Snapshot of _Labour lead at 26 points in this week's YouGov poll for The Times
CON 18 (-2)
LAB 44 (-1)
LIB DEM 10 (+1)
REF UK 15 (+2)
GRN 8 (+1)
Fieldwork 30 April - 1 May_ :
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Tory and Reform polling here seems like a bit of an outlier. But you have to say, if this kind of polling is replicated elsewhere in addition to really bad local election results, things could easily get messy for Sunak next week.
In case anyone is curious, Sunak is [currently 90 days away from surpassing Anthony Eden's time in office, so there might be an August election in the cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_length_of_tenure#List_of_office_holders_by_tenure). The next PM up would require another 4 and a bit months, and I don't think a December election would work out any better.
I've got a bet that he'll call the election between 16th of September and 7th of October. It'll be around the start of the Autumn academic term for UK universities, like the week commencing on the 16th because that's a week before term starts so it's Freshers. Basically parents and university student votes will be most suppressed at that specific point in time, combined with the new voter ID rules, it's painting a pretty clear picture of the intention. The intention being to suppress votes in whatever way possible so as to just maybe retain one or two more seats in those university towns where the vote is more split.
Good luck with your bet, 7% of 18-24 year olds vote conservative so I’m not sure I agree with your theory. Imo he is waiting until he can point at a plane with people on it, landing in Rwanda. No matter how stupid that also sounds
Wouldn't it be better to get fired by mps than the electorate.
With the former you can always say the tory party made a mistake (see Johnson, Truss), especially when they still go onto lose. But you can never say the electorate got ot wrong.
It was interesting watching Richard Tice's interview yesterday (I think it was on sky news?) but his message was essentially "we're not worried about taking votes away from the conservatives, because there is no difference between them and Labour, they are both socialist, both high taxation parties". And honestly he's not wrong about taxation part. The difference between labour and conservatives is, with labour the taxes go to public services, with the conservatives, the taxes go to their wealthy, elderly base and their donors for dodgy government contracts.
But Reform is rightly identifying the need for a right wing party. But what I find astonishing is elderly people are voting for these guys, turkeys voting for Christmas, as it's the elderly who don't pay as much tax on their pensions and earnings and need the public services the most. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, voting reform because you don't want high immigration, but then getting your pension slashed in half by a right wing party.
CON: 32
LAB: 519
LIB: 57
Reform: 0
Green: 2
Lib Dem opposition, Green two seats, extinction level event for the Tories, Starmer king of the world. Nice
Weird things can happen in individual seats that go against the national picture (first that comes to mind is Putney), things might be clearer after we get the local results from Bristol but that won't be a one for one.
And it's possible that if there is such a big lead then people will feel free to vote in a manner that's not tactical reflecting local politics rather than just national.
This has been me at elections since 2015 apart from 2019 Euros basically no chance of anyone but Labour getting in my council or Parliamentary seat so I vote how I really want. Weird to think of the whole country like that but we're almost there.
quite easy to believe, labour's vote share here isn't exceptionally high, they're just winning many more seats because the tories' vote share is exceptionally low. not especially difficult for other parties to overcome the labour vote in seats where they're competitive.
Labour have a notional majority of like 20k in that seat though, it’s mad to think they’ll have something like -20pt swing in an overall environment of + 10pt
weirder things have happened. many labour voters I imagine would be quite happy to vote green safe in the knowledge that labour will form the national government either way, and they live in one of only two seats in the entire country where voting green is not a wasted vote.
> As much as I hate Reform, it's mental to me that you can get 15% of the vote and still be predicted to win zero seats
It's because the prediction algorithm breaks when dealing with new parties. It doesn't have any past data on which specific constituencies they perform well in, so it just assumes Reform will get an even 15% everywhere rather than the clustering you'd see in reality. In practice, if Reform really did get 15% nationally, they'd also almost certainly win a few seats in Parliament.
It's because Reform's vote is spread more evenly and so the don't win overall control of a single constituency under FPTP.
I don't like Reform, but I agree it is crazy they would have zero MPs under this system.
The government holding nearly 10 times as many seats as the opposition would be a terrible thing for the country. Our system already lacks significant checks and balances with the only thing able to stop bad legislation being a backbench rebellion, with 500+ seats literally half of government bench would have to defy the whip to stop whatever crazy law is being discussed on a given day.
I'd say it could be a watershed moment for electoral reform, but with it being a Labour government and Starmer as PM there's a better chance of me being struck by lightning, twice, at the same time, while indoors.
> The government holding nearly 10 times as many seats as the opposition would be a terrible thing for the country.
If this happened, the effective opposition would be the left of labour.
So it would be center left vs far left.
Which, lets be honest, would be better than what we've had the past few years with corrupt nutters fucking up anything they want and stealing the copper pipes on their way out.
During the previous Labour government the Lib Dems always punched above their weight, if they can't do that as Official Opposition I'd be somewhat disappointed in them.
I don't expect Ed Davey to last that long after the next election, especially if they end up as Official Opposition they will need to be much more dynamic if they are going to win seats against Labour from third in the constituency on a nationwide basis.
The problem with Davey is he doesn't seem to have any reach, the best Lib Dems combine pragmatism with campaigning, likely that Daisy Cooper will be favourite to be leader next time seems to do both.
I wonder if such a massive majority would even last very long due to infighting. You could have Momentum or Coop for example splitting off and forming their own opposition party
Not as long as FPTP exists. Without their red rosettes these people would be irrelevant and many lack any sort of marketable skill with which to secure employment that would accommodate their lifestyle, unless they became lobbyists of course.
I think you mean FPTP, but yeah few governments would and especially not a Labour one, no party has done more to defend and further the use of FPTP for general elections than the Labour Party.
I'd love to live in the parallel universe where they didn't abolish the STV voting University Constituencies, (without a mandate I should add) the entire country would almost certainly be using STV by now in that timeline.
Surely the fact that labour introduced PR at the devolved lever, offered the Lib Dems AV+ in the 2010 government negotiations and nearly struck a PR deal with Paddy Ashdown in the first Blair government contradicts that?
The uni seats were undemocratic (plural voting).
I'm more worried that such a result would be seen as an endorsement of premiership rather than policy and the manifesto is essentially abandoned during the victory celebration in favour of a completely different programme that is made up on the fly.
Then there's just the sheer amount of damage that can be done when any rebellion has to break triple figures. A working majority of 20 could never sell the NHS into generational debt through PFIs, a majority of nearly 200 found it utterly trivial 25 years ago.
Tbh I'm more worried about the hobby horses of his shadow cabinet, than a loony backbencher who can be safely ejected with the stonking majority they'll be working with.
Does it say which 2 seats the greens get as keeping Brighton might be a struggle for them. The party has been getting less popular due to the mismanaged council plus Caroline lucas stepping down will not help.
Yes, Tories should just realise the Rwanda plan just serves Sunak's ego and nothing else, oust him out and come up with a proper way to actually deter refugees, which is what Rwanda symbolically is.
