A political collapse along the lines of that suffered by the Canadian Conservatives in 1993 – when they fell from a Parliamentary majority to just 2 seats – has long been the stuff of fantasy in British politics. Such implosions hardly ever happen in Western democracies and yet the chances a near repeat by the British Conservatives later this year have climbed from “impossible” to merely “highly improbably”.
Conservatives whips are struggling, I am told, to identify more than fifty colleagues confident of victory in the Autumn, while the steady trickle of senior Conservative MPs standing down – Theresa May last week, Brandon Lewis this – reinforces the impression of sinking ships and guinea pig-like rodents.
Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK is likely to be more an effect than a cause of decline but party leaders fear that things could quickly snowball, were others to follow suit. And that’s without Farage showing his hand, which many suspect could tip the Conservative party over the edge.
In a ‘normal’ election, the roughly 35-40% of the right-wing vote consolidates over the course of the campaign around the Conservatives, driven by fear of the alternative, but what if Labour is insufficiently fear-inspiring to drive voters home and the right wing vote splits down the middle?
It is perfectly conceivable that the Conservatives and Reform UK might each finish on between 15% and 20% with the Lib Dems just behind on 10%-12%. Under the perversities of first past the post, Labour might then reasonably expect 400+ seats in return for its 40-42% vote share, with the Conservatives might indeed plunge below 100 with the Lib Dems either side of fifty. Meanwhile, a disgruntled Reform UK, despite potentially even coming second in terms of the popular vote, might be lucky to return more than the handful of seats the Liberal party achieved with its 19% of the vote in February 1974.
Unlikely but not impossible, so it’s worth asking what next?
The incoming Labour government would garner an economic and political inheritance like no other, zero wriggle-room and huge expectations. By mid term, things could turn very bad and the electorate might once again be on the outlook for an alternative.
Meanwhile, it is hard to see a demoralised Conservative rump getting its act together in such a short period. Indeed, in such circumstances, a further lurch towards the right would seem the most likely outcome, with the next leader might be chosen from a much depleted field. It is also not inconceivable that the Conservatives might collapse altogether or – drawing on the Canadian experience once again – reverse engineer into Reform UK.
With Trump perhaps once again in the White House, populists performing strongly in elections across the globe and an increasingly unpredictable and volatile electorate, the appeal of such a reinforced Reform party – reinforced by self-righteous indignation arising from their treatment at the hands of FPTP – could well make them very serious rivals to Labour by 2029, especially if the UK remains in the doldrums.
Is that the only alternative?
Almost by default, the Lib Dems might emerge from the 2024 elections as the third Parliamentary force once again. For them, the question would be how to make the most of the opportunity that this could open up?
Going into these elections, the party seems determined to mirror Labour positioning by simply “not being the Conservatives” to attract soft Conservatives and tactical Labour votes where the latter is perceived to be unable to win.
But while, undoubtedly, this positioning is right for this election is it enough? Should the Lib Dems not also consider how “not to be Labour”, if only to have something with which press the party once it begins to falter in power?
I have previously argued that the Lib Dems should publicly declare that in the choice between tax cuts and supporting public services they will always choose schools and the NHS – a position that Paddy Ashdown (“a penny in the pound for education”) would surely have supported. Might the party not also now explicitly call out Labour’s withdrawal from its pledge to fund a massive investment in green infrastructure, a policy without which its economic policy is set up for failure? And then of course there is Europe and internationalism and civil libertieis and political reform…
Differentiation for differentiation’s sake is as Ed Davey might say “pure think tankery”.
Differentiation for political advantage is just good sense “Get Brexit Done”, for those who see a unique opportunity ahead.
* Ben Rich is Chief Executive of Radix, the radical centre think tank. From 1992-95 he was Lib Dem Deputy Policy Director and from 1997-2001 Vice Chair of the Federal Policy Committee. He was Tim Farron’s Leadership Campaign Director and his interim chief of staff from 2015-16 and senior adviser to the Lib Dem Business & Entrepreneurs Network until December 2019.
