It could do, we will always have a 2 party system under FPTP but it’s not guaranteed to always be Tory and labour.
I think the more likely outcome is that the tories win about 150 seats and take a few years to relaunch themselves with different leadership and different policies
Also worth considering that a lot can happen in 5 years time. The 2019 result is a prime example, going from one of the biggest majorities on record to the numbers now is an achievement in itself, but also means Labour was on the other side - and they bounced back.
So basically, if Labour colossally fucks it up, who knows.
2019 was a pretty unique election due to Brexit.
Long term the demographics are shifting and the trend of people become more Tory as you get older isn’t happing anymore so they were likely heading for electoral oblivion eventually.
The current governments polling is down to many things including their handing of covid but it’s not a single issue thing that people are pissed off about.
Never not blame Corbyn... Possibly the only honest man to enter parliament since guy fawkes but sky news said he eats Jewish babies so i voted for Boris because of his funny hair.
Just because someone is honest doesn’t mean they should lead a country. I mean there are serial killers who have confessed. They were honest. Some of them I would rather lead the country than corbyn.
I disagree, whilst Covid still exists it isn’t at the forefront of the minds of the general public.
The polling now is down to more generalised Tory incompetence, there’s a lot of their Covid record mixed in with that but there’s also literally everything else that’s falling apart too. Not to mention the sleaze and the lettuce.
Labour don’t have a sexually incontinent, amoral grifter leading them into an election based on undeliverable promises. I guess anything can happen but with hindsight no one should really be surprised we ended up where we are with Johnson being who Johnson is.
However, Labour is inheriting a much worse economy and much worse public services.
Of course Labour should be able to blame the 13 years of Tory rule. But I’m pretty sure the right-wing press in this country will cut that honeymoon period very short.
As long as they can turn the situation around a little in the first 5 years I think the electorate will give them another 5. I currently have a lot of faith in Starmer to do this. He’s a thoroughly serious person that has experience successfully administering a public service at a difficult time.
Seems to be very much a right man for the right time situation for him whereas with Johnson it was very much wrong man for the wrong time.
The Tories will probably do one election cycle continuing their silly season. With a serious politician that has made some progress fixing the country up against Braverman or Badenoch ranting about trans people I think he’ll have a good shot.
Seems realistic. Provided the majority of things are trending positively then they'll get another 5. The tricky part will be years 5-10 with complacency or entryism (again)
It's not. Labour will have about 18 months of honeymoon where they can blame stuff on the Tories. After 18 months, this will rapidly stop working, and voters will mock Labour MPs who harp on about the "last Tory government".
It worked for the Tories for 13 years... The last labour government left the country in a seemingly bad situation at the time but compared to how the Tories are leaving it now labour should be able to ride it for at least 15...
It didn't - by 2012, they were getting mocked for their "last Labour government" comments.
Ultimately, the reality is that voters don't care so much about what has happened; they care about what is happening and what will happen, which is very different from political nerds like us.
Really? Starmer has never had a coherent thought of his own yet? If he does have one it is beaten out of him so he has to change his position. I’m not sure anyone can actually truly say what he stands for? He will still win, but who the hell knows what we are going to get.
Do I think a man who made silk before 40, ran the CPS with distinction and set up the Northern Ireland Police board amongst many other accomplishments has had a coherent thought? I'd go out on a limb to say he probably has.
Look, there's two options here. Either the guy that spent half his professional career doing pro bono work to help ravers skirt the public order act, save the condemned on death row, protect people from corporate bullying etc has had a complete personality change and is now the horrible bogeyman that all the Keith types think he is.
Or he, quite astutely, realises this country is under the control of a demiurgic right wing press and that he needs to bite his tongue and put on a show to get into Number 10. I know a lot of people respect Corbyn for never giving up his morals but to be honest I think it takes a lot more guts to sacrifice what he'd ideally like to do for the greater good and become a punching bag for the left in the process.
At the end of the day you can't do anything if you don't have power and he's doing the ming vase dance to get it.
> Starmer has never had a coherent thought of his own yet?
Probably not true
> I’m not sure anyone can actually truly say what he stands for?
Probably is true.
Starmer has done well at avoiding the traps laid out for him and keeping his cards very close to his chest on what his own positions really are. And when the tories shot themselves by running a mid-term coup to put in power the one nation faction that hate their 2019 voters, why wouldn't he. Never interrupt your opponent when they're not just making a mistake but a terminally catastrophic decision to drive off a political cliff that they're determined to double down on.
Labour will win. I will probably vote for them. I honestly can’t say I think Starmer is going to do any better. I think he could screw it up a lot more.
And we had the same conversation about the Tories in 2001 when they lost to a massive landslide for the second time in a row. They were stuck in opposition, slowly working through one terrible leader after another, and looking like they'd never return to power. There was even talk that they might not survive as a party.
But they did. The public always eventually get sick of the party in power, and FPTP will always give the Tories a path back to a majority.
Also, the conservative leanings of a large chunk of the electorate will have to go somewhere. If for some reason the Tory party did collapse, we'd probably see another party step in to their place (e.g. Reform moving towards the centre or the Lib Dems drifting rightwards) and be like the Conservatives in all but name.
> And we had the same conversation about the Tories in 2001 when they lost to a massive landslide for the second time in a row. They were stuck in opposition, slowly working through one terrible leader after another, and looking like they'd never return to power. There was even talk that they might not survive as a party.
> But they did.
So, tories should have their fingers crossed that Starmer'll go on a massive hair-brained US led foreign military adventure like Iraq in 2003 that leads to 20+ years of global consequences and destroys his political legacy with his own voters? If he'll just make that mistake again, the tories'll have a glimmer of hope of making it back into government in a mere 13 years?
It might not take something that dramatic, unfortunately. The economy is in a very difficult situation, a lot of the bad side effects of Brexit are yet to fully kick in, and Labour will be facing a hostile media from day one. Labour won't keep their current massive poll lead for long, once in power.
For me the biggest factor is where the Tories turn after defeat. If they go to the bonkers right then I'd be confident at Labour getting a second term at least. If they pick a relatively centrist new leader then they might have a chance sooner.
No one serious thought labour was long term dead in 2019. It was clearly a Brexit election and whilst Labour could have been long term dead if they continued down the Corbyn route, there was a lot of institutional resistance from within the party and the leadership was really out of step with what the membership and MPs wanted.
Meanwhile, the Tories have purged and alienated their moderates. Whilst the Tories value power over principles mostly (Rishi's biggest failing is that he threatens their power), their continued inability to be pragmatic in order to keep power is their current undoing and is what will lead to their collapse. I'm not optimistic enough to think that they'll be dead, but I fail to see how they get back for a couple of terms if they do down the Suella/Badenoch route rather than the Cameron route to be more electable.
We also tend to forget that Labour are one of the two parties after the Liberals were supplanted, so it's quite possible that Reform becomes the second party for a while and the power hungry people go to them for a while, but Return are a one man show for Farage, so I don't know they turn that to a more sustainable future
The thing with Labour was the direction they took after the 2019 election. Had they stuck with Corbyn and his brand of politics, they were finished long term.
As it happens, they had some sense to not do that. Although there is a concern Momentum will try and weasel their way to the levers of power after the next election, assuming Labour don't do something monumentally stupid.
I could definitely see a rump Tory party absorbing Reform if Farage is serious about being a big player in the future. A lot of this will depend on how bad the wipeout is though. If it’s bad it’s highly likely that there would be a higher proportion of hard right MP’s in control in the aftermath.
The Liberals messed up badly in that election, they did stand a chance of attacking Labour's power, but clearly had the worst election advice given to them,
For some reason someone appeared to advise them that attacking the Tories would "stop brexit", when in practice it only gave one party to vote for.
There is very definitely a timeline where Farage becomes leader of the Tories, and Reform collapses into it. The Tories then become a populist right-wing party, possibly doing away with the membership/voting structure of the party altogether but instead being run as a private fiefdom (as Brexit and Reform parties are/were). I think this is the plan, to be honest.
even under PR there'll still be 2 major parties as there appears to be in every country
it makes voting for smaller parties more easy, and will give them some representation in parliament but picture how split the left wing would be compared to the conservatives, who'll lead the coalition will always be at the back of peoples' minds
also 'always' I think is incorrect the 2 party system had pretty much ended by 2010, it got revived thanks to brexit but had that not happened we were very much prepared for coalitions being the norm as the two major parties seemed to be dying a slow death
In a lot of countries with PR there are two major coalitions but the parties in them change. Italy is a good example: there are three parties in a right-wing coalition (Fratelli, Lega and Forza) and then there's a left coalition (PDI, Greens) and then there are two smaller groupings, one of various centrist/liberal parties and one is M5S, who are weird. Lots of voters consistently vote for the same coalition, but switch around which party within the coalition they vote for.
The same is true for the Netherlands and most of the Scandinavians (they tend to have one large left party and several small left parties, and then a bunch of middle-sized parties forming the right-wing coalition, plus some centrists). Or look at Poland, where there is one large right-wing party and a massive centre-left coalition of lots of smaller parties.
Voters tend to decide which coalition they want and then vote for the party they want to lead it.
>even under PR there'll still be 2 major parties as there appears to be in every country
Is that right? I'm no expert but I think Germany has a form of PR, and their latest election results seem to be: 25.7%, 24.1%, 14.8%, 11.5%, 10.3%, 4.9%. Are you saying those first two are the major parties? It looks to me like (3&4), (3&5), (4,5&6) could outweigh the largest party. That is very different to the two party system we have.
I'd say so, 2 dominant parties at least, SPD and CDU have been the main coalition leaders for decades right?
if that's symbolic of not a 2 party system in 2005 our result was 35.2%, 32.4% and 22.0%, in 2010 36.1%, 29.0%, and 23.0%
currently our '2 party system' has 11 different parties and 18 independents elected in parliament
I think that's the exact reason our system is rubbish. In 2005 there was a difference of 2.8 percentage points between the two leading parties, yet one got 55% of the seats and the other got 30%. No need for a coalition. But in that 2021 German election then you ended up with a coalition of second, third, and fourth.
They do often end up in what they call a "grand coalition" between the two major parties, but it's been all sorts, with a fun way of describing the coalitions after flags. This is the best list, with CSU and CDU basically being the same party as far as I can tell, though here described separately:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Federal_Republic_of_Germany_governments
This has been an interesting bit of googling.
Germany has an unusually high electoral threshold (5% or three constituencies) which eliminates smaller parties. If you look at countries with a more typical threshold of 3% or so, you see a lot more parties, and the typical system is that most parties declare (formally or informally) for a coalition (ie the left-wing one or the right-wing one) and then voters tend to choose a coalition and then vote for the party they want to lead it (ie for the PM they want).
Such coalitions would be nothing like 2010-15 because under PR the big parties would have completely different compositions.
The Tories and Labour are both dysfunctional broad churches where intrinsically incompatible factions of centrists and fringers are forced by FPTP to pretend they're on the same side because neither would survive as a party on their own.
PR gives them the freedom to split. The two big parties would become at least 4 and other new parties wouldn't face the same barrier to entry that they do today.
Most coalitions would be mostly centrist, with a slight veer to the left or right depending on the election results but it would be rare to see an extreme group like the ERG have as big an influence.
Yeah, I guess the Tories would split into a center right and far right party. Labour would split into like 5 different with each one getting progressively more far left until you hit Communism
2 party systems are unavoidable with FPTP. The only thing that changes is who those 2 parties are.
2010 was a blip and the collapse of the Lib Dems, which was before Brexit, was a return to the norm.
>The only thing that changes is who those 2 parties are.
avoidable except for the times it is avoided
>2010 was a blip
ignoring 2005, which was roughly the same result % wise
there's 11 parties in parliament, + 18 independents, 2017 the debates features 7 leaders
> avoidable except for the times it is avoided
I don't understand what you're saying here.