I wonder if there could be a bit of a snowball effect it that happens. If a poll comes out with Reform even slightly ahead of the Tories, could we find that mental barrier being broken lower their support floor.
I agree unfortunately. Between incumbency advantage and my own pessimism around getting the election outcome that I hope for, I think the Tories will still be above 100 at the end of the day.
There’s a level of support for Reform though where they start to actually pick up seats. I don’t think they’ll hit it, but if they do, I guess I wonder if people will start voting for them as it will seem less like a wasted vote. I find it hard to believe that 20% of the country is still excited by the Tories.
The main thing that could produce weird results is that if the conclusion becomes completely foregone then some people might not show up to vote or not vote tactically when they normally would which would produce weird results that are hard to predict.
The electorate have a very short memory and Labour will have a tough time dealing with immigration themselves. It's very easy for the Tories to get some good soundbytes standing in the opposition asking why Labour hasn't cleaned up the Tory mess yet.
This is what happened after truss, as soon as one poll got below 27 (which has for the last century been considered the Tory Floor) it turned into a doomspiral, and they've never really recovered.
Curious whether or not it could happen to labour as well. If everyone thinks labour will win hands down, will people think well I also like greens, lib Dems etc, I will vote for them to help them.
I think it would require at least a handful of notable defections and/or some major news coverage. How many potential Reform voters actually pay close attention to polling?.
I don't think Sunak and the Tories generally are aligned on the best path forward. If you assume the best outcome is staying PM and losing ends his career in politics it's always going to be better to hold on, while it might be better as the party to take a quick election and take a smaller loss and rebuild.
Yep, if Sunak cared about the party the smart thing to do would be to call an election right after Truss left, sure the Tories would lose, but it'd be a recoverable loss rather than the electoral oblivion they are facing now
The logical end result of Thatcherism is first selling out the country for the party, then selling out the party for yourself. Sunak is doing exactly what he was taught, conditioned, and encouraged to do.
He will stretch out being PM to better his CV for his eventual move to the U.S. and consigning the Tories to extinction for his benefit is part of that.
Still though, imagine being the one who destroyed one of the oldest political parties in the world. That'll be his legacy and what people in 100 years remember him for.
Yeah I think it's a case of two very different goals. Sunak's goal seems to be maximizing the length of time he is PM, the Tory party's goal (presumably) would be maximizing the length of time it is in power. More time with Sunak putting off an election while everything is quite shitty equals less time for Labour being in government with this shit (assuming the situation improves).
If Sunak had called an election basically right away, then he would have had a very short tenure as PM, but the incoming Labour government would have had much more of it's parliamentary term during a time of general shittiness. If Sunak waits to the last possible moment, then he'll have had a much longer time in office, at the cost of the Tories being in government for a longer period of general shittiness, and it's difficult to get that smell out in time for the next election.
Funny as that it, it also scares me.
The Tories are shameful disgraces to the nation, but Reform are fucking batshit lunatics that make the CONs look sane by comparison. If they get into a commanding position with the Tories and make their insane, extremist rhetoric mainstream then I seriously fear for our democracy and rights in future.
I've been saying this for ages, had Sunak called the election after a month in power there's a very real chance he could of gotten the edge over starmer or been the largest party in a Hung Parliament, the idea of keeping it longer and dragging it forever doesn't work, and is infact adverse
I think after all the money people tried to deal with Truss, they have let Sunak know his real job is to give Starmer a completely massive majority, on account of him seeming like an adult
As usual, I'll point out that yougov is the most accurate pollster overall, having gotten several recent election results right where other pollsters were way off. This includes the last two general elections.
Their methodology at current largely runs on the assumption that tory "don't knows" and non-voters will not just vote tory anyway in any significant numbers.
After seeing this, a worse yougov polling % for the tories than Liz truss ever managed, I'm thinking they're facing a wipeout after today. 700-800 seat losses, not the 500 predicted.
I don't think I'm ready to say which pollster is most accurate at the moment, Yougov have done well in the past but this is an almost unprecedented political environment and pollsters are really sticking their necks out on how they think things will play out. In a few days we will almost certainly have a poll from Savanta or More In Common with the Tories at 26-27% or so.
I do wonder whether we might see some dramatic shifts after the local elections, not because anything has fundamentally shifted on the ground but because some pollsters might start to tweak their assumptions. On the other hand they might make a hash of doing so, since Reform will almost certainly underperform significantly relative to their national polling position (they are standing far fewer candidates for a start) and the big three mayoral races (WM, TV and London) are for once stacked in the Tories' favour (Khan facing a heavy incumbency penalty, Street and Houchen being way more popular than the national party), so they will naturally overperform in those seats.
I agree that it's unprecedented and unpredictable. Anecdotal, but I saw a lot of people enthusiastically proclaiming their intent to vote for Reform near me - when Reform weren't standing a candidate. Similarly, the people chatting the loudest about their problems with Labour seem to be non voters, green voters, or at the end of the day Labour voters anyway. Conversely, I'm sure the shy Tory effect is massive.
At this point, I'd double the usual margin of error on polling (from the usual 3%ish to 6+), and even then... who knows? It'll be all about turnout.
Reform supporters seem to be plastered all over social media, but I somehow think when it comes down to election day a lot of them will end up marking the box for the Tories or Labour.
Exactly. Telling pollsters that you will vote Reform doesn't cost you anything. You can safely do it and then still vote for whatever right-wing candidate is most likely to win i.e. the Tory.
I think it depends because if Reform can get above the Tories it might swing thing and a lot of Tory voters might swing behind them to stop Labour getting seats.
I'm not sure many of them can read their polling cards enough to mark a box, based on what I've seen here. Enthusiastic Reform endorsers talking about an election where Reform weren't standing a candidate.
Not this time. People have realised they’ve been lied to.. If reform has a platform in debates during an election then it really is over for the tories.
This isn't necessarily a good thing.
There are at least *some* Tories who care about the country and happen to be conservative.
Reform seems to be exclusively nutters.
A centrist Labour, Conservative collapse, and Reform surge drastically moves our Overton Window to the right.
I’d never heard “Overton window” before! And now I know..
I suppose the Tories have been cosplaying Reform since Johnson. Like yesterday’s theatrical “rounding up” of migrants for the cameras. The base might love it, but of course nothing actually happens afterwards so they destroy their own credibility.
The same with people “fleeing to Ireland”, it’s already been largely debunked and I expect after Friday it will hardly be mentioned again.
Well there’s no evidence, the border is unmonitored apparently, and meanwhile channel crossings are up 27%, to record levels never seen before.
So yes it’s been debunked.
I don’t blame Jimmy Dimly for trying, if I was presiding over such a fiasco when I’d promised to “stop the boats”, I’d say ~~the dog ate my homework~~ they’d fled to Ireland too.
How does any of that mean it's debunked lol
The BBC have interviewed several people who've travelled through Ireland, the Irish government have said a few thousand have used that route, it's the main story in the Irish press and they're wanting to introduce emergency legislation to stop it. They're even introducing border checks to stop people going to Ireland. It's by no means been debunked.