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52 Comments
Under Fptp id be surprised to see the Tories dip below 30%…They tend to get there vote out , & the resources available to them makes a catastrophic loss of seats less likely..Reform – like Ukip will struggle to make inroads under this system ..Labours withdrawal from it’s green fund pledge is just one less stick from the Tories & media to bash them with. Plus it’s not the vote winner people like to make out – net zero is fantasy stuff – that nobody wants to pay for .
Labour might have two objectives:
1. Beat Conservatives in Conservative-Labour marginals.
2. Help Conservatives to win in Conservative-other marginals by splitting the non-Conservative votes.
Thanks Ben. LibDems took a solid position in the most expensive referendum the UK has undertaken. Neither of the ‘bigger’ parties could make up their minds. Polls say that the majority in the UK regret that the referendum went in the opposite direction.
We should remind people that LibDems gave leadership in the right direction then and therefore earned the right to be considered as better leaders for our country.
Why trust parties that could not lead, to be leaders?
Ironically the reverse is happening in Canada where the Conservatives in the latest “Mainstream” Poll are 21% ahead of the Liberals and appear to be heading for a real landslide, even in Ontario.
” Labour might then reasonably expect 400+ ……”
This is the kind of scenario we’ve all seen published in the MSM. Ben Rich’s analysis takes into account the likely effect of Reform on the Tory vote but there’s no consideration of what is happening on the left.
The mainstream largely also ignores this. The pollsters don’t include any option to the left of labour which is quite an omission considering that the Workers Party has had a win and also a near win in two of this Parliament’s by-elections. It’s not necessary to actually win under the FPTP system to have a significant electoral effect.
Galloway is claiming he’ll put up 300 or so candidates at the next election. There are another 20 or so constituencies which have a similar demographic to Rochdale. Wes Streeting looks to be vulnerable to a challenge in Ilford North from Leanne Mohamad who is standing as an Independent Socialist on a pro Gaza platform. Andrew Feinstein is reportedly doing the same to Keir Starmer in his own constituency. The contest will provide valuable publicity for the anti-Starmer left.
Corbyn will almost certain participate. We have a nascent political party in the form of Transform which could receive his backing whenever he’s forced to show his hand. He will have the option of standing as a member of this party rather than as an independent which is the general expectation.
Don’t bet your house on the outcome of the next election just yet!
This is an interesting article, but there are quite a lot of improbable speculations going on in it. The Conservatives are almost certainly underpriced at the moment. We heard the other day that 17% of voters are still undecided. I remain convinced that many/most will break Conservative when the election comes. The Conservatives falling to less than 100 MPs in one election is a fairy tale. Even our own Party did not break up that quickly.
However, it is very plausible that we’ll return to being the third party in terms of MPs. The question of what to do with that status has been endlessly debated – and no doubt will continue to be!
I really don’t envy Our Leadership Team in this Election – do we Target 50 Seats then realise too late that we could have gone for 80, do we Target 80 & spread ourselves too thin & end up with 40 ?
We are facing a number of known unknowns –
Swingback – normally the Opposition lead declines as The Election approaches, That happened in 1997, in fact for 2 Years before there was a steady fall in Labour support & a rise in Conservative Polling. We are less than 6 Months from the “planned” date for calling the Election & there has been no sign of any Swingback so far, in fact The Conservative Polling continues its slow decline, a pattern that’s been in place for 4 Years now.
Perhaps this will be an Election with no swingback ?
Reform – will they hang on to their Voting block of around 11% or will they collapse ?
Right now I can see a range of possible results from a near-repeat of 1997 to The Libdems becoming The Official Opposition.
What does the cliche phrase “wriggle room” mean in accessible financial language?
If it means that H. M.G. has no money, it is an inaccurate cliche phrase because, having a sovereign currency , H. M. G. can, and has a definite duty to, create enough to run its national society well.
Governmental creation of money does not create debt as this type of money is created not borrowed.
Responsible money creation and use is a prime duty/reason for government.
Both major parties seem to have formed an unacknowledged political caste with the submerged purpose of using Neoliberal/austerity theory and practices to remove money from essential infrastructures to go into the finance industry.