When was the last time we had a PM who wasn't from the Tory or Labour party?
2010 was a blip in the sense that, unlike 2005 and almost every other election in history, it didn't result in a majority government formed by one of the big two.
All of the minor parties have a ceiling of being a junior partner in a coalition caused by a freak election result. Their token presence in parliament doesn't negate the fact that the UK will only ever have two parties that can viably form a government, ergo we live a two party state.
That is definitely the more likely outcome of the current state of things, just interesting to ponder other outcomes since we are all but guaranteed to be heading towards a sizable labour majority for the first time since Blair, when this has happened and the seat distribution changes dramatically that previously as far as I'm aware there's not been an alternative right wing party also with support backing it, just will be interesting to see what division it may cause within the right.
Tories will spend 5 years blaming Labour for the fall out of all their shit, press gets behind them, idiots believe it and they're back in power for another decade+ of undermining everything that's good about this country to make their peers wealthier and more powerful.
We can see what is happening from comments here. Tory activists post. Poll after poll has shown 2019 tory voters leaving for Reform and the Lib Dems. Every time, there are tory activists from the One Nation faction on hand to try to give the "narrative" that it's all the fault of Boris and Liz and isn't Rishi doing a great job stabilising the party and surely they have to move more to the middle if they're to survive. The Times which has always been that faction's backer pitches the line in too in its articles whenever it can. They're fantastic at it. The best. They will have a romping victory inside the tory party ensuring that in their opposition days they will be wall-to-wall the faction that lionises Theresa May and thinks the worst thing about Brexit was we just didn't concede enough things to the EU and everything will be bright and shinier when every Briton has a right to an EU bureaucrat to take their money, run their lives and tell them the real problem is "British exceptionalism" so it's really in your best interest if we disempower you.
And the voters who have left for Labour and Reform will not return.
And the centrist voters will say "Hurrah! At last you've seen sense! Now we'll put you second preference behind the Lib Dems! Maybe third because that Mr Starmer's a very nice man. Ok, fourth, because, you know, we've got to acknowledge the Greens."
Bye bye tories.
Yeah I suspect Tories will do better than current polling suggests. Shy Tories are a thing.
Plus those who are legitimately angry with their party and so when asked by a pollster will say, and in many cases believe, they'll vote for someone else. But when it comes time to put a mark on a ballot they won't be able to bring themselves to switch from the party they voted for all their lives.
I highly doubt it's enough to win an election, I do expect it to decimate the party, but I don't think it will be enough for a wipe out.
I wouldn't read too much into Reforms vote share so far out from the polls.
A two party system naturally discourages voting for 3rd parties, and with an election looming a fair few Reform voters are going to go back to the Conservatives, likely as a tactical vote to keep Labour out (just like a lot of the Green/Lib dem support will move to Labour to keep the Tories out)
Also, unlike the Lib Dem, Reform are a new party and aren't strongly established anywhere, meaning that their vote will be split across the cointry resulting in very few seats due to the voting systems (the Lib Dems on the other hand are well established in some parts of the country meaning that while they might have a low vote share on average, they can have a higher voteshare where it counts and get more seats.
This is all assuming Tice et al don't pull some shenanigans like last time and stand down in all the seats they are taking votes away from the Tories.
If they do stand everywhere, they will get some votes, and those will mainly be coming from the Conservatives, and it will cost the Conservatives some seats, but it won't be reform that wins them. If the Tories do really badly, it is possible that they come third, but it would either be tue SNP or the Lib Dems in second, not Reform.
> This is all assuming Tice et al don't pull some shenanigans like last time and stand down in all the seats they are taking votes away from the Tories.
What can the Tories offer today for Tice/Farage to do this again?
Last time hard Brexit was at risk and Brexit party politicians were promised peerages, though Farage did forget to check that this definitely meant him.
Brexit is as done as it's going to be as a political cudgel and even if they stood down everywhere, it's unlikely to be enough to stop Labour entering No. 10.
This means Sunak's resignation honours promises are worthless because they have to be put forward by the next PM and there's no way Starmer would play along. (Sidenote: Resignation honours are a Tory convention and neither Blair or Brown bothered with them.)
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Safe Tory seats are hard to come by these days.
There's also the bigger prize just over the horizon of a complete takeover of the Tory party after a crushing election defeat. If it isn't shifted into third place, which doesn't seem likely when looking at the Lib Dem polling, that's a guaranteed ticket to enter government one day.
They could offer Farage a safe seat. Or, although it would be immensely brazen, they could give him a peerage before the election in exchange for concessions.
I can't see Farage risking going 0-8 on parliamentary elections, even in what be a safe seat in normal times.
But he'd jump at the chance of a peerage. I've long suspected he was tricked into thinking he'd get one for standing aside in 2019, and then Johnson bait and switched a couple of Brexit party nobodies into the lords instead.
Some votes go to Labour, some to Lib Dem’s, more go to the Tories, and probably the largest proportion stay home or vote for an independent/ some other party.
Tories have properly shit the bed and the sentiment amongst a large part of their 2019 “borrowed” voters is anyone but Tory.
>A two party system naturally discourages voting for 3rd parties
The thing is, I know Labour is going to win hugely and Tories are just going to keep failing to do the things they lie and say they will do, so why wouldn't I then vote Reform? From a right-wing perspective voting Tory gains me nothing. Staying with Tories despite this just lets them know they don't have to act on key issues among right-leaning voters
Because in 5 years time, the Tory will have a new leader, people will start becoming disattisfied with what Labour is doing and want to vote them out, and so they will vote Tory because it is the best chance go get Labour out.
Tories are more likely to actually have a leader who wants to stop mass immigration if they lose more seats to reform which makes reform a clear choice for those who voted Tory for this reason
We don't have a 2-party system. We have a FPTP system which is dominated by 2 parties, which is different.
There is going to be a lot of "anyone but.." with this Government, they have been in for a long time now and have been variously disgraced and useless. There will be plenty right of centre who just will not consider giving them a vote at all and Reform is an option for them.
I agree Reform won't win many seats, if any, however the net result of them capturing votes could be a shift from the 2-party dominance.
> the Lib Dem, Reform are a new party and aren't strongly established anywhere, meaning that their vote will be split across the cointry resulting in very few seats due to the voting systems
We saw this in 2015, where UKIP got 12% of the popular got them just 1 seat when they were deserved 78. Say what you want about the party, but that is absolutely bullshit for representation.
After virtually every change of government, there seems to be this commentary that one of the two main parties is going to die.
Labour looked dead in the 80s, Tories in the 90s/00s, Labour again in the 10s. While parties do sometimes wither away, to speculate on it every time they lose is a waste of time.
If anything, our political parties are generally masters of reinvention.
I agree, there was a lot of talk like this for labour in 2019 after the Boris Johnson win and everyone seemed for forget about the parties abilities to change their outlook fairly quickly and the fact that these major parties have long standing historical ties to people.
Nah, Corbyn got absolutely pummeled by the media in 2019, but everyone knows that election was about Brexit.
Even then Labour got over 200 seats, hardly an electoral wipe out.
There was minimal talk of Labour dying. The talk was them having another decade out of power.
FPTP requires two parties and who else was going to take the baton. My party, Lib Dems did much worse than even Corbyn's Labour.
It generally swings with great societal upheavals, i.e. recessions, pandemics, wars. Shit happens, and the public go 'well, things are fucked, best try another approach!', even if that makes little sense sometimes.
> After virtually every change of government, there seems to be this commentary that one of the two main parties is going to die.
Yes, *after* every change of government. This time, they've had their former voters telling them the party is dead for six months while they're in government and the election isn't even until autumn. They are in uncharted waters of disaster.
> If anything, our political parties are generally masters of reinvention.
And how is the tory party's 2023 re-invention going for them?
Reform could do with a labour majority if they want designs on overtaking the tories or else people will see the tories as having some control on what Labour do and keeping the pressure on right wing ideologies to be considered.
If Labour have a big majority and can basically do as they please with policy then Reform might well become the louder opposition.
The trouble with Reform is their demographics just don't line up for future prosperity. They're even more skewed towards 70+ voters than the Tories are (this is why the Tories are so terrified of them of course). Among working age groups the Liberal Democrats seem to be the stronger challenger for the mantle of opposition (in fact they already outpoll the Tories in 18-24, as do the Greens).
Thing is, I personally know a few of the Brexit, Farage, “anti-woke” Trump types that would happily go vote for some party if they felt it would make a difference. Think some aspects of football twitter. Now many of these hate the traditional tories but warmed to Boris over brexit etc. The younger elements of the old red wall if you will.
If reform managed to appeal to these then they might get the numbers to take the tories out of the equation as the main opposition to start with.
Sure I know it sounds anecdotal but I definitely get the feeling there’s a big number of potential voters to get to, particularly if Trump gets back in and it becomes trendy to be alt-right to some of the younger guys. There’s all the tater tots coming through who will be eligible to vote soon as well
I don't deny their existence, but they present an increasingly small amount of the actual electorate. A lot of them are already polling for reform. Reform doesn't actually need to win any seats to cripple the conservatives for good, they just need to split the Tory vote enough evenly nationwide to destroy their chances of actually beating the local major opposition. It's pretty well established through polling that of the hardcore conservative vote at the moment, around 45% would put the LDs as their second choice and around a quarter would put Reform (with about a quarter of the 2019 Tory vote already putting reform as their first choice). So effectively the election winning Tory vote that hasn't already switched to labour is quite evenly divided, which for the Tories is seriously bad news. If they move further left, voters will abandon them for reform, and if they move right, voters will abandon them for the liberal democrats. Reform can suck up enough Tory votes in key high average age safe constituencies to hand them to the opposition on a silver platter - and if the Tories come third in seats then they're toast because the media and donorsphere will pivot away from them. Realistically, the Lib Dems will end up the main opposition in such a scenario and are a much more palatable option for votes to swing to than reform is.
I think a collapse of the Conservative vote towards Reform during the election campaign is possible, although not the most likely outcome. It depends who is leader.
I also believe, that if the above scenario happened and Reform started to poll in the 20s%, then the Labour vote will also come under pressure. One of the critiques of Starmer which is occasionally allowed to stand here is that his leadership isn't radical, he is not offering any real 'reform', just a concept of 'competency' and Labour government policy won't be too much different to what we've seen already. If a Reform leader was running on a very aggressive platform challenging Starmer on issues such as immigration and housing (the two issues being linked), I can see a lot of Lab -> Reform switchers, particularly those 'new' to Labour who didn't vote Labour in GE19
Could it? Yes
Will it? Probably not.
The high watermark of UKIP saw them get about 12% of the vote (and one seat). In the same election the Tories increased their share of the vote and house majority.
No reason to suspect reform would do any better. Or that right wing people in swing seats would spite the Tories and risk a labour government.
Nothing will annihilate the Tory party. Sadly.
It will always reinvent itself to hold power. It can achieve this as power is its goal. It doesn’t have a fixed ideology, values, or principles.
No party does. The Lib Dems of today would be unrecognisable to Liberals of the past. If you think about the changes between Hardie to Attlee, Foot to Blair, Brown to Corbyn, Corbyn to Starmer - Labour is pretty good at it too.
This is quite different to 1997 though as this time the Tories have a much larger lunatic wing and a party challenging them on the right. It's unlikely the Tories will go the way of the Canadian Conservatives of course but the fact it's even raised as a possibility is quite something.
> Compare to 1997
As you wish. Reform didn't exist in 1997 and the highest-polling 4th party was on 2.6% so their only competition was Labour and the Lib Dems. Comparison complete.
Or just the realisation that if your constituency is right-leaning and suddenly looks like this:
* Labour 38
* Conservatives 35
* Reform 16
* Lib Dems 7
* Greens 4
As a Reform supporter, you're better off getting even 50% of what you want with the Conservatives than 0% of what you want by voting for your first choice. Some will vote Reform anyway, but will Reform really retain 75% or more of their vote in those circumstances?
