United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[Blair]

For those who want precise Westminster constituency boundaries, this is for you:

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/election-maps/gb/


Also, a friend and I would like to travel to Britain for the last week of the campaign, and we have a couple of questions:

(a) How often do party leaders hold big rallies?  Is it easy to attend them?
(b) If we wanted to attend an election announcement early in the morning, how easy are those to go to?  Perhaps, Uxbridge and South Ruislip?

A.) Rare; Tories will be members only and Labour will be hard to track down; unless you’re happy tl go wherever the rally is in the UK.

B.) you need a pass to get into the actual counts iirc- esp for a PM one.

[Blair]

Yes the importance of Scottish leave voters has been ignored; I’m sure I’m as guilty as most but there’s a trend to treat Scotland as one universal set of seats rather than the 4-5 different clusters you have

[Blair]

There are no such thing as Brexit or Remain seats!

A Labour- Tory marginal seat in the Midlands that voted 52-48 leave is still a million times different to a 52-48 leave voting Lib-Tory marginal in the South West. Equally a 24 year old single mum who voted leave in the first seat is a lot different to a 57 year old professional who voted leave in the second seat.

We’re talking about groups respectively of 17 and 16 million people; and any voter between the age of 18-21 couldn’t vote in 2016 by my maths.

We know seats that ‘voted leave’ can still easily vote for the Lib Dem’s- we already have examples of this when the Lib Dem’s won before- Carshalton, Westmoreland, Brecon and Radnorshire and Eastbourne to give four.

The Lib Dem’s even now are not just a stop Brexit Party; they’re actually a cash rich, Uber local, and activist led party with a strong local base. They have a history of winning seats they shouldn’t by getting local people to run on bin collections who win as a council, then run the council, then win the seat etc. They also have regions of historic strength that did well for them at the local elections.

[Blair]

The polls with low labour levels have had a stupidly high Green vote (at 5-7%) and a high Lib Dem vote.

  US house race polling seemed to be pretty good last few cycles, maybe UK pollsters could learn from accross the Atlantic.

I don’t think it’s that easy...

[Blair]

Can we please not derail this thread with such banal and inaccurate comments?

If you want to stop Brexit you need a second referendum. If you want a second referendum you need to work out how to get Lab+LD+Green+PC+SNP to get to 325. Look at your seat & work out who that candidate is... it's not that hard

The comment about voting Labour for a 'hard brexit' ignores the fact that there's a chunk of 50-100 members of the PLP who've spend the last two years organizing, pushing and fighting for Labour to take a much more pro-remains stance... and it's worked. And ignores the fact it was the Benn Bill that blocked no-deal & Labour votes which got the various wrecking amendments to Brexit through the HOC.

Why throw those MPs out just to get a Tory MP (the reality if you don't vote Labour in a Lib-Dem Tory marginal)

[Blair]

Apparently Nick Brown was extremely insistent on Godsiff getting the heave-ho, and, well, it's hard not to respond to that detail with a cackle.

The sun is out and so am I.

[Blair]

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1192350770156507136

Consistent with my big post here on how the best place for Swinson's Lib-Dems in not just London but perhaps the entire country this cycle could be the wealthiest and whitest slice of london, a slice that extends outwards into Raab's seat.

Yay a poll from my constituency! Totally agree that E&W falls into 'slice' territory. So far I've received only Lib Dem literature. Truth be told, the Lib Dems will have to get lucky if they want to take the seat: a Tory implosion AND mass tactical voting by Lab. Not impossible, but will need a lot of work to make happen.

are you gonna vote Lib Dem?

[Blair]

Also, the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid have entered into a Remain alliance, which involves standing down in a number of seats. And of course, one of the seats the Lib Dems have chosen to stand down in is mine. Terrific. I'm not huge on voting Green but I can at least stomach it unlike everyone else so that's what I'll be doing.

I doubt this alliance will shift a single seat in the end.

For some of the seats it actually benefits Labour- for example in Exeter the Lib Dems aren't running & in Bermondsey the Greens aren't running.

If I was a Labour MP I'd be worried about losing remainy votes to the Lib Dems & low info/anti-politics votes to the Green- if you remove one of the two they're just as likely to float back to Labour as one of the rivals.

[Blair]

Again, to equate Corbyn himself with Ruth George, the individual pro-Remain Labour MP in question, is disingenuously misguided.

When the time comes, Duffield, George and all the other Remainer Labour MPs will do what Corbyn tells them to or face instant deselection.