But one execrable of which is economically presented in the following attachment:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/03/17/what-is-the-point-of-power-if-it-is-not-to-help-the-most-vulnerable-and-least-well-off-which-there-is-no-sign-that-labour-will-do/
Any organization not perceptually limited by possible patches of ideological blindness, a desire for power itself rather than the good it could do, and even pleasing donors, might cost the price of running our country well and sustainably and create money and tax accordingly, with efficient degrees of inflation.
P. S. Why is inflation “sold” to us as a unit entity when it varies?
How can parents in work have a surfeit of money when they cannot afford to feed their children well?
Might a reality check show a way forward for us?
@Paul Barker. “I really don’t envy Our Leadership Team in this Election – do we Target 50 Seats then realise too late that we could have gone for 80, do we Target 80 & spread ourselves too thin & end up with 40 ?” I think there will be 80 associations targeting their own seats. Those that are going to win already have the resources to do that. Whether they are being targeted by the central party is now largely irelevant. What they need from the national party is a national campaign which uplifts all our seats.
@ Steve,
“Governmental creation of money does not create debt as this type of money is created not borrowed.” ???
If you are interested in MMT take what Richard Murphy says with a huge pinch of salt. He doesn’t, by his own admission, agree with important parts of it.
Money is an IOU, so the Govt debt is created when the money itself is created. What is normally termed Govt borrowing is merely a swap of cash for bonds/gilts. It is a swap of one type of government IOU for another and doesn’t substantially change anything
@Peter Martin: We’ve been there before. Left-wing challenges to mainstream Labour may work in by-elections, but are much more difficult to pull off in a General Election. Labour will win back Rochdale, unless George Galloway suddenly becomes an assiduous constituency MP (highly unlikely given his past record). I wouldn’t put it past him to abandon Rochdale and find another seat where he’s less well known. Other left-wing challenges will also fall flat, unless they are by sitting MPs on personal votes (e.g. Jeremy Corbyn). Most voters are far more concerned about bread & butter issues than about a foreign conflict in which the UK is not directly involved.
Alex is right . Without the glare of a by-election the media brings – it’ll probably be back to the status quo. It’s not often that when politicians step outside the comfort of a party flag the big two gives , that the public respond in like . What we need to be concerned about is how strong will that labour vote be – North Shropshire would be very vulnerable . Let’s not underestimate that strength like Farron did in mid beds …
“The term “sovereign money” denotes the portion of a currency issued by a central bank or monetary authority which is not made up of debt.”
https://www.bing.com/search?q=sovereign+money+moneyla&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=1&lq=0&sm=csrmain&pq=sovereign+money+moneyla&sc=9-23&sk=&cvid=CED2ABC6F469436CAEDA54D8C95E33E6&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl=
“The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton on M. M. T. is both informative and enjoyable to read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Kelton
I agree with Ben’s core argument and his view of the way forward. I disagree with his starting point: “Such implosions hardly ever happen in Western democracies”. Such radical change may require “implosion” in a FPTP electoral system. It’s worth looking at the changes in other “Western democracies”. Where are the once-dominant Socialist Parties? They are on their last legs where they haven’t disappeared entirely as an electoral force. Germany has a Social Democratic Chancellor, but with a share of the vote that would have been seen as derisory at any time since WWII. Christian Democracy, the other stabilising element in post-1945 democracies, is giving way to populist nationalist parties, even if under the cloak of old names. The growth of radical parties of the Left and Right and separatist, regional parties makes them a crucial element in government formation. This may not be “implosion” but they are fundamental changes in the underlying ideological structure of party systems.
In some countries, usually smaller ones, Liberal parties are the main alternative to the dominance of these new elements. Why does our Party not think about and prepare for our role and responsibility in this new political environment? Liberalism is the philosophic and practical alternative to statism and nationalism. Our Party should be the voice of that alternative, not “not the Tory party” and not simply as “local champions”, but as the strongest, clearest national voice for open, pluralist, participatory politics.
@Peter Martin: “The pollsters don’t include any option to the left of labour”
Pretty much every national poll prompts for the Green party – who were the only “left of Labour” party in the 2019 election to get more votes nationally than the Monster Raving Loony Party. (Or, comparing to elections in which Labour wasn’t as left as in 2019, in 2015, got around 30 times the votes of the next closest England&Wales left-of-Labour party – TUSC)
They’re doing pretty well – if current polling is accurate and remains stable going into the election they will likely double or triple their vote over last time, and quite possibly win Bristol Central. Probably they will take a few % of votes off Labour in a lot of other seats but not enough to seriously worry Starmer.
