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The demise of the Tories

gez

gez

pfm Member
Found this article which has a very interesting graph showing the projected/known popularity of the parties over the last 4 years.

One thing that struck me (apart from the obvious demise of the Tories), is the growth of the Reform party. If you sum the two, it comes to 33% (at the present time), vs Labours 44%. So it would apear Labour's lead is at least partly due to a fracturing Conservative party. Also Labour don't appear to have been negatively impacted by their stance on Gaza. At least not to any significant degree.

yougov.co.uk

Voting Intention: Con 18%, Lab 44% (30 Apr - 1 May 2024) | YouGov

Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention figures
yougov.co.uk yougov.co.uk
 
I'm not surprised Labours stance of Gaza has no effect on them. Isn't the majority of the MSM on Israel's side? Does anyone know if there are any MSM sources supporting Palestinians?
 
gez said:
Found this article which has a very interesting graph showing the projected/known popularity of the parties over the last 4 years.

One thing that struck me (apart from the obvious demise of the Tories), is the growth of the Reform party. If you sum the two, it comes to 33% (at the present time), vs Labours 44%. So it would apear Labour's lead is at least partly due to a fracturing Conservative party. Also Labour don't appear to have been negatively impacted by their stance on Gaza. At least not to any significant degree.

yougov.co.uk

Voting Intention: Con 18%, Lab 44% (30 Apr - 1 May 2024) | YouGov

Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention figures
yougov.co.uk yougov.co.uk
Click to expand...

YouGov also claim that just 31 per cent of Reform supporters would back the Conservatives if Reform didn't exist, while 27 per cent would not vote, 23 per cent would seek another party and 12 per cent are unsure. 4% and 3% would back the LDs and Labour, respectively.
 
These polls aren't going to correspond to what happens in a real election. Look at the London mayoral election - in a city where the Tories have been unpopular for years and lost two assembly constituency seats, Susan Hall, a worse candidate than even the last two bad ones, still polled 32.7%. It could be less in the general election because not every constituency is a straight Labour/Con race, but there is absolutely no way they will go below 20% and it will probably be nearer 30%. Everyone knows Reform won't win any seats so they'll do well to get over 10%.
 
In a first-past-the-post election, an average vote share of 30% translates to electoral annihilation. 30.1% was what the Conservatives polled in 1997...

Polling in London had Khan at 40-45% and Hall at around 30% pretty much all along. On the final count, Khan took 43.8% of votes, and Hall got 32.7% - it's not a landslide by any means, but there's only one seat for Mayor... (Anyone surprised at that Tory vote should look at a borough map: the Stockbroker Belt reaches into the boundaries of London, and those outer suburbs are as blue as blue can be when it comes to voting).

I think that people predicting damage to Labour over its stance on Gaza were mischaracterising the party's position on the conflict as being even more pro-Israel than it actually is, forgetting the existence of tactical voting, and also making an assumption that "Muslims" are a monolithic group that votes entirely on religious lines...
 
TheDecameron said:
Reform is mana from heaven. Its role is to fracture and incapacitate the Tory vote without winning any seats for itself. You couldn’t ask for better. I also think it’s important to share your appreciation of them on their social media accounts.
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Spot on. In fact the more idiots vote for them the better.
 
TheDecameron said:
Reform is mana from heaven. Its role is to fracture and incapacitate the Tory vote without winning any seats for itself. You couldn’t ask for better. I also think it’s important to share your appreciation of them on their social media accounts.
Click to expand...
Ooh, that's a good idea. I just need to set up a John Doe account so that I can tell them how much I adnire their stance on immigration and that we should be taking control properly and setting up a proper military response to illegal invasions by small boats.
 
I would expect that Reform will now use their vote share to try to arrange some kind of pact with the Tories. If Reform stands in every constituency, the Tories will barely get a seat, but then neither will Reform. Both parties know they're now fishing in the same small barrel, as was clear from 2019's de-facto pact between the Tories and the company's former trading name, "The Brexit Party".
 