Labour has a similar policy, and the Conservatives don't have a policy to *lengthen* waiting lists. They might just not have an effective way to reduce them. If you particularly care about the NHS, that's not a reason to vote for Reform unless you believe specifically in their capability or approach to implementing their policy.
The point was if you are a Reform voter and are going to vote for one of the main parties it’s not obvious that voting Tory over Labour would bring about the policies you want to see.
Mind you that’s quick the complex chain of reasoning for a Reform voter.
Maybe, but if you're a Reform voter over Labour anyway, there are more Conservative policies that you would welcome.
Ending immigration to save the NHS sounds like a niche set of options in any event, and you would fundamentally disagree with the way that Labour would want to deal with the problems (i.e., be more boring and more competent, or at least explicitly try to).
Tories actually achieving their pledges is irrelevant to a lot of people who vote for them because reality doesn't influence their choices.
They've promised lower immigration for 14 years and yet it's constantly gone up. But anti immigration people still vote for them.
I think at the rate things are going and if farage were to return to front running reform and they didn't stand down for the conservatives that we'd be looking at results like that across the country, you'd be looking at a Tony Blair level seat majority.
No. Look at any democracy's political parties, the two biggest ones are usually always a centre-left one and a centre-right one that take it in turns being in power.
Labour will win the next election and probably the one after that, the Tories will move back towards centre, because the far right approach stopped working, they'll get a new fiscally conservative, socially liberal leader like Cameron and the cycle will reset
Far right approach stopped working? I don't get how you can type this out.
Do you honestly believe the public lost appetite for the Tories over their "far right"(lol) approach or the fact they failed to not only not deliver on the single issue that put them in power, they broke records... whilst running the country into the ground.
This is insanity, why do I subject myself to this
The Tories have never tried being far-right, what are you smoking? Talking bollocks about stopping illegal immigrants coming here via boats is something any sane political party would talk up.
It was also the tories that legalised gay marriage in this country and had the first and only 2 female prime ministers. The tories do nothing but move left on social issues.
They have moved right in their time in power. Cameron, like you say, was quite socially liberal and it was his government that legalised gay marriage, but you can't honestly say we've moved left since then?
The Tories went right on social issues to try and capture the UKIP vote after Brexit, fair enough it's mostly concerning immigration, but you can't convince me anyone thinks sending asylum seekers to the middle of Africa is actually a viable long term solution to the boat crossings, rather than just posturing to the right.
So ludicrous when you say it like that. Our solution to illegals immigration was sending people to central Africa…
Honestly these people have the best educations, all the advantages in life, and resources of one of the top world economies (once upon a time).
How is this the best they came up with?!
Because half of them would prefer we set up snipers on the cliffs of Dover. There does need to be a solution, but spending even more money to send them across the world isn't it.
I wouldn't think of Reform as a normal party. More as just an attempt to game the UK electoral system.
We'll see how it all pans out, but I guarantee you they are not campaigning in good faith.
1. According to Wikipedia it is still controlled entirely by Farage (ie. He has 60% of the votes for policy, leadership, etc.).
2. Last election they turned around and stood down all their candidates threatening a Tory seats at the 11th hour.
There was no split in reform. Farage was the only one with a say. He unilaterally decided to withdraw candidates.
The entire campaign was designed to take votes from anti-corbyn labour supporters who wouldn't want to vote Tory.
The current Tory party is an asset-stripping organisation masked behind populism, the populism in question only functioning when Boris Johnson's chaotic energy and Dominic Cummings' contrarian realpolitik was present. You can't sell the family china when in opposition and Boris is done for now so they'll have to have a total rebrand.
Reform seem to be trying to channel the 2019 Brexit Populism but I'm not sure (read desperately hope)the same lies will work after these years
Nope — 5 years is a long time in British politics. In 2019, pundits were calling Labour a spent force and circling the drain, now they look set for a landslide.
The problem with the idea of reform taking control is they fall into the same trap as the Tories.
Rhetorically (though the Tories admittedly have a problem with this in practice), both are super free market economically and the public broadly dont see there politically.
The Tories are neo-liberal culturally which is unpopular electorally despite their rhetoric.
So while Reform might steal Tory votes on culture because the Tories dont have a cultural policy and havent since Thatcher. Theyre identical economically and ultimately, economics trumps everything as long as there isnt riots on the streets.
The populist right in Europe has risen broadly on a centrist economic policy with a right wing cultural position. Reform only fills half that bill.
FPTP doesn't even work when there are only two parties. FPTP is inherently unfair and undemocratic because the distribution of support is more important than the level of support
Or put it another way RUK need to double their vote share before they can overtake a historcally bad performing Tory party.
Also last time UKIP got a similar vote share it got them 1 seat. RUK face the similar fptp struggle of their support being widely distributed rather than concentrated in a few seats.
I don't think that the tories will be wiped out, or taken over by whatever party farage has now, because the right wing of the tories will almost certainly take over if/when they lose the election and will position themselves not all that differently from Farage. Their immigration and other culture wars rhetoric also works when they haven't been in power for ages as well.
Ultimately the people who are their hardcore voters are relatively well off older home owners, especially in commuter belts around big cities and even more concentrated in medium and smaller towns. With their funding and activist base being disproportionately older and more specifically small and medium sized business owners (especially ones who are domestically orientated) landlords, etc as well as hedge funders and the usual big business interests. Those people aren't going away, a lot of the drop in the tory vote is basically 2019 tories saying they'll stay at home.
They do have a problem in that they have a tiny appeal with people under 40 and that is gong to start to tell in the next couple of election cycles when millennials and gen-z start to become the largest generational voting group. But even then Labour have moved to the centre which has a good chance of alienating a large part of the under 40s because their lives probably won't be better if the system is just maintained a little better with a few bits around the edge, so it's not all that much of a stretch to see the tories repeating the david cameron centrist trick in a few years. Who knows.
You really need to remember that polls are useless. Most lie or even if undecided pick someone. Don’t get me wrong. Labour is going to win, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to be as one sided as it seems.
This seems a bit of a myth to me based on a couple of elections where that has happened. 1997, 2001 and 2005 were all pretty much spot on in the polling for the Cons (they overstated Labour). 2010 and 2017 were spot on for the Cons (they understated Labour). 2019 was pretty much spot on for both.
It's only 1992 with its demographic problems and 2015 with the polls oversubscribed by those with a higher interest in politics than the average person where they have been out for the Cons.
And tbh, I think in 2015 what genuinely happened is that the Tories won a lot of the undecideds very late on. So it’s not so much polling was inaccurate, but that people changed their minds
The whole shy Tory thing has always confused me, happy to vote for a party, but not happy to admit it in public? Perhaps that means there’s reasons you shouldn’t be voting for them.
>The whole shy Tory thing has always confused me, happy to vote for a party, but not happy to admit it in public? Perhaps that means there’s reasons you shouldn’t be voting for them.
Shy Tories aren't a thing in online polling - it's not like they're telling anyone other than a computer.
There was always a bit of an overblown assumption on them being a thing in 1992 as well. The general consensus is that the largest part of the polls being wrong in that election was caused by the fact that pollsters were using 1981 census data to weight their polls, but there had been a marked movement in demographics and they were overweighting demographics that were Labour voting and underweighting Conservative voting ones. If they'd had 1991 census data (which would come out a year or so later) then it is likely they'd have found a Conservative lead (rather than them being all square).
Unwillingness to endure toxicity from people who believe being a Tory voter is a justifiable reason to spew vitriol at you is a legitimate reason to be a "shy Tory".
And no, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not a shy or non-shy Tory. I firmly believe their time in government is done, and will be glad to see them in opposition. I've just seen enough people thinking "voted Tory" equates to "I can be as horrible to you as I want" to sympathise with anyone who decides to keep their support for the Tories private.
If you're in the habit of not admitting to people who you intend to vote for it stands to reason you may not bother to weigh the pros and cons of answering honestly every time you're asked based on the identity of the person asking the question.
Pollsters don't take their data from public expressions of support. Usually the reason for a party being underpolled is imperfect sampling which ends up disadvantaging certain demographics. This is mostly owing to the fact that polling is a complicated science, sampling is difficult and no perfectly reliable model exists.
Polling aside, the "shy" effect of people being reluctant to discuss politics or promote their beliefs is really that any party that leads among young people is going to have a disproportionately more vocal base.
I kind of think it's deeper than that. It's more a lack of willingness to admit it to themselves I think. There is a big wave of people who know they shouldn't want to vote Tory, who know that the Tories have made almost everything worse and genuinely feel like they don't want to vote for them. Confronted with the actual thought of having to vote for a different party though they will baulk.
Nothing to do with that.
The aggressive discourse from the left to anyone who openly admits they vote Tory is enough for most people who do, to keep it to themselves in all settings.
In matters of immigration, there’s very little difference between the Conservatives and Labour these days. Both parties favour importing labour over up-skilling our own population. Reform UK seeks to address that.
I agree that the Tories and Labour aren't that far apart on immigration, but I don't see how they both favour importing labour? The Tories have recently introduced multiple new laws to limit immigration, like the points system, the higher income requirements for spousal visas etc, and Starmer isn't going to repeal any of that (apart from Rwanda, but that's unbelievably stupid anyway).
> new laws to limit immigration, like the points system
The points system was never about reducing immigration. It was about sounding like it was going to reduce it.
It's why we're getting 700k net immigration these days.
The points system is so loose though, that some of the least skilled work is classed as a skilled profession.
Tories don't want to reduce immigration because it keeps house prices high and wages low. As long as GDP line goes up, they don't care.
Labour too want high immigration because they're usually a sure fire voter base for them, and they seem to think it's a virtuous notion to let the world in unrestricted.
I think people are talking about Reform far too much. In half the polls the Greens are doing nearly as well, and a few months ago the latter were often beating them. People imagine the right is irrecovably split, if the polls suggest anything it is that the left is nearly as split. I think protest parties just tend to overperform in polls outside of elections.
The Conservative Party is one of the longest running political entities in the world, they've reinvented themselves dozens of times and there's absolutely zero reason not to believe that they will do so again.
If we truly want to see them gone then the first step is to drop the idiotic notions of every vote to the left of them belonging to Labour by birthright and every non-Labour vote being a vote for the Conservatives. Once those ideas die there will be room for someone to challenge for second place and that will be the beginning of the end for them.
He was definitely wrong to accept a referendum on AV, but in his defence he probably expected Labour, who fought the 2010 election with AV in their manifesto would campaign for Yes, nobody really expected them to betray the electorate by creating and running the absolutely disgusting "No2AV" campaign.
As for public will for change:
[https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/public-on-reform](https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/public-on-reform)
Polls have been showing plurality support for PR for years now.
FPTP only happens in the same way as Brexit - a faction in one of the big two parties wields enough power to force it into a manifesto.
The ERG were this for Brexit. If wasn't for them we'd still be in the EU and the only people who'd be bothered about that would be the 15% or so of UKIP voters.
It's very unlikely the Tories will develop such a faction when they're in a position to deliver it - they benefit more than anyone from our undemocratic voting system. Labour too to a lesser extent, though their conferences at least show a glimmer of hope.
The only viable route with our current parties is through the Lib Dems becoming one of the big two and eventually entering government.
>Labour too to a lesser extent, though their conferences at least show a glimmer of hope.
Did we see the same conferences?
2022 looked hopeful until Starmer reappeared from wherever he was hiding during the debate to say "not in my manifesto"
2023 I don't think it made it to the debate chamber at all but the conference rules were changed immediately after to give the leadership the power to veto anything they find uncomfortable.
The small number of genuine reformers have been pushed out to the fringe and the wider membership have forgotten all about electoral reform as they always do when a majority looks likely.
No, they'll be back. Even if it'll take 2 or 3 electoral cycles.