@ cim,
You’ve made a fair point about the Greens. In fact you could possibly have added the Lib Dems too. It’s not that hard to be to the left of Starmer’s Labour. However, I’m still wondering why Reform and UKIP which have never won Parliamentary elections are included in the pollsters prompts whereas the Workers Party which has, whatever we think of them, are not.
@ Alex Macfie,
“Other left-wing challenges will also fall flat…”
This is crystal ball gazing. “Old Moore” may well disagree. 🙂
I’m not sure you appreciate what Galloway’s tactics are likely to be. His stated aim is to either win or prevent Starmer from winning. If he runs candidates in Labour’s target seats he only needs to take a few % to make the difference between between a Labour gain and a Tory hold. So the WP candidates may lose deposits but won’t necessarily “fall flat”.
Starmer has made the calculation that the Labour Party can do without the socialist left. We’ll see just how well that works out as others will inevitably move in to fill the political vacuum.
@ Steve,
You’re simply quoting the mainstream view. This a hangover from the time that currency was backed up by gold reserves. So whereas the currency in its paper form could be regarded as an IOU, which could (at least in theory) be exchanged for a set amount of the yellow metal, the monetary base as whole could be regarded as debt free.
The removal of gold backing doesn’t change the IOU status of the issued notes. Therefore the monetary base should now be classed as debt even though the mainstream has chosen not to catch up on this point.
The choice of prompting is generally to avoid overstating the chances of minor parties by telling the voter that they exist at all, which in experiments has generally been found to be a much bigger effect than the understating you might get when someone discovers that a minor party exists on receiving their ballot paper. They do from time to time run experiments with prompting for different parties (or not prompting at all) to see if it makes a difference.
“If he runs candidates in Labour’s target seats he only needs to take a few % to make the difference between between a Labour gain and a Tory hold.”
Sure, in some individual seats, that will be true. But if the polls are vaguely accurate, the Con->Lab swing compared to 2019 will be about 30%, and if that was a truly uniform swing (which it isn’t, of course) the Conservatives would lose essentially all their Labour-facing seats. Even if the polls are substantially overstating the lead already and *then* Galloway’s party somehow takes an additional deposit-saving 5% purely from Labour’s vote in a bunch of key seats, Labour will still win a very comfortable majority.
Whether Labour can manage without the socialist left in the long term – things probably will look quite different in another twenty years, say – is a different question to whether they can easily win this election without them.
I would imagine that many who identify as ‘socialist left’ might want to have nothing to do with Galloway.
@ Martin,
You’re right. But, many on the left, including myself, also now don’t want anything to do with Keir Starmer. So it comes down to voting for the least worst option. Many will take the view that this is George Galloway.
I’d much prefer to vote for a Labour Party which was a genuinely based coalition of left, centre left and centre as it always was previously. This option no longer exists so I too will have a difficult decision to make. I’ll probably end up voting Green or even Lib Dem! This, too, could help let the Tory back in my constituency so the net effect won’t be any different from voting WP – if Galloway were to stand a candidate here.
@ Cim,
I’m guessing, of course, but if a genuine left party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn were to field candidates in most constituencies I would expect the support to be similar to what the Lib Dems might expect. Some 10-15%. Take that away from the Labour lead and the picture looks quite different.
I doubt Galloway would get such widespread support but, again, I don’t know. This is why I would like the pollsters to ask the question.
The point about prompting by opinion pollsters is a good one.
The only occasion I was ever grilled by an opinion pollster was in about 1980. The political alternatives offered were Conservative, Labour, Liberal, National Front and “Other”. As, at that time, I favoured the Greens, I was less than impressed.
