UK General Discussion: 2019 and onwards, The End of May

[vileplume]

all you can say if that result did come to pass would be that three and four way marginals would become the norm, tactical voting would become impossible and there would be loads of fluke winners (and Onasyana/O'Mara style flameouts in the ensuing parliament) and high profile losses from both Labour and the Tories.

Agree that it would be far worse for the Tories than Labour though, because the former would have no real safe regions to fall back on - even blue counties like Surrey would collapse.

The places where the Tories would probably hold up best would be in affluent exurban/rural seats where the Brexit vote was around 50/50 or so. For Labour you're looking at minority and urban post-industrial working class areas. So in the event of both parties crashing, Labour do better than the Tories.

Would Corbyn lose if Labour got 19% and the Lib Dems 24%?

From Flavible Politics, inputting the data from the poll, Islington North would look like this

Labour: 32%
Brexit: 26%
Lib Dem: 22%
Green: 9%
CUK: 8%
Conservatives: 3%

As a bonus, here's Maidenhead as well (May's seat)

Conservative: 30%
Lib Dem: 29%
Brexit: 26%
Green: 6%
Labour: 6%
CUK: 1%
UKIP: 1%

Of course, take all of this with a huge amount of caution as models do break down with these huge swings. But Theresa May would be more likely to lose her seat than Corbyn. In fact, the Tories would only get 70 seats with these numbers

Well... maybe. In Corbyn's seat, BXP wouldn't do anywhere near that well, but the LDs would do much better (extremely heavily Remain seat), so the projection is probably way off. On the other hand, in May's seat, the projection is probably about right because it's the sort of seat where both the LDs and BXP would make substantial gains roughly proportionately to the national result (narrowly Remain seat).

Yeah, it's worth noting the Leave vote was less than 26% in the Corbyn's seat, so the Brexit Party only get about 5% or something. So you can see a path for the Lib Dems if Corbyn's vote is only at 32% or something.

OTOH CrabCake's point about it being somewhat deprived is valid (I was under the impression it was wholly an urbane progressive/champagne socialist area)

On that point, Chukka's probably one CUK MP that might hang on (as well as Wollastorm)

No Islington North is a young, ethnically diverse, very deprived constituency. Islington South & Finsbury is indeed a bit better off and has smatterings of the rich, Guardian reading, 'champagne socialist' types but it too is still a pretty deprived constituency with high levels of poverty and financial insecurity.

The reason why London is a Labour city is not because it is full of rich lefties but because it has as a whole has much high levels of poverty than much of the rest of the country, is very financially insecure primarily due to very high rents and low home ownership, is very ethnically diverse and is an extremely unequal place (the wealth is concentrated in a small minority of hands). Whilst the 'Islington metropolitan elite champagne socialists' trope does have a slither of truth to it (a number of Guardian columnists do indeed live in Islington as did Tony Blair) it is mostly a myth created by the right in order to discredit the left in working class provincial Britain. I'm surprised at how many people still fall for it especially those on the left.

[Hnv1]

Btw that 17% is the lowest Tory score ever, and by "ever" I do actually mean in any survey since opinion polling as we know it started in the 1930s.

1943 was the first opinion poll, but yeah. It’s their worst for Westminster polling.

I heard it was the first time neither CON\LAB were ahead in a national poll. I thought the SDP were leading for a while after the split.

[beesley]

I'll update my map in the other thread in the Intl Elections subforum, but Boris' campaign launch has been a huge success by the looks of it. I don't know how many were supporting him already, but 12 MPs announced their support for him. Two MPs (Sheryll Murray and Daniel Kawczynski) were allegedly previously supporting someone else.

[Blair]

I'll update my map in the other thread in the Intl Elections subforum, but Boris' campaign launch has been a huge success by the looks of it. I don't know how many were supporting him already, but 12 MPs announced their support for him. Two MPs (Sheryll Murray and Daniel Kawczynski) were allegedly previously supporting someone else.

