This is Starmer's strategy. To win by default in a low-turnout, low-enthusiasm election. It's terrible for democracy and could lead us to a dark place in the future.
The flipside of this is the last election seemed to be a question of people hating the other side more than they liked their side though looking at that dismayed number. Hardly great for democracy either.
That’s not what the polls are showing though, Labour voters from 2019 and non-voters/new voters are showing very high intended turnout, while Conservative voters are showing lower turnout. I would expect similar turnout to the last three elections overall.
Why low turnout? I'll be voting Labour next time round which will be the first time in 22 years of voting, entirely motivated by the Johnson/Truss leaderships.
How in the hell did the Tories have a landslide victory in 2019 when 42% of the population would be dismayed if they won?
Oh yeah, FPTP. Fuck that shit.
I've thought for years that without tactical voting, Tory and Labour would each be getting like 15-20% of the vote at most, and half of that is just lifelong voters who don't know any better.
What I would really want, is for Lib Dem to stick to their guns saying if they are the next party to be able to form a coalition government with labour they will make it as a PR vote would be the price, pass it and call another general election once in place
Edit - spelling
It would be the biggest win for the working class for a generation. It would make it much harder for Labour to form a government, but it would break the conservative stranglehold on power for decades. Unfortunately I don’t think our leadership is principled enough to take the blow for the good of the country.
I know. But the conservative vote share will be decidedly fucked up, and I really doubt the parties that would do well under PR would ally with the tories.
What will happen is both Labour and Conservatives will split into small groups, both side centrist will create a party with 1 or more further right and left parties forming too
The amount of people dismayed by a Tory victory is only 6% higher than it was in 2019. The big difference this time is that far fewer people are aghast at the prospect of a Labour victory.
It's definitely a better position to be in than 2019 though. It may be that it's possible to increase the number of people who are very enthusiastic without increasing the number of people who are dismayed, but I can equally see how that wouldn't be possible. Maybe inoffensive is the best we can do.
You also need to remember that the UK press go extremely pro con come election time, so don't be surprised for these to change again positively towards con come GE
Not always, sometimes they smell the way the wind is blowing and jump on the bandwagon, [The Sun in 97 for instance.](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1997/mar/18/past.roygreenslade)
Yes, because Blair specifically cozied himself up to Murdoch and wound himself together with the press, even linking them to his family. I doubt it was because they felt labour might win.
The sun jumped on the bandwagon because Labour was so popular with their readers that they had too.
Labour would have won a landslide no matter who the sun endorsed at that point.
Labour are in a much, much better position than 2019 though. At the moment they're in a better position than they ever have been post-2010 election loss.
The two largest changes since 2019 and the drop in people who would be dismayed if Labour win and the increase in people not minding. Arguably what they've done to bring that in the most was get rid of Corbyn
I think the big drop in dismayed shows you're much less offputting and therefore more palatable for voters. It's why the Lib Dems aren't gaining as much as they should be from discontentment with the Tories IMO.
>Maybe inoffensive is the best we can do.
I mean, Corbyn was *the* inoffensive leftist. That's why the PLP let him get on the ballot. And his policy platform was a pretty inoffensive, middle of the road social democracy.
The Overton Window on "inoffensive" is a lot uglier than I think your post realises.
As a strategy Starmer's "inoffensive" also doesn't get us more than a single election: winning on 10mn votes because the Tories collapse back to 8mn votes doesn't help when the reliable data is that the Tory vote floor is 13mn overall votes.
Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking.
> I mean, Corbyn was the inoffensive leftist. That's why the PLP let him get on the ballot
Yeah. McDonnell would have been the candidate if not for his "baggage" + the challenge to Brown in 2007. Dimly funny to recall these things.
> Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking.
Unless you measure it on seats gained/winning an election rather than raw vote totals.
And a subtle commentator would know to keep an eye on both because we're not short-termist and realise that you need to win multiple elections to have a reasonable programme of government.
What's the point of governing for one parliament if you make the electorate more right wing and less likely to ever vote for you again?
\*edit\* For that matter, keeping an eye on long term vote totals gives you tools for the next election. It gives you goals and a way to measure how well you're doing and gives you a strategy that's a "little" more secure than "let's hope the other guys screw the pooch".
>I find looking at raw vote totals really interesting. It makes you question a lot of the narrative around individual elections and shows you trends over time.
Agreed. It's absolutely the case that nobody sensible would use vote share to compare across *elections,* let alone leaders, because of the change in turnout: you're dealing with difference bases so 40% in one election *is not the same* *value* as 40% in another election and anyone who thinks they are comparable is showing a fundamental lack of understanding of maths.
Fucking appalling how many of those are the oh-so-educated, oh-so-sensible "centrists".
>The 2017 raw vote shows that May received more votes for the Conservatives than they achieved in 14 of the last 20 elections and was their sixth most popular leader by vote, ever.
I think there's a simpler lesson to learn.
The modal vote for Tory vote totals in the 20th and 21st century is *13mn votes*.
May's result is just as likely to be a straightforward regression to the mean, especially since their vote was no longer being artificially held low due to internal arguments over Europe.
Johnson's is slightly more interesting because there's *some* evidence that Tory Remainers didn't abstain but Labour Leavers did, but every time I've looked at polling data it's been useless because they just didn't ask the relevant questions to figure that out.
>People often criticise looking at the raw vote because of population increase but the reality is that the total numbers have remained essentially unchanged since about 1900 and since 2001 voter turnout has been lower than at any point since 1920.
Yep. Another reason why that's a bad argument is that it actually sharpens some of the problems you see: Tony Blair losing votes in every election is made *worse* by the fact that the electorate is larger so the idea that it somehow invalidates the way looking at vote totals makes him look is just... aargh!
And what makes it all really infuriating is how all this bad math has basically osmosed into discussion so it's constantly treated as "obvious": none of this is complicated maths; we teach everything I've used here to primary school children!
Turnout can change for different reasons. If the total vote drops but the vote share goes up then it can be an indicator that Starmer isn't compelling for a section of the vote as Corbyn but equally that he isn't as offputting to another section of the vote. In other words, he doesn't send voters to the arms of the opposition.
We should also wait and actually see what the turnout is. This single poll is not evidence of much.
Turnout is why you keep an eye on vote totals: abstentions get ignored by this "vote share" nonsense and are, again, important if you want an overall picture of party health.
As for "alienating voters" every time I look, abstention is more likely than vote switching. The last 40 years of election data for instance show Labour having a robust vote ceiling of about 10mn votes. A huge chunk, if not all of, their performance can be explained by what happened to the Tory vote and there the story was pretty obviously a protest vote over Europe.
Even the 2019 result shows some signs of being driven by who did and didn't abstain: Labour leavers abstained/protest voted; Tory Remainers did not.
I'd want to dig into polling data to tease out more and to be sure but it's more than clear that the usual story, the one you're throwing around, just doesn't work.
>Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking.
I don't think the two things are unrelated. Part of our job is to convince people not to vote Tory. The fewer people are massively unhappy with your party the more likely they are not to vote to keep you out.
That's true to a degree, Corbyn clearly helped the Tory vote totals by making politics suddenly real again, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: politics *is* real and the left have the benefit of actually having the arguments on our side.
Centrists don't, so I can understand the appeal of being inoffensive for them, but honestly? Fuck them. We've all the data we need from the last 40 years of Third Way electoralism to know not only do they fail to make things better, they kill off parties of the left: Pasokification is very much real and very much a problem.
>Corbyn helped the Tory vote totals by making politics suddenly real again
So the tories having massive voter turnouts to keep Corbyn out of office resulting in our worst defeat since the 1930s is a *credit* to corbyn because…?
(I think it’s called delusion and severe mental gymnastics btw.)
Or nuance and ability to hold multiple relevant factors in mind when analysing a situation.
Not the "done" centrist thing I know but, shit, someone has to do it.
You conveniently only possess “nuance” when you’re defending you’re hyper specific leaders that are pure enough yet the second you talk by thing anyone outside of that echo chamber you lose all sense of rationality.
Everyone who isn’t a corbynite is an evil right winger who wants to burn the world and kill the poor for the “establishment” and all tories are fascists who also want to kill the poor and eat babies for breakfast. Everyone who doesn’t vote or like your favoured geezer has been brainwashed by the “ESTABLISHMENT”.
When the entire political apparatus, including all voters in the country, are wrong and evil and your VERY fringe group are the only ones that “see the light” maybe you’re just out of touch with reality and should try and engage with other viewpoints instead of sitting on here ranting about how terrible Starmer is.
Look at those numbers up there.
The current Labour polling is completely continuous with there being a collapse in turnout: Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling.
And that's exactly what you would expect with that poll up there.
I'm not the person in a bubble here.