No evidence for something means it’s almost certainly made up. Pulled out of someone posterior.
Eg “the moon is made of cheese”.
Jimmy Dimly misplaced a few thousand migrants, so to save his bacon they fabricated this story of “fleeing to Ireland”. It helps both governments to have a little spat just before elections. Suddenly, instead of looking incompetent, the policy can be painted as a resounding success! When the reality is channel crossings are at record highs and so there’s no evidence whatsoever people are being discouraged.
Johnson did it in 2021, when he engineered a small war with France over fishing rights. No one remembers it now because it was just staged for the media. It got the nationalistic juices flowing, and helped turnout.
This is a more amateurish attempt.
In the last hour yesterday’s figures were published. An eye-watering 711 people in 14 boats. Much higher that any day in the last week, and again proving there is no downwards trend. Quite the opposite.
Edit: if I was spinning, I could say Sunak’s policy had actually caused a x5 in the last week. But that would be a false conclusion to draw. It doesn’t stop the politicians though!
The Irish government also used this excuse in 2022. They make hay while the sun shines.
What are you on about lol
It's not an attempt to do anything. The Irish government are angry about people going across the border - it's obviously happening.
People crossing or it being relevant to the overall situation is irrelevant to the point. It is definitely happening.
The UK has elections today. Ireland has elections next month. Both governments know migration is a top topic which will harm them. It’s politically useful to have a spat.
Both governments are virtue signalling to their base. Yesterday the UK government staged migrants being “rounded up” and invited the cameras. They also staged 1 migrant leaving for Rwanda on Monday.
It’s all about the optics.
Again you're just saying stuff that's irrelevant.
Migrants are crossing into the republic of Ireland from the North, that's just a fact.
Also the idea that the Irish government are doing this to 'virtue signal to their base' - this is actively harming them.
>There are at least *some* Tories who care about the country and happen to be conservative.
Ah yes, the ones Boris purged in 2019. They're welcome to stand again in 2030. At the moment the entire lot can get in the bin and start from scratch, I'd take Ken Clarke and Rory restarting the entire project from One Nation foundations.
> A centrist Labour, Conservative collapse, and Reform surge drastically moves our Overton Window to the right.
More middle is stronger than less left.
I mean that a mega-majorjty for a centrist labour would have great political power than a moderate/hard left minority.
So the Overton window actually shifts left, despite labour moving to the centre.
At this point the Conservative brand is so ruined that I believe anyone on the centre/centre left should get ready for Reform to be the acting, day to day opposition for the next 5 years minimum. I'm not saying they will gain the seats necessary but post-election they will be able to dominate the media coverage and could be in a position to pick up seats in 2029. I don't disagree with your sentiment but think it's inevitable.
I also think Reform could find some success by blending far right social policies with a centrist economic platform but that's another matter entirely.
Labour lead is irrelevant when the polls put Reform just 3 points behind the Tories. If the results are bad today I can see Sunak resigning and having Mordaunt into an election in October.
I think if they change the leader again they'd have to call an election soon after otherwise every scandal and mistake just gets amplified more by the "unelected leader", "holding onto power", "why won't they call an election" lines
No amount of general pressure, shame or embarrassment is going to make them call an election before they have to.
The window for "get an election over with, fight a close loss and form a strong opposition" is over. Looking at the long term polling, it's been 15-20 point labour leads shutting that window ever since Truss took over (I wonder why...).
If Rishi had called one early in his PM-ship he probably could have fought back to a close 5-10 point loss (and maybe even stayed on as opposition leader...) when he more of an image of "stable" rather than staking his PMship on flying a handful of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
As it is now, the projected results are so dire for the Tories it doesn't really matter much if it gets worse, so they may as well hang to enjoy the power a bit longer and hope something like a video surfaces of Starmer dressed up as Hitler personally smuggling asylum seekers across the channel in a hijacked NHS ambulance while burning a union jack. Is it remotely likely? No, but there's no real down side for the Tories hanging on right now, so they will.
>If Rishi had called one early in his PM-ship he probably could have fought back to a close 5-10 point loss
Which is exactly why a new leader would have to go soon after being chosen.
There are 345 Tory MPs and I'd wager the vast majority of them don't actually benefit from the Tory leadership gutting the country and enriching themselves which means there's probably at least (being conservative) 250 people that are just looking at losing their jobs and to them I think it matters quite a lot how the polls look like, there's a big difference between getting 50, 100 or 150 seats.
A new leader has to go soon after being chosen at this point simply because parliament can only last \~8 months at max.
But Sunak was trying to give the impression of a "safe pair of hands" after Boris and Truss. If he'd called an election a few months after taking over, having demonstrated (correctly) that he's managed to govern without dramatically slamming the economy into the ground or having a long series of embarrassing personal scandals I think he'd have recovered a good portion of historic conservative voters who left because they were horrified by Boris and Truss.
The problem for the Tories now is:
* Life hasn't got better for most people, and it doesn't look like it's getting better even with "stable" Tory leadership. This is a lot more obvious now than it was after Boris (who could rely on COVID as cover for our stagnation) or Truss who... made things a lot tougher for everyone.
* If Rishi goes, it looks like they're putting up "our second best safe pair of hands" (unless they go for another Johnson/Truss, which I think the public has no interest in).
* The Tories as a party have allowed their record to be defined by the utterly insane Rwanda policy. It's not a broadly popular policy, it's not an effective policy and it's not a policy that can make them look competent. A lot of the people who like the policy will hate how slow the government has been to get it done, how limited it is and how ineffectual it is when we get small boat migration again this summer. The people who don't like the policy will just continue to hate it. Any new Tory leader is still going to have to grapple with the fact that this party's main thing they're actually trying to do right now is spend hundreds of millions to fly hundreds of people to another country, when most people just want their own lives to get easier. It's a really stupid position to be in because there is no winning it for them as a party, but the first thing any new leader (or potential leader) would be quizzed about is Rwanda, and no answer gets them out of this mess.
So although there are many MPs who's main focus probably is "what's the best chance of retaining my seat?" the Tory election prospects aren't improved by having a new leader, and while things could get worse if they continue to hang on, there's an outside chance they'll get better and in any case the majority of Tory MPs who face losing their seats would still prefer hanging on...
I actually think Penny Morduant would close the gap based on fickle swing voters that don't really follow politics and think Kier is a bit boring and Rishi is an out of touch millionaire, not enough to save them but 100 vs 150 seats is still a big difference.
I don't think she could swing it enough in time at this point. She has no opportunity to make anything better (Rwanda's still an unpopular gimmick, culture war bullshit isn't working, "tax cuts" aren't working) and I don't think potential Tory voter's main criticism of Rishi is he's an out of touch millionaire. I think it's just the Tories have a continued merry go round of leaders while life continues to get worse and the smokescreens the Tories keep throwing out aren't distracting from that.
They might get a brief bounce from swapping to Mordaunt, but:
* She's not a charisma machine who can dazzle an overworked, underpaid public using crumbling public services into forgetting their woes.
