UK Politics General Discussion

[Craig]

If the Tories end up just a couple of seats ahead of the Lib Dems, it might make for a tempting prospect for a few Labour MPs to make the Lib Dems the official opposition in an instant.

I must admit I’m finding these polls finding the Tories in double figures hilarious. That said, I’d also urge caution in taking them as gospel. There is a psychological impact to the state of polling at the moment. Those who might vote Tory might not bother even voting on account of these polls - “they’re not gonna win anyway so why bother” effect. Then there’s also the impact on the other side “Labour are well ahead anyway, so I can’t be arsed to vote” or “I’ll vote for the Greens/Lib Dems as Labour will get in anyway”. While asking a polling question can root out some of these apathetic people, some can also change their mind closer to polling day.

It’s also worth noting that we’ve not seen such a seismic shift in voting intentions at one single election for a long, long time. Chuck in differences in campaigning (agile social media adverts etc) and I think there’s a distinct possibility that MRP polling can massively under or indeed overestimate the actual result.

Bottom line - if you’re eligible to vote, then register, vote and don’t assume everyone else will get the result you want for you.

Edit: What Matt said

 

[BarryZola]

Boris Johnson is very unpopular with the population, he wouldn’t be who would get the Tory’s back in power.

You only win in the UK if you float around the centre, I’m not certain the Tory’s will pick a centrist leader so Labour might get 2 terms (10 years).

Yes, sorry, 10 years. However, 10 years is a long time in politics so there would be plenty of time for Boris to come across as a new improved man who has learned his lessons. Although I was being slightly tongue in cheek by suggesting it would be Boris in particular to lead the fightback.

 

[Dobba]

Boris will have defected to the Starmer Party within the next 10 years.

 

[Craig]

Sorry, what?

Is this a different UK to the one I live in, in which a party that declared war on those in receipt of benefits and called for a hostile environment on migrants has been in sole power for a decade?

The general opinion of reducing migration is a belief from the middle of the political spectrum. Likewise, as is making the benefit state more manageable. Both are not hard right views.

What hasn't worked for the Tories is trying to enact those changes without the wider population seeing benefit and through outright harsh punishment of those affected by the changes. The Tories lost their traditional voters as a result, and instead of changing back to more centrist views, they decided to move further and further to the right to please Farage, his supporters and the ever more extremist wing of their party. All the while forgetting their traditional base.

That move further to the right is why the Tories are in this downward spiral and seeing the wipeouts predicted in the polls at present. They've lost their sensible figures in the party and are left with the clowns running the show.

 

[Dave]

Boris will have defected to the Starmer Party within the next 10 years.

Sure sure.

It must really annoy the far left that when ever they take charge of the Labour Party from the centre left they mess it up and allow the Tories to kill hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. Must be lovely to stand on perfect ideology rather than actually doing something that improves the lives of the population.

As far as I’m concerned Corbyn is responsible for every unnecessary death in the NHS for the last 10 years.

Sorry, what?

Is this a different UK to the one I live in, in which a party that declared war on those in receipt of benefits and called for a hostile environment on migrants has been in sole power for a decade?

The Tories sell to the centre and govern to the right. It’s why they have always been successful.

Check out the 2019 Tory campaign. They massively sold the centrist policies and whispered the right wing ones.

 

[Tom]

Responding to a few points generally, rather than the complex multi-quote thing.

Well aware of this latest Doomsday poll being a snapshot, as indeed all polls are. Things can and probably will change, but hopefully not too much. Personally I have satisfied myself with the reasonable worst-case outcome of a Labour minority propped up by the Lib Dems. The Doomsday poll also doesn't account for the internal scrap around Diane Abbott this week. Voters hate that, and you would think Starmer would have learned.

In terms of the Tories being able to bounce back: Barring them finishing a catastrophic third, I am absolutely certain they will, and will do is potentially as soon as the next election. Labour will be on a nosedive pretty quickly and managing voter erosion. Blair did this for three terms but that was before the Tories discovered populism.