(I have another, happier, memory of that poll. I was also asked “Can you name any building societies?” As I was a High Street solicitor, I reeled off the names of about twenty before the canvasser begged me to stop…)
On sovereign currency and off the gold standard.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/02/13/the-gold-standard/
@ Steve,
As always Richard Murphy get some of it right but not all. The reason the government sells bonds, which is what he means by ‘borrowing’ although it is just a swap of one IOU for another, is to set longer term interest rates. If it wants rates to fall it instructs the BoE to enter the market as a buyer which forces the price up and therefore the yields and effective interest rate downwards. If it wants to force rates up it does the opposite.
So, the Govt can always ‘borrow’ at 0% if it wants to. It last did when the Covid crisis was at its height but it doesn’t want to right now.
Peter Martin 18th Mar ’24 – 1:26pm:
…many on the left, including myself, also now don’t want anything to do with Keir Starmer. So it comes down to voting for the least worst option. Many will take the view that this is George Galloway.
Also, the Westminster bubble is likely underestimating the support for Reform UK by traditional working class former Labour voters (as happened before with UKIP and the Brexit Party.) Nigel Farage stuck his neck out and made a prediction about that in a recent interview on Speccie TV…
‘Nigel Farage on Reform, the Red Wall & 14 years of Tory failure | SpectatorTV’ [15th. March 2024]:
@Cim: the swing won’t be 30%. It will be half that!
For example, Labour up about 10%. Tories down about 20%. Swing 15%.
A swing of 30% – for example, Labour up 30%, Tories down 30% – would see Labour on 63%, Tories on 14%.
Peter Martin 18th Mar ’24 – 1:26pm…You’re right. But, many on the left, including myself, also now don’t want anything to do with Keir Starmer. So it comes down to voting for the least worst option. Many will take the view that this is George Galloway…..
I live in a ‘solid’ Tory seat.. My experience gives quite the opposite conclusion..Many here would never vote for a radical ‘leftie’ but will vote for a change (providing it ‘doesn’t frighten the horses’); they are fed up with Sinak and will either not bother or go with Starmer..
At the moment Starmer is ‘all things to all men’ but, if his aim is to get into N0.10, then that is the right approach…The UK media is almost exclusively right wing and they have nothing to attack him on; Sunak’s latest attempt, at PMQ’s, was met with the great put down, “The Prime Minister is describing a Labour Party that no longer exists.”..
Looking at Starmer/Sunak and the future of the UK I’m reminded of two men meeting a lion..You don’t need to outrun the lion, just the other man…
@Chris Moore
Thanks – forgot to divide by two at the end, of course.
@Peter Martin
The problem with hypothetical polling is that respondents are collectively really bad at predicting what they will do later, and things like “new left party” or “new centrist party” tend to massively outperform reality because the respondents often interpret it as “[best possible]”, while on the other side the advantage of incumbency is overstated (see for example polling around ChangeUK, or on Boris Johnson as a potential successor to Theresa May). It’s wrong far more often than right.
“I live in a ‘solid’ Tory seat.. My experience gives quite the opposite conclusion…..”
Assuming you don’t mean in the so-called Red Wall, so do most of the British commentariat. They don’t tend to live in places like Rochdale or Bradford so often don’t have any feel for what’s happening there. So they won’t be aware that there are places in the UK that parties like the WP will do quite well. Just like they weren’t aware of the strength of support for Leave in 2016. Had they lived in Stoke, though…….
Scotland is a particular problem for Starmer. He’s not at all popular there but he does need to pick up seats there to win his majority.
The feeling on the left is that he won the Labour leadership by deception and so can’t be supported.
@ Jeff,
I think you’re right about the potential ( I would say danger) of the far right to pick up support from the working class, especially when unemployment or homelessness is high. If someone is without a job or a decent place to live then it’s easy to see how they will react to those, who they might consider to be outsiders, and who are doing better than them.
FPTP is a peculiar beast. It has not been a friend to the LibDems, but has greatly helped the Tories and Labour. Neither have ever had their vote fall far enough for FPTP to be a disaster for them. Now. I’m not sure where it happens, but somewhere in the low 20s the Tories would suddenly get savaged by FPTP and drop from around 200 seats to 40 or 50. Maybe not the 2 seats the Canadian Tories held, but low enough so that they might not be the second party.