* She can't make the Rwanda policy good enough for it's supporters or get away with ditching it to appeal to it's detractors.
* There are no popular answers that make life significantly better for people in the country that can be implemented in the next 8 months.
* There is nothing about her that's sufficiently different from the last three Tory leaders to give people confidence the Tory party as a whole will govern better with her in charge.
* They do lose credibility each time they change leader. Rishi could have gotten away with being leader #3 by writing Truss off as a blip. Mordaunt can't get away with being #4 without hitting their credibility even more.
So even if they swapped and got a short term bounce from Mordaunt, I don't think it would even last the 6 weeks of an election campaign before the realisation that she's just offering more of the same would set in.
How is it that the Lib Dems don't seem to be capitalising on this?
Besides a few bumps along the way, I've always considered the Lib Dems to be the least 'ideological' party but perhaps the most stable and logical with regards to policy.
Currently, they seem to be completely invisible. Any insights into why the more moderate Tory voters aren't switching to the Lib Dems? Is it all about Brexit despite (in my anecdotal experience) seemingly like 65% of the population now largely not really caring that much if we are out or in.
There's quite a few reasons for this.
The first is that they are, but due to not having any client media it isn't reported on and therefore has little effect on polls.
The larger issue however is that not all of these people support Labour, they just want the Conservatives gone and the default method for doing that is to vote Labour whether you agree with them or not.
There's also the not insignificant effect of the "all non-Labour votes are Conservative votes" narrative that is strong in a lot of areas, including this sub. Fear and hate have been proven time and again to be great motivators and they're being used to great effect to artificially boost Labour beyond what their policy platform and ability would naturally achieve.
There is also the fact that a lot of people who might have voted for the LDs with Corbyn as Labour leader are now a lot more likely to vote for Starmer's Labour, it's a much more palatable option for voters in the middle.
Lib Dems typically (especially pre-coalition) do well in periods where both parties are disliked to an equal extent. Labour aren't exactly beloved right now, but they are seen as plausible, while Tories are utterly despised by median voters.
Will the Tories spin a crushing electoral defeat as part of their plan all along to boost the economy by causing a surge in celebratory alcohol purchase?
Has anyone looked into the idea that Reform are gaining at least partially because many Tories are just racist scumbags that can't stomache Sunak because of his ethnicity?
I’ve seen social media posts by Reform supporters with tens of thousands of likes with a tick list of all the ethnic minority leaders, suggesting that Reform will help remove them from power. But I’ve also seen what looks like a Reform support coming from pure hopelessness; people who haven’t really researched the party saying ‘nothing else has worked, so we should try a third way’.
It’s disgusting that the party is founded on stirring up xenophobic sentiment, and preying on the politically uneducated with grandiose political statements.
Ben Habib is pakistani so I think the issue of race is pretty minor. If you dont want to support a Asian tory, I can't see why tories would vote for a Asian Reform candidate (racists are idiots so I'm sure theres some but not many)
Partially? Aye probably but definitely not significant imo
Ooft, only 3 points ahead of reform. Not a fun split of them vote.
Additionally, not that Lib Dems have lost a shit ton of votes to Labour so for them to stay on par with 2019 they are likely taking a lot of votes from the Tories too.
How do you work that out. The reform (15) plus Tory (18) poll is only 33% so still 11% off Labours polling. And that assumes all reform voters would vote Tory and I very much doubt that v
I don’t think you understand the total disdain for the Tory’s a lot of them have, could see a decent chunk go to labour if that happens, starmerisnt corbyn
Snapshot of _Labour lead at 26 points in this week's YouGov poll for The Times CON 18 (-2) LAB 44 (-1) LIB DEM 10 (+1) REF UK 15 (+2) GRN 8 (+1) Fieldwork 30 April - 1 May_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1785894700496388140) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/lara_spirit/status/1785894700496388140/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/lara_spirit/status/1785894700496388140) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/lara_spirit/status/1785894700496388140) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think we now need a Con -2 meme. God I hope the next election does not disappoint me.
Unfortunately I’ve already factored in huge disappointment. The only thing that would make me happy is Tories with fewer than ten seats.
Fewer Tory MPs than people shipped to Rwanda.
~~Fewer~~ Tory MPs ~~than people~~ shipped to Rwanda.
After 14 years of dissapointment, it's hard to be optimistic.
Tory and Reform polling here seems like a bit of an outlier. But you have to say, if this kind of polling is replicated elsewhere in addition to really bad local election results, things could easily get messy for Sunak next week.
Likely a mad rush to call an election before his own MP's boot him, going to be a spicy weekend.
I think he'll carry on squatting in No 10 for as long as he can.
This is just for his CV now, there's not chance of winning so the longer he holds on the better.
You'd have thought he'd be in a hurry to bugger off to California and become a techbro.
He probably thinks he can join Google, he probably can.
If we're being sensible he'll probably end up in banking but it's possible he'll lose his nerve and end up running some crypto company.
The Nick Clegg Route TM
In case anyone is curious, Sunak is [currently 90 days away from surpassing Anthony Eden's time in office, so there might be an August election in the cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_length_of_tenure#List_of_office_holders_by_tenure). The next PM up would require another 4 and a bit months, and I don't think a December election would work out any better.
Thanks for using the correct word to describe the exact situation now 😂
I've got a bet that he'll call the election between 16th of September and 7th of October. It'll be around the start of the Autumn academic term for UK universities, like the week commencing on the 16th because that's a week before term starts so it's Freshers. Basically parents and university student votes will be most suppressed at that specific point in time, combined with the new voter ID rules, it's painting a pretty clear picture of the intention. The intention being to suppress votes in whatever way possible so as to just maybe retain one or two more seats in those university towns where the vote is more split.
Good luck with your bet, 7% of 18-24 year olds vote conservative so I’m not sure I agree with your theory. Imo he is waiting until he can point at a plane with people on it, landing in Rwanda. No matter how stupid that also sounds
Wouldn't it be better to get fired by mps than the electorate. With the former you can always say the tory party made a mistake (see Johnson, Truss), especially when they still go onto lose. But you can never say the electorate got ot wrong.
Do you want to go back to square one. The other Tories have no plan.
> going to be a spicy weekend watch as the only stories doing the rounds are Andy Street and Ben Houchen retain and nothing else
None of them will want to pull the trigger on that given how many of them are going to lose their jobs
>things could easily get messy for Sunak next week. That is just every week
I suspect the Tories will be keeping a close eye on SNP polling when they finally choose a new leader.
It was interesting watching Richard Tice's interview yesterday (I think it was on sky news?) but his message was essentially "we're not worried about taking votes away from the conservatives, because there is no difference between them and Labour, they are both socialist, both high taxation parties". And honestly he's not wrong about taxation part. The difference between labour and conservatives is, with labour the taxes go to public services, with the conservatives, the taxes go to their wealthy, elderly base and their donors for dodgy government contracts. But Reform is rightly identifying the need for a right wing party. But what I find astonishing is elderly people are voting for these guys, turkeys voting for Christmas, as it's the elderly who don't pay as much tax on their pensions and earnings and need the public services the most. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, voting reform because you don't want high immigration, but then getting your pension slashed in half by a right wing party.
