I got this in an email from Survation today:
New research and MRP analysis on voting behaviour and standards conducted on behalf of 38 Degrees by Survation in conjunction with Professor Christopher Hanretty of Royal Holloway University has found that the Conservative majority won in 2019 could disappear, should the current voting trend continue. The projections result in a hung Parliament, with Labour the largest party by a significant margin.
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Our new research, using MRP, shows that core Conservative voting groups - older voters and rural constituencies are the most likely of all to be concerned by recent lobbying and lockdown party allegations.
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As older voters are more likely to vote Conservative, we can see how the impact of accusations of sleaze shifts votes among older voters and order profile constituencies, depriving the Conservatives of many of these otherwise core voters.
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Vote share projections in the poll show 41% for Labour, 35% for the Conservative Party and 9% for the Lib Dems,
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MRP analysis from the figures indicate the Conservatives would win 255 seats, - a net loss of 111. Labour would return 309 seats, just 11 short of a majority and with a net gain of 107 seats on 2019 totals. SNP success would cause Conservatives to lose all their seats in Scotland
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Five Cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister, could lose their seats. Other Cabinet ministers projected to lose their seats include George Eustice, Simon Hart, Alister Jack and Alok Sharma.
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Of 40 key Red Wall seats identified and currently held by Tories, only three (Dudley North, Morley & Outwood and Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland) are projected to be held by the Conservatives.
I am not counting chickens here today. I am well aware that Labour is leading because the Tories are failing and not on their own merit, and that can change.
However, as I have long suggested, there always has to be a tipping point if a government is to fail. I think we have passed one.
I would also point out that Labour has invariably won because the Tories failed. That was even true of 1945, when the failure was pre-war.
And so, maybe, this might be real. Opinion polls are consistently saying so right now. But in that case what has changed? I suggest three things.
First older conservatives (small c) have realised that this government is neither Conservative or conservative. Large and small c, note. No Tory party they have ever known before has behaved like Johnson and his cronies. And conservatives abhor contempt for the law, which Johnson now personifies.
Second, this has cut through. Ant and Dec did that. They realised there was real anger with contemptuous politicians. I am sure that there is.
Third, these voters realise that if these Tories are very obviously only in politics for themselves - as they glaringly obviously are - then all the promises that they make are meaningless. In that case there is no point voting for them.
It does, of course, remain the case that a staggering 30% or so of the population do still support the Tories. These people are, politely, stupid. In other words they are willing to support the Tories in denying the country as a whole the services it needs, from which denial they too will suffer, meaning their support for the Tories is literally incomprehensible since no winners (apart from Tory cronies) can be identified as a result of it. But we have to admit that stupidity happens.
However, what this data proves is that there are enough people who have voted Tory in the past who still have the wit to realise that they can no longer be trusted or supported.
I think that is a tipping point. There is hope for 2022 are a result.
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Stupidy has to be a major part of the Tories ‘success’ but there is another thing, a quality in the population, which I can’t put into words, that comes into play. It reminds me of a chap I used to know many years ago. A generally friendly and intelligent man. Whenever he had to go to the local tip, this was long before their current level of control and organisation, he used to mix dog turds into whatever it was he was dumping. Bags of old clothes would be salted with dog turds, carpets would be rolled up with turds inserted every few turns. He seemed to have a problem with accepting that his discards might be recovered and exploited by the dump scavengers. This seemed in part to be a comment on the poor men, women and children forced to exist by scavenging and also some comment of getting something, and something that he had paid for, for nothing. It flummoxed me as an older teenager then and the current crop of Tories and Brexiteers flummoxes me in the same way now.
your use of the term, stupid, fits Carlo Cipolla’s definition almost exactly. Their actions benefit neither themselves nor others.
Thanks Richard. Let’s hope you’re right, and that in 2022 we’ll see positive change.
Regarding “It does, of course, remain the case that a staggering 30% or so of the population do still support the Tories”, I’m reminded of this quotation, which deserves to be better known, I think:
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power?
Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”
The great Aneurin Bevan, of course.
He was right
Never averse to a Bevan quote… he cut to the chase more quickly than most.
But J K Galbraith also hit the nail on the head…..
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”.
Although we may argue to toss about the nature of money, tax QE etc., the truth is that the real enemy, as always, is the “modern conservative” that JKG defines.
Richard, please keep up the fight!
I will
Great question, but what was his answer? How, precisely, do they do it?
A number of times over the last couple of years, Conservative rule seem destined to continue whatever they did, however, cruel or self seeking it was.
Several times we, you, me and other contributors, have mentioned the need to hang on to hope however bleak the prospects.
Evil will trip itself up as it focuses on itself to the exclusion of others. It is ‘selfish’. When the tide turns, the supporters fall away.
