The disillusionment with the Tories is justified.
Why is labour riding so high? Are the public really unaware that they are in a great many ways remarkably similar?
Fascinated by the 24%. https://t.co/BjhtCtTqBz
— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) February 6, 2023
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Labour rides high because voters intuitively understand the consequences of the FPTP electoral system.
I would also bet that the smaller party support is concentrated in constituencies where they are 1st or 2nd placed (obviously true with SNP but also LDs).
I have been discussing this around my area, where my Tory MP made it to cabinet today and is it seems universally disliked
People are divided whether to vote LD or Labour
She may get back
Richard, (1) what ghastly idiot do you have for an MP?
(2) Thanks a lot Labour for failing to reform the rotten FPTP system simply because you got a large majority under it in 1997. Pathetic, selfish and insanely short sighted and non-progressive for a party that claims to be progressive. And no sign that they’ve learned their lesson and are going to co-operate next GE to stop splitting the vote and allowing the truly appalling tories to get far more seats than they should, as in your case Richard.
Lucy Fraser
I guess the basic graph reflects that members of the public (well, those of them polled) are less concerned with policies or the lack of them of the different parties, and more with how they perceive the likeliness of them being competent. Labour are ahead on that score – arguably it is difficult for them not to be given the chaos in the Conservative Party, but they have also been working to give that impression.
I mused on that graph when it was displayed in the Kuenssberg programme on Sunday, as a challenge to Ed Davey about the Liberals’ low polling. I suspect the pollsters ask questions in an abstract way so those questioned think in terms of the make-up of Westminster with Labour being the challenging party. I wonder whether it works differently in a General Election when voting is in constituencies and people may become aware Labour is not the main challenger in around 75% of Conservative seats.
Agreed
The Lib Dems have their hit list of seats. Under FPTP they don’t really have any other choice. They have to concentrate their resources on winnable seats.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/31/lib-dems-tory-seats-south-of-england
Lib Dem Target seats
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
Lab target seats
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour#UKParliament
Just a pity that the Labour leadership still have fantasies about the two party system and FPTP. A deal between the two of them, followed by PR would put us all out of our misery of minority Tory Government. Not going to happen though. Unfortunately.
Why aren’t the 24% who intend to vote Tory being asked why, their answers would be interesting. If I was Labour, I’d want to know.
I think we’d find that most people are quite superficial about their voting habits. There was a woman on one of the TV channels exclaiming that she would never vote Labour because they are funded by the unions. She could have been a troll, but equally, I think there are those who don’t know who the unions are.
Even more interesting would be to ask the 33% who did not vote at the last election.
This is the same electorate who punished New Labour in 2010 for the banking crisis that effectively was not their fault.
So they voted in a bunch of idiots who’d had leaders like IDS, Michael Howard and William Hague.
Maybe people have realised that they’ve been had, but I doubt it.
This ‘most sophisticated electorate’ is nothing more than unpredictable in my opinion. Sod the stats, let’s just have the election and get it over with.
Yes, it’s the just appointed Tory Party Deputy Chairman. He is spectacularly unpleasant even by Tory standards. Was Sunak informed?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/29/tory-caught-staging-doorstep-chat-is-odious-sexist-says-anna-soubry
Hmmm – Ashfield?
Do you know it?
I do. We don’t even like to play them at mini rugby union – we used to get a lot of sweary parents at games – industrial strength language. I used to have to drive through it.
Ashfield has a reputation even in the Midlands. It’s a tough place. A colleague of mine moved there as a boy and was immediately invited out to fight to show how tough he was.
It’s one of those areas that Thatcher no doubt messed up – brutalised by the pits and then brutalised again by the loss of the pits. One of England’s forgotten zones sacrificed on the altar of class warfare by the Tories, forgotten by middle class loving Labour and now dangerous to democracy.
Subtlety is not a local trademark.
PSR, I’d like to know how tory and leave voting people in Ashfield think that their area is going to be improved by leaving the EU, and having tory governments?
The point is?
What do you think?
The vision of Labour that many have, and one that is fostered in many constituencies, is of assiduous councillors. They do not have access to or interest in the myriad pieces of evidence that the current LOTO and his minions are nasty authoritarians of the centre right, promoting the same lies as the Tories (e.g. the ‘household myth’ of national economics), and busy purging most local activists in favour of ex Tories, CEOs and machine politicians. This is the party of Mann, Austin, Berger, Duffield etc. that make Soubry look left wing. LOTO may contribute to his own downfall by ignoring Conference and making policy vague, Tory-lite, and unappealing. Equally, the electorate may have a shock to find the new PM presiding over much of the same, with some social liberal frills au Blair.
It’s Buggins’ turn.