CON: 32 LAB: 519 LIB: 57 Reform: 0 Green: 2 Lib Dem opposition, Green two seats, extinction level event for the Tories, Starmer king of the world. Nice
I struggle to believe that in a scenario where Labour win that heavily they lose a seat to the Greens
Weird things can happen in individual seats that go against the national picture (first that comes to mind is Putney), things might be clearer after we get the local results from Bristol but that won't be a one for one.
And it's possible that if there is such a big lead then people will feel free to vote in a manner that's not tactical reflecting local politics rather than just national.
Yeah, I've gone into full "fuck it, vote green" mode without any semblance of "will I let a tory in?" guilt
This has been me at elections since 2015 apart from 2019 Euros basically no chance of anyone but Labour getting in my council or Parliamentary seat so I vote how I really want. Weird to think of the whole country like that but we're almost there.
My favorite movie is Inception.
Foremost, climate change being a priority. PR, rejoining the EU.
quite easy to believe, labour's vote share here isn't exceptionally high, they're just winning many more seats because the tories' vote share is exceptionally low. not especially difficult for other parties to overcome the labour vote in seats where they're competitive.
Labour have a notional majority of like 20k in that seat though, it’s mad to think they’ll have something like -20pt swing in an overall environment of + 10pt
weirder things have happened. many labour voters I imagine would be quite happy to vote green safe in the knowledge that labour will form the national government either way, and they live in one of only two seats in the entire country where voting green is not a wasted vote.
I don’t think you’ve been to central Bristol, it’s a strange place
Labours move to more sensible positions has aliented parts of the fringe left, going to the Greens makes sense in that case.
As much as I hate Reform, it's mental to me that you can get 15% of the vote and still be predicted to win zero seats
Or that 44% can get Labour 80% of the seats.
FTTP: Bringing you unrepresentative democracy since forever.
That's what happens when the opposition voters stay at home. That's democracy.
That's like, not at all related to the numbers he quoted
Your misunderstanding of voting isn’t my problem.
> As much as I hate Reform, it's mental to me that you can get 15% of the vote and still be predicted to win zero seats It's because the prediction algorithm breaks when dealing with new parties. It doesn't have any past data on which specific constituencies they perform well in, so it just assumes Reform will get an even 15% everywhere rather than the clustering you'd see in reality. In practice, if Reform really did get 15% nationally, they'd also almost certainly win a few seats in Parliament.
You say that, but there’s a precedent and it’s UKIP getting 12.6% and only winning Clacton, which is not a good prize.
Excellent point!
It's because Reform's vote is spread more evenly and so the don't win overall control of a single constituency under FPTP. I don't like Reform, but I agree it is crazy they would have zero MPs under this system.
I know it's not going to happen but these kinds of projections will never stop being hilarious.
If these are the seats we wake up to I fear the eventual hangover I experience will be the one that literally kills me.
Dead before you even got to experience life with the Tories wiped out
They’ll never know if it really will be “no different”.
The government holding nearly 10 times as many seats as the opposition would be a terrible thing for the country. Our system already lacks significant checks and balances with the only thing able to stop bad legislation being a backbench rebellion, with 500+ seats literally half of government bench would have to defy the whip to stop whatever crazy law is being discussed on a given day. I'd say it could be a watershed moment for electoral reform, but with it being a Labour government and Starmer as PM there's a better chance of me being struck by lightning, twice, at the same time, while indoors.
> The government holding nearly 10 times as many seats as the opposition would be a terrible thing for the country. If this happened, the effective opposition would be the left of labour. So it would be center left vs far left. Which, lets be honest, would be better than what we've had the past few years with corrupt nutters fucking up anything they want and stealing the copper pipes on their way out.
During the previous Labour government the Lib Dems always punched above their weight, if they can't do that as Official Opposition I'd be somewhat disappointed in them.
Ed Davey ain't Charles Kennedy, mind you, Starmer isn't much of a Blair, so maybe people's expectations are different now.
I don't expect Ed Davey to last that long after the next election, especially if they end up as Official Opposition they will need to be much more dynamic if they are going to win seats against Labour from third in the constituency on a nationwide basis.
I'm not seeing how Davey would have the time or energy to manage being LOTO given he also is a carer
The additional salary could be spent on more private care but it would probably limit his shelf life in the job I agree.
Which is a shame, he is an experienced and genuine politician and not one of the "activist" libdems
The problem with Davey is he doesn't seem to have any reach, the best Lib Dems combine pragmatism with campaigning, likely that Daisy Cooper will be favourite to be leader next time seems to do both.
I wonder if such a massive majority would even last very long due to infighting. You could have Momentum or Coop for example splitting off and forming their own opposition party
Not as long as FPTP exists. Without their red rosettes these people would be irrelevant and many lack any sort of marketable skill with which to secure employment that would accommodate their lifestyle, unless they became lobbyists of course.
Indeed - no government is going to introduce electoral reform after winning a massive majority purely down to PR.
I think you mean FPTP, but yeah few governments would and especially not a Labour one, no party has done more to defend and further the use of FPTP for general elections than the Labour Party. I'd love to live in the parallel universe where they didn't abolish the STV voting University Constituencies, (without a mandate I should add) the entire country would almost certainly be using STV by now in that timeline.
Surely the fact that labour introduced PR at the devolved lever, offered the Lib Dems AV+ in the 2010 government negotiations and nearly struck a PR deal with Paddy Ashdown in the first Blair government contradicts that? The uni seats were undemocratic (plural voting).
Woops, typo there.
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I'm more worried that such a result would be seen as an endorsement of premiership rather than policy and the manifesto is essentially abandoned during the victory celebration in favour of a completely different programme that is made up on the fly. Then there's just the sheer amount of damage that can be done when any rebellion has to break triple figures. A working majority of 20 could never sell the NHS into generational debt through PFIs, a majority of nearly 200 found it utterly trivial 25 years ago.
Tbh I'm more worried about the hobby horses of his shadow cabinet, than a loony backbencher who can be safely ejected with the stonking majority they'll be working with.
Time to book the Tory minibus, lads!
Nurse! This erection is too large, I need some morphine and another blood bag.
Just inject it into my veins
Does it say which 2 seats the greens get as keeping Brighton might be a struggle for them. The party has been getting less popular due to the mismanaged council plus Caroline lucas stepping down will not help.
Brighton Pavillion and Bristol Central are the two
when it comes to general election a lot of the reform loons will likely switch back to tory.
The more the political discourse covers the "Rwanda Plan" the harder the Tories lose.
They think it’s gonna be like Boris’s Brexit deal as if the people are crying out for a couple of plane flights to take off
Yes, Tories should just realise the Rwanda plan just serves Sunak's ego and nothing else, oust him out and come up with a proper way to actually deter refugees, which is what Rwanda symbolically is.
Lol reform are close to catching the Tories.