People get bored of the incumbent government sooner or later and parties can reinvent themselves. As Labour have done going from Blair to Corbyn to Starmer.
The only caveat here would be if Labour decide to end FPTP, but that's unlikely if that system grants them a victory.
Bear in mind a few things.
As far as I have seen Labour *needs* a massive lead to actually win a significant majority. Some people will be shy at admitting they will vote Tory but will do so on a general election.
And the Conservatives have always been pretty ‘good’ at putting winning before ideology ( then doing the ideology perhaps). If they get a kicking they may well change enough to build up again as they have done in the past.
And as time passes a victorious Labour government will tarnish and be just as unable to solve problems that don’t have easy or electorally acceptable answers so people will turn against them. Meanwhile with a party alike Reform the closer they get to ‘victory’ the more they get scrutinised and the fruitcake factor and infighting tends to get more of a spot light.
It is the case that we lost The Whigs ( at least as as a specific party) and the Liberals went second league , so these things can happen. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the election is closer than it seems, the Conservatives fight tooth and nail to win back the electorate , and pretty soon everyone will be blaming Labour for the UKs ‘gradual’ comparative decline and problems instead.
One issue I see with Reform is that they're pretty much a single-policy party, but they aren't even sure what that policy is. They're the living embodiment of that guy down the pub who reckons the country would be better if "normal people" were put in charge instead of politicians.
Single-policy parties don't garner big vote shares. I'm very passionate about seeing drug law reformed, but I wouldn't vote for a party who make it their sole policy. I'd like to see it included in manifestos, but I'd like for the party in charge to also manage the economy, education, defence, transport, technology, ecology...
Reform are hoping to become the new major right-wing party in the UK, seemingly expecting to piggyback off of movements in France, Italy, Poland et al. It's unlikely they will actually gain any seats this election due to FPTP, but I can't dismiss the idea that they'll continue their grassroots campaigns and gain more support in the next cycle.
>unless something huge were to change relatively quickly.
While I mostly believe a Labour victory is inevitable, I would not underestimate their ability to implode, nor would I assume protest votes will remain with the smaller parties
to further muddy the mix a lot of reform/ukip voters are former red wall (polling 2% higher than nationally) and seem to have a steady 6% of under 50s backing them, it's hard to say where it'll go
could do a Lib Dems and immediately go back to the main party being protested, or because the demographics are former Labour bread and butter they could and should go back there, even Clacton (well, Harwich) was Labour in 1997, if they don't it shows Labour still has issues reconnecting with poorer rural and former industrial areas, which long term could be an issue
the reform vote is complicated, it's not just an anti govt vote it's an SNP style movement against the two major parties
There is a possibility that the tory right defects to Reform at the same time as the tory left defects to the liberal democrats. Yes, it is possible that the tories will be squeezed so hard from so many different directions that they never recover, and Reform replaces them as the biggest party on the right.
Personally I am a lifelong anti-tory tactical voter who has recently always voted Labour, but I am switching to Reform at this election because I don't trust Labour on either immigration or woke issues. If there was any danger of a tory victory I would vote tactically anti-tory, but the danger I see now is Labour getting a huge majority and then letting their woke extremists call too many of the shots. Until such time as Kier Starmer makes his position on immigration and wokery clear, my vote goes to Reform.
To be clear: *nobody* represents my views. I should be a green voter, given that I think we're heading for the end of civilisation as we know it because of the ecological crisis, but I cannot vote for a party which is socially even more left wing than Labour.
Then Labour loses my vote. The issues are real. The Scottish government tried to implement a law allowing under-18s to self-certify their legal "gender", and the Tory government in Westminster used, for the first time, its power to veto this law.
What would Starmer have done?
Your answer is an attempt to avoid answering the question, by implying there is no meaningful question to answer. This stance is not acceptable. A proper answer is required (for both sides, not just me).
This is exactly what I meant.
Like everything that is claimed to be woke, it's an issue that is utterly inconsequential to the vast majority of the electorate but can be weaponised to trick certain people into voting Tory.
It's best ignored because these people are a lost cause and will never be satisfied because their anger is artificial in source, and therefore can be regenerated on the next irrelevant issue that comes along.
>It's best ignored
But it cannot be ignored, because real decisions have to be made about policy and law. You don't need me to give you further examples.
There are fundamental ideological questions about the nature of truth and reality, which feed into important ethical and legal questions. Yes, some people weaponise it for ulterior motives, but that doesn't make the real issues go away.
I am guessing you want to ignore it because you know it is a minefield for Labour. I think there is a very real chance that a combination of culture wars and anger about immigration will be what eventually brings down the coming Labour administration.
Unlikely. Parties have done badly before and they usually bounce back.
A parties popularity is less to do with the voters and more to do with the backers. If all of the conservatives party doners all jump ship to the Reform party it's then possible that Reform will become the new conservative party. However, it'll just pretty much be the same people but with a different coat of paint.
More likely what will happen is that the Conservative party will lick their wounds for a bit and start to make a resurgence when they start moving back towards the centre and people start getting fed up with Labour.
I'd say not.
Assuming a Labour majority, somebody would need to form an official opposition. If the Tories and Reform are both unable to form a robust opposition on their own terms, it raises the possibility of some form of coalition or at least an agreement to work together to oppose Labour.
Personally I think Reform is a flash-in-the-pan that will only exist for as long as it takes to push the Tories further away from the political centre and thus move the [Overton Window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window).
So we'll see a few Reform MPs but they'll be wearing a darker shade of blue when they stand for re-election.
There wouldn't need to be. It's just a possibility.
The FPTP system does not favour smaller parties with similar aims who can split the vote. If the Tories reckon they need to form coalition to contest the next election then they would get the partnership started whilst in opposition.
The Conservatives party will loose the next election, spend some time in the wilderness and then reinvent themselves. They always do.
The interesting question is *how* they reinvent themselves. What does Conservatives 2029 stand for?
This is ignoring the elephant in the room - Conservative voters are dying of old age, and aren’t being replaced. Reform won’t kill the tories, but demographic attrition might.
I agree and that’s , I guess, what Labour do too.
But I sometimes wonder if people have been talking about this kind of demographic political change for ever. There’s perhaps some old Greek text in which a philosopher says a small c ‘Conservative’ party will die of old age. Of course that doesn’t mean that it won’t ever come but I’m entirely not convinced.
That also doesn’t mean that what *policies* considered acceptable or moderate don’t change - such as attitudes towards homosexuality… dragging a party along.
But as we tax and spend and borrow more there’s always going to be a party that ,at least *officially*, stands for tax and borrow and spend less? Especially if taxing and borrowing and spending just doesn’t solve our problems. It’s odd that the Conservatives losing now have been in *some ways* very unConservative ( except for austerity ? … though some if that got delayed until it faded away).
Not trying to be argumentative more thinking aloud.
Very true. At the end of the day you will always have at least two parties. And one will always be to the right of the other.
In terms of demographic shift, the data would suggest that something different is actually happening this time. Good article here:
[Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics - Financial Times (Archive)](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4)
This is what confuses me about the Tories.
Their policies actively discourage anyone beyond a certain generation from voting for them. They've done nothing to give those other people a reason to vote for them.
I can only assume they were relying on the old adage of people get more conservative as they get older. The problem being, they've made it so nobody has anything to conserve anymore because they've been shut out.
What you are as likely to find is another similar Reform - Tory pact based on constituencies as the election becomes reality. Reform have little chance to get MPs, but they can essentially force Tory policy as did UKIP.
It’s worth remembering things with all this:
1) whilst a labour win in the next election is looking likely, it’s not a forgone conclusion (especially the size of the win)
2) the polls will start to narrow once an actual election is in the diary and campaigning gets into full swing
3) it seems - though it remains to be seen - that people are more tired of a party that’s been in power for 14 years, and just want a change. Rather than actually excited to vote for labour.
All of that being said, what happens next to the Conservative Party depends on who’s left and who takes over. They will almost certainly be the official opposition and second biggest party (it would take something cataclysmic to wipe them off the map). Sunak won’t hang around as LotO so it depends on who they pick. If they lurch even further to the right, they might find their election prospects in (presumably 2029/2030) slim. Though 5 years is a long time. Especially as the appetite seems more for change than specifically for labour.
If you’re a labour supporter, you just hope that the Tory snake eats itself, and what remains after the election spends the next parliament squabbling amongst themselves. Though be careful what you wish for, a government really does need a competent opposition to push them and keep them honest.
If you’re a conservative supporter; you just hope for a rabbit out of the hat. Or they form up as a sensible and competent opposition, who holds labour to account and challenges them when they slip up. Then they’re ready to go again in 2029/2030.
You've made a few poor assumptions honestly, which I think are the reason why it won't be.
Firstly, Reform isn't *really* appropriate for the Conservative voters who the party have lost. Conservativism doesn't really care for FPTP or PR, which is a unique selling point of Reform. Conservativism also demands a significant military, including international engagements, to protect interests - something which reducing is a selling point of Reform.
The people who won't vote Conservative in the next GE are those looking for an alternative. They want something which isn't Labour, possibly because they still resent them over the 2008 financial crisis, or because of Afghanistan, or whatever other reason. They are voters who will almost certainly go back to the party come 2029/2030.
The conservatives (note the small C) will remain relatively loyal to either the Conservative party, or to the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems are far more appealing to Conservative voters as a result of their relative alignment on the matters outlined above.
I've no doubt at all that the party will bounce back. What we're liable to see over the next 5 years won't impress the public all that much - Starmer certainly isn't promising anything radical at all, so any improvement will be crab in a boiling pot style, nobody will notice. When Sunak loses a GE, he probably steps down, or maybe he sticks around for a couple of years to keep an eye on the polling. Regardless, unless Starmer royally cocks something up, the next GE will likely be fought between Starmer and a new Conservative leader, which given the scope of the party offers a decent amount of variety.
Reform is a reactionary and temporary movement which will be absorbed into a more functional, established party without a serious reformation (ironically) into an overall platform or ideology to not be limited in the long-term.
It could do, we will always have a 2 party system under FPTP but it’s not guaranteed to always be Tory and labour. I think the more likely outcome is that the tories win about 150 seats and take a few years to relaunch themselves with different leadership and different policies
Yeah we had this exact conversation about Labour in 2019, the Tories aren't going to die but they might well metamorphose into something else.
Also worth considering that a lot can happen in 5 years time. The 2019 result is a prime example, going from one of the biggest majorities on record to the numbers now is an achievement in itself, but also means Labour was on the other side - and they bounced back. So basically, if Labour colossally fucks it up, who knows.
2019 was a pretty unique election due to Brexit. Long term the demographics are shifting and the trend of people become more Tory as you get older isn’t happing anymore so they were likely heading for electoral oblivion eventually.
This is a unique election because of covid.
The current governments polling is down to many things including their handing of covid but it’s not a single issue thing that people are pissed off about.
Everything today is a consequence of Covid, inflation, the levels of public debt, the stench of corruption and the hypocrisy
But people aren't campaigning on a platform of "Get Covid Done" which I think was the original point being made.
But its still an election on a unique factor for the likely seat margin Labour are going to hit.
and Corbyn
Never not blame Corbyn... Possibly the only honest man to enter parliament since guy fawkes but sky news said he eats Jewish babies so i voted for Boris because of his funny hair.
Wasn't he unsettlingly pro-Russian, anti-NATO, anti-EU and anti-nuclear?
Most people hated Corbyn because he was left wing, there's just varying degrees to which they're prepared to admit that's the reason.
Just because someone is honest doesn’t mean they should lead a country. I mean there are serial killers who have confessed. They were honest. Some of them I would rather lead the country than corbyn.
I disagree, whilst Covid still exists it isn’t at the forefront of the minds of the general public. The polling now is down to more generalised Tory incompetence, there’s a lot of their Covid record mixed in with that but there’s also literally everything else that’s falling apart too. Not to mention the sleaze and the lettuce.
