Sampson

I don’t know enough about French politics, but Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart on the latest The Rest is Politics episode were arguing Macron isn’t a centrist in terms of trying to find middle ground, but a centrist in terms of more of a radical who espouses both radical left and radical right opinions and he’s been trying to play the hard left and hard right against each other by one moment allegedly saying something the hard left like and hard right hate like “France’s crimes in Algeria were abhorrent and we need to apologise for them” and then the next moment allegedly saying something like “immigration is awful” etc. something the hard right love but the hard left hate And that it’s massively backfired as a tactic and only given mainstream credence to those opinions and why would you vote for someone who agrees with half of these things, when you can vote for the real thing? Now these previously extremist opinions have been made by the supposed centrist establishment? Sunak has made a lot of the same mistakes in this campaign I think - gone on about immigration and the Rwanda scheme, which has only helped Reform and hindered the Tories, because he’s normalising the opinion into mainstream politics, but he’s never going to beat Farage on those kind of issues, so it only causes voters to jump from Tory to Reform.

Yeh but their traditional Conservative Party has basically withered away in France which is the point. I’m expecting right wing younger people are probably much more likely to vote reform than Tories. Just feels like the Tories have become a party trying to only appeal to the baby boomers and that gen x, millennials and gen z just won’t vote for them (i think a lot of it is due to the housing market being perceived to have been hoovered up and had the ladder pulled up to the treehouse by the baby boomers) and find them damaged goods. Which is obviously disastrous for the Tories as their voter base dies out, they’ve have to completely redesign themselves and likely take a long time to win those generations round.

I’m very interested in the demographic data following the election. The country has become so polarised by age since the 2016 referendum, in a way it never has before, that I’m wondering if the Tories have passed the point of no return.

In the Tory parties final hours governing this country perhaps ever let’s remember one thing; There was one man who brutalised this country and lay its public services to waste with years of brutal austerity leading to excess deaths of 600,00+ British people when history has shown countries who continued with Gordon Brown’s Keynesian QE methods fared historically better and caused less pain and suffering. There was one man who created a culture of division and took billions of out the countries economy with a referendum on a minor party issue which all polls showed the uk weren’t particularly interested in and was way down the list as the 5th or 6th issue at the 2015 election according to pollsters. Even against the strong advice of his chancellor and deputy PM. There was one man who cowardly resigned and went off into the sunset leaving the vacuum behind for the hard right and populists to purge the moderates from the Tory party and grapple control of it. In all the dismay over Truss and Boris, history should remember the atrocious legacy that David Cameron (and George Osborne) has had on this country and especially the appalling brutality of austerity

Yeh just seen that as well, the biggest poll so far of the election and genuine chance the LibDems form the opposition.

The main thing I think about Trump getting in is that it’s likely bye bye Ukraine, especially with the EU also lurching to the hard right. Remember those optimistic days when Putin first invaded and we also said “he underestimated the west wanting to back Ukraine and he doesn’t want a long drawn out war”? Hope I’m wrong but I feel like this winter could be a real struggle for Ukraine. I feel for those in other bordering countries who are probably frightened as **** Putin is going to recuperate then continue too.

Ok fair enough my guess is 18% then, which will be similar to Reform and probably around 4-8% above Lib Dems. Overall I’d probably guess - Labour 36% Conservatives 18% Reform 17% Lib Dems 13%

I think some people are in for quite a shock come Thursday if they still think Tories are getting 30% of the vote. I would be very surprised if the Tory share is anywhere near 30%. Most polls put it somewhere between 16-22% with that largely only being because of the over 65s, polls have shown Tories are barely scraping 10% of the vote in under 50s. Again, no one has seen election figures like this in their lifetime and it’s not just in the UK - it’s all over Europe. Formerly fringe parties are making huge gains and traditional parties which have been popular since the industrialised era are collapsing. I don’t think you can rely on “the silent majority” anymore, demographics have changed, new generations are voting and social media has greatly changed how people get their news and information and well, democracy is a lot more unstable than it was in 2015.

The thing is, it doesn’t cut through. Everyone feels worse off in their pocket than they did 15 years ago, everyone feels the hatred and nastiness that’s festered in society, everyone feels the negative energy in the country, people aren’t fools, they feel their lives worse off under the Tories.

Huh? I’m talking about representation of 2024 nor 2019, people have been saying “it won’t be as bad as predicted” for months bur the polls consistently show the Tories getting ridiculously small vote shares and that below the under 65 age brackets, people voteshare towards Tory is barely into double digits. It isn’t budging. People need to realise traditional voting patterns and traditional adages about how the country vote and the “silent minority of Tory voters” no longer apply. The political landscape has changed since 2016

All the polls suggest Reform vote will be comfortably less than 20% and will be less then the Tories. There’s no way it will be close to 30%. No poll has predicted they’ll get more than 7 seats yet either. Lib Dem’s and SNP will have many times more seats than them. Reform will likely be the 5th-7th biggest party in terms of seats depending on the Greens, local Welsh and N. Irish parties

I think a big problem with the current Labour campaign is they are sticking to the old adage “you win from the centre” and “Britain is a small c conservative country” But tbh since 2016, I don’t think you can rely on those things anymore, it’s clear that we are operating in very different times now, social media and demographic changes have torn down the status quo and you can’t rely on these old adages anymore. Tories purged the moderates from their party and became a hard right party and the only reason they’re losing is because Farage has split the vote. Corbyn did also spark a left wing movement for a while in 2017 which probably also will be resurrected in the future. Macron did the same in France and tried to hold onto this adage however it he pandered to the hard right too much to the point at which he’s now just seen as a lighter version of it.