Faith may look foolish at times but it has a strength that its detractors don’t appreciate.
Stupid?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
Maybe the 30% are the managers and directors, accountants, share holders, city slickers, credit default swap holders all of whom benefit in some way from Tory policy. There seem to be a lot of those around.
Or are they also those who read and believe the agnotology in the Tory press and online mis-information barrage that it pays millions for a year?
Other than that my wish is your wish – let’s hope people are opening their eyes. Democratic elections are our only hope.
But remember who the real culprits are: Tory politicians and their rich supporters.
Always.
Tory modus operandi is bribery pure and simple, whether it’s the old staple of tax cuts, tax allowances, boosting house prices, selling off social housing at knock down prices, “cakeism”, or whether it’s dog-whistle politics aimed at their supporters’ basest instincts, promising “reform” of all those failing State institutions and of course promising to be responsible with the nation’s finances – just like that exemplary housewife-prime minister.
YouGov publish research on who votes for whom in GE’s. It’s eye-opening and isn’t all those “masters of the universe”, the rich elite, but lots of the not very well off too and of course loads of old farts like me. As previously mentioned It’s astonishing just how many vote against their own best interests.
Link: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election
Voting against your own best interests has been used by vested interests for years the world over.
If you abuse/exploit bias in people, you can get them to see immigrants, public sector workers, unions, the EU as the problem to the point that you/they cannot see what is actually making you/they poor or suffer:
The very people who are throwing you off the scent in the first place.
It’s the oldest trick in the book. And still far too many people fall for it.
But are such people ‘stupid’?
Or are they victims?
I think that they are the latter myself.
I enjoy coming here to learn and talk things over. I don’t come here to think that I’m superior or better than anyone.
If we claim these people are stupid, then I think that that is a big mistake. If we create that idea then why are we here involved in this? To just talk to ourselves, to just validate ourselves? I hope not.
That’s all I’m trying to say.
Don’t write people off. We see folk coming here telling us that the scales have come off their eyes. It’s great to bear witness to that. That is what ‘we’ must work towards.
Yes, it’s slow, it’s frustrating but we are up against powerful self interests – that is where our gaze must land, not on our neighbours.
It’s simple. You want to know who is responsible for all this? Look up! Follow the money.
When considering who are the ‘stupid’ – during our local by election in North Shropshire, there were people being interviewed in the street, being asked the question:
“Is there anything at all that Boris Johnson or the Conservative Party would do that would make you vote for someone else?”… to which came the reply… “No”.
There was also a sheep farmer interviewed (I don’t remember the publication), who said “We know that Labour are always better for farmers. But I’ll still vote Tory because that’s the way I was brought up.”
Unfortunately, there are rural areas like mine where people appear to still have a feudal mentality, with some sort of ancient unquestioned loyalty to their overlords, regardless of how they are treated.
According to John Curtice it’s more a case of Tories loosing support rather than voters turning to Labour. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-poll-leave-voters-john-curtice-1370000
I agree
I think I suggested so
The 5 laws again! Once seen, they can’t be unseen.
And I’ve just seen the 6th law of stupidity – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.17131.pdf
There are twice as many laws of stupidity as there are laws of thermodynamics.
Thanks
Likely to be true, I think
Oops. Forgot about the Zeroth Law!
There are multifarious reasons why people resort to voting Tory, like in the last election where the red wall collapsed because people reacted against the so called influx of immigrants and the promise that Brexit would restore sovereignty.
Information is the most influential way to convince people to vote for a certain party, which is why the corporatists dominate the mass media, the smears and lies against the left is not a new phenomenon where we witnessed the character assassination of Tony Benn and latterly Jeremy Corbyn. Misinformation has been turned into a new art form originating from the CIA where they neither confirm or deny factual misdeeds. Information generally has been sanitised to represent the establishments interests, Neo-Liberal dogma has been generally accepted even among Universities where market influence decides which students they accept, or even the curriculum studied, after the crash students at Manchester university set up their own Marxist studies to explain how the crash actually happened, and what remedies were really required.
What appears to me also is that the establishment don’t care about the masses and use their wealth and power to maintain a core vote; whilst depressing the masses with a feeling of hopelessness; which has fostered parties such as New Labour and the Libdems happily continuing with the Neo-Liberal agenda. In other words, no matter which party is in power change means nothing. With the development of technology the establishment only need a small workforce to maintain their status and needs, even down to the military where drones can achieve today what a whole regiment would be needed previously. People to them are things to be used, as technology increases, the fewer people are needed. The problem is that most people don’t realise it, and sell themselves too cheaply, or don’t realise that they should demand technology works for them not just the 1%.