They were all no doubt held back- there’s not been a huge rush

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'll update my map in the other thread in the Intl Elections subforum, but Boris' campaign launch has been a huge success by the looks of it. I don't know how many were supporting him already, but 12 MPs announced their support for him. Two MPs (Sheryll Murray and Daniel Kawczynski) were allegedly previously supporting someone else.

They were all no doubt held back- there’s not been a huge rush

And frankly it still isn't particularly impressive.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Btw that 17% is the lowest Tory score ever, and by "ever" I do actually mean in any survey since opinion polling as we know it started in the 1930s.

1943 was the first opinion poll, but yeah. It’s their worst for Westminster polling.

I heard it was the first time neither CON\LAB were ahead in a national poll. I thought the SDP were leading for a while after the split.

First time neither were in the top two.

[CumbrianLefty]

Rumours that the last rites of Change UK are nigh.

[YL]

Rumours that the last rites of Change UK are nigh.

Apparently Anna Soubry, Chris Leslie, Jona Ryan, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey are staying in Change UK; the rest are leaving.

[Lumine]

It's confirmed, Ummuna, Allen and four others quit Change UK, Soubry becomes leader of what's left of the party (which is going to make David Owen's infamous continuity SDP look like a huge succes).

(And Cleverly has quit the leadership race, was self-aware enough to realize he was going nowhere)

[YL]

It's confirmed, Ummuna, Allen and four others quit Change UK, Soubry becomes leader of what's left of the party (which is going to make David Owen's infamous continuity SDP look like a huge succes).

(And Cleverly has quit the leadership race, was self-aware enough to realize he was going nowhere)

Umunna, Allen, Wollaston, Berger, Smith and Shuker are independent MPs for now.  There are suggestions that some of them are going to join the Lib Dems but none have yet and it seems unlikely that they all will.

Updated composition of the House:
Con 312 (+1 deputy speaker)
Labour 244 (+2 deputy speakers)
SNP 35
Independent 16
Lib Dem 11
DUP 10
Sinn Féin 7
Change UK 5
Plaid 4
Green 1
Speaker 1
vacant 1 (Peterborough)

The 16 Independents are:
5 ex Lab (Ian Austin, Frank Field, Ivan Lewis, Jared O'Mara, John Woodcock)
4 ex Lab via Change UK (Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chuka Umunna)
2 ex Con via Change UK (Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston)
2 suspended Lab (Kelvin Hopkins, Chris Williamson)
1 ex Con (Nick Boles)
1 ex Lib Dem (Stephen Lloyd)
1 ex UUP but elected as Independent (Sylvia Hermon)

[CumbrianLefty]

It's confirmed, Ummuna, Allen and four others quit Change UK, Soubry becomes leader of what's left of the party (which is going to make David Owen's infamous continuity SDP look like a huge succes).

(And Cleverly has quit the leadership race, was self-aware enough to realize he was going nowhere)

Kit Malthouse has now followed Mr Non-Nominative Determinism in doing this.

[Silent Hunter]

Change UK is a busted flush; it will be a fairly short footnote in the whole history of this era.

[YL]

Change UK is a busted flush; it will be a fairly short footnote in the whole history of this era.

Yes.  I think they underestimated how difficult it would be to answer the question of why pro-European centrists should vote for them instead of the Lib Dems, and as the election results showed they failed to answer it.

They got a few things wrong.  They made a mess of their name, first of all using a name ("The Independent Group") that wasn't going to be allowed by the Electoral Commission and then coming up with an awkward hybrid.  They almost certainly should have started registration earlier; even if they had just wanted to be an independent group of MPs it would have been useful to have a name to stand under.  Their logos (accepted and rejected) were rubbish and they never had a proper colour scheme.  They didn't seem to be trying too hard to develop a membership and activist network, even though there were people out there who were trying to be one for them (and actually had better branding in some respects -- they did have a colour scheme).  And they never really seemed to me (a pro-European who wanted to make a pro-European vote on 23 May) to have a decent answer to the question of why pro-Europeans should vote for them rather than the Lib Dems or Greens.