Some of that 24% are true blue believers. They are the very same as those who were muttering “Thank heavens for Boris during the pandemic” and actually believed he had done a fantastic job. The degree of delusion here is frightening tbh, however, there is a sizeable proportion of the population who would vote for a donkey with a blue ribbon on it. My grandmother is one of them, perhaps its only a coincidence that she has always had a very insular and narrow minded world view? Wouldn’t want to conflate narrow mindedness with political persuasions necessarily, however, the answer always seems to be clearly in black and white. Maybe its just my crackpot family?
You could be describing my late paternal grandmother
I always escaped from her house and went down the road to her much more fun sister’s house – Labour to its core
I may not have known that as a child, but they had totally different worldviews and I knew which one I preferred
It also says a lot about how many aunts and uncles I had (my grandmothers were both one of 13 and none strayed far)
Bear in mind that those polls sum voting intention to 100%. If a load of disaffected Tories won’t vote/don’t know/won’t say, Labour’s % increases, whether or not the number of ppl intending to vote Labour does.
I read the other day that if all the don’t-knows/won’t-votes who voted Tory in 2019 did so again, Labour would struggle to form a govt.
Here’s disaggregated likelihood to vote Labour: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/likelihood-to-vote-labour-in-the-next-general-election
..note no discernible upticks with the dropping of pledges and born-again fiscal conservatism.
There is an identified phenomena of people not wishing to identify themselves as Tory to opinion pollsters, which I think entirely understandable. However, to suggest that this would a present swing the balance in an election is hard to believe.
I have always thought Richard that the supposed phenomenon of the shy Tory respondent to pollsters questions was a bit of a myth, somewhat akin to the other much loved conservative trope of the silent majority.
I always felt, for instance, that if you were a Labour voter who read the Sun, there used to be millions of them, and every time you picked up your paper you glanced articles telling you how rotten was the Labour party, then come polling day you might not bother voting.
Alternatively, if you were an apathetic Tory voter who read the Sun and kept reading about the brilliant job the Tories were doing you would be much more likely to vote.
Both effects relying on their potency for the reason that most people would take in what they were reading without necessarily considering it political.
The net result that the Tories always used to do better than the polls suggested and Labour did worse, with no need for the concept of the shy Tory voter.
It is an interesting fact that when the Sun supported John Major in 1992 he got roughly the same number of votes as when the Sun semi-supported Tony Blair in 1997.
I am as solid Labour as anyone, but I simply cannot and will not vote for Starmer.
I think there were many people who said the same thing with Corbyn in charge, and here we are.
I think that is the difference between Labour supporters and Labour politicians, the latter did everything to sabotage Corbyn who came within a whisker of winning the election. Starmer is a Tory pretending to be Labour, hence full support from Labour politicians, but lukewarm at best from supporters.
I tend to think this somewhat simplistic, but then I saw the faults in Corbyn and those in Starmer are visible to almost anyone
SoTD
The people of Ashfield are like many other such ex-industrial areas of the country – desperate to be noticed and have their concerns addressed.
The Tory party has spoken warm words about levelling up and well paid jobs but used these to hook and basically exploit desperate people who want help.
And what have they got out of Labour in comparison who daren’t even say those things for fear of being called ‘left wing’ and are still stinging from the Corbyn backlash?
How often do we see desperate people walk into the arms of their abusers these days?
Too often I’m afraid. All around the world.
At the end of the day, the perception of competence trumps ideology.
Can a leader deliver on the the bread-and-butter issues; Keep the trains running on time, keep the shelves stocked so on and so forth.
If neo-liberalism can do this, most people will be neo-liberal, is socialism can do this, most people will be socialists, fascists, greens etc.
I personally could live with competent, gradualist and pragmatic right wing rule, a modern day Bismarck who understands that the ruling-class enjoys it’s privilege because of it’s competence and ability to add it’s fair share to the commonwealth.
Unfortunately the current crop clearly are not up to this standard.
So you would happily live in an ethical void for bread and circuses without noticing the circumstances of others?
Really?
Begrudgingly? Yes.
Not all right wingers are the same, in the way not all left wingers are the same either.
I was specifically referring to the more moderate type that understood that social hierarchies worked on ‘give and take’ that those that were able to take much were also obligated to give more, hence my loathing for the current batch of parasites.
An at least minimal standard of ethics tends to lead to a steady supply of bread and circuses, and a status quo that lacks the former is on the way out and soon will be unable to supply the latter. So I would not feel comfortable living on such a castle of sand in the long term.
But when the choice is food, water, and shelter today vs perhaps better stability tomorrow?
It may as well not be a choice.
As ‘good’ doesn’t exist and likely never will exist I’ll take ‘not unbearably awful’ any day.