Apart from the Conservatives it seems fairly representative, but the Conservative vote has also completely collapsed amongst the under 65s and I’d imagine the demographics here are more skewed with a less proportionate amount of older 65s

To me, it’s just neoliberalism unravelling, which is also a major theme in the interwar years back when it used to be called classic liberalism. This time it hurts more because it’s fundamentally incompatible with population ageing but the reality is states in all western countries just can’t afford the burden of pension and healthcare populations where most people are over 55 and where people aren’t having enough children to add to the workforce.

I also share that concern, my main counteract would be polls show how deeply unpopular Brexit is with under 35s, I think to the point where around 80% of under 35s oppose it and want to rejoin the EU in polls and Farage and Reform at least will always be tarnished with that brush amongst the younger generations. I’m not 100% convinced on the demographics argument though, but I stick to it because it gives me crumbs of comfort.

I do understand your concerns @The Doctor I am a bit concerned Starmer is just another Macron. I.e. a former left wing politician who moved to the centre-right and killed his ideas on worker rights to get power under the guise of “keep the far right out” but then throughout his reign just moved the ovartan window further and further right until the far right get power anyway. I’m also extremely cynical of this “look what Starmer said 4 years ago” line. I was quite excited by Starmer when he came in. I thought he’d improve worker rights, move us back towards the eu and change the voting system but he’s abandoned all that The one saving grace for me, is that the far right score well with the young in France and at least until now score well with the old in the UK, so demographics suggest their support will actually shrink in 5-10 years time. Largely because I think they’re seen as one of the main cultivators for Brexit in the UK which all polls show is deeply unpopular with under 40s, as many younger people feel like their opportunities have been robbed from them by the old because of.

On that note. Noticed reading in the French election today that they have a set number of seats for Brits who live abroad. I know we have a 17th century voting system but it seems bizarre to me we don’t have that. Having to vote in a constituency you haven’t lived for years seems odd. Not to mention the issues which are more important to Brits living abroad are naturally going to be different to those of people living in the UK, it makes sense to give them their own seats proportional to the number of people on the overseas voting register.

It was to do with the voting style referendum not the EU referendum. 15 years seems an arbitrarily long time for a culture not to change course. We don’t keep the same party in power because well people voted for it 15 years ago when the world looked very different. If polls show public opinion changes on any issue though why wait for 15 years?

13 years isn’t a short space of time at all. The demographics of the voting people's as well as popular opinion, culture and technology changes dramatically in that time. We change laws and governments in way less time than that all the time, as public opinion changes, governments should change choice too. Giving a vote only once in a blue moon doesn’t sound very democratic to me. I remember polls showing public opinion completely changed from being against to overwhelming for on same sex marriage within the space of like 3 or 4 years during the late 00’s for example.

Exactly. Several of the main parties advocate for PR and refusing to vote for it isn’t going to cause change. People should have the right not to vote, but refusing to vote because you want the system to change strikes me as incredibly counter-intuitive. You don’t have to vote Labour or Tory and even if the smaller party you vote for doesn’t get seats the more a party gets votes, the more they influence policy and change the discussions of the public forum.

I’m confused about your utopia. How exactly do we turn everyone into AI and computer programming specialists which probably requires everyone to have a pHD in mathematics? All that reads like to me is a country where we have mass unemployment and so the burden on the state becomes even more unsustainable as only a few have the skills needed to works.

Uhhh… what? Are we even having the same conversation. How does that help with population ageing? That just reduces the number of jobs and income from taxes even more.

For 2-3 generations absolutely. Immigration is the medium term solution, no question. The problem is that within 2-3 generations immigrants adapt to the low birth rates of their new nation and as many developing nations gets richer the pull of economic emigration goes down. You’d kind of need to keep countries, especially African countries poor to keep the steady stream of immigration to keep it being the long term solution and that’s kind of immoral. Kurgestadt did a good video on population ageing btw for people who want an understandable overview about why it’s one of the 2 biggest issues humanity face this century along with climate change Also one reason why our current 2 child benefit cap is so baffling and counter intuitive when we need to be trying to get people to have more than 2 children.

Reality is I think you’d be just moving a hell of a lot of people from one benefit to another from their pension to job seekers or disability benefits. That’s why it’s such a difficult issue.

Someone should do the meme to Lionel Hutz’ business card