Who would benefit from such a collapse if it happened? There are a quite large number of seats where it could be the LibDems. If you add into the mix a Tory vote split by Reform, who knows.
Of course, this is fun speculation, but it isn’t a total fantasy. With FPTP you can win a seat with less than 25% if there’re more than 4 candidates. I think that the election campaign strategists need to have a plan if, during the election, a Tory collapse or split seems likely.
I’m not an expert on psephology, @Mick Taylor, but the damage to the Tories seems to happen if they are polling in the low 20’s, Labour have at least a 20 point lead and the Lib Dems get half the Tory score. So, Tories 22%, Labour 42% and Lib Dems 11% would give a result of Tories 81 seats, Labour 471 seats and Lib Dems 56 seats, according to the Baxter MRP calculator on Electoral Calculus. Those figures are fairly in line with recent polling, and of course because of the machinations of FPTP, any figures you might decide to put in for the Greens or Reform make very little difference.
Well, we can’t ensure that the Labour Party will have a large lead over the Tories on Polling Day, but we can do our bit to ensure that the Lib Dem vote is high enough to benefit from any weakness inflicted on the Tory Party, either by their opponents or by themselves. Who knows, if those are the rough figures on Polling Day, and our targeting strategy works, we could be about to see the Conservative Party have its back broken.
Peter Martin 19th Mar ’24 – 10:33am…..Assuming you don’t mean in the so-called Red Wall, so do most of the British commentariat. They don’t tend to live in places like Rochdale or Bradford so often don’t have any feel for what’s happening there. So they won’t be aware that there are places in the UK that parties like the WP will do quite well. Just like they weren’t aware of the strength of support for Leave in 2016. Had they lived in Stoke, though……
The idea that the ‘commentariat’ don’t ‘have a ‘feel’ for Red Wall voting intentions is ridiculous.. More time is spent reviewing those areas than anywhere else.. Galloway won due to a ‘perfect storm’
.
10th March (Post Galloway) Polling intentions Red Wall seats…
Labour 47% (+5)
Conservative 21% (-3)
Reform UK 14% (–)
Liberal Democrat 8% (-4)
Green 6% (+1)
Scottish National Party 3% (+1)
Other 1% (–)
As for not knowing the strength for leave, that too is a myth…In the run up to the referendum opinion polls of voters tended to show roughly equal proportions in favour of remaining and leaving….And so it turned out..
@DavidLangshaw. The point I was trying to make is that there is a situation where our vote goes up and the Tories crash and we actually get more seats than them. We should at least have a plan for putting resources into seats other than target seats if that seems likely to happen.
Ed Davey, Leader of the opposition?
@ Mick Taylor. “The Tories crash and we actually get more seats than them”.
You and I are both getting a bit long in the tooth, Mick, but I can’t actually remember 1910.
@ expats,
I’m not saying the commentariat don’t understand opinion polls. If anything, they are too reliant on them. On the immediate topic of the potential for a left wing insurgency: This will be led, most likely, by George Galloway and the Workers Party although we could yet see Jeremy Corbyn make a late entry into the contest. Therefore to rely on opinion polls is being somewhat remiss, especially as the pollsters aren’t even asking the question – as your quoted figures on the red wall show.
It’s fair enough not to include JC (that’s just hypothetical right now), but as GG and the WP have just won in Rochdale……
Agree 100% @Mick Taylor! Targeting is a virtuous discipline, but a bit of flexibility might be needed if the result looks like it is going to be “unusual”.
Ive used the Electoral Calculus prediction facility, with the most pessimistic & optimistic assumptions that I can imagine – Our Seat total varies between 40 & 60 but The Conservative range id from 40 to 150 Seats.
So, Us becoming The official Opposition in one Night is possible, it requires Our Vote share to go up a bit, as sometimes happens during The Campaign itself, No Conservative Recovery & Reform hanging on to their current 11%.
If that happened We would all have to tighten up & get more serious.
@Peter Martin: Jeremy Corbyn’s stock has plummeted since 2017. It’s not only the antisemitism issue. His reputation suffered after his comments on the Salisbury poisoning and the resulting perception that he is soft on Russia (while voters don’t care much about foreign policy, they do care about national security). His recent comments drawing a false equivalence between the two sides in the Ukraine war can only have compounded this perception.