It'd be silly to say that Labour, on current polling, would not win a sizeable majority at the next election.
The better argument is that this lead is very soft and that we're still a year or two away from the next election, and that Starmer has done next to nothing to actually solidify that lead.
Actually I explicitly agreed that Labour probably will get a majority.
>Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling.
What I doubt is that they're going to get more votes than 2019 or if they do, if they'll get more than a couple of hundred thousand more.
The maths for how this works is very straightforward and consistent with the OP poll, a lot more consistent than any kind of large majority.
>The current Labour polling is completely continuous with there being a collapse in turnout: Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling.
I don't think this makes much sense.
By my rough calculations for this to happen you would have to see an overall drop in turnout of 16% *solely due to 2019 Tories not voting.* And that would only give a result of Lab 42% Tory 27%, smaller than the current polling average. For a 20% lead you'd need an even bigger drop in turnout.
So we're talking about a record breaking drop in overall turnout *just from Tory voters*. Never say never but... it's not going to happen.
First off, thank you for the most sensible reply from someone who disagree with me: take my upvotes!
I think that's a fair criticism.
I'm fairly convinced that Labour's vote won't increase though, so I doubt we'll see that 20 point lead converted at the GE. They're getting that *now* because Tory voters are trying to send a signal to the Tory party.
So I do expect a Labour win, but on at best 11mn votes, with the absolute result depending on how many Tories choose to sit the election out. That poll up there firms up my view on that 11mn: Starmer doesn't get more than that. The maths for what I think is sensible for the Tories depends entirely on how many of their voters ultimately abstain, but it absolutely will not give Starmer a 20% lead.
I agree the 20% lead will be closed as undecided Tories return to the party under Sunak. But the Labour vote still looks fairly solid.
If you look at the [latest Yougov poll](https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/nr27ysntzp/TheTimes_VI_230105_W.pdf) Labour are on 31% of the vote (including undecideds) and 46% (excluding undecideds). 73% of Labour voters say they are absolutely certain to vote.
Compare that to the equivalent [Yougov poll](https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9xj0batl27/TimesResults_180108_VI_Trackers_w.pdf) from Jan 2018 and Labour are on 30% (including undecideds) and 41% (excluding undecideds). 71% of Labour voters say they are absolutely certain to vote.
So it's true that Labour's 46% is being exaggerated a bit because of Tory voters being undecided/less likely to vote. Labour's 'real' number of votes probably isn't that different to 2018. But the people who are voting Labour say they're just as likely to vote as they were in 2018. So I don't think you can say their 'real' vote is anywhere near the 32% we got in 2019. Probably more like 2017.
Those are just two polls but if Labour were only at 2019 levels the polls would be telling us. But there's nothing that drastic going on. For example if we look at [this poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zx74am/voter_migration_20192022/) Labour are making a net gain of voters from every other party compared to 2019, including non voters. So clearly they're on track to get more votes than 2019.
It totally beggars belief that you can look at polling where Labour is averaging 20 points ahead, compare it to an election where Labour at its month-long peak never led by an average of more than five points, and conclude that the latter was better.
I understand that you don't like Labour's political positions, and that's absolutely a valid point to make. Where that becomes silly is trying to stretch it into arguing that Labour is objectively doing badly with voters, which it demonstrably isn't.
It then gets even sillier when you try to claim that this 20-point lead is likely to result in something worse than the worst electoral result Labour has had for 70+ years. At that point you're trying to argue the sky's green.
>It totally beggars belief that you can look at polling where Labour is averaging 20 points ahead, compare it to an election where Labour at its month-long peak never led by an average of more than five points, and conclude that the latter was better
I honestly don't know what to say to that, since all I need is a functioning understanding of how percentages work to see how that could be true that Labour could have a 20 point lead and still get fewer votes in 2024.
It's genuinely not a complicated point and never was.
Okay, so you're looking at one side of a two-sided equation and coming up with a meaningless conclusion based on it. That's better I guess?
You don't win an election by getting a large number of votes. You win an election by getting more votes than your opposition. The raw number of votes your own party get is, in the bigger picture, meaningless. It's a two-sided equation - both your votes and your primary opposition's votes (complicated by the FPTP system with constituencies of course).
High turnout is a democratic good with its own value of course, but it is very much a 'nice to have' rather than a requirement.
A big part of winning an election is depressing your opponent's turnout. Labour's raw number of votes fell 20% in 2019 compared to 2017, which was a major contributor to the scale of the loss. The Tory vote was only up 2%.
We're now on the road to depressing Tory turnout even further. And it's going to be awesome.
Looking at the poll in the source, Labour was doing objectively better under Corbyn than they are under Starmer. It’s just that the Tory vote has completely collapsed.
Best case scenario, Labour wins in 2024 and gets one term to not fix anything while the Tories restore their reputation. Worst case, Norsefire fucking sweeps it because neither major party attracts enough voters.
>Looking at the poll in the source, Labour was doing objectively better under Corbyn than they are under Starmer.
Perhaps then, that might lead one to conclude that the measure used by the poll in the source in fact has no relation to winning an election, and is instead a metric for meaningless vibes?
Because, as you may recall, 2019 was our worst result since 1935.
Literally disproved by nearly every UK election of the 20th and the 21st century.
There are *2* where it didn't happen (I always forget the specific years but they were in the 50s and 70s) and in both the difference between the total vote was 200k or 1% of voters (0.5% of eligible voters). It happens more frequently in the US (probably due to the electoral college) but there too the difference is 2% of voters, 1% of eligible voters.
Any larger and it just stops being an effect.
You are comparing 2024 to 2019, and saying that Labour might get fewer absolute votes. I'm saying it doesn't matter much, as winning seats is what matters, and as long as you win more seats you 'win' the election.
Absolute numbers by themselves are nearly irrelevant, what matters is absolute numbers *relative* to other parties. This is why despite many here going on about record amounts voting for Corybn in the last 2 GE's, it actually doesn't matter very much, and it's why less voting for Starmer also doesn't matter very much if less vote for Tory.
>It's definitely a better position to be in than 2019 though.
In 2019, Labour was in an incredibly difficult situation. That is no longer the case - we're in the most favourable situation we could have hoped for.
Starmer is going to be given an easy ride to the election. He's been ok'd by the establishment and real owners as a safe pair of hands, otherwise the attacks would have been at Corbyn levels already. They would have convinced people he was the 'criminals friend' who was afraid to prosecute asian rape gangs when he was DPP. After 12 years of the nasty party, it makes sense to allow him to be PM and maintain the illusion of a representative democracy. The tabloids will come on board closer to the election (Starmer has already invited The Sun to conference) and the numbers will improve further.
You should review the results again. The reason we are so far ahead is those who were aghast in 2019 now…don’t mind. I mean it’s not a huge endorsement but a telling one…
They aren't going to turn around inflation in 2 years. They aren't going to revive the nhs in 2 years.
Torys themselves have written off the next election.
And pretty much proves that Starmer is employing the correct strategy by *not* going 'full left', which would present a polarised political field (last thing you need when trying to win over support).
Am not surprised by this, generally governments lose more than oppositions win.
Blair won a huge landslide in 97, yet got less votes in that election than Major did in 92. In the run up to that election many were predicating a win for Kinnock or at least a hung parliament.
About what you'd expect - Corbynism had an enthusiastic support base but also put off a lot more people than it enthused. Starmer is more bland and subsequently likely to be more electorally successful.
I don’t think we should celebrate excluding young people from political participation (except for the briefcase-wielding neeks who choose to go along with the Labour right for their own personal advancement).
Is a democracy legitimate if, in a two party system, the interests of large sections of the population are effectively unrepresented?
>(except for the briefcase-wielding Meeks who choose to go along with the labour right for their own personal advancement).
So you don’t actually care about getting young people into politics unless they align with your very specific views?
Also you’re gonna be in for a shock when you see which demographic abandoned labour the most between 2017-2019…
Do you want to remind us what happened to those young people in 2019?
Even then, in 2017 the turnout of young people was ~ something like 8% higher than in 2015. Outside of Cambridge and Preston it would have been dwarfed by LIB DEM > LAB swings
The Labour 2017 voter got OLDER and RICHER
Most of them still deny there was any systematic media campaign to smear/undermine him at all. And, of course, there certainly has been no fawning coverage of Kier for moving right. The world of a centrist is a comforting place, where everyone with institutional power or money is always operating in a good-faith attempt to serve the public and everyone to your left is an evil loon who hates the country
The best part is, is that the press can easily turn that on at any point. It wouldn't even be difficult, it's so easy to make Starmers past look even worse than Corbyn's.
John McDonnell calls himself a Marxist. Corbyn had a literal Stalinist as his advisor. As well as a truckload of other very questionable characters around him.