One of the underconsidered stories of the past few months has been how few Labour MPs actually got triggered. None of those triggered can be considered a particularly strong Remainer, with the possible exception of Hodge (who was primarily triggered for being a strong critic of Corbyn and who comfortably won the reselection ballot.) Several of those triggered, on the other hand, were on the more Brexit-y wing of the party. There are other things at play besides that, of course, but some conclusions can still be drawn.

Yes Dawn is being either woefully wrong about the internal dynamics in the Labour Party or engaging in pearl clutching. There's not a single case of an MP being deselected over being too pro EU & if you think Corbyn has the power to point and deselect ask how Neil Coyle, Ian Murray and the most vitriolic anti-Corbyn MPs sailed through...

There's at least 50 MPs who have rebelled regularly & are actively encouraged and supported by their local party.

There's another 50 who have proved wiling to also rebel against the leadership

[Blair]

What a boring election.

But basically everyone has no one to blame but themselves

Labour for not ditching Corbyn

LibDems for a ridiculous policy of defying the will of the people regardless of what they might say in a second referendum

Brexit - for not fighting the Tories nationwide. If they did I think they could actually win a handful of seats. But not fighting a full campaign has definitely discouraged voters and Farage not running was a putrid mistake because most Brexit party voters look up to him a lot and would be more motivated to vote for them knowing they’d be led by Farage in parliament.

Yawn

Yawn this shows you don’t know a lot about British politics.

[Blair]

I know it's too early to discuss this, but if Corbyn were to resign after the election due to a bad Labour performance, who would be the likely candidates to replace him? I hear names like John McDonnell and Emily Thornberry but I obviously don't know what's the actual sentiment on the ground among Labour members and I'm curious.

Probably some social democrat who isn't too centrist but also doesn't shake the table too much.

ha.

[Blair]

FWIW it's remarkable for the FT to say that the British Economy isn't broken- and equally galling that the FT didn't back Miliband who was offering pretty much what the FT wants now (no Brexit, modest state investment, regulation rather than nationalisation etc) 

At the risk of sounding like the boorish 'you're part of the problem' types- if you think the british economy is working well (current growth rate of 0.1% irrc) then I'm going to be a bit sceptical of your views.

[Blair]

Thank god I'm trying a politics free weekend!

[Blair]

fwiw much like QT the BBC would weight the attention; even in Sheffield you are more than capable of finding enough Conservatives, or heaven forbid they could find people sad enough to travel by train.

Besides all it takes is 5-6 people being loutish in the audience to make it appear on TV as if one side is dominant.

[Blair]

Survation has completed a poll for the Daily Mail.  It shows 30 northern ridings are set swing to the conservatives:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7716641/Tories-win-30-seats-Labours-northern-heartland.html

Most of Corbynites posting here have maintained that Survation was the best pollster in 2017. Well Survation never produced any polling similar to this in 2017.  I cannot wait to get the cross tabs.

I cannot wait to see how you Corbynites explain away this poll.
    

Why are you talking about a riding?

[Blair]

Some thoughts on the Lib Dems.

1.) Expectation Management- The Lib Dems were loudly boasting about how they were going to win 50-100 seats in this election, and how the polling was showing seats in London that are on paper safe labour as being Lib-Dem picks up. This is the reason why Chukka is running in Cities and Westminster rather than Twickenham (as the party was confident both him & Berger would win) The whole 'Jo for PM' and the push for an early election meant that the current result (12-18% & 10-20 MPs) looks a lot worse than they briefed and expected.

2.) Revoke A50- The A50 revoke was a poor policy & was ironically done because they thought Labour conference would have a strong remain policy (it didn't) No data to back it up, but I imagine it did a bit of harm to the sort of soft-Liberals they need in the South-West, South and other non-FBPE type seats.

3.) Poor Leader- Why isn't it Layla Moran? Well Lib Dem Party politics for one, but as someone not involved in the coalition she would have been miles better. I actually think Swinson has the worst of  all worlds- she voted for all of it, but wasn't a large enough voice to boast about doing anything (Both Davey & Cable for their faults could point to some things they'd done) Swinson's voting record is much like how a whole crop of Labour MPs got stuck voting for Iraq and got hit for it 5-10 years later (in internal rather than external elections)

4.) Big Two- The big two parties always steal oxygen; and iirc the Liberal Democrats tend to do better with a strong Labour leader because otherwise they lose a large chunk of the voters with a 'stop Corbyn/Miliband etc'. There's a reason the party does extremely well at by-election and locals, rather than the big national elections.