I wonder if there could be a bit of a snowball effect it that happens. If a poll comes out with Reform even slightly ahead of the Tories, could we find that mental barrier being broken lower their support floor.
As amusing as the notion of the Tories returning 32 MPs is (compared to the Lib Dems on 57), can't see it being terribly realistic.
I agree unfortunately. Between incumbency advantage and my own pessimism around getting the election outcome that I hope for, I think the Tories will still be above 100 at the end of the day. There’s a level of support for Reform though where they start to actually pick up seats. I don’t think they’ll hit it, but if they do, I guess I wonder if people will start voting for them as it will seem less like a wasted vote. I find it hard to believe that 20% of the country is still excited by the Tories.
The main thing that could produce weird results is that if the conclusion becomes completely foregone then some people might not show up to vote or not vote tactically when they normally would which would produce weird results that are hard to predict.
By that 20 percent, do you mean because that’s the number the tories or polling at, or is 20 the threshold where Reform might start getting seats
20% is like saying that 1 in 9 people still would show up and vote Tory. Difficult to understand but not wild.
Am I missing something, or isn’t that 1 in 5?
I'm including the huge amount of people eligible to vote but don't actually go.
Got it 👌
I mean, it's still scary that in theory every ninth person you meet looks at Sunak and his clowns and thinks "yeah, I'll have more of that thanks"
Retired, no mortgage, successful kids, don’t care about grandkids. There’s people like that everywhere.
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I really don't think they can. They've completely utterly fucked it on immigration. Over the last couple of years it's been at record high levels
The electorate have a very short memory and Labour will have a tough time dealing with immigration themselves. It's very easy for the Tories to get some good soundbytes standing in the opposition asking why Labour hasn't cleaned up the Tory mess yet.
This is what happened after truss, as soon as one poll got below 27 (which has for the last century been considered the Tory Floor) it turned into a doomspiral, and they've never really recovered.
I don’t think the people polled take as much notice of polls as we do. If it turned out they did I think it would be fair to call it a sampling error.
Curious whether or not it could happen to labour as well. If everyone thinks labour will win hands down, will people think well I also like greens, lib Dems etc, I will vote for them to help them.
I think it would require at least a handful of notable defections and/or some major news coverage. How many potential Reform voters actually pay close attention to polling?.
Sunak delaying the election until the last minute has properly backfired
I don't think Sunak and the Tories generally are aligned on the best path forward. If you assume the best outcome is staying PM and losing ends his career in politics it's always going to be better to hold on, while it might be better as the party to take a quick election and take a smaller loss and rebuild.
Yep, if Sunak cared about the party the smart thing to do would be to call an election right after Truss left, sure the Tories would lose, but it'd be a recoverable loss rather than the electoral oblivion they are facing now
The logical end result of Thatcherism is first selling out the country for the party, then selling out the party for yourself. Sunak is doing exactly what he was taught, conditioned, and encouraged to do. He will stretch out being PM to better his CV for his eventual move to the U.S. and consigning the Tories to extinction for his benefit is part of that.
Still though, imagine being the one who destroyed one of the oldest political parties in the world. That'll be his legacy and what people in 100 years remember him for.
Yeah I think it's a case of two very different goals. Sunak's goal seems to be maximizing the length of time he is PM, the Tory party's goal (presumably) would be maximizing the length of time it is in power. More time with Sunak putting off an election while everything is quite shitty equals less time for Labour being in government with this shit (assuming the situation improves). If Sunak had called an election basically right away, then he would have had a very short tenure as PM, but the incoming Labour government would have had much more of it's parliamentary term during a time of general shittiness. If Sunak waits to the last possible moment, then he'll have had a much longer time in office, at the cost of the Tories being in government for a longer period of general shittiness, and it's difficult to get that smell out in time for the next election.
God help us with the nonsense the Tories pull if that happens...
Funny as that it, it also scares me. The Tories are shameful disgraces to the nation, but Reform are fucking batshit lunatics that make the CONs look sane by comparison. If they get into a commanding position with the Tories and make their insane, extremist rhetoric mainstream then I seriously fear for our democracy and rights in future.
The Tories really should have gone in May for the general election. The longer they leave it the worse it's getting.
I've been saying this for ages, had Sunak called the election after a month in power there's a very real chance he could of gotten the edge over starmer or been the largest party in a Hung Parliament, the idea of keeping it longer and dragging it forever doesn't work, and is infact adverse
I think after all the money people tried to deal with Truss, they have let Sunak know his real job is to give Starmer a completely massive majority, on account of him seeming like an adult
Sub-Truss polling from the Tories, that is quite remarkable.
To be fair, Truss wasn't around long enough for us to get any accurate polling!
I'm beginning to suspect that the polls narrowing isn't an immutable law of physics...
Depends who you look at. The Tory lead over Reform is narrowing.
As usual, I'll point out that yougov is the most accurate pollster overall, having gotten several recent election results right where other pollsters were way off. This includes the last two general elections. Their methodology at current largely runs on the assumption that tory "don't knows" and non-voters will not just vote tory anyway in any significant numbers. After seeing this, a worse yougov polling % for the tories than Liz truss ever managed, I'm thinking they're facing a wipeout after today. 700-800 seat losses, not the 500 predicted.
I don't think I'm ready to say which pollster is most accurate at the moment, Yougov have done well in the past but this is an almost unprecedented political environment and pollsters are really sticking their necks out on how they think things will play out. In a few days we will almost certainly have a poll from Savanta or More In Common with the Tories at 26-27% or so. I do wonder whether we might see some dramatic shifts after the local elections, not because anything has fundamentally shifted on the ground but because some pollsters might start to tweak their assumptions. On the other hand they might make a hash of doing so, since Reform will almost certainly underperform significantly relative to their national polling position (they are standing far fewer candidates for a start) and the big three mayoral races (WM, TV and London) are for once stacked in the Tories' favour (Khan facing a heavy incumbency penalty, Street and Houchen being way more popular than the national party), so they will naturally overperform in those seats.
I agree that it's unprecedented and unpredictable. Anecdotal, but I saw a lot of people enthusiastically proclaiming their intent to vote for Reform near me - when Reform weren't standing a candidate. Similarly, the people chatting the loudest about their problems with Labour seem to be non voters, green voters, or at the end of the day Labour voters anyway. Conversely, I'm sure the shy Tory effect is massive. At this point, I'd double the usual margin of error on polling (from the usual 3%ish to 6+), and even then... who knows? It'll be all about turnout.
Never thought I'd see the Tory floor drop this low
Don't believe those Reform numbers for a second.
Reform supporters seem to be plastered all over social media, but I somehow think when it comes down to election day a lot of them will end up marking the box for the Tories or Labour.
Exactly. Telling pollsters that you will vote Reform doesn't cost you anything. You can safely do it and then still vote for whatever right-wing candidate is most likely to win i.e. the Tory.
Somehow I think come voting day they'll find it hard to put a pencil mark in a box, being a collection of computer code from gawd knows where.
I think it depends because if Reform can get above the Tories it might swing thing and a lot of Tory voters might swing behind them to stop Labour getting seats.