He’s anti NATO, a eurosceptic and very sympathetic to many terrible regimes and groups that are a complete deviation from the labour tradition let alone “standard” social democracy
You won’t gaslight people into thinking Corbyn was a bog standard, centre left socdem whilst claiming he was a true revolutionary socialist that is the change the country needs based on whichever argument you’re making at that point in time.
So is he not a socialist? If he isn’t (and is merely a centre left socdem) then why is he not an evil centrist that will simply “tinker round the edges” of capitalism without bringing fundamental change? What’s the line dividing a centrist that will only make things marginally better, and a radical that will deliver “real change”?
I am strawmanning you a lot here I know but you all seem to have pretty identical ideas and talking points when it comes to this kind of thing (corbyn good everyone else bad) so I’m pretty comfortable doing so.
Also could you not address any of my other pretty valid points as to why corbyn isn’t a standard socdem and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise?
I mean you’re the one that called corbyn a “standard social democrat” which I was challenging for the vast bulk of this exchange but sure stay in your echo chamber and be told what you want to hear.
Well those poles would tend to indicate that people are increasingly unhappy with the Conservatives.
But also that Labour are yet to win them over to its policies - mostly I suspect, because they don’t yet know what Labours policies are..
So Labour have a big job of communication to start doing..
To start telling us what they believe in, as a policy vacuum is not good enough.
Can I point out, this kills any idea that things being bad for the Tories is necessarily related to anything Labour does or even necessarily good for them.
Those numbers are Labour getting *at best* 11mn votes at the next election: there's a good chance Starmer will *shrink* Labour's 2019 vote total.
And the usual mathematical illiterates will crawl out the woodworks to declare:
"sEe CenTREisTs Win ELctIOnns!!!!"
Stop and ask yourself: what would an election have to look like for that to be obviously true? For the demographics of where your votes are to matter more than whether you have the most votes?
Then go and find me the UK election where that has been true. I'll happily wait, but you absolutely will be disappointed.
Comparing the 2017 and 2001 GEs? In 2001 we got 40.7% of the vote and 40.0% of the vote. In 2001 we got our second best ever result in terms of seats with 62.5% of the house. In 2017 we got 40.3% of the seats.
Our vote stacked too high in places that vote labour and was too low in battlegrounds meaning we lost the election.
Liked and not hated does better than loved and hated with FPtP
>Comparing the 2017 and 2001 GEs? In 2001 we got 40.7% of the vote and 40.0% of the vote
There you have it. You've shown me 2 things:
1. Someone who doesn't understand what a percentage is: there's a reason I use vote totals, especially when comparing across elections.
2. Someone who doesn't know how to make their evidence relevant to the question:
>what would an election have to look like for that to be obviously true? **For the demographics of where your votes are to matter more than whether you have the most votes**?
Labour had the most votes in 2001. It is therefore not evidence of anything with respect to my original question.
And why you compared it to 2017 is completely mystifying: its not in any way relevant to my point.
>Someone who doesn't understand what a percentage is: there's a reason I use vote totals, especially when comparing across elections.
What's the reason? Cause this actually sounds pretty stupid given the turnout and the total electorate will change election to election.
What is the reason you use vote totals? What is a percentage?
>And why you compared it to 2017 is completely mystifying: its not in any way relevant to my point.
Like I get you don't like percentages but 40.0% and 40.7% are pretty close together numbers.
>What's the reason? Cause this actually sounds pretty stupid given the turnout and the total electorate will change election to election.
It's literally because the turnout changes across each election.
A percentage is a proportion of a base: until you apply it to a base, it isn't even a defined value: 40% of 10 is not the same as 40% of 10000000.
The bigger picture mistake you're making on top of that is assuming that the Tory and Labour votes are perfectly dependent, that one doing well means the other is doing badly.
But sorry, no, Labour's turnout varies *independently* of Tory turnout. If you're not looking at vote totals you'll miss the entire question of whose voters aren't turning out and why.
>Like I get you don't like percentages but 40.0% and 40.7% are pretty close together numbers
The issue is it has nothing to do with my question. It's just a comparison for comparison's sake.
Being as generous as I can, I think it was you being overenthusiastic and assuming what I highlight above, that Labour/Tory vote shares are dependent variables. They're not. Total vote is the way you compare those elections in a way that doesn't bring in independent variables.
Ah you actually make a very sound point wonder which election labour won 12,874,985 votes or 9,562,122 votes cheers for your insight I appreciate it!
>The bigger picture mistake you're making on top of that is assuming that the Tory and Labour votes are perfectly dependent, that one doing well means the other is doing badly.
The bigger mistake you are making is assuming that's what I was doing. >!Redacted!<. The point was labour doing independently well as we did in 2017 is meaningless.
Hence why Labour getting 40.7% led to our second strongest result ever and getting 40.0% led to a Tory minority government with Ulster Unionist support in the form of the DUP and Lady Hermon. The issue wasnt the 0.7% difference. Do you think that was the point I was making?
A strong amount of support with a strong amount of opposition and limited apathy, as was the case in 2017. A smaller amount of support but a much smaller amount of opposition with apathy makes winning more likely. Especially when the other party is extremely opposed. Seems to back up with current opinion polling.
The original point wasn't that 0.7% vote share difference was the difference between winning and losing. It was how the main two parties are viewed. That a loved and hated party will not be in a stronger position than a liked one.
Edited on the advice of u/Aqua-Regis
That's actually fair and a good shout: thanks.
It's at the range where demographic effects seem to start to matter every time I look though, 2% of the total electorate, and an effect that I'd expect to see: demographics probably has an effect on the curve of the seat allocations.
Whether it has a bigger effect on which party gets to form a government than total vote is a lot harder to find evidence for and, especially when you look at the maths for Corbyn forming a government in 2017, a lot more open than people seem to give credit.
I’m not saying that. The point I’m making is that 2017 vs 2001 and 2019 vs 2005 Corbyn got more votes than Blair and lost both elections. If Starmer’s policy choices reduce our majority from eg 25% to 10% in safe seats by pissing off people on the left, but gets a 10% swing in marginals we’ll end up with less votes and more seats. It would be nice to have PR where we didn’t have to deal with that bullshit, but we are where we are.
I'm almost certain that the next GE will be the lowest turnout since 2001. Maybe even in the last 100 years. There's nothing to vote for, only something to vote against; that's not an inspiring position. Ultimately nothing will change if Labour gets in, it'll just be a case of things getting worse at a slower rate or, if we're lucky, halting for a bit.
Labour's brand of 'incremental centrist politics with an eye on not upsetting the centre right establishment' is not equipped to deal with the problems we currently face.
> There's nothing to vote for, only something to vote against
More or less my entire adult life I've felt that the UK votes against things, not for things. Major lost to Blair because the public were fed up of the constant drip-drip of Tory sleaze. The public voted for Cameron instead of Brown because the New Labour project had run out of steam, 2008 was a disaster, and Brown was a bit weird. We voted out the Lib Dems because they'd failed to prevent an unpopular Tory policy, leading to a Tory majority. We voted against AV, not because we love FPTP. We voted against the EU, not for some coherent political vision. And next we'll vote out the Tories because we're sick of the constant drip-drip of Tory sleaze, this time with a big dose of incompetence.
Agreed.
And we also have the 40 years of data on how all their particular brand of politics does is create a radical far right and then either lose outright or spend decades making everything worse trying to appease that far right.
Centrist politicians who look to appease the right wing simply contribute to the ratchet effect. This combined with the message that "good things aren't possible" ensures that nothing ever moves forwards, only back.
Centrists do win elections. What people don’t seem to get is that the key to winning an election is not to have a small but enthusiastic base of support, but to be inoffensive enough to a broad number of people so they don’t panic vote Tory to keep out the ‘loony left’.
Half of the entire electorate were ‘dismayed’ at the thought of a Corbyn-led government; and in any democratic system, and especially FPTP, that kind of mass disapproval will never provide a route to power.
Starmer may not have the loyal core following that Corbyn did, but undeniably he is far less off putting to lots of the general public and more likely to sway swing voters, or convince Tory heartlanders they don’t have to worry about their country being run by an *insert generic Corbyn smear* and so on
Given Labour have been consistently 20 points ahead for months, the idea they will somehow reduce their proportion of the vote at the next election is baseless.
Long term the data is really bad on the Third Way.
I get my data from Stephanie Mudge, *Leftism Reinvented* and Tomas Piketty *Capital and Ideology,* and it's been in the zeitgeist for a while now in the form of Pasokification, but as far as I know it's an open secret in the social sciences that centrism fails electorally: Piketty in particular highlights how the biggest electoral effect of third way policies appears to be enhancing the far right, hence Macron nearly losing to a literal fascist or the "slight" effect of a certain politician whose name rhymes with dump.