They might well have been better off taking over Renew, who did have the branding and had something of a membership base, though I don't think Renew convincingly answer the question of why them rather than the Lib Dems either.

(Presumably the answer to some extent is the one that Lib Dems give: that Change UK and Renew are not liberals.  But is there much support for an illiberal centrist pro-European party out there?)

[Zinneke]

I mean the LibDems have surged really late in the game when you consider there has been perpetual negativity and institutional impass about Brexit in the headlines basically since May lost her majority. I don't think we can blame the Change UK people for thinking that the LibDems had a very low ceiling compared to a new Remain party. 

[YL]

I mean the LibDems have surged really late in the game when you consider there has been perpetual negativity and institutional impass about Brexit in the headlines basically since May lost her majority. I don't think we can blame the Change UK people for thinking that the LibDems had a very low ceiling compared to a new Remain party. 

The thing is that the Lib Dems had an established support base, and crucially got a boost from local elections in which Change UK didn't even compete [1], another blunder caused by not being registered in time and not having a support base.  Anger over the Coalition is clearly fading, which is not surprising given the passage of time and the disappearance from the field of its leading figures.  So the Lib Dems were in a better position than people realised.

However, it is possible for a new party to displace an established party; indeed we've just seen the Brexit Party pretty much completely supplant UKIP.  So I'd certainly entertain the possibility that had Change UK done things right they might have supplanted (and perhaps eventually absorbed) the Lib Dems.  But they didn't do things right...

[1] Well, except in East Ecclesfield, but the result suggests they didn't compete there either...

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Their idea seemed to be that the LibDems still had too much bad will among centrist and left-leaning voters due to the coalition to make a real break-trough as the major party of remainers, something that wasn't too strange of an idea based on the 2017 general election results. It obviously turned out to be a miscalculation though and it's sort of hard to paint yourself as the LibDems for people who don't like that the LibDems worked with the Conservatives, when you have a number of former Conservative MPs in your midst.

[CumbrianLefty]

There are also some more practical considerations - they clearly expected (and planned for) further waves of MPs (mostly Labour but also some Tories) coming over to them after the original tranche of defections, but for whatever reasons that didn't happen.

[Silent Hunter]

Change UK isn't a very good name either.

[Bakersfield Uber Alles]

Change UK isn't a very good name either.

CUK is an even worse acronym. ChUK makes it explicitly sound like Chuka Umanna’s vanity project.

[Tintrlvr]

Change UK isn't a very good name either.

CUK is an even worse acronym. ChUK makes it explicitly sound like Chuka Umanna’s vanity project.

Which was obviously why they chose the name, which made the bad name even worse. Although apparently the final name originated because he wanted the party to be the "Change UK Alliance" (ChUKA) and "Change UK" was the compromise. The delusion of grandeur is apparently continuing into attempts to "negotiate" with the Lib Dems on the terms under which Umunna (and I guess Allen and Wollaston) would join the party (with what leverage?).

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

If the LibDems knows what is best for them they shouldn't let Chuka anywhere near their party.

[Lechasseur]

Theresa May has officially stood down as the Conservative Party leader today. She'll stay on as acting leader until the party elects a new leader.

[Joe Republic]

Updated composition of the House:
Con 312 (+1 deputy speaker)
Labour 244 (+2 deputy speakers)
SNP 35
Independent 16
Lib Dem 11
DUP 10
Sinn Féin 7
Change UK 5
Plaid 4
Green 1
Speaker 1
vacant 1 (Peterborough)

Con+DUP is still a minority.  How long can this current parliament sustain itself?  Surely this can’t go on until 2022?

[Silent Hunter]

Sinn Fein don't take their seats, so the Con+DUP majority is 3.

[YL]

Sinn Fein don't take their seats, so the Con+DUP majority is 3.

It's 5.  There are 639 voting MPs (exclude Sinn Féin, the Speaker and the three Deputy Speakers), of whom 312 are Tories, 10 DUP and 317 neither.

It's possible things may change after the Tory leadership election, but we'll see.