I'd also slightly disagree that Johnson is sufficiently unpopular to dramatically change their fortunes, given the voting system. As has been proven, you only need little more than a third of people voting for you. I personally believe if he were to take over this second it would see a fairly significant upshift in Tory fortunes at the election. Fortunately they were too blind to see this.

IF, and it's a massive if, by some miracle the Tories finish third, it could be terminal. Not being the official opposition will see so much of their air time and funding evaporate. The big business backers could go to the Lib Dems and mould them in their own image, as they have done the Tories. It could in theory be a moment where one of the big two parties is replaced for multiple generations - think the Labour replacing the Liberals around a century ago. There can only ever be two credible parties under FPTP, and death can be virtually instant.

 

[BigT]

Strange as I was reading yesterday Labours lead was down to 17 points.
I still expect Starmer to be in number 10 come July but not a chance he will have the majority predicted in this poll.

 

[Craig]

I think Johnson would maybe save a chunk of seats for the Tories (20 ish maybe?) on account of his Trump-like popularity and his likely ability to drag back some of the Reform switchers who see him as Mr can-do-no-wrong. However, for the majority of people, there’s now tangible proof of his record in office - and to put it bluntly it doesn’t paint him in a good light. The bumbling bloke from the pub persona doesn’t wash for the majority of people, as shown by his approval ratings toward the end of his time in parliament.

To top that off, the Conservatives as a brand are now toxic. There’s a large number of people who just wouldn’t vote for them no matter who was in charge currently. They’re an incumbent party with 14 years of governance and the majority of the public do not have a lot to show for it.

As for the future of the Tories, I do agree that we’re likely seeing the end of the party as we know it. I said a while back that they would either split or cease to exist, and they’ve been in terminal decline for some time now through poor discipline and infighting. Repeated attempts to influence the direction of the party have already happened, be that through the myriad of factions like the ERG or One Nation Conservatives or via the creation of new parties like ChangeUK (lol) or Reform. When they’re used to internally lobby for change, that’s fine - but when that turns into outright infighting spilling into the media, it only serves to demonstrate to the public that there’s no cohesive direction for the party. It’s the same issue Labour had with Momentum, and why the Diane Abbott issue has potential to cause problems.

The Tories needed a leader in charge to both enforce discipline and to properly mediate between these groups to find common ground and pull together for a long time now. If they’re to survive, they need a figurehead that can do that, but the issue has gone on for so long that those sensible people have long since quit. All that’s left is the people who are so hyper-focussed on imposing their own views, and they’re not willing to listen to others to develop anything that’s remotely appealing to the majority of the British public. They’re not showing any sign of that changing, so I can’t help but feel we’ll either see them disappear altogether with supporters moving to other parties, or the hard right wingers ship themselves off to Reform and the Conservatives rebooting into the centre-right party they previously were.

 

[Dobba]

The general opinion of reducing migration is a belief from the middle of the political spectrum. Likewise, as is making the benefit state more manageable. Both are not hard right views.

What hasn't worked for the Tories is trying to enact those changes without the wider population seeing benefit and through outright harsh punishment of those affected by the changes. The Tories lost their traditional voters as a result, and instead of changing back to more centrist views, they decided to move further and further to the right to please Farage, his supporters and the ever more extremist wing of their party. All the while forgetting their traditional base.

That move further to the right is why the Tories are in this downward spiral and seeing the wipeouts predicted in the polls at present. They've lost their sensible figures in the party and are left with the clowns running the show.

Are we supposed to ignore the architect of the hostile environment and sending Go Home Vans around the country then being made Prime Minster and winning an election after the impact of the Windrush scandal was public knowledge to make this work?

 

[Tom]

Labour had a 10-point lead when Johnson left office. Compare that to now!

 

[Dobba]

Labour had a 10-point lead when Johnson left office. Compare that to now!