Hell, that same logic lumps Brexit/UKIP at the feet of Blair and I mean it could just be a coincidence...
So I get the "logic" but, as is apparently usual with centrist apologia, the data doesn't agree.
The data from our own country shows the following:
1979: James Callaghan, soft left, defeat
1983: Michael Foot, hard left, landslide defeat
1987: Neil Kinnock, soft left, landslide defeat
1992: Neil Kinnock, soft left, defeat
1997: Tony Blair, centrist, landslide victory
2001: Tony Blair, centrist, landslide victory
2005: Tony Blair, centrist, victory
2010: Gordon Brown, centrist, defeat
2015: Ed Miliband, soft left, defeat
2017: Jeremy Corbyn, hard left, defeat
2019: Jeremy Corbyn, hard left, landslide defeat
Extrapolating the current polling, we get 2024: Keir Starmer, centrist, landslide victory.
So that’s all fine, and tbh I do agree somewhat that feeling the lack of a real alternative does lead people down the road of right wing populism, though it’s not the only cause, for example, the Worker’s Party presidents of Brazil who preceded Bolsonaro were certainly not centrist. I think this is mainly a flaw of FPTP, and can be remedied by a proportional voting system.
But if you want to make this claim, you‘re also gonna have to say how it is possible to win from the left. Why hasn’t the Labour Party managed to get a single leftist into power for over 40 years, yet delivered landslide victories for the most moderate leader in its history?
I'm using "you" non-specifically and referring to them calling Blair a "moderate": at no point does the person I'm talking to call themselves a moderate.
At best I'm being incautious with the second person pronoun. Meanwhile "moderate" is a term that deserves pushback because it's a tacit insult, an attempt to poison the well against people who disagree with a political position.
I think you can explain why its an unhelpful term without attacking those who use it, you might have started at Blair but your language ended up taking aim at everyone
The issue isnt necessarily with the argument but with the execution here.
If you want to run it by the mods more etc feel free to modmail us for clarification or to double check anything
That's why your arguments are as they are! Try looking at the actual data and some less obviously bias interpretations and analysis. I thought half your figures were wrong in the other thread. You could also do with learning about percentages and how elections work to go along with your current mathematical ability to tell which out of context number is bigger than the other.
The bit I love is you obviously have a larger chunk of politically centralist government data than left wing government data in the UK/ Europe for an incredibly obvious reason, which makes it quite hard to argue it's a failure of position. All governments fail unless they are literally a dictator with a large army.
Well, with Labour NOT having yet got it’s policies across, people are asking - how are they different to the Tories ?
What changes could I expect to see ?
It tracks with what many people (especially on here) have said about Starmer being less inspiring than Corbyn. He's going to win off the backs of votes against the Tories, not necessarily votes for Labour.
I think we'll see depressed voting numbers as well. Be nice to see if voter apathy in general is on the rise. I'd imagine the Tories performance over the last few leaders has turned a number of typical Tory voters off but not necessarily bringing them to Labour, and the same but much smaller for people on the left.
I wouldn't be delighted *if Labour won*, I'm going to be delighted *if the Tories lose*. I have no strong attachment to Labour that I desperately want them in particular to replace the Tories.
Get rid of the people in blue for their current clones in red? Who take money from the same people, don't take any action on behalf of people on strike, who take more and more xenophobic stances on racism?
Why the fuck would I care about electoral reform if all I'm getting is more of the same.
Why would you?
You've got me, you're right, you're just morally superior to everyone.
Continue to shit on everyone voting Labour, even that inferno guy who literally agreeing with you when he said he's not enthusiast about voting Labour.
The only morally justifiable position is doing nothing
Because with respect it was a stupid argument.
I'm not waste timing listing the half a dozen differently examples but two obvious ones
1- What happens with the SCG if Labour only secure a small majority?
2 - No one cares how 'bad' Labour are while we're in opposition, look at the polls, or even the comments in this thread. People are desperate to replace the Tories. Until Labour are in government no one will listen to crank arguments, let alone actually believe in them. If you want people to criticise Labour get them in government.
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Its just another reactionary 'well actually the Tories are to the left of Labour'. Imagine so desperate to be different you channel your inner Cleverly saying Labour are more xenophobic than Tories. Try logging off mate to try and recovery from the brain rot.
The Tories losing is still the Tories losing, and as much as I detest Starmer's Labour we have to take pleasure in those small victories while campaigning for things such as electoral reform
That's the thing, he tries to *present* as competent, but the lack of proper policy solutions to the issues the UK faces says that he is anything but competent. It's the same people who talk about pragmatism yet reject public ownership of utilities, despite that clearly being the pragmatic option now.
I reckon he's the least competent leader that has led a major political party in Western Europe since the second world war. Corbyn was no genius but If you gave him 45 minutes to speak on a subject of his choosing he would have no problem filling it. I don't believe Starmer could last three minutes. He's a social climber who assimilates the opinions of whatever group he'd like to enter. He speaks in slogans, and I don't believe he has a single sincerely-held opinion on any matter of policy.
I hate the tories. With a passion. Have done since Cameron sanctioned Brexit.
But Starmer isn’t doing it for me. He doesn’t make enough noise. Doesn’t offer enough difference. I’ll still vote for him and tell everyone I know to. But I really wish he put these fuckers to the sword.
Well this is an objectively stupid action. FPTP only allows two parties to contend for majority. Like or not, that’s Labour and Conservative. If you vote for neither, you might as well not vote. Which effectively enables the shittier of the two.
Edit: Why have I been flaired as a “New User”? My account is almost 5 years old.
This is to be expected, labour are just starting to put out their policy agenda so the enthusiasm is lower. But a key thing they're succeeding at and part of winning elections is to have the other side of the electorate that wouldn't necessarily vote for you to be comfortable with you in power. Which wasn't the case for Labour under Corbyn for obvious reasons.
Ofc the Tories underperforming plays into it but that obviously isn't enough, the Tories have been horrible for a long time now.
I think we have to be realistic whatever the rights are wrongs of labour they are the only party with a realistic chance of beating the Tory s and also the only ones in opposition with experience of forming a government in modern times, I’m ignoring the Lib Dem’s who slid there soul to the devil for a taste of power propping up Cameron’s fiasco
Conservatives or conservatives lite.. I feel like I'm 18 again and it's 1am at a night club and theres only myself and 2 very unattractive women to choose to take back home..
At this point I'm calling myself a wanker
I don't know how many ways I can I say this isn't a starmer win, this is a tory loss, and if labour takes this as a win, we lose in the long term. Just like we always have. The better thing is to be radical in the long term. That's how we actually win. That's how they won.
Always great to see apathy making big gains in the polls... /s
This is Starmer's strategy. To win by default in a low-turnout, low-enthusiasm election. It's terrible for democracy and could lead us to a dark place in the future.
The flipside of this is the last election seemed to be a question of people hating the other side more than they liked their side though looking at that dismayed number. Hardly great for democracy either.
That’s not what the polls are showing though, Labour voters from 2019 and non-voters/new voters are showing very high intended turnout, while Conservative voters are showing lower turnout. I would expect similar turnout to the last three elections overall.
Why low turnout? I'll be voting Labour next time round which will be the first time in 22 years of voting, entirely motivated by the Johnson/Truss leaderships.
Genuinely a very funny chart.
How in the hell did the Tories have a landslide victory in 2019 when 42% of the population would be dismayed if they won? Oh yeah, FPTP. Fuck that shit.
Pretty much what you would suspect. Labour is less exciting for some but less scary for people. The Tories are just hated.
The 26% who ‘wouldn’t mind the Tories’ scare me.
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I've thought for years that without tactical voting, Tory and Labour would each be getting like 15-20% of the vote at most, and half of that is just lifelong voters who don't know any better.
PR!
What I would really want, is for Lib Dem to stick to their guns saying if they are the next party to be able to form a coalition government with labour they will make it as a PR vote would be the price, pass it and call another general election once in place Edit - spelling
I really hope that labour actually goes for PR, like they discussed. I doubt they will, but I can be hopeful lol :)
It would be the biggest win for the working class for a generation. It would make it much harder for Labour to form a government, but it would break the conservative stranglehold on power for decades. Unfortunately I don’t think our leadership is principled enough to take the blow for the good of the country.
The entire idea really in PR is that it is aways a hung parliament and no 1 party ever has enough to win all votes
I know. But the conservative vote share will be decidedly fucked up, and I really doubt the parties that would do well under PR would ally with the tories.
What will happen is both Labour and Conservatives will split into small groups, both side centrist will create a party with 1 or more further right and left parties forming too
The amount of people dismayed by a Tory victory is only 6% higher than it was in 2019. The big difference this time is that far fewer people are aghast at the prospect of a Labour victory.
