I liked the line that we all knew the Queen had only hung on in order to make sure that Boris Johnson had gone. Turns out that if she’d lasted another three weeks, she might have seen the back of Liz Truss as well.
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It’s worth noting that tactical voting will be a thing this time around too, as it was in 1997. The two recent by-elections showed that people understood which party to vote for to beat the Tory. So although it is true that in reality Labour can’t possibly win everything, I’m coming close to being prepared to lay money on the LibDems winning maybe even 40 seats (when projections show them only winning around 15.)
And, of course, we’ll have new constituency boundaries as well, which will impact the ‘incumbency’ benefit in quite a few places. That may skew the model somewhat too.
But yeah, however you look at it, the Tories are fucked. After 1997 it took them four leaders before they found someone even vaguely electable and Cameron only scraped a majority once by bending the rules so far that even the Electoral Commission noticed. I am willing to concede that “Boris” did get a hefty result, but it’s increasingly clear that wasn’t actually a vote for the Tories (it was mainly a Brexit vote combined with anti-Corbyn hysteria.)
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Which should be a constitutional crisis for me. I mean playing Toryball for several months was a disaster for Britain last time out, can’t see it being an improvement this time. The alternative of bringing back the serial liar to the people, parliament, and queen is obviously a constitutional crisis too as he was ousted for being unfit.
ETA
Conservatives should see those numbers and put in some kind of proportional representation before the election.
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As you’ve pointed out recently, the current Labour party is itself an omnishambles, but it would still be a step up from the Tories!
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Freemarket Fascist rolls off the tongue better.
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Underlying data:
It’s worth noting that even from this extreme result- Labour still don’t win the most votes from over 65s, or in Scotland.
More analysis of same results:
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It has been noted that Labour were polling at >50% in 1990, which was two years out from the fiasco of 1992. Having said that, of course, the situation isn’t remotely comparable. Because John Major took over, and by comparison to the seven Tory leaders after him, he was a towering colossus who understood politics and party management at an instinctive level, even if he was a charisma free vacuum. And god knows I respect Neil Kinnock but he was monstered in a way that even Corbyn barely matched, meaning that he was doomed.
The reason neither Labour nor the Conservatives want to change the electoral system is that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t want it changed. He can’t threaten a party in anything like the same way if they are merely part of a coalition… So he’d rather see Labour with a huge majority thus ensuring they won’t be tempted to change things.
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I was throwing shade on the conservatives by suggesting they had relegated themselves to a permanent position of unelectability. I was suggesting they’d need to change the electoral system to have a hope.
Unfortunately I know this isn’t true. Neither labour nor conservative countenance electoral reform. It suits both of them. Rupe loves it too of course. But he isn’t the only oligarch to take into account. I guess it makes things simple for the Mail and Torygraph etc. too but everywhere else manages to keep an ecosystem of similarly awful oligarchs afloat with shifting networks of coalitions and alliances. I mean the English political classes loved Borgen didn’t they? Was it just Sidse Babett Knudsen’s amazing English accent?
ETA from the Financial Times
I don’t know if that can ever be quantified or true. E.g. Sinn Féin have reacted to energy/cost crises in a fairly centrist way. They may be left of English and Irish labour parties but that’s hardly noteworthy.
ETA
Here’s the article and their political compass of how far the Conservatives have goosestepped to the right of their voters is pretty stark. I have something of a bias against those diagrams as they always show the people with a more reasonable left/centre/libertarian belief than the parties.
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No fucking way are Labour that economic left wing, unless they are including the backbenchers. The last two years of Sir Keith have been a rejection of the most milquetoast social democratic policies in the name of capitalism.
The only way that spectrum works is if it is possible to get a negative score.
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They have them to the right of the US Democratic party which at least recognises the journey. Obviously their centre point is not one I agree with in the first place.
The data for that graphic seems to come from this project:
https://www.globalpartysurvey.org/methods
And the citation of “FT research” would suggest that they’ve used the survey’s questions to code up updated positions for Truss and Starmer’s current policies. So while not an ideal measure, it does have a robust methodology behind it.
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I don’t know. They’re at the same spot as the US Democrats, a mainstream right wing party. Seems about right.
If you are replying to the bit I think you are (my dislike of political compasses) it’s not that the methodology isn’t robust, it’s that there is a relatively empirical measurement of people’s political beliefs that isn’t self reported sentiment, it’s how we vote. In situations where people have options to vote with their sentiment the political compass still doesn’t match their actual voting.I understand that is not the case in the UK though.
They are both positioned left of centre though. I don’t think I could put either of them any lower than 4.5.
Maybe it’s because I have more awareness of left wing economics, and how Marxist-Leninist parties like the Cuban Communist Party are traditionally the right wing of communism. That’s why I suggested that it only works if you can get a negative score.
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Well, he called that right, didn’t he. Not that it was a hard thing to call. But yet again he shows why he has long been one of the more admirable political/economic commentators.
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Two nations divideddeluded by a common language
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This looks interesting. Al Jazeera have uncovered a load of files detailing the witch-hunts and deliberate self-sabotage going on at the heart of the Labour party as it tried to purge itself of a leadership elected by the membership.
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King Charles III is reportedly abandoning plans to attend and deliver a speech at the Cop27 climate change summit on the advice of Liz Truss.
My takeaway from The Crown - a piece of fiction, I know - is that the show creators/writers/advisers have been mildly sympathetic to all of the important Royals (Andrew isn’t in it much), but they fucking hate Charles.
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