libs or UKIP to the opinion polls clearly aren't anymore and that may well make voters a lot more firm in their partisan affiliation.

There's also the fact that this is a bit of a unique situation for the UK: we've never really had a government call an early election and get embarrassed in this way whilst staying in government: the two unsuccessful examples that had government going vaguely early (Labour went in 1970 after three and a half years because they were running high in the polls after three years of misery; the Tories went in February 1974 after around three and a half years because of the miners strike and the issues that it caused) led to the government being defeated which is different to the current situation.  Because this is new we don't have any historical data to fall back on that fits the current situation so we can't definitively say that either Labour or the Tories are under or over performing.  I'm of the opinion that the status quo (the big two parties basically tied with the others nowhere) will likely remain constant until we have a clearer idea what the future of the UK post-March 2019 is which we don't at the moment.  Even then its unlikely to hit significantly unless the situation post-Brexit gets very dire quickly which you might expect if the American economy starts to misbehave around that time.

An odd feature of the 2017 locals was that the tone of commentary was set by the first few results in - which were indeed appalling for Labour - and not by what then followed, which was a much more complex picture. An telling feature of them was the unusual attention given to Wales before the results came in and pretty much zero attention given to Wales the following day. An amusing detail was Laura von Kuenssberg briefing that Labour was likely to lose its majority in Durham - in the event the majority was quite comfortable - after having obviously had a very quick check at the results website and not noticed that pretty much all the divisions left to declare were coalfield ones.

Doesn't this always happen in elections though?  The narrative is drawn up in advance and then the election results are interpreted to fit that narrative - look at the people still trying the "Labour did very badly in Leave areas" after the General Election when that underperformance cost them; what; three seats - and three seats with other factors that might explain the result at that?  Another example of that was Peter Kellner claiming that after five seats were in (which at the time showed no net swing I believe; perhaps a small swing to the Tories) that the results in proved that the Tories were heading for a 100 seat majority!

[IceAgeComing]

The last time the Tories won a working majority (defining my terms: a working majority is distinct from an overall majority in that the latter is a mathematical thing while the former also suggests that their majority almost guarantees that their legislative programme passes - ie enough to cover by-election losses, defections and rebellions) was 1992; since then they’ve lost three elections (two of them massive landslides), been the largest party in hung parliaments in two (both of which were seen as under performances, especially 2017) and a majority of 12 in 2015 which is amongst the smallest majorities since the war.  This idea that the Tories are the natural party of government is really rather out of date; they certainly haven’t been able to put together a coalition that’s big enough to give them even a decent overall majority.

Also the idea that minority governments and intrinsically popular because they can’t pass anything is just... weird and certainly not true in the UK context.  Labour governed with a minority from 1976 for three years and lost bad in 1979 for example.  Indeed going back to World War 1 no government elected as a minority and governing as a minority party has improved their situation in the next election bar 1974 which is a different case to now - a newly elected government seeking a majority.  If you’re using history you also need to consider this.

One other fact: we’ve already seen what happens if the Tories go fully after the Leave voter - or at least their imagination of the Leave voter.  They hemmorage seats that they’ve held forever - some of them never had been Labour before -  and end up being on the losing side of a 20,000 majority in a seat that they won in 2010 and for what?  Three gains from Labour and tepid swings in safe Labour seats while annoying lots of very Tory voters especially in London which has lots of places where the Tories should be competitive in.  If your strategy results in Labour swings in every region of the country bar the West Midlands (and even that was like a 1% swing) and Scotland (special case; the Scottish Tories ran a very different campaign) while resulting in a 10% swing from the Tories to Labour in London strikes me as being very misguided.  Most Tory voters may have also voted leave but that 30% who didn’t are key for them and they can’t win without them and they found the 2017 Tory campaign and the direction that the party went in unpalatable.

[IceAgeComing]

They have done nothing to alienate their voters, and are at little risk of paralysis. They don't care about Labour/LD partisans or the woke, though.