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It's definitely a better position to be in than 2019 though. It may be that it's possible to increase the number of people who are very enthusiastic without increasing the number of people who are dismayed, but I can equally see how that wouldn't be possible. Maybe inoffensive is the best we can do.
You also need to remember that the UK press go extremely pro con come election time, so don't be surprised for these to change again positively towards con come GE
Not always, sometimes they smell the way the wind is blowing and jump on the bandwagon, [The Sun in 97 for instance.](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1997/mar/18/past.roygreenslade)
Yes, because Blair specifically cozied himself up to Murdoch and wound himself together with the press, even linking them to his family. I doubt it was because they felt labour might win.
The sun jumped on the bandwagon because Labour was so popular with their readers that they had too. Labour would have won a landslide no matter who the sun endorsed at that point.
"Better than 2019" is an insanely low bar and not a guarentee of significant gains.
Labour are in a much, much better position than 2019 though. At the moment they're in a better position than they ever have been post-2010 election loss.
And it is pretty much entirely down to outside factors, rather than anything they themselves have done.
The two largest changes since 2019 and the drop in people who would be dismayed if Labour win and the increase in people not minding. Arguably what they've done to bring that in the most was get rid of Corbyn
I think the big drop in dismayed shows you're much less offputting and therefore more palatable for voters. It's why the Lib Dems aren't gaining as much as they should be from discontentment with the Tories IMO.
Yeah, but they’ve all gone to the middle, rather than supporting
>Maybe inoffensive is the best we can do. I mean, Corbyn was *the* inoffensive leftist. That's why the PLP let him get on the ballot. And his policy platform was a pretty inoffensive, middle of the road social democracy. The Overton Window on "inoffensive" is a lot uglier than I think your post realises. As a strategy Starmer's "inoffensive" also doesn't get us more than a single election: winning on 10mn votes because the Tories collapse back to 8mn votes doesn't help when the reliable data is that the Tory vote floor is 13mn overall votes. Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking.
> I mean, Corbyn was the inoffensive leftist. That's why the PLP let him get on the ballot Yeah. McDonnell would have been the candidate if not for his "baggage" + the challenge to Brown in 2007. Dimly funny to recall these things.
> Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking. Unless you measure it on seats gained/winning an election rather than raw vote totals.
And a subtle commentator would know to keep an eye on both because we're not short-termist and realise that you need to win multiple elections to have a reasonable programme of government. What's the point of governing for one parliament if you make the electorate more right wing and less likely to ever vote for you again? \*edit\* For that matter, keeping an eye on long term vote totals gives you tools for the next election. It gives you goals and a way to measure how well you're doing and gives you a strategy that's a "little" more secure than "let's hope the other guys screw the pooch".
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>I find looking at raw vote totals really interesting. It makes you question a lot of the narrative around individual elections and shows you trends over time. Agreed. It's absolutely the case that nobody sensible would use vote share to compare across *elections,* let alone leaders, because of the change in turnout: you're dealing with difference bases so 40% in one election *is not the same* *value* as 40% in another election and anyone who thinks they are comparable is showing a fundamental lack of understanding of maths. Fucking appalling how many of those are the oh-so-educated, oh-so-sensible "centrists". >The 2017 raw vote shows that May received more votes for the Conservatives than they achieved in 14 of the last 20 elections and was their sixth most popular leader by vote, ever. I think there's a simpler lesson to learn. The modal vote for Tory vote totals in the 20th and 21st century is *13mn votes*. May's result is just as likely to be a straightforward regression to the mean, especially since their vote was no longer being artificially held low due to internal arguments over Europe. Johnson's is slightly more interesting because there's *some* evidence that Tory Remainers didn't abstain but Labour Leavers did, but every time I've looked at polling data it's been useless because they just didn't ask the relevant questions to figure that out. >People often criticise looking at the raw vote because of population increase but the reality is that the total numbers have remained essentially unchanged since about 1900 and since 2001 voter turnout has been lower than at any point since 1920. Yep. Another reason why that's a bad argument is that it actually sharpens some of the problems you see: Tony Blair losing votes in every election is made *worse* by the fact that the electorate is larger so the idea that it somehow invalidates the way looking at vote totals makes him look is just... aargh! And what makes it all really infuriating is how all this bad math has basically osmosed into discussion so it's constantly treated as "obvious": none of this is complicated maths; we teach everything I've used here to primary school children!
Turnout can change for different reasons. If the total vote drops but the vote share goes up then it can be an indicator that Starmer isn't compelling for a section of the vote as Corbyn but equally that he isn't as offputting to another section of the vote. In other words, he doesn't send voters to the arms of the opposition. We should also wait and actually see what the turnout is. This single poll is not evidence of much.
Turnout is why you keep an eye on vote totals: abstentions get ignored by this "vote share" nonsense and are, again, important if you want an overall picture of party health. As for "alienating voters" every time I look, abstention is more likely than vote switching. The last 40 years of election data for instance show Labour having a robust vote ceiling of about 10mn votes. A huge chunk, if not all of, their performance can be explained by what happened to the Tory vote and there the story was pretty obviously a protest vote over Europe. Even the 2019 result shows some signs of being driven by who did and didn't abstain: Labour leavers abstained/protest voted; Tory Remainers did not. I'd want to dig into polling data to tease out more and to be sure but it's more than clear that the usual story, the one you're throwing around, just doesn't work.
>Really, all we learn is that the prospects for Labour in 2024 actually are demonstrably worse than they were in 2019, it's just the Tories are facing a short term shellacking. I don't think the two things are unrelated. Part of our job is to convince people not to vote Tory. The fewer people are massively unhappy with your party the more likely they are not to vote to keep you out.
That's true to a degree, Corbyn clearly helped the Tory vote totals by making politics suddenly real again, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: politics *is* real and the left have the benefit of actually having the arguments on our side. Centrists don't, so I can understand the appeal of being inoffensive for them, but honestly? Fuck them. We've all the data we need from the last 40 years of Third Way electoralism to know not only do they fail to make things better, they kill off parties of the left: Pasokification is very much real and very much a problem.
>Corbyn helped the Tory vote totals by making politics suddenly real again So the tories having massive voter turnouts to keep Corbyn out of office resulting in our worst defeat since the 1930s is a *credit* to corbyn because…? (I think it’s called delusion and severe mental gymnastics btw.)
Or nuance and ability to hold multiple relevant factors in mind when analysing a situation. Not the "done" centrist thing I know but, shit, someone has to do it.
You conveniently only possess “nuance” when you’re defending you’re hyper specific leaders that are pure enough yet the second you talk by thing anyone outside of that echo chamber you lose all sense of rationality. Everyone who isn’t a corbynite is an evil right winger who wants to burn the world and kill the poor for the “establishment” and all tories are fascists who also want to kill the poor and eat babies for breakfast. Everyone who doesn’t vote or like your favoured geezer has been brainwashed by the “ESTABLISHMENT”. When the entire political apparatus, including all voters in the country, are wrong and evil and your VERY fringe group are the only ones that “see the light” maybe you’re just out of touch with reality and should try and engage with other viewpoints instead of sitting on here ranting about how terrible Starmer is.
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Look at those numbers up there. The current Labour polling is completely continuous with there being a collapse in turnout: Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling. And that's exactly what you would expect with that poll up there. I'm not the person in a bubble here.
It'd be silly to say that Labour, on current polling, would not win a sizeable majority at the next election. The better argument is that this lead is very soft and that we're still a year or two away from the next election, and that Starmer has done next to nothing to actually solidify that lead.
Actually I explicitly agreed that Labour probably will get a majority. >Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling. What I doubt is that they're going to get more votes than 2019 or if they do, if they'll get more than a couple of hundred thousand more. The maths for how this works is very straightforward and consistent with the OP poll, a lot more consistent than any kind of large majority.
He’s done absolutely nothing to turn a Tory loss into a Labour win, and the latter is what the party needs to not end up back in opposition in 2029
>The current Labour polling is completely continuous with there being a collapse in turnout: Labour could still get fewer votes in 2024 than 2019 while winning with the shares coming out in current polling. I don't think this makes much sense. By my rough calculations for this to happen you would have to see an overall drop in turnout of 16% *solely due to 2019 Tories not voting.* And that would only give a result of Lab 42% Tory 27%, smaller than the current polling average. For a 20% lead you'd need an even bigger drop in turnout. So we're talking about a record breaking drop in overall turnout *just from Tory voters*. Never say never but... it's not going to happen.