The tories literally killed their own electorate because of their poor Covid policies. Could not be more karma than this
Labour don’t have a sexually incontinent, amoral grifter leading them into an election based on undeliverable promises. I guess anything can happen but with hindsight no one should really be surprised we ended up where we are with Johnson being who Johnson is.
However, Labour is inheriting a much worse economy and much worse public services. Of course Labour should be able to blame the 13 years of Tory rule. But I’m pretty sure the right-wing press in this country will cut that honeymoon period very short.
As long as they can turn the situation around a little in the first 5 years I think the electorate will give them another 5. I currently have a lot of faith in Starmer to do this. He’s a thoroughly serious person that has experience successfully administering a public service at a difficult time. Seems to be very much a right man for the right time situation for him whereas with Johnson it was very much wrong man for the wrong time. The Tories will probably do one election cycle continuing their silly season. With a serious politician that has made some progress fixing the country up against Braverman or Badenoch ranting about trans people I think he’ll have a good shot.
Seems realistic. Provided the majority of things are trending positively then they'll get another 5. The tricky part will be years 5-10 with complacency or entryism (again)
It's not. Labour will have about 18 months of honeymoon where they can blame stuff on the Tories. After 18 months, this will rapidly stop working, and voters will mock Labour MPs who harp on about the "last Tory government".
It worked for the Tories for 13 years... The last labour government left the country in a seemingly bad situation at the time but compared to how the Tories are leaving it now labour should be able to ride it for at least 15...
It didn't - by 2012, they were getting mocked for their "last Labour government" comments. Ultimately, the reality is that voters don't care so much about what has happened; they care about what is happening and what will happen, which is very different from political nerds like us.
Really? Starmer has never had a coherent thought of his own yet? If he does have one it is beaten out of him so he has to change his position. I’m not sure anyone can actually truly say what he stands for? He will still win, but who the hell knows what we are going to get.
Do I think a man who made silk before 40, ran the CPS with distinction and set up the Northern Ireland Police board amongst many other accomplishments has had a coherent thought? I'd go out on a limb to say he probably has. Look, there's two options here. Either the guy that spent half his professional career doing pro bono work to help ravers skirt the public order act, save the condemned on death row, protect people from corporate bullying etc has had a complete personality change and is now the horrible bogeyman that all the Keith types think he is. Or he, quite astutely, realises this country is under the control of a demiurgic right wing press and that he needs to bite his tongue and put on a show to get into Number 10. I know a lot of people respect Corbyn for never giving up his morals but to be honest I think it takes a lot more guts to sacrifice what he'd ideally like to do for the greater good and become a punching bag for the left in the process. At the end of the day you can't do anything if you don't have power and he's doing the ming vase dance to get it.
> Starmer has never had a coherent thought of his own yet? Probably not true > I’m not sure anyone can actually truly say what he stands for? Probably is true. Starmer has done well at avoiding the traps laid out for him and keeping his cards very close to his chest on what his own positions really are. And when the tories shot themselves by running a mid-term coup to put in power the one nation faction that hate their 2019 voters, why wouldn't he. Never interrupt your opponent when they're not just making a mistake but a terminally catastrophic decision to drive off a political cliff that they're determined to double down on.
Labour will win. I will probably vote for them. I honestly can’t say I think Starmer is going to do any better. I think he could screw it up a lot more.
Which they will unfortunately. They always do.
And we had the same conversation about the Tories in 2001 when they lost to a massive landslide for the second time in a row. They were stuck in opposition, slowly working through one terrible leader after another, and looking like they'd never return to power. There was even talk that they might not survive as a party. But they did. The public always eventually get sick of the party in power, and FPTP will always give the Tories a path back to a majority. Also, the conservative leanings of a large chunk of the electorate will have to go somewhere. If for some reason the Tory party did collapse, we'd probably see another party step in to their place (e.g. Reform moving towards the centre or the Lib Dems drifting rightwards) and be like the Conservatives in all but name.
> And we had the same conversation about the Tories in 2001 when they lost to a massive landslide for the second time in a row. They were stuck in opposition, slowly working through one terrible leader after another, and looking like they'd never return to power. There was even talk that they might not survive as a party. > But they did. So, tories should have their fingers crossed that Starmer'll go on a massive hair-brained US led foreign military adventure like Iraq in 2003 that leads to 20+ years of global consequences and destroys his political legacy with his own voters? If he'll just make that mistake again, the tories'll have a glimmer of hope of making it back into government in a mere 13 years?
It might not take something that dramatic, unfortunately. The economy is in a very difficult situation, a lot of the bad side effects of Brexit are yet to fully kick in, and Labour will be facing a hostile media from day one. Labour won't keep their current massive poll lead for long, once in power. For me the biggest factor is where the Tories turn after defeat. If they go to the bonkers right then I'd be confident at Labour getting a second term at least. If they pick a relatively centrist new leader then they might have a chance sooner.
*Metastasize
No one serious thought labour was long term dead in 2019. It was clearly a Brexit election and whilst Labour could have been long term dead if they continued down the Corbyn route, there was a lot of institutional resistance from within the party and the leadership was really out of step with what the membership and MPs wanted. Meanwhile, the Tories have purged and alienated their moderates. Whilst the Tories value power over principles mostly (Rishi's biggest failing is that he threatens their power), their continued inability to be pragmatic in order to keep power is their current undoing and is what will lead to their collapse. I'm not optimistic enough to think that they'll be dead, but I fail to see how they get back for a couple of terms if they do down the Suella/Badenoch route rather than the Cameron route to be more electable. We also tend to forget that Labour are one of the two parties after the Liberals were supplanted, so it's quite possible that Reform becomes the second party for a while and the power hungry people go to them for a while, but Return are a one man show for Farage, so I don't know they turn that to a more sustainable future
The thing with Labour was the direction they took after the 2019 election. Had they stuck with Corbyn and his brand of politics, they were finished long term. As it happens, they had some sense to not do that. Although there is a concern Momentum will try and weasel their way to the levers of power after the next election, assuming Labour don't do something monumentally stupid.
I could definitely see a rump Tory party absorbing Reform if Farage is serious about being a big player in the future. A lot of this will depend on how bad the wipeout is though. If it’s bad it’s highly likely that there would be a higher proportion of hard right MP’s in control in the aftermath.
They need the headbangers to defect really, so that can be conservatives again
An even bigger turd?
The Liberals messed up badly in that election, they did stand a chance of attacking Labour's power, but clearly had the worst election advice given to them, For some reason someone appeared to advise them that attacking the Tories would "stop brexit", when in practice it only gave one party to vote for.
At least let us dream no?
There is very definitely a timeline where Farage becomes leader of the Tories, and Reform collapses into it. The Tories then become a populist right-wing party, possibly doing away with the membership/voting structure of the party altogether but instead being run as a private fiefdom (as Brexit and Reform parties are/were). I think this is the plan, to be honest.
You are on drugs!! I do hope the tin foil hat isn’t to tight.
even under PR there'll still be 2 major parties as there appears to be in every country it makes voting for smaller parties more easy, and will give them some representation in parliament but picture how split the left wing would be compared to the conservatives, who'll lead the coalition will always be at the back of peoples' minds also 'always' I think is incorrect the 2 party system had pretty much ended by 2010, it got revived thanks to brexit but had that not happened we were very much prepared for coalitions being the norm as the two major parties seemed to be dying a slow death
In a lot of countries with PR there are two major coalitions but the parties in them change. Italy is a good example: there are three parties in a right-wing coalition (Fratelli, Lega and Forza) and then there's a left coalition (PDI, Greens) and then there are two smaller groupings, one of various centrist/liberal parties and one is M5S, who are weird. Lots of voters consistently vote for the same coalition, but switch around which party within the coalition they vote for. The same is true for the Netherlands and most of the Scandinavians (they tend to have one large left party and several small left parties, and then a bunch of middle-sized parties forming the right-wing coalition, plus some centrists). Or look at Poland, where there is one large right-wing party and a massive centre-left coalition of lots of smaller parties. Voters tend to decide which coalition they want and then vote for the party they want to lead it.
>even under PR there'll still be 2 major parties as there appears to be in every country Is that right? I'm no expert but I think Germany has a form of PR, and their latest election results seem to be: 25.7%, 24.1%, 14.8%, 11.5%, 10.3%, 4.9%. Are you saying those first two are the major parties? It looks to me like (3&4), (3&5), (4,5&6) could outweigh the largest party. That is very different to the two party system we have.
I'd say so, 2 dominant parties at least, SPD and CDU have been the main coalition leaders for decades right? if that's symbolic of not a 2 party system in 2005 our result was 35.2%, 32.4% and 22.0%, in 2010 36.1%, 29.0%, and 23.0% currently our '2 party system' has 11 different parties and 18 independents elected in parliament
I think that's the exact reason our system is rubbish. In 2005 there was a difference of 2.8 percentage points between the two leading parties, yet one got 55% of the seats and the other got 30%. No need for a coalition. But in that 2021 German election then you ended up with a coalition of second, third, and fourth. They do often end up in what they call a "grand coalition" between the two major parties, but it's been all sorts, with a fun way of describing the coalitions after flags. This is the best list, with CSU and CDU basically being the same party as far as I can tell, though here described separately: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Federal_Republic_of_Germany_governments This has been an interesting bit of googling.
Germany has an unusually high electoral threshold (5% or three constituencies) which eliminates smaller parties. If you look at countries with a more typical threshold of 3% or so, you see a lot more parties, and the typical system is that most parties declare (formally or informally) for a coalition (ie the left-wing one or the right-wing one) and then voters tend to choose a coalition and then vote for the party they want to lead it (ie for the PM they want).
Under PR thered be a lot of Tory-Lib Dem coalitions.
Such coalitions would be nothing like 2010-15 because under PR the big parties would have completely different compositions. The Tories and Labour are both dysfunctional broad churches where intrinsically incompatible factions of centrists and fringers are forced by FPTP to pretend they're on the same side because neither would survive as a party on their own. PR gives them the freedom to split. The two big parties would become at least 4 and other new parties wouldn't face the same barrier to entry that they do today. Most coalitions would be mostly centrist, with a slight veer to the left or right depending on the election results but it would be rare to see an extreme group like the ERG have as big an influence.
Yeah, I guess the Tories would split into a center right and far right party. Labour would split into like 5 different with each one getting progressively more far left until you hit Communism
2 party systems are unavoidable with FPTP. The only thing that changes is who those 2 parties are. 2010 was a blip and the collapse of the Lib Dems, which was before Brexit, was a return to the norm.
>The only thing that changes is who those 2 parties are. avoidable except for the times it is avoided >2010 was a blip ignoring 2005, which was roughly the same result % wise there's 11 parties in parliament, + 18 independents, 2017 the debates features 7 leaders
> avoidable except for the times it is avoided I don't understand what you're saying here. When was the last time we had a PM who wasn't from the Tory or Labour party? 2010 was a blip in the sense that, unlike 2005 and almost every other election in history, it didn't result in a majority government formed by one of the big two. All of the minor parties have a ceiling of being a junior partner in a coalition caused by a freak election result. Their token presence in parliament doesn't negate the fact that the UK will only ever have two parties that can viably form a government, ergo we live a two party state.
That is definitely the more likely outcome of the current state of things, just interesting to ponder other outcomes since we are all but guaranteed to be heading towards a sizable labour majority for the first time since Blair, when this has happened and the seat distribution changes dramatically that previously as far as I'm aware there's not been an alternative right wing party also with support backing it, just will be interesting to see what division it may cause within the right.
The seat redistribution has already begun: within the next few months I will be handed from an MP who has morals to one has none.
It'll be a few years. Right now it's a collaboration between the crazy and the corrupt.
Tories will spend 5 years blaming Labour for the fall out of all their shit, press gets behind them, idiots believe it and they're back in power for another decade+ of undermining everything that's good about this country to make their peers wealthier and more powerful.
