Author Archives: Caron Lindsay

Over the next wee while, we’ll have to reflect on what went wrong in the election and how we can avoid some of the mistakes in the future.

We know that our vote share went up more than any other party’s. Our bonkers electoral system ended up giving us one fewer seat. The Tories gained a quarter of what we did and were rewarded with tens of seats. But we thought we were going to end up with many more MPs. We should have ended up with more MPs. The narrow losses in places like Carshalton where we lost Tom Brake by 400, Sheffield Hallam, where the brilliant Laura Gordon didn’t win the seat by 700, Wimbledon where we lost by 600 and, of course, Jo’s seat where fell short by just 149 should have been avoided.

The reasons why it all went wrong are varied and we shouldn’t rush to blame it all on the Revoke policy. Remember that 6 million people signed a petition calling for exactly that just 6 months ago and even in the latter stages of the election, it was still the most popular policy amongst remainers.

We need to look at our targeting strategy, the way in which we asked activists to move around the country and the seats we asked them to move to.  We need to look at our messaging and how we appealed to Labour remainers.  I think we needed to emphasise that our manifesto was the most redistributive of the three main parties. It did more to help the poorest. I think we should have been shouting that much louder. And we had a brilliant policy to provide free childcare that was not mentioned nearly enough.

We need to look at that decision to push for an election in the first place. I was not convinced that the timing was right. I understand that the EU was less than convinced about granting another extension and that the support for the election  provided them with motivation to do so. I understand that the prospect of a People’s Vote was waning with Labour’s refusal to actually vote for it in Parliament. I understand that it looked like the Withdrawal Agreement could go through with Labour votes. But, if we had left it, would we have been any worse off than we are now? 

The latest You Gov MRP poll shows us gaining slightly in both vote share and seats from 2017 but  still gives Boris Johnson a majority. But before we all panic, the figures show that we can stop him and gain more seats.

The headline figures have the Tories on 339, Labour on 231, us on 15, the Greens on 1, Plaid on 4 and the SNP on 41.

The study has us on 12% and with 15 seats. That doesn’t ‘t tell the whole story. Seats like Lewes, Finchley and Golders Green (Luciana Berger) and Cities of London and Westminster (Chuka Umunna) are in reach for us if we can squeeze that Labour vote.

North East Fife has moved from being SNP two weeks ago to a toss up and Caithness has gone from a 1% SNP lead to a 4% Lib Dem  lead.

If these results were replicated, we would gain St Albans, Richmond Park, South Cambridgeshire, Sheffield Hallam and Winchester by significant margins.

Here are the seats when we are in with a shout of a gain:Cheadle

Cheltenham

Esher and Walton,- Monica Harding could unseat Dominic Raab with the race tightening in the two weeks

Finchley and Golders Green, (Luciana Berger)

Guildford,

Hazel Grove,

Lewes

St Ives

Wokingham

Chelsea and Fulham – a longer shot but Labour votes switching to Lib Dem could see Nicola Horlick elected.

Ceredigion

The SNP could gain a few more seats from the Tories, too.

The take home from this poll is that a Tory majority is not inevitable.

Incredibly, Bolsover, one of the safest Labour seats in the country, is predicted to go Conservative. Who would have thought that Dennis Skinner would face electoral defeat at the hands of the Tories?

And on other side, Iain Duncan Smith also faces defeat by Labour in Chingford and Wood Green.

I suspect that this poll underestimates the Lib Dem vote from what I have seen and heard about on the ground in Lib Dem seats.