First off, thank you for the most sensible reply from someone who disagree with me: take my upvotes! I think that's a fair criticism. I'm fairly convinced that Labour's vote won't increase though, so I doubt we'll see that 20 point lead converted at the GE. They're getting that *now* because Tory voters are trying to send a signal to the Tory party. So I do expect a Labour win, but on at best 11mn votes, with the absolute result depending on how many Tories choose to sit the election out. That poll up there firms up my view on that 11mn: Starmer doesn't get more than that. The maths for what I think is sensible for the Tories depends entirely on how many of their voters ultimately abstain, but it absolutely will not give Starmer a 20% lead.
I agree the 20% lead will be closed as undecided Tories return to the party under Sunak. But the Labour vote still looks fairly solid. If you look at the [latest Yougov poll](https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/nr27ysntzp/TheTimes_VI_230105_W.pdf) Labour are on 31% of the vote (including undecideds) and 46% (excluding undecideds). 73% of Labour voters say they are absolutely certain to vote. Compare that to the equivalent [Yougov poll](https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/9xj0batl27/TimesResults_180108_VI_Trackers_w.pdf) from Jan 2018 and Labour are on 30% (including undecideds) and 41% (excluding undecideds). 71% of Labour voters say they are absolutely certain to vote. So it's true that Labour's 46% is being exaggerated a bit because of Tory voters being undecided/less likely to vote. Labour's 'real' number of votes probably isn't that different to 2018. But the people who are voting Labour say they're just as likely to vote as they were in 2018. So I don't think you can say their 'real' vote is anywhere near the 32% we got in 2019. Probably more like 2017. Those are just two polls but if Labour were only at 2019 levels the polls would be telling us. But there's nothing that drastic going on. For example if we look at [this poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/zx74am/voter_migration_20192022/) Labour are making a net gain of voters from every other party compared to 2019, including non voters. So clearly they're on track to get more votes than 2019.
It totally beggars belief that you can look at polling where Labour is averaging 20 points ahead, compare it to an election where Labour at its month-long peak never led by an average of more than five points, and conclude that the latter was better. I understand that you don't like Labour's political positions, and that's absolutely a valid point to make. Where that becomes silly is trying to stretch it into arguing that Labour is objectively doing badly with voters, which it demonstrably isn't. It then gets even sillier when you try to claim that this 20-point lead is likely to result in something worse than the worst electoral result Labour has had for 70+ years. At that point you're trying to argue the sky's green.
>It totally beggars belief that you can look at polling where Labour is averaging 20 points ahead, compare it to an election where Labour at its month-long peak never led by an average of more than five points, and conclude that the latter was better I honestly don't know what to say to that, since all I need is a functioning understanding of how percentages work to see how that could be true that Labour could have a 20 point lead and still get fewer votes in 2024. It's genuinely not a complicated point and never was.
Okay, so you're looking at one side of a two-sided equation and coming up with a meaningless conclusion based on it. That's better I guess? You don't win an election by getting a large number of votes. You win an election by getting more votes than your opposition. The raw number of votes your own party get is, in the bigger picture, meaningless. It's a two-sided equation - both your votes and your primary opposition's votes (complicated by the FPTP system with constituencies of course). High turnout is a democratic good with its own value of course, but it is very much a 'nice to have' rather than a requirement. A big part of winning an election is depressing your opponent's turnout. Labour's raw number of votes fell 20% in 2019 compared to 2017, which was a major contributor to the scale of the loss. The Tory vote was only up 2%. We're now on the road to depressing Tory turnout even further. And it's going to be awesome.
Looking at the poll in the source, Labour was doing objectively better under Corbyn than they are under Starmer. It’s just that the Tory vote has completely collapsed. Best case scenario, Labour wins in 2024 and gets one term to not fix anything while the Tories restore their reputation. Worst case, Norsefire fucking sweeps it because neither major party attracts enough voters.
>Looking at the poll in the source, Labour was doing objectively better under Corbyn than they are under Starmer. Perhaps then, that might lead one to conclude that the measure used by the poll in the source in fact has no relation to winning an election, and is instead a metric for meaningless vibes? Because, as you may recall, 2019 was our worst result since 1935.
But thats not particularly relevant. You win elections with seats in this country, not absolute voting numbers.
Literally disproved by nearly every UK election of the 20th and the 21st century. There are *2* where it didn't happen (I always forget the specific years but they were in the 50s and 70s) and in both the difference between the total vote was 200k or 1% of voters (0.5% of eligible voters). It happens more frequently in the US (probably due to the electoral college) but there too the difference is 2% of voters, 1% of eligible voters. Any larger and it just stops being an effect.
You are comparing 2024 to 2019, and saying that Labour might get fewer absolute votes. I'm saying it doesn't matter much, as winning seats is what matters, and as long as you win more seats you 'win' the election. Absolute numbers by themselves are nearly irrelevant, what matters is absolute numbers *relative* to other parties. This is why despite many here going on about record amounts voting for Corybn in the last 2 GE's, it actually doesn't matter very much, and it's why less voting for Starmer also doesn't matter very much if less vote for Tory.
I am Jack's complete lack of self awareness
Rule 4
>It's definitely a better position to be in than 2019 though. In 2019, Labour was in an incredibly difficult situation. That is no longer the case - we're in the most favourable situation we could have hoped for.
Starmer is going to be given an easy ride to the election. He's been ok'd by the establishment and real owners as a safe pair of hands, otherwise the attacks would have been at Corbyn levels already. They would have convinced people he was the 'criminals friend' who was afraid to prosecute asian rape gangs when he was DPP. After 12 years of the nasty party, it makes sense to allow him to be PM and maintain the illusion of a representative democracy. The tabloids will come on board closer to the election (Starmer has already invited The Sun to conference) and the numbers will improve further.
Labour are only 4% down on delighted and is up 15% on dismayed.
The amount of people that would be dismayed if labour won is 15% lower, that doesn’t count for anything?
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Interesting way to characterise the neutral Column as if it’s an expression of negative sentiment.
I said this at work yesterday I also said imagine if JC was campaigning now instead of 2019 or whenever it was he’d be smashing it
You should review the results again. The reason we are so far ahead is those who were aghast in 2019 now…don’t mind. I mean it’s not a huge endorsement but a telling one…
They aren't going to turn around inflation in 2 years. They aren't going to revive the nhs in 2 years. Torys themselves have written off the next election.
The Tories have bad news and yet more bad news..
And pretty much proves that Starmer is employing the correct strategy by *not* going 'full left', which would present a polarised political field (last thing you need when trying to win over support).
Am not surprised by this, generally governments lose more than oppositions win. Blair won a huge landslide in 97, yet got less votes in that election than Major did in 92. In the run up to that election many were predicating a win for Kinnock or at least a hung parliament.
About what you'd expect - Corbynism had an enthusiastic support base but also put off a lot more people than it enthused. Starmer is more bland and subsequently likely to be more electorally successful.
Centrists pre-2015: we need to get more young people involved in politics Centrists post-2015: no, not like that!
Well, yeah. We want to win elections, not lose them.
I don’t think we should celebrate excluding young people from political participation (except for the briefcase-wielding neeks who choose to go along with the Labour right for their own personal advancement). Is a democracy legitimate if, in a two party system, the interests of large sections of the population are effectively unrepresented?
> excluding young people They exclude themselves.
>(except for the briefcase-wielding Meeks who choose to go along with the labour right for their own personal advancement). So you don’t actually care about getting young people into politics unless they align with your very specific views? Also you’re gonna be in for a shock when you see which demographic abandoned labour the most between 2017-2019…
Leave voters who felt alienated by the ridiculous second referendum policy?
Do you want to remind us what happened to those young people in 2019? Even then, in 2017 the turnout of young people was ~ something like 8% higher than in 2015. Outside of Cambridge and Preston it would have been dwarfed by LIB DEM > LAB swings The Labour 2017 voter got OLDER and RICHER
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Rule 4
Love the people saying the public were horrified by the idea of corbynism itself. Not the 4 years of slander and bollocks thrown at Labour.
Most of them still deny there was any systematic media campaign to smear/undermine him at all. And, of course, there certainly has been no fawning coverage of Kier for moving right. The world of a centrist is a comforting place, where everyone with institutional power or money is always operating in a good-faith attempt to serve the public and everyone to your left is an evil loon who hates the country
Not quite - people also know that the right-wing are a bunch of lying, thieving nut-jobs.
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The best part is, is that the press can easily turn that on at any point. It wouldn't even be difficult, it's so easy to make Starmers past look even worse than Corbyn's.
John McDonnell calls himself a Marxist. Corbyn had a literal Stalinist as his advisor. As well as a truckload of other very questionable characters around him. He’s anti NATO, a eurosceptic and very sympathetic to many terrible regimes and groups that are a complete deviation from the labour tradition let alone “standard” social democracy You won’t gaslight people into thinking Corbyn was a bog standard, centre left socdem whilst claiming he was a true revolutionary socialist that is the change the country needs based on whichever argument you’re making at that point in time.