[Blair]

BBC supposedly has a clip of Gove and the rest of the Tory team turning up for the debate, but then it was the channel 4 dudes who told them they would accept nothing but Boris. This may turn... Trumpy, as Boris now can reorient back to his talking points about People vs Remain Elite/Parliament. *Shudders*

Well the Tories were told days ago it was BOJO or no-one; so sending Gove was a stunt.

[Blair]

Yes; the baffling thing about the last two years has been the willingness of the Tory Party to rip up conventions that a Corbyn Government could exploit when nationalising Greggs (ignoring humble address motions, skipping liason committes, ignoring contempt motions, threatening media licenses, dissolving Parliament etc etc)

I mean, I’ve spent a lot of my life having to lick boots of one variety or another, so sycophancy has always become me.

Were I running the Tory campaign, I would have ignored it. In the grand scheme of things it’s bloody Channel 4, nobody watches it aside from Peep Show fans (not a particularly Tory friendly demographic I would’ve thought) waiting for an ageing Mitchell and Webb to roll in for series 168 of them pretending to still be 30 year olds. Making a fuss like this just creates another irritant for the press to rub into the Tory campaign.

Nonetheless, the fact is, the government, whether it be a Tory government or a Labour government, is entitled to set the parameters for Channel 4. There are plenty of other places for liberals and the left to go and get their kicks (the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, that constellation of dubious “independent” media sites like Novara and many, many more). Were the Tories to clamp down on Channel 4’s ability to pose at ‘telling truth to power’ (retch), I find it highly unlikely that it would be the prelude to Gleichschaltung 2 Electric Boogaloo.

If Channel 4 were interested in running a serious debate on the environment, I doubt they would set it up as a debate between seven people with only an hour (about eight and a half minutes of speaking time per person!) for running time, which is what they did. Johnson was right to treat it with the contempt it deserved and was fairly generous in sending along Gove to participate at all.

None of these are TV channels, but you know this. Your post is much like watching Cleverly or Burgon going out to bat; pretty hilarious in showing just what defences have to be wheeled out when something relatively stupid has been done.

I'm not complaining though- the hits on Bojo for skipping are stronger than a 30 second clip of him getting attacked for fossil fuel donations or whatever low grade stuff would have got thrown at him. 

[Blair]

FWIW thanks to First Past the Post a 42-35 Tory Victory can still see some very weird results; the 2015 result shows how a Tory lead of 7 can really throw curveballs

[Blair]

I also can't help but feel the shortness of this campaign has compressed time in a weird way; the Prince Andrew news cycle alone clearly blocked off a significant chunk of the campaign, and the parties/campaigns have been so pushed with time- post votes were dropping last week!

I'm really thinking out loud; but I can't work out if the short campaign means we're going to see the result everyone predicted (Tory Maj between 30-60) because there was no time to change it, or are we going to see a weird bizarre result (Lab win & or Tories up to 400) because it was a short campaign where no-one knew what was going on, and one side failed to turn out or inspire their vote.

I've been completely wrong in both 2015 (predicted difference of 10 seats between Labour and Tories) and in 2017 (predicted healthy Tory majority) but this election I'm still completely baffled

[Blair]

Question to more experienced UK posters

Am I the only one who feels every election has this usual final two weeks feel like the spitting image sketch where Labour just shout 'nurses, teachers, nurses, teachers' and seem to drag out a large part of a Labour vote which clearly hates the leader, the party and everything we represent; there was much talk of how 2010 was saved by a defensive game ground game, 2015 had a late (and rather pathetic) surge around Miliband and 2017 saw UNITE fly a plan around the North telling voters to 'come home to Labour'

Maybe it's just a statement of how Labour does politics differently but I do feel a lot of Labour's campaigning is based around people who really should be voting Labour.

[Blair]

Yep; people forget that weeks before the 2017 elections we had local elections which saw Labour get hammered & the national vote share was something like Tories 40%, Labour 29%, Lib Dems 10%

[Blair]

I'm not sure what Dennis Skinner is actually like as a constituency MP in all fairness.

[Blair]

And it's worth noting that there is a vast swath of difference within the Jewish community in terms of politics & Labour's obvious issues aren't new (but have of course been made much worse by JC)

[Blair]

Did I miss the beef?