What happened in Rochdale will stay in Rochdale. Any far-left challenge at the GE will falter because it will not have a big party machine behind it. I remember 1992 when there was talk of Militant sabotaging Labour efforts in numerous constituencies, but in the end only the sitting MP Dave Nellist came close in Coventry (having been sent there by the Labour machine).
@ Alex,
We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
The first test of extent of support for a left challenge was in Rochdale. The next big one will be in May with Jamie Driscoll’s mayoral challenge in the NE. At the same time we’ll see numerous challenges at council level.
The mood on the left is quite different from 1992. Whatever misgivings there might have been about Neil Kinnock there were no accusations that his winning of the Labour leadership was achieved by fraud and deception.
There wasn’t the same split on the huge issue of deaths in Palestine.
“What happens next?” There’s an immediate Next, and a ten-year one. They will be utterly different, for the coming General Election will surely be the very last FPTP one, and we must consider NOW how the shape, and the shaping-up-for , of the 2029 GE under PR.
Why do the Greens do so badly? They currently have better ideas than the LDs, and more of them: and their own voting results are misleadingly poor. Why? Because FPTP oversimplifies. It must be that too many Greens do in fact cast their votes for the LDs, not in support of LD policies (!), but to keep LDs going as the most likely Third-past-the-Winning-Post, as well as the closest to the concerns of the Greens,
”What happens next?” is all very well but I think it has fallen short in scope. Fair enough: the title is indeed ‘what happens next’. But shouldn’t we be looking much further ahead than “next”, if that means Now?
[Continues below I hope]
I’ve just had to curtail the piece of which only the top half appears not far above. I cannot find the botomm half. Summarising thebottom half, it contained a recognition that my LDV piece on 1.12.23, “UBI and PR will work together” was much too condensed at the outset. The basic message was that PR is on its way, and that the LD ought NOW to be looking forward to 2029, and considering the implications.
In particular I considered our relations with the Greens, who have more important concerns to worry about –climate, energy. agriculture etc– than we current LDs have, and that they will probably overtake our party if we do not buck our ideas up and consider how we and the greens might well profit by collaborating in various ways, such as agreeing to stand down in half the seats and voting for the other. There was more, but it has lost itself in this bit of surgery. Sorry.
We look forward, I trust, to collaborating with them in much of what Parliament does, once PR is up and running
Jamie Driscoll may well win on his record and personal popularity. Defrocked sitting MPs could also present serious challenges at the GE if they choose to stand under new colours. But I really doubt that unknown Dave or Deidre Spart will be much of a threat to Labour at either local or national level.
@ Alex,
I’m not sure about your Dave and Deidre but I’d say Wes Streeting could be quite worried about Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North. Emma Dent Coad will run a serious challenge in Kensington. The Liverpool Community Independents also plan to challenge -possibly under the banner of ‘Transform’. These won’t be the only ones.
Again it’s not necessarily about winning as far as Galloway and the Independent Socialists are concerned. It’s about reducing the Labour vote so that Starmer doesn’t win big time. The Lib Dems might go along with this strategy too. Having a huge Labour majority would mean that you can forget about any PR reform in the next Parliament.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-british-palestinian-candidate-wes-streeting
@Alex …
Nellist polled well in Coventry & hundreds of militant supported coming to do the groundwork . The same foot soldiers that nearly unseated Simon in Bermondsey – J Bryan being the labour candidate I think..Dave was voted parliamentarian of the year by the spectator mag of all people. Having said that – give me the likes of Nellist as my local mp than some vacuous Blairite careerist ..
@Martin Gray: You might be thinking of 1987, when Simon Hughes’ majority in Bermondsey fell to 2,779 (from over 5,000 in the 1983GE). In 1992, he more than trebled his majority to nearly 10,000; his Labour opponent then was the area’s MEP Richard Balfe, who 10 years later defected to the Conservatives. I know Dave Nellist nearly toppled the official Labour candidate in 1992, but my point to @Peter Martin is that he was the only one who achieved such a stunt.