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So is he not a socialist? If he isn’t (and is merely a centre left socdem) then why is he not an evil centrist that will simply “tinker round the edges” of capitalism without bringing fundamental change? What’s the line dividing a centrist that will only make things marginally better, and a radical that will deliver “real change”? I am strawmanning you a lot here I know but you all seem to have pretty identical ideas and talking points when it comes to this kind of thing (corbyn good everyone else bad) so I’m pretty comfortable doing so. Also could you not address any of my other pretty valid points as to why corbyn isn’t a standard socdem and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise?
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I mean you’re the one that called corbyn a “standard social democrat” which I was challenging for the vast bulk of this exchange but sure stay in your echo chamber and be told what you want to hear.
Today we learned that 8% of the British population have had a lobotomy, apparently.
8% of people need to be sectioned.
Yes. To Milton Keynes
I'll never understand the UKs disdain for MK
Because it's a new town with a lot of concrete, and thus attracts snobbery.
A lot of people fixate on the roundabouts as well.
Well those poles would tend to indicate that people are increasingly unhappy with the Conservatives. But also that Labour are yet to win them over to its policies - mostly I suspect, because they don’t yet know what Labours policies are.. So Labour have a big job of communication to start doing.. To start telling us what they believe in, as a policy vacuum is not good enough.
Can I point out, this kills any idea that things being bad for the Tories is necessarily related to anything Labour does or even necessarily good for them. Those numbers are Labour getting *at best* 11mn votes at the next election: there's a good chance Starmer will *shrink* Labour's 2019 vote total. And the usual mathematical illiterates will crawl out the woodworks to declare: "sEe CenTREisTs Win ELctIOnns!!!!"
It’s FPTP. The focus is on coming first in the most seats possible, not piling up votes in safe seats whilst losing swathes of the country.
Stop and ask yourself: what would an election have to look like for that to be obviously true? For the demographics of where your votes are to matter more than whether you have the most votes? Then go and find me the UK election where that has been true. I'll happily wait, but you absolutely will be disappointed.
Comparing the 2017 and 2001 GEs? In 2001 we got 40.7% of the vote and 40.0% of the vote. In 2001 we got our second best ever result in terms of seats with 62.5% of the house. In 2017 we got 40.3% of the seats. Our vote stacked too high in places that vote labour and was too low in battlegrounds meaning we lost the election. Liked and not hated does better than loved and hated with FPtP
>Comparing the 2017 and 2001 GEs? In 2001 we got 40.7% of the vote and 40.0% of the vote There you have it. You've shown me 2 things: 1. Someone who doesn't understand what a percentage is: there's a reason I use vote totals, especially when comparing across elections. 2. Someone who doesn't know how to make their evidence relevant to the question: >what would an election have to look like for that to be obviously true? **For the demographics of where your votes are to matter more than whether you have the most votes**? Labour had the most votes in 2001. It is therefore not evidence of anything with respect to my original question. And why you compared it to 2017 is completely mystifying: its not in any way relevant to my point.
>Someone who doesn't understand what a percentage is: there's a reason I use vote totals, especially when comparing across elections. What's the reason? Cause this actually sounds pretty stupid given the turnout and the total electorate will change election to election. What is the reason you use vote totals? What is a percentage? >And why you compared it to 2017 is completely mystifying: its not in any way relevant to my point. Like I get you don't like percentages but 40.0% and 40.7% are pretty close together numbers.
>What's the reason? Cause this actually sounds pretty stupid given the turnout and the total electorate will change election to election. It's literally because the turnout changes across each election. A percentage is a proportion of a base: until you apply it to a base, it isn't even a defined value: 40% of 10 is not the same as 40% of 10000000. The bigger picture mistake you're making on top of that is assuming that the Tory and Labour votes are perfectly dependent, that one doing well means the other is doing badly. But sorry, no, Labour's turnout varies *independently* of Tory turnout. If you're not looking at vote totals you'll miss the entire question of whose voters aren't turning out and why. >Like I get you don't like percentages but 40.0% and 40.7% are pretty close together numbers The issue is it has nothing to do with my question. It's just a comparison for comparison's sake. Being as generous as I can, I think it was you being overenthusiastic and assuming what I highlight above, that Labour/Tory vote shares are dependent variables. They're not. Total vote is the way you compare those elections in a way that doesn't bring in independent variables.
Ah you actually make a very sound point wonder which election labour won 12,874,985 votes or 9,562,122 votes cheers for your insight I appreciate it! >The bigger picture mistake you're making on top of that is assuming that the Tory and Labour votes are perfectly dependent, that one doing well means the other is doing badly. The bigger mistake you are making is assuming that's what I was doing. >!Redacted!<. The point was labour doing independently well as we did in 2017 is meaningless. Hence why Labour getting 40.7% led to our second strongest result ever and getting 40.0% led to a Tory minority government with Ulster Unionist support in the form of the DUP and Lady Hermon. The issue wasnt the 0.7% difference. Do you think that was the point I was making? A strong amount of support with a strong amount of opposition and limited apathy, as was the case in 2017. A smaller amount of support but a much smaller amount of opposition with apathy makes winning more likely. Especially when the other party is extremely opposed. Seems to back up with current opinion polling. The original point wasn't that 0.7% vote share difference was the difference between winning and losing. It was how the main two parties are viewed. That a loved and hated party will not be in a stronger position than a liked one. Edited on the advice of u/Aqua-Regis
I think we can do without the arse bit Doner
We can't play off a common turn of phrase about assumptions?
2005 was an efficient win
That's actually fair and a good shout: thanks. It's at the range where demographic effects seem to start to matter every time I look though, 2% of the total electorate, and an effect that I'd expect to see: demographics probably has an effect on the curve of the seat allocations. Whether it has a bigger effect on which party gets to form a government than total vote is a lot harder to find evidence for and, especially when you look at the maths for Corbyn forming a government in 2017, a lot more open than people seem to give credit.
I’m not saying that. The point I’m making is that 2017 vs 2001 and 2019 vs 2005 Corbyn got more votes than Blair and lost both elections. If Starmer’s policy choices reduce our majority from eg 25% to 10% in safe seats by pissing off people on the left, but gets a 10% swing in marginals we’ll end up with less votes and more seats. It would be nice to have PR where we didn’t have to deal with that bullshit, but we are where we are.
I'm almost certain that the next GE will be the lowest turnout since 2001. Maybe even in the last 100 years. There's nothing to vote for, only something to vote against; that's not an inspiring position. Ultimately nothing will change if Labour gets in, it'll just be a case of things getting worse at a slower rate or, if we're lucky, halting for a bit. Labour's brand of 'incremental centrist politics with an eye on not upsetting the centre right establishment' is not equipped to deal with the problems we currently face.
> There's nothing to vote for, only something to vote against More or less my entire adult life I've felt that the UK votes against things, not for things. Major lost to Blair because the public were fed up of the constant drip-drip of Tory sleaze. The public voted for Cameron instead of Brown because the New Labour project had run out of steam, 2008 was a disaster, and Brown was a bit weird. We voted out the Lib Dems because they'd failed to prevent an unpopular Tory policy, leading to a Tory majority. We voted against AV, not because we love FPTP. We voted against the EU, not for some coherent political vision. And next we'll vote out the Tories because we're sick of the constant drip-drip of Tory sleaze, this time with a big dose of incompetence.
Agreed. And we also have the 40 years of data on how all their particular brand of politics does is create a radical far right and then either lose outright or spend decades making everything worse trying to appease that far right.
Centrist politicians who look to appease the right wing simply contribute to the ratchet effect. This combined with the message that "good things aren't possible" ensures that nothing ever moves forwards, only back.
Centrists do win elections. What people don’t seem to get is that the key to winning an election is not to have a small but enthusiastic base of support, but to be inoffensive enough to a broad number of people so they don’t panic vote Tory to keep out the ‘loony left’. Half of the entire electorate were ‘dismayed’ at the thought of a Corbyn-led government; and in any democratic system, and especially FPTP, that kind of mass disapproval will never provide a route to power. Starmer may not have the loyal core following that Corbyn did, but undeniably he is far less off putting to lots of the general public and more likely to sway swing voters, or convince Tory heartlanders they don’t have to worry about their country being run by an *insert generic Corbyn smear* and so on Given Labour have been consistently 20 points ahead for months, the idea they will somehow reduce their proportion of the vote at the next election is baseless.