All it took was the Tories nuking the economy and then electing one of the richest Prime Ministers in history whilst vast swathes of the country he was running were choosing between eating and heating as proof they had no connection with the electorate anymore

Sorry, I obviously meant Starmer 'moving to the centre'.

 

[Craig]

Are we supposed to ignore the architect of the hostile environment and sending Go Home Vans around the country then being made Prime Minster and winning an election after the impact of the Windrush scandal was public knowledge to make this work?

Nope, absolutely not? I'm not saying to ignore anything, but chucking a sign on a van is a far cry from spending millions shipping a few people off to Rwanda. I'm not saying the Tories were running some sort of brilliant campaign with the best of intentions at the start of their tenure in government - the signs were there that they were going to go that way eventually anyway since the infighting was there in the first place.

I should note I'm a Labour voter and always have been, I'm not making excuses for them. The point I'm making is that the Conservative's issue has been a belief that just shifting themselves further and further to the right, embracing populism over statesmanship "resolves" their problems - and it very clearly hasn't.

 

[Matt.GC]

I think complacency is very dangerous at this stage.

Previous elections have proven that nothing is ever assured when it comes to general election results, and that polls can change quickly. Look at the 1992 election, where Neil Kinnock was supposedly nailed on to win and John Major managed to pull off a shock win at the eleventh hour. Or look at the 2017 election, where Theresa May’s initial polling would have given her a landslide majority and she ended up losing the modest majority that she inherited from David Cameron.

So my message to anyone who thinks that the election is a foregone conclusion is; it most certainly isn’t. If you want the Tories gone or Labour in power, you need to get out and vote for that outcome rather than just treat it as a foregone conclusion. The election is still all to play for, despite the many opinion polls implying that it isn’t.

1992 is often misremembered. Kinnock had a strong lead going into the campaign, but it was not consistently like that for over 2 years before the election was called, it fluctuate. It also visibly diminished as the campaign went on. Contrary to popular belief, the exit poll on the night also didn't predict a Labour victory. It actually predicted a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the biggest party. The following morning John Major won a small majority.

It wasn't too dissimilar in 2017, where May had a strong lead going in that diminished as the campaign went on. The exit poll on the night was pretty accurate to the result the next morning.

What's different now from both of those elections is how consistent the polling has been. It's hardly budged since Sunak took charge. If anything, it's widening slightly.

That said, I do agree with you, @Craig and @BigT . These polls are not right. The Tories know they're toast, and Sunak's route round the country shows that he's in defence mode. His policy announcements so far are pathetically weak, and are clearly targeted at the base and the not the wider public. But this tactics may work. He needs to keep Reform at bay, and it was inevitable that Labour cockups like the Dianne Abbott fiasco were going to happen. With Labours lead so large, Starmer is rightly now starting to get scrutinised.

I said at the start and I stand by this, it's the fate of the smaller parties that will decide how big a Labour victory will be. If the SNP have a night better than expected, that could be 5-10 seats less for Labour. There's momentum behind the Greens at the moment, that could be another couple of seats less. The Lib Dems could nab another few. From Reform to the Greens, they're pretty much all peddling the message that the Tories are gone, so appealing to voters that you may as well vote for who you want rather than tactically. That could split votes and gain another few seats for the Conservatives by the back door.

Then you have the vast amount "don't knows" and "undecided" voters. Lers face it, most of these people are Tories, they're just ashamed to admit it. Some of them will reluctantly turn up on polling day like zombies and put their X in a Tory box anyway. And Labour are not at all popular, they're just the default option for many people whilst the Conservatives reputation sits in the toilet bowl. If you don't really want any of them, and you think the Tories are brown bread anyway, you may decide just to not bother as you may expect the result to be a forgone anyway.

