Local Elections 2023

[HighPeakFox]

3 minutes ago, deep blue said:

The sentiment is right on the ball, but the practicality of it is different to manage.  When the SDP were going strong and they had an arrangement with the Liberal Party they still didn't manage the breakthrough in spite of getting a substantial proportion of the national vote. The figures were:

   Conservative               46% -> 362 seats

   Labour                      26.8% -> 209 seats

   SDP/Lib Alliance   26.4%  -> 13 seats

 

The only change that has a hope of fixing our broken, unrepresentative political system is proportional representation - but how can that be achieved?

They need to co-operate, seat by seat.

[deep blue]

12 hours ago, HighPeakFox said:

They need to co-operate, seat by seat.

But that was done in the 83 election I referenced, with the results I pinpointed.

[Brizzle Fox]

On 06/05/2023 at 09:23, Finnegan said:

It's a worse result for the Tories than it is a good result for Labour. 

 

Massive gains for the Greens and Lib Dems show a lot of people still don't actually want to vote Labour either. 

 

Will definitely be an interesting GE. Tories on course to take a hammering but don't think it'll be a clear cut Labour landslide without a significant improvement in public perception. 

I think this a good analysis. Key really is that no way will the Tories win a majority at the next GE. Starmer will be the PM, its just a question as to whether as part of a single party government or as part of a coalition, and this is still not clear.

[Bilo]

The local elections are disastrously bad for the Tories, and that alone points to Starmer getting the keys to Number 10 at the next General Election unless something genuinely seismic and unexpected happens. 

 

The question now is whether this translates to the kind of majority he'd want. A superficial analysis says he'll lead the largest party in Parliament, but some way short of an overall majority. If we say that the results at the GE will mirror these, Labour will get 298 seats. That's unlikely to happen for a number of reasons.

 

Firstly, the turnout at General Elections will be much higher than in these locals. That's a worry for the Tories, because their voters are exceptionally committed and loyal while supporters of other parties tend to save it for the GE. Long story short, Tories always vote Tory and they tend to vote in all elections where a Tory is standing. If they aren't bothering or full on defecting, that leaves Sunak dependent on floating voters. I can't envisage a single reason why floating voters would pick Tory. 

 

Secondly, London, Wales and Scotland did not vote. London and Wales are real strengths for Labour and, with the SNP lurching from one bad headline to the next, there's an opening for Labour to recover in Scotland too. London, Wales and Scotland combined count for around 170 seats in Parliament, and Labour will fancy their chances in over 100 of them at least as the polling is very positive in all three and pretty horrendous for the Tories.

 

Lastly, we have to look at it from a psephelogical perspective. People don't vote the same way in General Elections as they do in locals. That's bad news for the Greens and Lib Dems as the people who've voted for them now are likely to engage in tactical voting for what they regard as the lesser of the two evils at election time. Put bluntly, the Lib Dems aren't going to get 20% at a General Election any more than the Greens will make nationwide gains.

 

In a GE, Green voters may just hold their nose and vote Labour, while Lib Dems are slightly harder to predict. However, it seems unlikely that the latter will be as put off by Starmer as they were by his predecessor and this could wreak havoc for the Tories in South East and South West seats. 

 

The problem for the Tories is that they've thrown the kitchen sink at keeping the Red Wall blue and seem to have abandoned too much of their core vote in so doing. 

 

All this being said, the swing Labour need to form a majority of 1 would still need to be historic and much of their poll lead will dissipate in the heat of a campaign once the MSM gets behind the Tories as it always does. I do think Starmer will make mincemeat of Sunak in televised debates from what I've seen at PMQs, and we know how that medium was a real boon for Nick Clegg in 2010. There's little doubt that actual enthusiasm for the Tories is now dead and all but their most loyal supporters and fanatical Brexiters want them gone, but we don't yet know if that translates into enthusiasm for the alternative. 

 

Gun to the head right now, I'd say Labour with a small majority of around about 10-20 and needing the Lib Dems for controversial votes. The price for that might be openness to electoral reform.

 

 

 

 

[TJQuik]

23 hours ago, Lako42 said:

They are

Well I suppose they do have a different name and different coloured ties.

[Lako42]

24 minutes ago, TJQuik said:

Well I suppose they do have a different name and different coloured ties.

It's just a lazy attitude. 

 

Sums the masses of this country up. 

[TJQuik]

46 minutes ago, Lako42 said:

It's just a lazy attitude. 

 

Sums the masses of this country up. 

I would say it's lazy to create a narrative that the likes of Starmer are meaningfully different from Tories and if we vote for them the trajectory of the country will meaningfully change.

 

In the case of the Labour Leicester Council they've been absolutely hopeless at opposing the Tories and they have been found especially corrupt in their relationship with their own members.

Edited 7 May 2023 by TJQuik

[Lako42]

14 minutes ago, TJQuik said:

I would say it's lazy to create a narrative that the likes of Starmer are meaningfully different from Tories and if we vote for them the trajectory of the country will meaningfully change.

 

In the case of the Labour Leicester Council they've been absolutely hopeless at opposing the Tories and they have been found especially corrupt in their relationship with their own members.

And yet they've been re-elected because people have lazy attitudes towards voting....

[HighPeakFox]

4 hours ago, deep blue said:

But that was done in the 83 election I referenced, with the results I pinpointed.

They got the right proportions to have a 'majority', but they didn't co-operate who to stand and not stand, and where.

[Daggers]

2021:

JRM, tasked with herding voter ID through the Commons, told MPs: “It is important that elections are fair and proper. (Debbonaire) mentioned we don’t have to prove who we are when voting in the division lobbies in normal circumstances but she’s forgetting that we’re not allowed to wear overcoats in the division lobbies just in case we send somebody through to vote in our place or indeed – as Mr Speaker helpfully says – hats. So therefore there are requirements in this place to prevent impersonation.”

 

2023:

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, has described the requirement for people to need photo ID to be allowed to vote as “gerrymandering”.

 

"Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well."

 

 

[leicsmac]

25 minutes ago, Daggers said:

2021:

JRM, tasked with herding voter ID through the Commons, told MPs: “It is important that elections are fair and proper. (Debbonaire) mentioned we don’t have to prove who we are when voting in the division lobbies in normal circumstances but she’s forgetting that we’re not allowed to wear overcoats in the division lobbies just in case we send somebody through to vote in our place or indeed – as Mr Speaker helpfully says – hats. So therefore there are requirements in this place to prevent impersonation.”

 

2023:

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, has described the requirement for people to need photo ID to be allowed to vote as “gerrymandering”.

 

"Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well."

 

 

[Parafox]

6 hours ago, Daggers said:

2021:

JRM, tasked with herding voter ID through the Commons, told MPs: “It is important that elections are fair and proper. (Debbonaire) mentioned we don’t have to prove who we are when voting in the division lobbies in normal circumstances but she’s forgetting that we’re not allowed to wear overcoats in the division lobbies just in case we send somebody through to vote in our place or indeed – as Mr Speaker helpfully says – hats. So therefore there are requirements in this place to prevent impersonation.”

 

2023:

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, has described the requirement for people to need photo ID to be allowed to vote as “gerrymandering”.

 

"Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well."

 

 

 

Serves the fvckers right.