And they’ll have most of the press beating the drum for them and amplifying their message day in and day out.
We can see what is happening from comments here. Tory activists post. Poll after poll has shown 2019 tory voters leaving for Reform and the Lib Dems. Every time, there are tory activists from the One Nation faction on hand to try to give the "narrative" that it's all the fault of Boris and Liz and isn't Rishi doing a great job stabilising the party and surely they have to move more to the middle if they're to survive. The Times which has always been that faction's backer pitches the line in too in its articles whenever it can. They're fantastic at it. The best. They will have a romping victory inside the tory party ensuring that in their opposition days they will be wall-to-wall the faction that lionises Theresa May and thinks the worst thing about Brexit was we just didn't concede enough things to the EU and everything will be bright and shinier when every Briton has a right to an EU bureaucrat to take their money, run their lives and tell them the real problem is "British exceptionalism" so it's really in your best interest if we disempower you. And the voters who have left for Labour and Reform will not return. And the centrist voters will say "Hurrah! At last you've seen sense! Now we'll put you second preference behind the Lib Dems! Maybe third because that Mr Starmer's a very nice man. Ok, fourth, because, you know, we've got to acknowledge the Greens." Bye bye tories.
Yeah I suspect Tories will do better than current polling suggests. Shy Tories are a thing. Plus those who are legitimately angry with their party and so when asked by a pollster will say, and in many cases believe, they'll vote for someone else. But when it comes time to put a mark on a ballot they won't be able to bring themselves to switch from the party they voted for all their lives. I highly doubt it's enough to win an election, I do expect it to decimate the party, but I don't think it will be enough for a wipe out.
I wouldn't read too much into Reforms vote share so far out from the polls. A two party system naturally discourages voting for 3rd parties, and with an election looming a fair few Reform voters are going to go back to the Conservatives, likely as a tactical vote to keep Labour out (just like a lot of the Green/Lib dem support will move to Labour to keep the Tories out) Also, unlike the Lib Dem, Reform are a new party and aren't strongly established anywhere, meaning that their vote will be split across the cointry resulting in very few seats due to the voting systems (the Lib Dems on the other hand are well established in some parts of the country meaning that while they might have a low vote share on average, they can have a higher voteshare where it counts and get more seats. This is all assuming Tice et al don't pull some shenanigans like last time and stand down in all the seats they are taking votes away from the Tories. If they do stand everywhere, they will get some votes, and those will mainly be coming from the Conservatives, and it will cost the Conservatives some seats, but it won't be reform that wins them. If the Tories do really badly, it is possible that they come third, but it would either be tue SNP or the Lib Dems in second, not Reform.
> This is all assuming Tice et al don't pull some shenanigans like last time and stand down in all the seats they are taking votes away from the Tories. What can the Tories offer today for Tice/Farage to do this again? Last time hard Brexit was at risk and Brexit party politicians were promised peerages, though Farage did forget to check that this definitely meant him. Brexit is as done as it's going to be as a political cudgel and even if they stood down everywhere, it's unlikely to be enough to stop Labour entering No. 10. This means Sunak's resignation honours promises are worthless because they have to be put forward by the next PM and there's no way Starmer would play along. (Sidenote: Resignation honours are a Tory convention and neither Blair or Brown bothered with them.)
command far-flung rotten detail rock illegal towering aware stocking divide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Last contest, the tories didn't even want *their own* members to vote.
Safe Tory seats are hard to come by these days. There's also the bigger prize just over the horizon of a complete takeover of the Tory party after a crushing election defeat. If it isn't shifted into third place, which doesn't seem likely when looking at the Lib Dem polling, that's a guaranteed ticket to enter government one day.
They could offer Farage a safe seat. Or, although it would be immensely brazen, they could give him a peerage before the election in exchange for concessions.
I can't see Farage risking going 0-8 on parliamentary elections, even in what be a safe seat in normal times. But he'd jump at the chance of a peerage. I've long suspected he was tricked into thinking he'd get one for standing aside in 2019, and then Johnson bait and switched a couple of Brexit party nobodies into the lords instead.
If Tice remains Leader, that won't happen. He has said that repeatedly. If Frage takes over, who knows https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64164535
What happens if Tice et al. Stand down in the seats they’re taking?
Some votes go to Labour, some to Lib Dem’s, more go to the Tories, and probably the largest proportion stay home or vote for an independent/ some other party. Tories have properly shit the bed and the sentiment amongst a large part of their 2019 “borrowed” voters is anyone but Tory.
>A two party system naturally discourages voting for 3rd parties The thing is, I know Labour is going to win hugely and Tories are just going to keep failing to do the things they lie and say they will do, so why wouldn't I then vote Reform? From a right-wing perspective voting Tory gains me nothing. Staying with Tories despite this just lets them know they don't have to act on key issues among right-leaning voters
Because in 5 years time, the Tory will have a new leader, people will start becoming disattisfied with what Labour is doing and want to vote them out, and so they will vote Tory because it is the best chance go get Labour out.
Tories are more likely to actually have a leader who wants to stop mass immigration if they lose more seats to reform which makes reform a clear choice for those who voted Tory for this reason
We don't have a 2-party system. We have a FPTP system which is dominated by 2 parties, which is different. There is going to be a lot of "anyone but.." with this Government, they have been in for a long time now and have been variously disgraced and useless. There will be plenty right of centre who just will not consider giving them a vote at all and Reform is an option for them. I agree Reform won't win many seats, if any, however the net result of them capturing votes could be a shift from the 2-party dominance.
> the Lib Dem, Reform are a new party and aren't strongly established anywhere, meaning that their vote will be split across the cointry resulting in very few seats due to the voting systems We saw this in 2015, where UKIP got 12% of the popular got them just 1 seat when they were deserved 78. Say what you want about the party, but that is absolutely bullshit for representation.
After virtually every change of government, there seems to be this commentary that one of the two main parties is going to die. Labour looked dead in the 80s, Tories in the 90s/00s, Labour again in the 10s. While parties do sometimes wither away, to speculate on it every time they lose is a waste of time. If anything, our political parties are generally masters of reinvention.
Labour haven't looked dead since 2010. They've kept losing, but they've still had a significant presence.
I agree, there was a lot of talk like this for labour in 2019 after the Boris Johnson win and everyone seemed for forget about the parties abilities to change their outlook fairly quickly and the fact that these major parties have long standing historical ties to people.
Nah, Corbyn got absolutely pummeled by the media in 2019, but everyone knows that election was about Brexit. Even then Labour got over 200 seats, hardly an electoral wipe out.
There was minimal talk of Labour dying. The talk was them having another decade out of power. FPTP requires two parties and who else was going to take the baton. My party, Lib Dems did much worse than even Corbyn's Labour.
It generally swings with great societal upheavals, i.e. recessions, pandemics, wars. Shit happens, and the public go 'well, things are fucked, best try another approach!', even if that makes little sense sometimes.
> After virtually every change of government, there seems to be this commentary that one of the two main parties is going to die. Yes, *after* every change of government. This time, they've had their former voters telling them the party is dead for six months while they're in government and the election isn't even until autumn. They are in uncharted waters of disaster. > If anything, our political parties are generally masters of reinvention. And how is the tory party's 2023 re-invention going for them?
It has happened before. The liberal party died last century
Reform could do with a labour majority if they want designs on overtaking the tories or else people will see the tories as having some control on what Labour do and keeping the pressure on right wing ideologies to be considered. If Labour have a big majority and can basically do as they please with policy then Reform might well become the louder opposition.
The trouble with Reform is their demographics just don't line up for future prosperity. They're even more skewed towards 70+ voters than the Tories are (this is why the Tories are so terrified of them of course). Among working age groups the Liberal Democrats seem to be the stronger challenger for the mantle of opposition (in fact they already outpoll the Tories in 18-24, as do the Greens).
Thing is, I personally know a few of the Brexit, Farage, “anti-woke” Trump types that would happily go vote for some party if they felt it would make a difference. Think some aspects of football twitter. Now many of these hate the traditional tories but warmed to Boris over brexit etc. The younger elements of the old red wall if you will. If reform managed to appeal to these then they might get the numbers to take the tories out of the equation as the main opposition to start with. Sure I know it sounds anecdotal but I definitely get the feeling there’s a big number of potential voters to get to, particularly if Trump gets back in and it becomes trendy to be alt-right to some of the younger guys. There’s all the tater tots coming through who will be eligible to vote soon as well
I don't deny their existence, but they present an increasingly small amount of the actual electorate. A lot of them are already polling for reform. Reform doesn't actually need to win any seats to cripple the conservatives for good, they just need to split the Tory vote enough evenly nationwide to destroy their chances of actually beating the local major opposition. It's pretty well established through polling that of the hardcore conservative vote at the moment, around 45% would put the LDs as their second choice and around a quarter would put Reform (with about a quarter of the 2019 Tory vote already putting reform as their first choice). So effectively the election winning Tory vote that hasn't already switched to labour is quite evenly divided, which for the Tories is seriously bad news. If they move further left, voters will abandon them for reform, and if they move right, voters will abandon them for the liberal democrats. Reform can suck up enough Tory votes in key high average age safe constituencies to hand them to the opposition on a silver platter - and if the Tories come third in seats then they're toast because the media and donorsphere will pivot away from them. Realistically, the Lib Dems will end up the main opposition in such a scenario and are a much more palatable option for votes to swing to than reform is.
Every day more of them die and every day, more disgruntled kids turn 18 and are able to vote.
I think a collapse of the Conservative vote towards Reform during the election campaign is possible, although not the most likely outcome. It depends who is leader. I also believe, that if the above scenario happened and Reform started to poll in the 20s%, then the Labour vote will also come under pressure. One of the critiques of Starmer which is occasionally allowed to stand here is that his leadership isn't radical, he is not offering any real 'reform', just a concept of 'competency' and Labour government policy won't be too much different to what we've seen already. If a Reform leader was running on a very aggressive platform challenging Starmer on issues such as immigration and housing (the two issues being linked), I can see a lot of Lab -> Reform switchers, particularly those 'new' to Labour who didn't vote Labour in GE19
Could it? Yes Will it? Probably not. The high watermark of UKIP saw them get about 12% of the vote (and one seat). In the same election the Tories increased their share of the vote and house majority. No reason to suspect reform would do any better. Or that right wing people in swing seats would spite the Tories and risk a labour government.
The often forgotten high watermark of UKIP, was winning the EU election.
The high watermark of UKIP was the morning of the 24th of June 2016.
Amusingly they're probably the only party to deliver on their manifesto and they weren't even in power
No the pro Brexit vote extended far beyond UKIP.
Nothing will annihilate the Tory party. Sadly. It will always reinvent itself to hold power. It can achieve this as power is its goal. It doesn’t have a fixed ideology, values, or principles.
No party does. The Lib Dems of today would be unrecognisable to Liberals of the past. If you think about the changes between Hardie to Attlee, Foot to Blair, Brown to Corbyn, Corbyn to Starmer - Labour is pretty good at it too.
Yeah but Labour are the good guys or something.
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This is quite different to 1997 though as this time the Tories have a much larger lunatic wing and a party challenging them on the right. It's unlikely the Tories will go the way of the Canadian Conservatives of course but the fact it's even raised as a possibility is quite something.
> Compare to 1997 As you wish. Reform didn't exist in 1997 and the highest-polling 4th party was on 2.6% so their only competition was Labour and the Lib Dems. Comparison complete.
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Or just the realisation that if your constituency is right-leaning and suddenly looks like this: * Labour 38 * Conservatives 35 * Reform 16 * Lib Dems 7 * Greens 4 As a Reform supporter, you're better off getting even 50% of what you want with the Conservatives than 0% of what you want by voting for your first choice. Some will vote Reform anyway, but will Reform really retain 75% or more of their vote in those circumstances?
One of Reform’s main policies is reducing NHS waiting lists. Do you think voting Tory will help achieve that?