It’s all very well celebrating fractured votes and the alleged end of the Tories but it’s important to remember that it’s real people voting for Reform and the task is not to look at the right and think it’s harmless because it’s fragmented. It’s still a whole bunch of right wing people with a wide range of odd, disturbing and often dangerous views. The more fractured they are the more likely people are to find a variant which works for them. There is no world in which that is a good thing.

Equally, it’s very easy to forget that we were told very clearly that the Tories buying into austerity were doing so on the understanding that it would be a huge shrinking of government but would likely keep them out of power for at least a generation. That has to be the least accurate political forecast in my lifetime and a clear portent of what came next i.e. a party in government for whom even law breaking wasn’t a deal breaker.
 
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What we are looking at is not the demise of the Tories, but the demise of our system of government and a loyal opposition. They are no longer distinct, but much the same. They do not represent the differing views of an electorate, they represent the views of a minority elite.

We should see any divisions between Labour and Tory in the same light as internal party divisions that for the most part are papered over when needs must.
 
The Tory party has been a Weekend at Bernie’s tribute act for around a decade, propped up by electoral stunts, the press and the broader establishment, including the Labour right. They have collapsed altogether now only because the media-politics class, and especially the press, decided to give Starmer’s mob a go, and stopped propping them up.

But once Labour are in Murdoch and co will need a means of disciplining them. Pretty clear that the plan is to relaunch the Tories as a full fat far right party, incorporating Reform, ukip remnants etc., which can pull Labour further to the right in opposition and eventually replace them when they fail to live up to already low expectations.

It’s been clear for a while now that about 30% of the British electorate are open to very right wing politics. I’d expect that proportion to grow over the course of the next government, in response to Labour’s refusal to address systemic issues.

Also worth bearing in mind that the far right are not going to get any pushback from the establishment: Labour will be very happy to have a far right opposition because that’s the only thing that makes their own politics palatable (the lesser evil routine). They’ll make a show of compromising with them and will adopt more and more of their policies.

So I’m with Mike, things are set to get worse. Only hope is that a significant amount of people withdraw their support from *both* of the main parties. Signs of that happening in the recent local elections so who knows.
 
Labour won't have anyone to blame but themselves if they lose a load of votes to the far right. Here's a thought, maybe fix some of the shit turning people to far right wing nuts in the first place, rather than ringing their hands claiming there's no money and just being the continuation party.

Strong local independents are gaining a lot of ground on both sides of the coin, the only thing that is going to happen is we're going to end up with an even more fragmented system.
 
KrisW said:
I would expect that Reform will now use their vote share to try to arrange some kind of pact with the Tories. If Reform stands in every constituency, the Tories will barely get a seat, but then neither will Reform. Both parties know they're now fishing in the same small barrel, as was clear from 2019's de-facto pact between the Tories and the company's former trading name, "The Brexit Party".
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One tactic might be to ask Farage to sit in the HoL as a Tory peer. I think the price would be at least £400k
 
Jezzer said:
I was under the impression that the gammons who vote for Reform do so because the Conservatives aren’t right wing enough..?
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Exactly that. Apparently, Cons are lefties because they are doing nothing about the small boats and are putting them all in hotels, with free money.
 
KrisW said:
In a first-past-the-post election, an average vote share of 30% translates to electoral annihilation. 30.1% was what the Conservatives polled in 1997...

Polling in London had Khan at 40-45% and Hall at around 30% pretty much all along. On the final count, Khan took 43.8% of votes, and Hall got 32.7% - it's not a landslide by any means, but there's only one seat for Mayor... (Anyone surprised at that Tory vote should look at a borough map: the Stockbroker Belt reaches into the boundaries of London, and those outer suburbs are as blue as blue can be when it comes to voting).

I think that people predicting damage to Labour over its stance on Gaza were mischaracterising the party's position on the conflict as being even more pro-Israel than it actually is, forgetting the existence of tactical voting, and also making an assumption that "Muslims" are a monolithic group that votes entirely on religious lines...
Click to expand...
165 seats is an unusual definition of annihilation. They weren't annihilated then and they won't be now. Significantly diminished will suffice, however.
 
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