Canterbury hadn't elected a non-Tory MP since 1868 (it was a two member seat; elected a Liberal and an Independent Conservative) until 2017 when Labour gained it on a 9.3% swing.  Brighton Kemptown was held by the Tories between 2010 and 2017 and seemed to have developed into a key marginal seat: its now Labour by 10,000 votes after a 10.8% swing from the Tories to them.  Enfield Southgate was most likely Tory since forever other than 1997 and 2001 (which were Labour landslides so a little odd); Labour gained it on a 10% swing.  Peterborough has historically only been held by Labour when they've been in government (1929; 1945, October 74, 1997-2001) other than 2017 when Labour gained it.  Hove was held by the Tories forever before 1997 and they held it between 2010 and 2015 and the incumbent Labour MP was defending a 1,200 majority: they held the seat by 20,000 votes - a 15% swing from the Tories to Labour.  There are plenty of examples of seats like this in 2017: Labour gaining some seats that they only tend to win if they form government, some on very large swings equivalent to what they managed in the 1997 election.

Sure the Tories gained votes in the last election - but Labour gained more and the impact of that in a two-party state is that you effectively have a swing to Labour from the Tories (of something like 2%).  It was clear early in the election that we were shifting towards a two-party system in England and Wales; the Tories went all in on getting as many 2015 UKIP votes as possible and ignoring the fact that there are plenty of Liberals who'd willingly have voted Tory if they saw them as a better option to Labour and the 2017 Tory campaign convinced them that they weren't.  They got 60% of 2015 UKIP voters (18% stayed with UKIP and 16% Labour) but that was geographically distributed in such a way where it tended to run up Tory majorities in, say, Basildon while not helping them gain more votes than Labour managed to get in those Brexit-voting marginals that they were going for.  When you factor in the fact that Labour gained the above mentioned seats - some with huge majorities! - and a factor in that was Tory voters not voting or voting for someone else because of their dissatisfaction with the Tory campaign and the government and I don't see how you can say with a straight face that they did nothing to alienate their voters.

There's also the fact that if the post-election demographic polling is correct: things... aren't great for the Tories long term.  Using Ipsos-Mori data for this as that tends to be what you use for these things: there's a massive age divide building with Labour being +35% with 18-25 year olds; and the Tories +36% with 65+.  That breaks down by class as well: all social classes under 35 voted Labour by a big margin (Labour got 52% of young ABs which is, well, not normal, those people should be your young Tories) while the Tories got all classes 55+ - including the working class.  Not to say that a class divide doesn't still exist because it does: but it seems like in 2017 the age split was much stronger.  The issue is that a younger base naturally benefits Labour here: the Tories need to convert people to vote for them if they want to win the next election; and younger people are less likely to agree with the sort of old fashioned policies (even little things like BLUE PASSPORTS) designed to appeal to people who've got a falsely rosy memory of the 1950s.  Its also hard for governments - especially governments like the Tories who've been in office for seven years and 'won' three straight elections - to build that support while in government.  That age divide began to display itself in 2015 so its not even a Brexit thing - although I think the same factors that developed it then and deepen it now also contributed to the EU referendum result - and the current Tory party which is very insular and out of step with most younger people - even the few young Tories - on things like migration and Europe makes it harder still for them to get that support.  They can't even rely on attacking the last Labour government anymore: they left office eight years ago and it'll be at least nine by the time that the next election happens and by that point it just looks desperate.

Incidentally 26% of 2017 Tory voters voted Remain so your implication that those people aren't Tories isn't actually true as that's a pretty significant chunk.  There are a surprisingly large number of 'woke' Tories, especially when you get into the centre of cities and those are the places where the Conservatives have been hemmoraging seats, with the party arrogantly assuming that they'd just displace Labour in safe Labour seats to replace them.