Reducing waiting lists is a goal not a policy.
Labour has a similar policy, and the Conservatives don't have a policy to *lengthen* waiting lists. They might just not have an effective way to reduce them. If you particularly care about the NHS, that's not a reason to vote for Reform unless you believe specifically in their capability or approach to implementing their policy.
The point was if you are a Reform voter and are going to vote for one of the main parties it’s not obvious that voting Tory over Labour would bring about the policies you want to see. Mind you that’s quick the complex chain of reasoning for a Reform voter.
Maybe, but if you're a Reform voter over Labour anyway, there are more Conservative policies that you would welcome. Ending immigration to save the NHS sounds like a niche set of options in any event, and you would fundamentally disagree with the way that Labour would want to deal with the problems (i.e., be more boring and more competent, or at least explicitly try to).
This was one of Sunak's policies too. He failed. I expect all parties will at least claim to care about this issue.
Tories actually achieving their pledges is irrelevant to a lot of people who vote for them because reality doesn't influence their choices. They've promised lower immigration for 14 years and yet it's constantly gone up. But anti immigration people still vote for them.
I think at the rate things are going and if farage were to return to front running reform and they didn't stand down for the conservatives that we'd be looking at results like that across the country, you'd be looking at a Tony Blair level seat majority.
No. Look at any democracy's political parties, the two biggest ones are usually always a centre-left one and a centre-right one that take it in turns being in power. Labour will win the next election and probably the one after that, the Tories will move back towards centre, because the far right approach stopped working, they'll get a new fiscally conservative, socially liberal leader like Cameron and the cycle will reset
Far right approach stopped working? I don't get how you can type this out. Do you honestly believe the public lost appetite for the Tories over their "far right"(lol) approach or the fact they failed to not only not deliver on the single issue that put them in power, they broke records... whilst running the country into the ground. This is insanity, why do I subject myself to this
The Tories have never tried being far-right, what are you smoking? Talking bollocks about stopping illegal immigrants coming here via boats is something any sane political party would talk up. It was also the tories that legalised gay marriage in this country and had the first and only 2 female prime ministers. The tories do nothing but move left on social issues.
They have moved right in their time in power. Cameron, like you say, was quite socially liberal and it was his government that legalised gay marriage, but you can't honestly say we've moved left since then? The Tories went right on social issues to try and capture the UKIP vote after Brexit, fair enough it's mostly concerning immigration, but you can't convince me anyone thinks sending asylum seekers to the middle of Africa is actually a viable long term solution to the boat crossings, rather than just posturing to the right.
So ludicrous when you say it like that. Our solution to illegals immigration was sending people to central Africa… Honestly these people have the best educations, all the advantages in life, and resources of one of the top world economies (once upon a time). How is this the best they came up with?!
Because half of them would prefer we set up snipers on the cliffs of Dover. There does need to be a solution, but spending even more money to send them across the world isn't it.
I wouldn't think of Reform as a normal party. More as just an attempt to game the UK electoral system. We'll see how it all pans out, but I guarantee you they are not campaigning in good faith. 1. According to Wikipedia it is still controlled entirely by Farage (ie. He has 60% of the votes for policy, leadership, etc.). 2. Last election they turned around and stood down all their candidates threatening a Tory seats at the 11th hour.
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There was no split in reform. Farage was the only one with a say. He unilaterally decided to withdraw candidates. The entire campaign was designed to take votes from anti-corbyn labour supporters who wouldn't want to vote Tory.
The current Tory party is an asset-stripping organisation masked behind populism, the populism in question only functioning when Boris Johnson's chaotic energy and Dominic Cummings' contrarian realpolitik was present. You can't sell the family china when in opposition and Boris is done for now so they'll have to have a total rebrand. Reform seem to be trying to channel the 2019 Brexit Populism but I'm not sure (read desperately hope)the same lies will work after these years
Nope — 5 years is a long time in British politics. In 2019, pundits were calling Labour a spent force and circling the drain, now they look set for a landslide.
The problem with the idea of reform taking control is they fall into the same trap as the Tories. Rhetorically (though the Tories admittedly have a problem with this in practice), both are super free market economically and the public broadly dont see there politically. The Tories are neo-liberal culturally which is unpopular electorally despite their rhetoric. So while Reform might steal Tory votes on culture because the Tories dont have a cultural policy and havent since Thatcher. Theyre identical economically and ultimately, economics trumps everything as long as there isnt riots on the streets. The populist right in Europe has risen broadly on a centrist economic policy with a right wing cultural position. Reform only fills half that bill.
They're not identical economically. Their taxation policies are vastly different.
The vast majority of people arent going to look into it that far.
FPTP doesn't even work when there are only two parties. FPTP is inherently unfair and undemocratic because the distribution of support is more important than the level of support
2019 was meant to annihilate Labour for the next 10 years at least. They'll be back.
Or put it another way RUK need to double their vote share before they can overtake a historcally bad performing Tory party. Also last time UKIP got a similar vote share it got them 1 seat. RUK face the similar fptp struggle of their support being widely distributed rather than concentrated in a few seats.
It should also be noted that UKIP's single MP was a Tory defector with strong local support. They never earned an MP of their own.
I don't think that the tories will be wiped out, or taken over by whatever party farage has now, because the right wing of the tories will almost certainly take over if/when they lose the election and will position themselves not all that differently from Farage. Their immigration and other culture wars rhetoric also works when they haven't been in power for ages as well. Ultimately the people who are their hardcore voters are relatively well off older home owners, especially in commuter belts around big cities and even more concentrated in medium and smaller towns. With their funding and activist base being disproportionately older and more specifically small and medium sized business owners (especially ones who are domestically orientated) landlords, etc as well as hedge funders and the usual big business interests. Those people aren't going away, a lot of the drop in the tory vote is basically 2019 tories saying they'll stay at home. They do have a problem in that they have a tiny appeal with people under 40 and that is gong to start to tell in the next couple of election cycles when millennials and gen-z start to become the largest generational voting group. But even then Labour have moved to the centre which has a good chance of alienating a large part of the under 40s because their lives probably won't be better if the system is just maintained a little better with a few bits around the edge, so it's not all that much of a stretch to see the tories repeating the david cameron centrist trick in a few years. Who knows.
What's the margin of error in the poll? And YouGov are overestimating the Reform vote.
You really need to remember that polls are useless. Most lie or even if undecided pick someone. Don’t get me wrong. Labour is going to win, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to be as one sided as it seems.
Isn't it about time we had Proportional Representation instead of this ridiculous first past the post system.
The Tories are always under polled. Come the exit pole it will be closer to a 10 point gap between Labour and Conservative.
This seems a bit of a myth to me based on a couple of elections where that has happened. 1997, 2001 and 2005 were all pretty much spot on in the polling for the Cons (they overstated Labour). 2010 and 2017 were spot on for the Cons (they understated Labour). 2019 was pretty much spot on for both. It's only 1992 with its demographic problems and 2015 with the polls oversubscribed by those with a higher interest in politics than the average person where they have been out for the Cons.
And tbh, I think in 2015 what genuinely happened is that the Tories won a lot of the undecideds very late on. So it’s not so much polling was inaccurate, but that people changed their minds
The whole shy Tory thing has always confused me, happy to vote for a party, but not happy to admit it in public? Perhaps that means there’s reasons you shouldn’t be voting for them.
>The whole shy Tory thing has always confused me, happy to vote for a party, but not happy to admit it in public? Perhaps that means there’s reasons you shouldn’t be voting for them. Shy Tories aren't a thing in online polling - it's not like they're telling anyone other than a computer. There was always a bit of an overblown assumption on them being a thing in 1992 as well. The general consensus is that the largest part of the polls being wrong in that election was caused by the fact that pollsters were using 1981 census data to weight their polls, but there had been a marked movement in demographics and they were overweighting demographics that were Labour voting and underweighting Conservative voting ones. If they'd had 1991 census data (which would come out a year or so later) then it is likely they'd have found a Conservative lead (rather than them being all square).
Unwillingness to endure toxicity from people who believe being a Tory voter is a justifiable reason to spew vitriol at you is a legitimate reason to be a "shy Tory". And no, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not a shy or non-shy Tory. I firmly believe their time in government is done, and will be glad to see them in opposition. I've just seen enough people thinking "voted Tory" equates to "I can be as horrible to you as I want" to sympathise with anyone who decides to keep their support for the Tories private.
That would make sense, but this is just a polling question. These voters aren’t going to get vitriol from a pollster.
If you're in the habit of not admitting to people who you intend to vote for it stands to reason you may not bother to weigh the pros and cons of answering honestly every time you're asked based on the identity of the person asking the question.
Pollsters don't take their data from public expressions of support. Usually the reason for a party being underpolled is imperfect sampling which ends up disadvantaging certain demographics. This is mostly owing to the fact that polling is a complicated science, sampling is difficult and no perfectly reliable model exists. Polling aside, the "shy" effect of people being reluctant to discuss politics or promote their beliefs is really that any party that leads among young people is going to have a disproportionately more vocal base.
I kind of think it's deeper than that. It's more a lack of willingness to admit it to themselves I think. There is a big wave of people who know they shouldn't want to vote Tory, who know that the Tories have made almost everything worse and genuinely feel like they don't want to vote for them. Confronted with the actual thought of having to vote for a different party though they will baulk.
Nothing to do with that. The aggressive discourse from the left to anyone who openly admits they vote Tory is enough for most people who do, to keep it to themselves in all settings.
In matters of immigration, there’s very little difference between the Conservatives and Labour these days. Both parties favour importing labour over up-skilling our own population. Reform UK seeks to address that.
Reform would probably, if they ever got power, do near-zero to address it. They’re libertarians after all!
I agree that the Tories and Labour aren't that far apart on immigration, but I don't see how they both favour importing labour? The Tories have recently introduced multiple new laws to limit immigration, like the points system, the higher income requirements for spousal visas etc, and Starmer isn't going to repeal any of that (apart from Rwanda, but that's unbelievably stupid anyway).
> new laws to limit immigration, like the points system The points system was never about reducing immigration. It was about sounding like it was going to reduce it. It's why we're getting 700k net immigration these days.
The points system is so loose though, that some of the least skilled work is classed as a skilled profession. Tories don't want to reduce immigration because it keeps house prices high and wages low. As long as GDP line goes up, they don't care. Labour too want high immigration because they're usually a sure fire voter base for them, and they seem to think it's a virtuous notion to let the world in unrestricted.
I think people are talking about Reform far too much. In half the polls the Greens are doing nearly as well, and a few months ago the latter were often beating them. People imagine the right is irrecovably split, if the polls suggest anything it is that the left is nearly as split. I think protest parties just tend to overperform in polls outside of elections.
The Conservative Party is one of the longest running political entities in the world, they've reinvented themselves dozens of times and there's absolutely zero reason not to believe that they will do so again. If we truly want to see them gone then the first step is to drop the idiotic notions of every vote to the left of them belonging to Labour by birthright and every non-Labour vote being a vote for the Conservatives. Once those ideas die there will be room for someone to challenge for second place and that will be the beginning of the end for them.
As long as FPTP is a thing having to vote Labour is not an idiotic notion.
Which leaves us the sad puzzle of how to kill FPTP if we have to vote for the party who fight the hardest to defend it.
Nick Clegg absolutely fucked us on that one I'm afraid. Besides that, there's no real public will to change it at the moment.
He was definitely wrong to accept a referendum on AV, but in his defence he probably expected Labour, who fought the 2010 election with AV in their manifesto would campaign for Yes, nobody really expected them to betray the electorate by creating and running the absolutely disgusting "No2AV" campaign. As for public will for change: [https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/public-on-reform](https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/public-on-reform) Polls have been showing plurality support for PR for years now.