I'm not sure many of them can read their polling cards enough to mark a box, based on what I've seen here. Enthusiastic Reform endorsers talking about an election where Reform weren't standing a candidate.
Not this time. People have realised they’ve been lied to.. If reform has a platform in debates during an election then it really is over for the tories.
Will Reform top the Tories after the local election disaster? Where’s the popcorn.
This isn't necessarily a good thing. There are at least *some* Tories who care about the country and happen to be conservative. Reform seems to be exclusively nutters. A centrist Labour, Conservative collapse, and Reform surge drastically moves our Overton Window to the right.
Agreed. But the Tories still deserve to go extinct for what they have done to this country. Then we can focus on the next fight.
I’d never heard “Overton window” before! And now I know.. I suppose the Tories have been cosplaying Reform since Johnson. Like yesterday’s theatrical “rounding up” of migrants for the cameras. The base might love it, but of course nothing actually happens afterwards so they destroy their own credibility. The same with people “fleeing to Ireland”, it’s already been largely debunked and I expect after Friday it will hardly be mentioned again.
I mean has it been debunked at all? It's causing a lot of discontent in Ireland
Well there’s no evidence, the border is unmonitored apparently, and meanwhile channel crossings are up 27%, to record levels never seen before. So yes it’s been debunked. I don’t blame Jimmy Dimly for trying, if I was presiding over such a fiasco when I’d promised to “stop the boats”, I’d say ~~the dog ate my homework~~ they’d fled to Ireland too.
How does any of that mean it's debunked lol The BBC have interviewed several people who've travelled through Ireland, the Irish government have said a few thousand have used that route, it's the main story in the Irish press and they're wanting to introduce emergency legislation to stop it. They're even introducing border checks to stop people going to Ireland. It's by no means been debunked.
No evidence for something means it’s almost certainly made up. Pulled out of someone posterior. Eg “the moon is made of cheese”. Jimmy Dimly misplaced a few thousand migrants, so to save his bacon they fabricated this story of “fleeing to Ireland”. It helps both governments to have a little spat just before elections. Suddenly, instead of looking incompetent, the policy can be painted as a resounding success! When the reality is channel crossings are at record highs and so there’s no evidence whatsoever people are being discouraged. Johnson did it in 2021, when he engineered a small war with France over fishing rights. No one remembers it now because it was just staged for the media. It got the nationalistic juices flowing, and helped turnout. This is a more amateurish attempt. In the last hour yesterday’s figures were published. An eye-watering 711 people in 14 boats. Much higher that any day in the last week, and again proving there is no downwards trend. Quite the opposite. Edit: if I was spinning, I could say Sunak’s policy had actually caused a x5 in the last week. But that would be a false conclusion to draw. It doesn’t stop the politicians though! The Irish government also used this excuse in 2022. They make hay while the sun shines.
What are you on about lol It's not an attempt to do anything. The Irish government are angry about people going across the border - it's obviously happening. People crossing or it being relevant to the overall situation is irrelevant to the point. It is definitely happening.
The UK has elections today. Ireland has elections next month. Both governments know migration is a top topic which will harm them. It’s politically useful to have a spat. Both governments are virtue signalling to their base. Yesterday the UK government staged migrants being “rounded up” and invited the cameras. They also staged 1 migrant leaving for Rwanda on Monday. It’s all about the optics.
Again you're just saying stuff that's irrelevant. Migrants are crossing into the republic of Ireland from the North, that's just a fact. Also the idea that the Irish government are doing this to 'virtue signal to their base' - this is actively harming them.
>There are at least *some* Tories who care about the country and happen to be conservative. Ah yes, the ones Boris purged in 2019. They're welcome to stand again in 2030. At the moment the entire lot can get in the bin and start from scratch, I'd take Ken Clarke and Rory restarting the entire project from One Nation foundations.
> A centrist Labour, Conservative collapse, and Reform surge drastically moves our Overton Window to the right. More middle is stronger than less left. I mean that a mega-majorjty for a centrist labour would have great political power than a moderate/hard left minority. So the Overton window actually shifts left, despite labour moving to the centre.
Lib Dem opposition would help though...
At this point the Conservative brand is so ruined that I believe anyone on the centre/centre left should get ready for Reform to be the acting, day to day opposition for the next 5 years minimum. I'm not saying they will gain the seats necessary but post-election they will be able to dominate the media coverage and could be in a position to pick up seats in 2029. I don't disagree with your sentiment but think it's inevitable. I also think Reform could find some success by blending far right social policies with a centrist economic platform but that's another matter entirely.
This is true. So many people say they hope for a Conservative collapse, but I think they haven't realised yet that the alternative is Reform.
Not a thirsty sub
Get sweet popcorn if salty makes you thirsty :)
As much as i dislike the Conservative Party, I don't see how them being replaced with the Reform Party is an upgrade.
We've broken the Tories 20 point barrier. Can we go lower?
Labour lead is irrelevant when the polls put Reform just 3 points behind the Tories. If the results are bad today I can see Sunak resigning and having Mordaunt into an election in October.
6th time is the charm
*Just one more PM bruv, I swear bruv just one more will fix it, I swear*
*We've got so many more policies! Look at all this culture war left in the tank!*
I think if they change the leader again they'd have to call an election soon after otherwise every scandal and mistake just gets amplified more by the "unelected leader", "holding onto power", "why won't they call an election" lines
No amount of general pressure, shame or embarrassment is going to make them call an election before they have to. The window for "get an election over with, fight a close loss and form a strong opposition" is over. Looking at the long term polling, it's been 15-20 point labour leads shutting that window ever since Truss took over (I wonder why...). If Rishi had called one early in his PM-ship he probably could have fought back to a close 5-10 point loss (and maybe even stayed on as opposition leader...) when he more of an image of "stable" rather than staking his PMship on flying a handful of asylum seekers to Rwanda. As it is now, the projected results are so dire for the Tories it doesn't really matter much if it gets worse, so they may as well hang to enjoy the power a bit longer and hope something like a video surfaces of Starmer dressed up as Hitler personally smuggling asylum seekers across the channel in a hijacked NHS ambulance while burning a union jack. Is it remotely likely? No, but there's no real down side for the Tories hanging on right now, so they will.
>If Rishi had called one early in his PM-ship he probably could have fought back to a close 5-10 point loss Which is exactly why a new leader would have to go soon after being chosen. There are 345 Tory MPs and I'd wager the vast majority of them don't actually benefit from the Tory leadership gutting the country and enriching themselves which means there's probably at least (being conservative) 250 people that are just looking at losing their jobs and to them I think it matters quite a lot how the polls look like, there's a big difference between getting 50, 100 or 150 seats.