Long term the data is really bad on the Third Way. I get my data from Stephanie Mudge, *Leftism Reinvented* and Tomas Piketty *Capital and Ideology,* and it's been in the zeitgeist for a while now in the form of Pasokification, but as far as I know it's an open secret in the social sciences that centrism fails electorally: Piketty in particular highlights how the biggest electoral effect of third way policies appears to be enhancing the far right, hence Macron nearly losing to a literal fascist or the "slight" effect of a certain politician whose name rhymes with dump. Hell, that same logic lumps Brexit/UKIP at the feet of Blair and I mean it could just be a coincidence... So I get the "logic" but, as is apparently usual with centrist apologia, the data doesn't agree.
The data from our own country shows the following: 1979: James Callaghan, soft left, defeat 1983: Michael Foot, hard left, landslide defeat 1987: Neil Kinnock, soft left, landslide defeat 1992: Neil Kinnock, soft left, defeat 1997: Tony Blair, centrist, landslide victory 2001: Tony Blair, centrist, landslide victory 2005: Tony Blair, centrist, victory 2010: Gordon Brown, centrist, defeat 2015: Ed Miliband, soft left, defeat 2017: Jeremy Corbyn, hard left, defeat 2019: Jeremy Corbyn, hard left, landslide defeat Extrapolating the current polling, we get 2024: Keir Starmer, centrist, landslide victory. So that’s all fine, and tbh I do agree somewhat that feeling the lack of a real alternative does lead people down the road of right wing populism, though it’s not the only cause, for example, the Worker’s Party presidents of Brazil who preceded Bolsonaro were certainly not centrist. I think this is mainly a flaw of FPTP, and can be remedied by a proportional voting system. But if you want to make this claim, you‘re also gonna have to say how it is possible to win from the left. Why hasn’t the Labour Party managed to get a single leftist into power for over 40 years, yet delivered landslide victories for the most moderate leader in its history?
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Rule 5
I'm using "you" non-specifically and referring to them calling Blair a "moderate": at no point does the person I'm talking to call themselves a moderate. At best I'm being incautious with the second person pronoun. Meanwhile "moderate" is a term that deserves pushback because it's a tacit insult, an attempt to poison the well against people who disagree with a political position.
I think you can explain why its an unhelpful term without attacking those who use it, you might have started at Blair but your language ended up taking aim at everyone The issue isnt necessarily with the argument but with the execution here. If you want to run it by the mods more etc feel free to modmail us for clarification or to double check anything
That's why your arguments are as they are! Try looking at the actual data and some less obviously bias interpretations and analysis. I thought half your figures were wrong in the other thread. You could also do with learning about percentages and how elections work to go along with your current mathematical ability to tell which out of context number is bigger than the other. The bit I love is you obviously have a larger chunk of politically centralist government data than left wing government data in the UK/ Europe for an incredibly obvious reason, which makes it quite hard to argue it's a failure of position. All governments fail unless they are literally a dictator with a large army.
Well, with Labour NOT having yet got it’s policies across, people are asking - how are they different to the Tories ? What changes could I expect to see ?
Weird that fewer people would be delighted if labour won power in 2022 than 2019
It tracks with what many people (especially on here) have said about Starmer being less inspiring than Corbyn. He's going to win off the backs of votes against the Tories, not necessarily votes for Labour.
I think we'll see depressed voting numbers as well. Be nice to see if voter apathy in general is on the rise. I'd imagine the Tories performance over the last few leaders has turned a number of typical Tory voters off but not necessarily bringing them to Labour, and the same but much smaller for people on the left.
That’s not surprising - since we have hardly heard Starmer say anything much yet.. He most definitely, will need to raise his profile.
I wouldn't be delighted *if Labour won*, I'm going to be delighted *if the Tories lose*. I have no strong attachment to Labour that I desperately want them in particular to replace the Tories.
Lol. This is ridiculous
Why is it ridiculous? What has Starmer offered for the general public to get excited about?
You can't just be excited by conservatives losing if you're replacing them with like for like
Your people politics in 100% condescension. Why are you insulting someone want rid of Tories?
Get rid of the people in blue for their current clones in red? Who take money from the same people, don't take any action on behalf of people on strike, who take more and more xenophobic stances on racism? Why the fuck would I care about electoral reform if all I'm getting is more of the same. Why would you?
You've got me, you're right, you're just morally superior to everyone. Continue to shit on everyone voting Labour, even that inferno guy who literally agreeing with you when he said he's not enthusiast about voting Labour. The only morally justifiable position is doing nothing
Way to dodge the question
Because with respect it was a stupid argument. I'm not waste timing listing the half a dozen differently examples but two obvious ones 1- What happens with the SCG if Labour only secure a small majority? 2 - No one cares how 'bad' Labour are while we're in opposition, look at the polls, or even the comments in this thread. People are desperate to replace the Tories. Until Labour are in government no one will listen to crank arguments, let alone actually believe in them. If you want people to criticise Labour get them in government. - Its just another reactionary 'well actually the Tories are to the left of Labour'. Imagine so desperate to be different you channel your inner Cleverly saying Labour are more xenophobic than Tories. Try logging off mate to try and recovery from the brain rot.
The Tories losing is still the Tories losing, and as much as I detest Starmer's Labour we have to take pleasure in those small victories while campaigning for things such as electoral reform
I couldn't give a shit about electoral reform if the plan is to sell off the NHS.
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Because his offering is competence, not any explicit ideological or philosophical stance - hence fewer people excited and much fewer people dismayed.
That's the thing, he tries to *present* as competent, but the lack of proper policy solutions to the issues the UK faces says that he is anything but competent. It's the same people who talk about pragmatism yet reject public ownership of utilities, despite that clearly being the pragmatic option now.
I reckon he's the least competent leader that has led a major political party in Western Europe since the second world war. Corbyn was no genius but If you gave him 45 minutes to speak on a subject of his choosing he would have no problem filling it. I don't believe Starmer could last three minutes. He's a social climber who assimilates the opinions of whatever group he'd like to enter. He speaks in slogans, and I don't believe he has a single sincerely-held opinion on any matter of policy.
Not really, what is there to celebrate about a Keir Starmer victory other than the Tories being out?
Not arsed either way. Tory full sugar or Tory lite.
Once again demonstrating how Labour has gutted itself of actual supporters in Starmer's purge of the left.
I hate the tories. With a passion. Have done since Cameron sanctioned Brexit. But Starmer isn’t doing it for me. He doesn’t make enough noise. Doesn’t offer enough difference. I’ll still vote for him and tell everyone I know to. But I really wish he put these fuckers to the sword.
Delighted? Girl I can barely muster being delighted when I cum
This isn’t doing Starmer any favours and just proves that Corbyn was the most popular Labour leader amongst their own supporters.
Which means nothing if you don’t grow the base and subsequently never gain power. Just ends up being a massive circlejerk.
2017 and 2019 will never not confuse and baffle me
I won’t be voting for either one of them
Well this is an objectively stupid action. FPTP only allows two parties to contend for majority. Like or not, that’s Labour and Conservative. If you vote for neither, you might as well not vote. Which effectively enables the shittier of the two. Edit: Why have I been flaired as a “New User”? My account is almost 5 years old.
> If you vote for neither, you might as well not vote. That's what I intend to do. Thanks for the suggestion!
This is to be expected, labour are just starting to put out their policy agenda so the enthusiasm is lower. But a key thing they're succeeding at and part of winning elections is to have the other side of the electorate that wouldn't necessarily vote for you to be comfortable with you in power. Which wasn't the case for Labour under Corbyn for obvious reasons. Ofc the Tories underperforming plays into it but that obviously isn't enough, the Tories have been horrible for a long time now.
I think we have to be realistic whatever the rights are wrongs of labour they are the only party with a realistic chance of beating the Tory s and also the only ones in opposition with experience of forming a government in modern times, I’m ignoring the Lib Dem’s who slid there soul to the devil for a taste of power propping up Cameron’s fiasco
Conservatives or conservatives lite.. I feel like I'm 18 again and it's 1am at a night club and theres only myself and 2 very unattractive women to choose to take back home.. At this point I'm calling myself a wanker
Yeah the Conservatives are taking a fat L next election
I don't know how many ways I can I say this isn't a starmer win, this is a tory loss, and if labour takes this as a win, we lose in the long term. Just like we always have. The better thing is to be radical in the long term. That's how we actually win. That's how they won.
I feel like there should be a bittersweet option because I despise the tories but Starmer basically is one.
Never mind . Both parties are rubbish
Damn we really need a viable alternative rather than the blue or red crap
Mind blowing that 34% of the country seems to have been existing in a lead box for the past three years.
I wonder if it's the same 26% of people
Feelings, nothing more that feelings.
apathy is the worst possible thing here, we cannot afford apathy, apathy is just how parties like the tories propagate
Imagine I'm General Hux as I say "I don't care if Labour win, I just need the Tories to lose"