General Election 2024

[clv101]

Hope so, Labour members and the unions are up for changing FPTP, Labour's front bench have other views!

[Ralphw2]

Reform 4 seats
Greens 4 seats
Gaza independents 4 seats.
PC 4 seats
SNP 7 seats so far

Reform got more votes than LD, but not by much.

Sinn Fein 7 seats on a tiny vote, but they don't take them up anyway

Reform wil be ignored like all the other small parties

[clv101]

Reform wil be ignored like all the other small parties

British media do not ignore Farage!

BBC are reporting Labour's vote share as 34.4% - that's awful for them!

[Ralphw2]

Liz Truss loses one of the safest Tory seats to Labour.

Will Farage continue to refuse to talk to the BBC?

I think Farage's big mistake in the campaign was to give his honest opinion on Putin and Ukraine. He totally misjudged his target core vote on that one. Probably cost him 10 seats.

[Ralphw2]

Sunbak resigns as Tory party leader, after saying he would stay on. California by August?

[BritDownUnder]

Reform wil be ignored like all the other small parties

British media do not ignore Farage!

BBC are reporting Labour's vote share as 34.4% - that's awful for them!

That's the amazing thing. They won with very little increase in their share of the vote except Scotland. Actually they didn't win. The divided other parties lost.

I think the Conservatives and Reform need to make a Coalition deal and they will be almost unbeatable. On the other hand if Reform get traction they can prevent the Conservatives ever getting into power.

I wonder what Truss will do now? Nice to see Lee Anderson getting back in.

[UndercoverElephant]

Reform wil be ignored like all the other small parties

If that is what you really think then you've got a surprise coming. A lot of people voted for Reform, and ignoring them will only make them stronger.

UKIP was also a small party, but that didn't keep us in the EU. Neither the tories nor Labour can afford to ignore Reform's voters. The person who delivered this landslide to Labour was not Keir Starmer. It was Nigel Farage.

[Mark]

Early odds on the new Tory Leader:
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/br ... ive-leader

Top 6 - Kemi Badenoch; Tom Tugendhat; Priti Patel; Suella Braverman; Robert Jenrick; Jeremy Hunt
Real mix of centre and right, so a big decision to be made....
If the centre wins, do the losers defect to Reform ???

[UndercoverElephant]

Early odds on the new Tory Leader:
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/br ... ive-leader

Top 6 - Kemi Badenoch; Tom Tugendhat; Priti Patel; Suella Braverman; Robert Jenrick; Jeremy Hunt
Real mix of centre and right, so a big decision to be made....
If the centre wins, do the losers defect to Reform ???

Hunt is very unlikely to even stand, and certainly won't win. I'd like to see what the new rules for electing a tory leader will be, but my guess is still Badenoch.

[clv101]

I think there will be new rules - that's why Sunak is sticking around for a bit, to influence those rules.

[UndercoverElephant]

We are going to need two new threads -- one to keep track of the Tories in opposition, and one for Reform.

My prediction now is that the coalition of voters that just gave Labour a landslide is already falling apart, and that within a couple of years it will be obvious that Starmer is going to struggle to win a second term. The coalition of voters that provided Johnson with a large majority in 2019 was held together by one thing: ensuring a real Brexit (ie leaving the single market) happened without a second referendum. Once that was achieved, nobody even knew what the Tories stood for (apart from their own self-interest), and then events and mistakes knocked off one chunk after another, until all that remained was the rotten core. Labour is now exposed to a similar process -- there's no reason to vote tactically for Labour in order to keep the Tories out if the Tories aren't threatening to come back into government. And Labour is offering very little in the way of positive change that people actually want.

Note that almost nobody voted tactically for Reform. That will now change. Reform is now in second place to Labour right across the Red Wall, and now becomes a tactical option to get rid of Labour if, as seems very likely, they don't get serious about stopping immigration and keep their woke extremists under control. Other people who voted tactically for Labour will now feel free to switch to other smaller parties, especially the Greens and libdems. That will happen even if Labour does reasonably well with the difficult hand it has been dealt.

Obviously much of the detail will depend on who becomes the new tory leader, and the relationship between the Tories and Reform. I don't think the two parties can formally merge, but it is possible they come to some sort of arrangement whereby the Tories stand aside in places where Reform is better placed to win, and vice versa. That would instantly destroy Labour's ability to win a majority at the next election.

My hunch is that Labour is going to come under extreme pressure to change the electoral system, from both inside and out. Their problem will be that if this is resisted then it will look like they have failed to understand how flimsy their mandate is in terms of vote share, and how disenfranchised most of the electorate feels. The LDs, Reform and Greens will all be demanding fair representation in Parliament, and if Labour keeps FPTP for reasons of party self-interest then it could cost them the next election.

[UndercoverElephant]

This article makes the same point I have above: "Labour's monumental sandcastle": https://www.politics.co.uk/politicslunc ... y-brittle/

[UndercoverElephant]

Reform have won a fifth seat. Basildon South is now a Reform-Labour marginal.

[clv101]

Anyone willing to make a specific guess at the results? Here's mine:

Labour majority of ~170 (certainly less than 200)

Lab 39% 410 [380-420]
Con 26% 120 [100-140] (certainly more than 100)
LD 11% 55 [50-65]
Reform 13% 4 [3-6]

Damn, I'm good! Labour on 412, I said 410. Tories on 121, I said 120, Reform on 5, I said [3-6]. My prediction was significantly better than all the big polls and even the exit poll! Just undercooked the LibDems a little.

Bunch of clowns these fancy polling companies... And as for Prof Sir John Curtis!

[mr brightside]

Damn, I'm good!

What does your crystal ball have to say about all these anti semitic...err, sorry, pro Gaza independents? It shocks me that communities of people will vote based on the interests of a group of people half way round the world. They aren't voting for more NHS dentists or a massive mosque building scheme, it seems they have voted for the creation of a new sovereign Muslim state. There's something unsettling about this.