Then we have the debates. As we've seen in previous years, these relatively new TV debates have the ability to make a large difference to campaigns. It's a long way to go until polling day, and all I can see is Labour getting scrutinised and challenged more and more, almost as if they were the party standing for reelection, whilst the Conservatives spend all their resources on damage limitation, and the smaller parties bring up the rear with a dustpan and brush sweeping up demoralised voters.

 

[Dobba]

Nope, absolutely not? I'm not saying to ignore anything, but chucking a sign on a van is a far cry from spending millions shipping a few people off to Rwanda. I'm not saying the Tories were running some sort of brilliant campaign with the best of intentions at the start of their tenure in government - the signs were there that they were going to go that way eventually anyway since the infighting was there in the first place.

I should note I'm a Labour voter and always have been, I'm not making excuses for them. The point I'm making is that the Conservative's issue has been a belief that just shifting themselves further and further to the right, embracing populism over statesmanship "resolves" their problems - and it very clearly hasn't.

They wrongly deported at least 83 people during the Windrush scandal. The measures they used were spelled out almost to the letter in their 2010 manifesto.

 

[WillPS]

Then we have the debates. As we've seen in previous years, these relatively new TV debates have the ability to make a large difference to campaigns. It's a long way to go until polling day, and all I can see is Labour getting scrutinised and challenged more and more, almost as if they were the party standing for reelection, whilst the Conservatives spend all their resources on damage limitation, and the smaller parties bring up the rear with a dustpan and brush sweeping up demoralised voters.

I thought the considered reaction was that they didn't really have that much of an effect on the actual results?

The first set of them in 2010 sent the polling weird, I think some briefly put the Lib Dems as the largest party, but by the election their result was pretty much as expected (they lost 5 MPs). If you ignore them the story is just the normal* story of 'incumbent builds lead/narrows deficit', as seen in pretty much every election since the 50s. Indeed even in '97 John Major's performance was a moderate improvement on the position the polls indicated, even though it was a landslide against him.

* although maybe not this time, looking at how stubborn that graph is proving thusfar

Edited to add: worth noting that in '97 people were thoroughly sick of the Tories, public services were in the gutter, people were scarred by Black Wednesday/negative equity and their leader was deeply unpopular, there are some pronounced differences.

For starters, Major had once been a relatively well liked PM. The in-roads he made in '92 which gave him that narrow majority have often been attributed to his likeable campaigning style - this couldn't be more different compared to Rishi Sunak, who has been thoroughly disliked other than a brief moment in the sunshine with furlough (arguably totally undone by the highly questionable, even at the time, Eat Out to Help Out [the virus] scheme).

Secondly, while in both elections the Tories were blamed for mismanagement of the economy, the kamikwaze budget is actually far more of an unforced error than Black Wednesday, which was the culmination of a lot of international and pan-european factors. Another factor worth considering is that Black Wednesday was almost 5 years in the past by the time it came to 1997, and the Tories could more legitimately claim they had sorted the problem and made amends. It didn't work, as we know, but the wounds of Sept 22 are much fresher; and of course we have the earlier impact of Partygate (which Sunak cannot personally extricate himself from no matter how unfair he thinks that is).


My contention is that the resentment against the Tories is (rightfully) more widespread now than it has been in any election I've any memory of.

 

[rob666]

Strange as I was reading yesterday Labours lead was down to 17 points.
I still expect Starmer to be in number 10 come July but not a chance he will have the majority predicted in this poll.

Good grief...what Tory rags have you been reading?!
The cross section says steady at 20%, the Mail today has started quoting Truss and her PopCons!!!

"You see, we should sack all the doomsayers, the financial regulators, the european courts, and those who try to make our pompous theories economically accountable.
We should be cutting taxes further, even though the whole nation knows it is financially irresponsible, to get the Tories over the line."

That desperate.
Might even start buying an extra paper at the weekend for the next few weeks.
That much fun and humour in them all.

 

[Benzin]

Also considerably cheaper than loo roll.

 

[Matt.GC]

I thought the considered reaction was that they didn't really have that much of an effect on the actual results?