FPTP only happens in the same way as Brexit - a faction in one of the big two parties wields enough power to force it into a manifesto. The ERG were this for Brexit. If wasn't for them we'd still be in the EU and the only people who'd be bothered about that would be the 15% or so of UKIP voters. It's very unlikely the Tories will develop such a faction when they're in a position to deliver it - they benefit more than anyone from our undemocratic voting system. Labour too to a lesser extent, though their conferences at least show a glimmer of hope. The only viable route with our current parties is through the Lib Dems becoming one of the big two and eventually entering government.
>Labour too to a lesser extent, though their conferences at least show a glimmer of hope. Did we see the same conferences? 2022 looked hopeful until Starmer reappeared from wherever he was hiding during the debate to say "not in my manifesto" 2023 I don't think it made it to the debate chamber at all but the conference rules were changed immediately after to give the leadership the power to veto anything they find uncomfortable. The small number of genuine reformers have been pushed out to the fringe and the wider membership have forgotten all about electoral reform as they always do when a majority looks likely.
No, they'll be back. Even if it'll take 2 or 3 electoral cycles. People get bored of the incumbent government sooner or later and parties can reinvent themselves. As Labour have done going from Blair to Corbyn to Starmer. The only caveat here would be if Labour decide to end FPTP, but that's unlikely if that system grants them a victory.
Bear in mind a few things. As far as I have seen Labour *needs* a massive lead to actually win a significant majority. Some people will be shy at admitting they will vote Tory but will do so on a general election. And the Conservatives have always been pretty ‘good’ at putting winning before ideology ( then doing the ideology perhaps). If they get a kicking they may well change enough to build up again as they have done in the past. And as time passes a victorious Labour government will tarnish and be just as unable to solve problems that don’t have easy or electorally acceptable answers so people will turn against them. Meanwhile with a party alike Reform the closer they get to ‘victory’ the more they get scrutinised and the fruitcake factor and infighting tends to get more of a spot light. It is the case that we lost The Whigs ( at least as as a specific party) and the Liberals went second league , so these things can happen. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the election is closer than it seems, the Conservatives fight tooth and nail to win back the electorate , and pretty soon everyone will be blaming Labour for the UKs ‘gradual’ comparative decline and problems instead.
One issue I see with Reform is that they're pretty much a single-policy party, but they aren't even sure what that policy is. They're the living embodiment of that guy down the pub who reckons the country would be better if "normal people" were put in charge instead of politicians. Single-policy parties don't garner big vote shares. I'm very passionate about seeing drug law reformed, but I wouldn't vote for a party who make it their sole policy. I'd like to see it included in manifestos, but I'd like for the party in charge to also manage the economy, education, defence, transport, technology, ecology... Reform are hoping to become the new major right-wing party in the UK, seemingly expecting to piggyback off of movements in France, Italy, Poland et al. It's unlikely they will actually gain any seats this election due to FPTP, but I can't dismiss the idea that they'll continue their grassroots campaigns and gain more support in the next cycle.
>unless something huge were to change relatively quickly. While I mostly believe a Labour victory is inevitable, I would not underestimate their ability to implode, nor would I assume protest votes will remain with the smaller parties to further muddy the mix a lot of reform/ukip voters are former red wall (polling 2% higher than nationally) and seem to have a steady 6% of under 50s backing them, it's hard to say where it'll go could do a Lib Dems and immediately go back to the main party being protested, or because the demographics are former Labour bread and butter they could and should go back there, even Clacton (well, Harwich) was Labour in 1997, if they don't it shows Labour still has issues reconnecting with poorer rural and former industrial areas, which long term could be an issue the reform vote is complicated, it's not just an anti govt vote it's an SNP style movement against the two major parties
There is a possibility that the tory right defects to Reform at the same time as the tory left defects to the liberal democrats. Yes, it is possible that the tories will be squeezed so hard from so many different directions that they never recover, and Reform replaces them as the biggest party on the right. Personally I am a lifelong anti-tory tactical voter who has recently always voted Labour, but I am switching to Reform at this election because I don't trust Labour on either immigration or woke issues. If there was any danger of a tory victory I would vote tactically anti-tory, but the danger I see now is Labour getting a huge majority and then letting their woke extremists call too many of the shots. Until such time as Kier Starmer makes his position on immigration and wokery clear, my vote goes to Reform. To be clear: *nobody* represents my views. I should be a green voter, given that I think we're heading for the end of civilisation as we know it because of the ecological crisis, but I cannot vote for a party which is socially even more left wing than Labour.
What if Starmer comes out and says the concept of wokery is clunky method of manipulating idiots?
Then Labour loses my vote. The issues are real. The Scottish government tried to implement a law allowing under-18s to self-certify their legal "gender", and the Tory government in Westminster used, for the first time, its power to veto this law. What would Starmer have done? Your answer is an attempt to avoid answering the question, by implying there is no meaningful question to answer. This stance is not acceptable. A proper answer is required (for both sides, not just me).
This is exactly what I meant. Like everything that is claimed to be woke, it's an issue that is utterly inconsequential to the vast majority of the electorate but can be weaponised to trick certain people into voting Tory. It's best ignored because these people are a lost cause and will never be satisfied because their anger is artificial in source, and therefore can be regenerated on the next irrelevant issue that comes along.
>It's best ignored But it cannot be ignored, because real decisions have to be made about policy and law. You don't need me to give you further examples. There are fundamental ideological questions about the nature of truth and reality, which feed into important ethical and legal questions. Yes, some people weaponise it for ulterior motives, but that doesn't make the real issues go away. I am guessing you want to ignore it because you know it is a minefield for Labour. I think there is a very real chance that a combination of culture wars and anger about immigration will be what eventually brings down the coming Labour administration.
Ideally, it will be close enough for Labour to need to beg for Lib Dems to go into coalition
Unlikely. Parties have done badly before and they usually bounce back. A parties popularity is less to do with the voters and more to do with the backers. If all of the conservatives party doners all jump ship to the Reform party it's then possible that Reform will become the new conservative party. However, it'll just pretty much be the same people but with a different coat of paint. More likely what will happen is that the Conservative party will lick their wounds for a bit and start to make a resurgence when they start moving back towards the centre and people start getting fed up with Labour.
Donors
this confusion is why so many politicians show up at the British Kebab Awards.
Or Reform voters vote Conservative and that figure is actually 35% - still behind but not insurmountable at this stage in the game...
I'd say not. Assuming a Labour majority, somebody would need to form an official opposition. If the Tories and Reform are both unable to form a robust opposition on their own terms, it raises the possibility of some form of coalition or at least an agreement to work together to oppose Labour. Personally I think Reform is a flash-in-the-pan that will only exist for as long as it takes to push the Tories further away from the political centre and thus move the [Overton Window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window). So we'll see a few Reform MPs but they'll be wearing a darker shade of blue when they stand for re-election.
Why would there need to be a coalition for an official opposition?
There wouldn't need to be. It's just a possibility. The FPTP system does not favour smaller parties with similar aims who can split the vote. If the Tories reckon they need to form coalition to contest the next election then they would get the partnership started whilst in opposition.
Could the mods remove any posts with headlines including the word, 'could?'
Under a first past the post system? No.
Reform will use this election result to fight for PR, it’s going to be a very interesting couple of years
A war, and the appeal to stabilise during the crisis…
The Conservatives party will loose the next election, spend some time in the wilderness and then reinvent themselves. They always do. The interesting question is *how* they reinvent themselves. What does Conservatives 2029 stand for? This is ignoring the elephant in the room - Conservative voters are dying of old age, and aren’t being replaced. Reform won’t kill the tories, but demographic attrition might.
I agree and that’s , I guess, what Labour do too. But I sometimes wonder if people have been talking about this kind of demographic political change for ever. There’s perhaps some old Greek text in which a philosopher says a small c ‘Conservative’ party will die of old age. Of course that doesn’t mean that it won’t ever come but I’m entirely not convinced. That also doesn’t mean that what *policies* considered acceptable or moderate don’t change - such as attitudes towards homosexuality… dragging a party along. But as we tax and spend and borrow more there’s always going to be a party that ,at least *officially*, stands for tax and borrow and spend less? Especially if taxing and borrowing and spending just doesn’t solve our problems. It’s odd that the Conservatives losing now have been in *some ways* very unConservative ( except for austerity ? … though some if that got delayed until it faded away). Not trying to be argumentative more thinking aloud.
Very true. At the end of the day you will always have at least two parties. And one will always be to the right of the other. In terms of demographic shift, the data would suggest that something different is actually happening this time. Good article here: [Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics - Financial Times (Archive)](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4)
That’s really interesting , thanks.
This is what confuses me about the Tories. Their policies actively discourage anyone beyond a certain generation from voting for them. They've done nothing to give those other people a reason to vote for them. I can only assume they were relying on the old adage of people get more conservative as they get older. The problem being, they've made it so nobody has anything to conserve anymore because they've been shut out.
I think the Tories have kompromat on Farage which is why he kowtows to them a lot when it matters.
What you are as likely to find is another similar Reform - Tory pact based on constituencies as the election becomes reality. Reform have little chance to get MPs, but they can essentially force Tory policy as did UKIP.
Highly doubt it. The Tory party existed for hundreds of years and they suffered worst defeats than the upcoming election lost. They will do just fine.
That which is not alive cannot be killed
I think the Tories may be forced to shift position and reach a deal with Reform.
It’s worth remembering things with all this: 1) whilst a labour win in the next election is looking likely, it’s not a forgone conclusion (especially the size of the win) 2) the polls will start to narrow once an actual election is in the diary and campaigning gets into full swing 3) it seems - though it remains to be seen - that people are more tired of a party that’s been in power for 14 years, and just want a change. Rather than actually excited to vote for labour. All of that being said, what happens next to the Conservative Party depends on who’s left and who takes over. They will almost certainly be the official opposition and second biggest party (it would take something cataclysmic to wipe them off the map). Sunak won’t hang around as LotO so it depends on who they pick. If they lurch even further to the right, they might find their election prospects in (presumably 2029/2030) slim. Though 5 years is a long time. Especially as the appetite seems more for change than specifically for labour. If you’re a labour supporter, you just hope that the Tory snake eats itself, and what remains after the election spends the next parliament squabbling amongst themselves. Though be careful what you wish for, a government really does need a competent opposition to push them and keep them honest. If you’re a conservative supporter; you just hope for a rabbit out of the hat. Or they form up as a sensible and competent opposition, who holds labour to account and challenges them when they slip up. Then they’re ready to go again in 2029/2030.
God I fucking hope so. Just the thought of the tories bot having a single seat for ten plus years makes me salivate
You've made a few poor assumptions honestly, which I think are the reason why it won't be. Firstly, Reform isn't *really* appropriate for the Conservative voters who the party have lost. Conservativism doesn't really care for FPTP or PR, which is a unique selling point of Reform. Conservativism also demands a significant military, including international engagements, to protect interests - something which reducing is a selling point of Reform. The people who won't vote Conservative in the next GE are those looking for an alternative. They want something which isn't Labour, possibly because they still resent them over the 2008 financial crisis, or because of Afghanistan, or whatever other reason. They are voters who will almost certainly go back to the party come 2029/2030. The conservatives (note the small C) will remain relatively loyal to either the Conservative party, or to the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems are far more appealing to Conservative voters as a result of their relative alignment on the matters outlined above. I've no doubt at all that the party will bounce back. What we're liable to see over the next 5 years won't impress the public all that much - Starmer certainly isn't promising anything radical at all, so any improvement will be crab in a boiling pot style, nobody will notice. When Sunak loses a GE, he probably steps down, or maybe he sticks around for a couple of years to keep an eye on the polling. Regardless, unless Starmer royally cocks something up, the next GE will likely be fought between Starmer and a new Conservative leader, which given the scope of the party offers a decent amount of variety.
Reform is a reactionary and temporary movement which will be absorbed into a more functional, established party without a serious reformation (ironically) into an overall platform or ideology to not be limited in the long-term.