Emma Dent Coad, as the former MP for Kensington, could indeed cause an upset there making the seat a 4-way fight (Lib Dems will also want to build on their strong showing last time). Where the rebel candidate is not a sitting or former MP for the constituency, it seems far less likely. Wes Streeting is probably safe because of the national swing, which I would expect to more than offset any vote leakage to this Ms Mohamad.
@ Alex,
The defection of Alex Jones from Labour is just the latest in the underreported developments on the left of British politics – which I have been writing about recently.
It’s very much of relevance to Lib Dems who might want to get on board, to the extent that this is possible, by trying to outflank the Starmerites on the left. This was done moderately successfully against Tony Blair. It should be even easier to do this now than it was then.
You surely don’t want to be in a Parliament in which Labour has a 400+ MPs? You might have 40 yourself but you’ll still have no influence. Your chances of PR reform will be zilch. It’s a scary prospect in any case.
“This Ms Mohamad” is someone who is tactically on your side. You can’t rely on the Tories to clip Starmer’s wings. You’ll need to rely on some effective opposition from the left. Approx 300,000 Labour members have left since 2020 to be replaced by just 100,000 supporters of a more rightish inclination. There’s plenty of support.
In any case I would suggest you take a closer look at what is happening in constituencies like Ilford North before making too many confident predictions.
Correction should be “the defection of Owen Jones…..” 🙂
Personally, I am massively looking forward to Our Party having 40 MPs – the size of the Labour majority doesn’t really matter, there isn’t any practical difference between winning by 100 or by 300.
So what is our long-term aim ? I believe it should be to replace The Tories as the opposition to Labour, something I think we can achieve in the next 5 to 10 Years.
@ Paul Barker,
I’m afraid it is wishful thinking, on your part, to expect the two main parties will ever be the Lib Dems and Labour. There is so little difference that a merger would be the sensible option. Even if the Labour Party were to move even further to the right the ‘brand name’ wouldn’t be recognised by most Tories.
So we can expect there always will be a significant right wing presence. Just as the present vacuum on the left will, sooner or later, be filled by those of a left wing persuasion. We haven’t gone away. I’d expect Reform and the Tories to come together at some point. Maybe even before the coming election if the Tory rank and file start to panic. So that would put them both combined on 35 -40% of the vote.
Support for Labour is soft and unenthusiastic to say the least. The lesser of the two evils is the way most view it. There won’t be any honeymoon. The PLP left daren’t make any criticisms at the moment otherwise they will be deselected. That won’t be the case after the next election. Starmer is in for a rough ride as PM.
The Lib dems have always criticised the Labour Party for being too authoritarian. If you weren’t right in pre-Starmer days you certainly are now. You can’t want Starmer to have the sort of power that a landslide majority would allow him.
@Paul Barker; even Blair recognised the dangers of having a massive majority in parliament,I remember seeing him asked in an interview why he didn’t implement more radical change when he had the chance, his answer was words to the effect that he didn’t feel he had the right to use such a large majority just push anything he wanted through parliament knowing that the opposition could do little of anything to prevent him, I’ve always thought it one if the more interesting comments from Blair post P.M. role.
Replacing the Conservatives as opposition to Labour in 5-10 years, that’s….optimistic the conservatives I know are not switching to a different party, they are staying at home and refusing to vote, for now. Your suggestion idea reminds me of the ‘ go back to your constituencies and prepare for power’ comment! Nice idea, not likely.
There is no way you could divide up the existing spectrum of views in this country to produce a Labour – Lib Dem two party system. We could be second at this election if the Tories dramatically imploded but it would be on the basis of voters picking a party they disagreed with over one they considered utterly useless. In the long term, we probably only get to be a major player with at least one of the other parties splitting.
@ Noah,
” I remember seeing {Tony Blair} asked in an interview why he didn’t implement more radical change when he had the chance, his answer was…..”
Untruthful!
An honest answer would have been that he didn’t push through radical change because he didn’t want radical change. At least not in socialist sense.
He’s admitted as much when he said ““wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”
If we want to replace/seriously endanger the Conservatives we need to become a classical liberal party along the lines of the FDP or the VVD, embodying a coherent and complementary philosophy of social and economic liberalism.