The first set of them in 2010 sent the polling weird, I think some briefly put the Lib Dems as the largest party, but by the election their result was pretty much as expected (they lost 5 MPs). If you ignore them the story is just the normal* story of 'incumbent builds lead/narrows deficit', as seen in pretty much every election since the 50s. Indeed even in '97 John Major's performance was a moderate improvement on the position the polls indicated, even though it was a landslide against him.

* although maybe not this time, looking at how stubborn that graph is proving thusfar

Edited to add: worth noting that in '97 people were thoroughly sick of the Tories, public services were in the gutter, people were scarred by Black Wednesday/negative equity and their leader was deeply unpopular, there are some pronounced differences.

For starters, Major had once been a relatively well liked PM. The in-roads he made in '92 which gave him that narrow majority have often been attributed to his likeable campaigning style - this couldn't be more different compared to Rishi Sunak, who has been thoroughly disliked other than a brief moment in the sunshine with furlough (arguably totally undone by the highly questionable, even at the time, Eat Out to Help Out [the virus] scheme).

Secondly, while in both elections the Tories were blamed for mismanagement of the economy, the kamikwaze budget is actually far more of an unforced error than Black Wednesday, which was the culmination of a lot of international and pan-european factors. Another factor worth considering is that Black Wednesday was almost 5 years in the past by the time it came to 1997, and the Tories could more legitimately claim they had sorted the problem and made amends. It didn't work, as we know, but the wounds of Sept 22 are much fresher; and of course we have the earlier impact of Partygate (which Sunak cannot personally extricate himself from no matter how unfair he thinks that is).


My contention is that the resentment against the Tories is (rightfully) more widespread now than it has been in any election I've any memory of.

The Lib Dems saw an instant poll boost in 2010, and you're right in saying that much of it ebbed away as the election drew nearer. However it did have an impact on the campaign. David Cameron in particular went in to charm mode to compete with Clegg, Cameron's messaging was quite depressing beforehand (clear warning signs of things to come), and Gordon Brown agreed with Nick an awful lot.

But considering that the Lib Dems at the time relied on seats where the Tories were the main competitor, it didn't materialise in FPTP. Cleggmania settled down by polling day somewhat and they lost seats, but they did still increase their national vote share, the highest since the alliance formed in 1983 (pre merger), and you had to go all the way back to the Liberal Party's performance in 1929 to see a national vote share that high from them.

I think the debates have the capacity to help the leader lagging most in the polls. That's Sunak here, since he's already lost the election, he doesn't have much to loose at the debates. The stubborn poll deficit, as you rightly point out, is similar to 1997 in that no one is listening to the Conservative messaging anymore. They were seen as a spent force years ago. But that also means Sunak has nothing to loose. A few well placed attacks on Labour, and although it won't attract support for the Tories, it can detract votes away from Labour, which aids the Conservatives in a number of seats.

I think the whole campaign, debates included, will start shifting more and more towards scrutinising Labour. That's begun already. You're bang on that the Conservatives are more unpopular now than they've been at any election in my lifetime, but that's what's driving these polls and not Labour popularity. In 1997, it was Labour popularity. That's why I think these polls are just defaulting. Nigel Farage and Carla Denyer are appealing to voters on the basis that the Tories are finished so you may as well vote for who you want rather than tactically. John Swinney is obviously attacking Labour more than the Conservatives. Ed Davey is bouncing round the country like a clown and announcing populist policies trying to appeal to sweep up disaffection.

Then, as seen in 1992 and 1997, you have the "shy Tory", who will crawl out from under those rocks at the eleventh hour. Those that can't really articulate why they vote Tory, and will probably do so with their noses held this time, but they just do and they don't tell pollsters that. I think these make up a lot of the don't knows and undecided. Rather than trying to attract noew voters, Sunak is targeting them to show up for him on the day which I think is the best strategy to limit the damage.