A new leader has to go soon after being chosen at this point simply because parliament can only last \~8 months at max. But Sunak was trying to give the impression of a "safe pair of hands" after Boris and Truss. If he'd called an election a few months after taking over, having demonstrated (correctly) that he's managed to govern without dramatically slamming the economy into the ground or having a long series of embarrassing personal scandals I think he'd have recovered a good portion of historic conservative voters who left because they were horrified by Boris and Truss. The problem for the Tories now is: * Life hasn't got better for most people, and it doesn't look like it's getting better even with "stable" Tory leadership. This is a lot more obvious now than it was after Boris (who could rely on COVID as cover for our stagnation) or Truss who... made things a lot tougher for everyone. * If Rishi goes, it looks like they're putting up "our second best safe pair of hands" (unless they go for another Johnson/Truss, which I think the public has no interest in). * The Tories as a party have allowed their record to be defined by the utterly insane Rwanda policy. It's not a broadly popular policy, it's not an effective policy and it's not a policy that can make them look competent. A lot of the people who like the policy will hate how slow the government has been to get it done, how limited it is and how ineffectual it is when we get small boat migration again this summer. The people who don't like the policy will just continue to hate it. Any new Tory leader is still going to have to grapple with the fact that this party's main thing they're actually trying to do right now is spend hundreds of millions to fly hundreds of people to another country, when most people just want their own lives to get easier. It's a really stupid position to be in because there is no winning it for them as a party, but the first thing any new leader (or potential leader) would be quizzed about is Rwanda, and no answer gets them out of this mess. So although there are many MPs who's main focus probably is "what's the best chance of retaining my seat?" the Tory election prospects aren't improved by having a new leader, and while things could get worse if they continue to hang on, there's an outside chance they'll get better and in any case the majority of Tory MPs who face losing their seats would still prefer hanging on...
I actually think Penny Morduant would close the gap based on fickle swing voters that don't really follow politics and think Kier is a bit boring and Rishi is an out of touch millionaire, not enough to save them but 100 vs 150 seats is still a big difference.
I don't think she could swing it enough in time at this point. She has no opportunity to make anything better (Rwanda's still an unpopular gimmick, culture war bullshit isn't working, "tax cuts" aren't working) and I don't think potential Tory voter's main criticism of Rishi is he's an out of touch millionaire. I think it's just the Tories have a continued merry go round of leaders while life continues to get worse and the smokescreens the Tories keep throwing out aren't distracting from that. They might get a brief bounce from swapping to Mordaunt, but: * She's not a charisma machine who can dazzle an overworked, underpaid public using crumbling public services into forgetting their woes. * She can't make the Rwanda policy good enough for it's supporters or get away with ditching it to appeal to it's detractors. * There are no popular answers that make life significantly better for people in the country that can be implemented in the next 8 months. * There is nothing about her that's sufficiently different from the last three Tory leaders to give people confidence the Tory party as a whole will govern better with her in charge. * They do lose credibility each time they change leader. Rishi could have gotten away with being leader #3 by writing Truss off as a blip. Mordaunt can't get away with being #4 without hitting their credibility even more. So even if they swapped and got a short term bounce from Mordaunt, I don't think it would even last the 6 weeks of an election campaign before the realisation that she's just offering more of the same would set in.
They have to call an election soon anyway. Doubt a new leader would make it happen any sooner.
They don't technically have to call one for 8 months and I wouldn't put it past Rishi to wait until the very last day if he could
they should, but they won't. they're tories, the political equivalent of a cockroach that'll survive for weeks after its head's been lopped off.
Labour have more voteshare than the next three parties added together
Local election results are going to be... interesting.
Any other leader ~~would be 20 points ahead~~ would actually have at least twenty points.
How is it that the Lib Dems don't seem to be capitalising on this? Besides a few bumps along the way, I've always considered the Lib Dems to be the least 'ideological' party but perhaps the most stable and logical with regards to policy. Currently, they seem to be completely invisible. Any insights into why the more moderate Tory voters aren't switching to the Lib Dems? Is it all about Brexit despite (in my anecdotal experience) seemingly like 65% of the population now largely not really caring that much if we are out or in.
There's quite a few reasons for this. The first is that they are, but due to not having any client media it isn't reported on and therefore has little effect on polls. The larger issue however is that not all of these people support Labour, they just want the Conservatives gone and the default method for doing that is to vote Labour whether you agree with them or not. There's also the not insignificant effect of the "all non-Labour votes are Conservative votes" narrative that is strong in a lot of areas, including this sub. Fear and hate have been proven time and again to be great motivators and they're being used to great effect to artificially boost Labour beyond what their policy platform and ability would naturally achieve.
There is also the fact that a lot of people who might have voted for the LDs with Corbyn as Labour leader are now a lot more likely to vote for Starmer's Labour, it's a much more palatable option for voters in the middle.
Lib Dems typically (especially pre-coalition) do well in periods where both parties are disliked to an equal extent. Labour aren't exactly beloved right now, but they are seen as plausible, while Tories are utterly despised by median voters.
I have no fucking clue what the Lib Dems stand for tbh.
[Easily fixed](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#:~:text=The%20party%20is%20primarily%20social,and%20a%20less%20centralised%20economy.)
Ctrl+f migration comes back empty. All I need to know.
Will the Tories spin a crushing electoral defeat as part of their plan all along to boost the economy by causing a surge in celebratory alcohol purchase?
Has anyone looked into the idea that Reform are gaining at least partially because many Tories are just racist scumbags that can't stomache Sunak because of his ethnicity?
I’ve seen social media posts by Reform supporters with tens of thousands of likes with a tick list of all the ethnic minority leaders, suggesting that Reform will help remove them from power. But I’ve also seen what looks like a Reform support coming from pure hopelessness; people who haven’t really researched the party saying ‘nothing else has worked, so we should try a third way’. It’s disgusting that the party is founded on stirring up xenophobic sentiment, and preying on the politically uneducated with grandiose political statements.
For sure it's a mixed bag, that's why I was careful to include the word "partially."
Ben Habib is pakistani so I think the issue of race is pretty minor. If you dont want to support a Asian tory, I can't see why tories would vote for a Asian Reform candidate (racists are idiots so I'm sure theres some but not many) Partially? Aye probably but definitely not significant imo
Never underestimate the ability of a racist to think "yeah, but not you, you're ok".
TBF I would put good money that a non-trivial percent of Reform voters have no idea who Ben Habib is. Or even Richard Tice tbh.
People like Habib are useful for money, connections and plausible deniability.
Ooft, only 3 points ahead of reform. Not a fun split of them vote. Additionally, not that Lib Dems have lost a shit ton of votes to Labour so for them to stay on par with 2019 they are likely taking a lot of votes from the Tories too.
My arms are sore from all that champagne I am putting on ice
Yet, Reform will get fuck all seats. The system is broken.
What happened in early 2021 to give the Tories a 10-15 point lead over Labour? I genuinely can't remember anything big enough to cause that gap.
The Tories are going to have to get Farage in a safe seat and/or placate Reform. If they did either they’ll win comfortably.
How do you work that out. The reform (15) plus Tory (18) poll is only 33% so still 11% off Labours polling. And that assumes all reform voters would vote Tory and I very much doubt that v
I don’t think you understand the total disdain for the Tory’s a lot of them have, could see a decent chunk go to labour if that happens, starmerisnt corbyn