[IceAgeComing]

If England and Wales voted as they did in 2005 while Scotland voted as it did in 2015; Labour would have been something like ten seats short of a majority - I can't do the calculations at the moment.  When you factor in that most of the seats that they lost are seats that without the SNP would be incredibly safe and have been since the decline of the working class Protestant Tory vote in the 50s and early 60s then it makes perfect sense that the route for Labour to form government needs to involve Scotland in some form.  Unless you see places in and around Glasgow as a no hope prospect for Labour...

I don't think that Scottish Labour will ever get back to their post-1997 level again; indeed it could be argued that the formation of the Scottish Parliament meant that the decline of SLab became more certain, especially at the Holyrood level.  The question that they have is what sort of party Scottish Labour needs to be in order to better defeat on one hand the SNP and on the other the Tories and I don't think that anyone has figured that out yet.  My wish is that they don't go down the hardcore unionist route: that doesn't work for them because the Tories do that better and because younger people, who've gone strongly towards Labour in the last few UK elections, tended to be more likely to support independence and even those that didn't is less likely to be convinced by the Unionist rhetoric.  I could be wrong though; I certainly didn't see the Tory success in the last General Election coming...

[IceAgeComing]

There's also the fact that you have to consider the context in which the election was called.

It was an early poll called by a majority Tory government seeking to get a huge majority so they could ram through whatever Brexit-related legislation they wanted without needing to worry about losing votes in parliament: to quieten the Tory rebels by claiming to have a post-referendum mandate and to neuter the opposition by sheer force of numbers.  It was also called in a situation where Labour were trailing by 20% in the polls and with a very divided Labour party who appeared (to those who only got their information from the Labour right) to be incapable of running an election campaign.  They hoped to win a large majority to get them through until 2022 (probably past the worst point of the post-Brexit problems); and to really hurt the Labour party and put them in a position where they spent the next five years arguing amongst themselves and not appearing like a strong government in any meaningful sense: think Labour post-83.

In that context; the Tories did not "win" the election in any meaningful sense: they met precisely zero of their goals.  They lost their majority meaning that they now have to rely on opposition votes on everything plus they didn't quieten the rebels in their own party because they didn't get a strong mandate.  They can't guarantee to go through until 2022: they rely on the DUP for confidence votes and the majority even with them could theoretically fall if they get a run of bad by-election results and Labour left the election broadly being a lot more united - at least the claim of unelectability was seriously hurt by the election; a party that's so anathema to the country to be impossible to form government would never get 40% in a General Election - and while they have their moments generally they are a much stronger opposition who, rather than being in that place where they argue amongst themselves over trite crap because they think that they've not got a chance to win the next election, are in a very good position to advanced further.

The "he should resign because he LOST" argument is very silly - there is precedent for 'losing' leaders staying on for another term (Kinnock lost in 87 and stayed until 92; Wilson lost in 70 and won in Feb74; Heath lost in 66 and stayed to win 70 etc) and there's also the fact that no party is going to evict a leader that managed over the course of an election campaign, no matter the incompetence of the other party, to almost entirely close a 20+% poll lead.  Like imagine a scenario where in 2001 it turned out that William Hague was a godly campaigner and managed to slash the Labour majority from 179 to 20: under your argument he should resign despite having a clearly very strong campaign because he "lost" by 60 seats or whatever the gap would have been which isn't at all sensible.  The precedent where leaders resign the day after an election is really very new; and has only been a thing since the 90s.

[IceAgeComing]

Talent or qualifications hasn't been the most important factor for Tory cabinet selections for an incredibly long time.

Its all about what faction you are from and how to please a particular brand of Tory backbenchers.

[IceAgeComing]

It’s hard to say: the Friday letter seemed to indicate a closer relationship with Europe than earlier indications suggested and the fact that the government are talking to opposition MPs on Brexit suggests that they could be thinking that they might need opposition votes to get their Brexit deal through Parliament since the right of the Tory party could object to it.  However the thread of a no-deal thing is ever present and probably the primary risk of a very hard Brexit at this point and I don’t think that this has affected that risk at all.