So whilst I agree that Conservative unpopularity is pretty much set in stone now, how many seats they loose doesn't hinge on that as much as the polls predict I think. They won't go down the double digits, and with Labour being unpopular and frankly quite boring, it's the parties on the fringes that could swing a number of seats away from Labour. I think the SNP will successfully hold a few Labour seats back, I can see a few LD/Labour marginals swinging towards Lib Dems, with the grey army coming out on polling day to retain a few Conservative seats in LD/Tory marginals, a low turnout impacting the Labour vote, and Labour could be in trouble in a small handful of seats under pressure from the Greens (I can see Bristol Central going Green).

 

[BigT]

The Lib Dems saw an instant poll boost in 2010, and you're right in saying that much of it ebbed away as the election drew nearer. However it did have an impact on the campaign. David Cameron in particular went in to charm mode to compete with Clegg, Cameron's messaging was quite depressing beforehand (clear warning signs of things to come), and Gordon Brown agreed with Nick an awful lot.

But considering that the Lib Dems at the time relied on seats where the Tories were the main competitor, it didn't materialise in FPTP. Cleggmania settled down by polling day somewhat and they lost seats, but they did still increase their national vote share, the highest since the alliance formed in 1983 (pre merger), and you had to go all the way back to the Liberal Party's performance in 1929 to see a national vote share that high from them.

I think the debates have the capacity to help the leader lagging most in the polls. That's Sunak here, since he's already lost the election, he doesn't have much to loose at the debates. The stubborn poll deficit, as you rightly point out, is similar to 1997 in that no one is listening to the Conservative messaging anymore. They were seen as a spent force years ago. But that also means Sunak has nothing to loose. A few well placed attacks on Labour, and although it won't attract support for the Tories, it can detract votes away from Labour, which aids the Conservatives in a number of seats.

I think the whole campaign, debates included, will start shifting more and more towards scrutinising Labour. That's begun already. You're bang on that the Conservatives are more unpopular now than they've been at any election in my lifetime, but that's what's driving these polls and not Labour popularity. In 1997, it was Labour popularity. That's why I think these polls are just defaulting. Nigel Farage and Carla Denyer are appealing to voters on the basis that the Tories are finished so you may as well vote for who you want rather than tactically. John Swinney is obviously attacking Labour more than the Conservatives. Ed Davey is bouncing round the country like a clown and announcing populist policies trying to appeal to sweep up disaffection.

Then, as seen in 1992 and 1997, you have the "shy Tory", who will crawl out from under those rocks at the eleventh hour. Those that can't really articulate why they vote Tory, and will probably do so with their noses held this time, but they just do and they don't tell pollsters that. I think these make up a lot of the don't knows and undecided. Rather than trying to attract noew voters, Sunak is targeting them to show up for him on the day which I think is the best strategy to limit the damage.

So whilst I agree that Conservative unpopularity is pretty much set in stone now, how many seats they loose doesn't hinge on that as much as the polls predict I think. They won't go down the double digits, and with Labour being unpopular and frankly quite boring, it's the parties on the fringes that could swing a number of seats away from Labour. I think the SNP will successfully hold a few Labour seats back, I can see a few LD/Labour marginals swinging towards Lib Dems, with the grey army coming out on polling day to retain a few Conservative seats in LD/Tory marginals, a low turnout impacting the Labour vote, and Labour could be in trouble in a small handful of seats under pressure from the Greens (I can see Bristol Central going Green).

I think you have summed up where we are quite nicely, the don’t knows are largely Tories that will have to be dragged out kicking and screaming to vote but will vote Tory if they vote at all.

 

[GaryH]

Green Party want a maximum 55mph speed limit in the UK which would include motorways. Jeez we are going backwards not forwards. Why are we bothering with all these technical advances and safety systems in vehicles only to go backwards.

“TR115 On major roads outside of built up areas, the maximum speed limit allowed would be 55m.p.h., to maximise the efficiency of fuel use as well as improving safety.”

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