Yes, you read the headline right. Ladbrokes’ The Political Bookie blog this week featured five seats where, based on the betting, they reckon the Lib Dems might confound expectations…
1. Montgomeryshire. Conservative majority 1,184
“Some are expecting a turnaround with a new candidate.” Her name is Jane Dodds, selected a year ago.
2. Watford. Conservative majority 1,425
“In Lord Ashcroft’s constituency specific polling, they were just 5 points behind the Tories.” It is also the top Lib Dem target from the Tories not yet to have selected a candidate.
3. Oxford West & Abingdon. Conservative majority 176
“Another relatively surprising loss in 2010, this seat will certainly still be a target for the Lib Dems.” Layla Moran, selected 18 months ago, has a great team behind her, which has been producing some impressive local election results.
4. Ashfield. Labour majority 192
“It might seem extremely improbable that the Lib Dems could gain a Labour seat in the current circumstances but, if there is to be one, this could be it.” Jason Zadrozny will fight the seat again, having received a 17% swing in 2010.
5. Maidstone & The Weald. Conservative majority 5,889
“The least likely in our list, but Ladbrokes have seen money for the Lib Dems to oust sitting MP Helen Grant.” The only one of the five seats here not in the top 50 targets list we’ve been tracking, the Lib Dems – led by candidate Jasper Gerard – outscored the Tories by almost 10 per cent across the constituency in May’s election.
Which seats do you reckon they’ve missed?
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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48 Comments
Sorry but in all honesty it will not happen, next year will be a polarisation contest for power between Conservative and Labour, we will be routed unless we can find something or more importantly somebody different to offer the electorate. More of the same will simply leave these candidates destitute.
The Lib Dems will not win any of those seats.
In fact, the Liberal Democrats will lose over half of the seats they currently hold along with around half of their vote share. This is a direct result of promising your base that you’d vote against any rise in tuition fees and then voting to treble them. Most of your voter base have abandoned you because they believe you abandoned them.
If you want to know how people in the UK feel about the Liberal Democrats pay close attention to the results of the Scottish Parliament election. The constituencies tell you how people feel about the candidates, the 2nd vote for the top up regional lists tells you how people feel about the party as a whole. The feelings in the North of England will be similar to those in Scotland, in the south of England things may be different, I don’t know.
Why is Jasper Gerard included in the list? There seems no logical reason for this, other than his wide network of contacts from his media days and (perhaps) his reputation as an Orange Book “ultra”!
Going slightly off-piste, Unite are having a conference beginning tomorow. One of the big issues is moves towards Disaffiliation from Labour. There are motions both supporting & opposing the idea.
Unite is not just Labours biggest donor its also The largest Union & any moves away from Labour are likely to influence others.
The Unite leadership have a problem in that they have invested alot of Political capital in the proposed merger with The PCS, supposed to happen in January. Theres grassroots opposition in both Unions & a big factor in The PCS is hostility to Labour. To some extent Unite may have a choice between the merger & staying with Labour.
Loss of Unite would not just mean less money for Labour, it would greatly increase the chances of a New Left Party becoming a significant force, doing to Labour what UKIP have done to The Tories.
So the one constituency that has returened a liberal every time but once in the last 100 until Lembit’s antics lost it last time, is now 9/4 a Lib Dem gain. i.e. the betting indicates less than a one in three chance. Truly we are in a mess.
Note the opening line… ‘based on the betting’…
Pop down to Ladbrokes, bet on yourself to win, see Ladbrokes cut their odds, ‘The Political Bookie’ blog talk up your chances ‘based on the betting’ and LDV report is as if you’re as good as in Parliament already.
Oldest by-election trick in the book to put out a ‘Bookies slash the odds’ leaflet.
I’ve won a good few thousand through political betting over the years but, with the possible exceptiopn of Montgomery (for historical reasons), the odds / chances in the five seats listed won’t be tempting me to part with my hard-earned cash.
@David
“The Lib Dems will not win any of those seats.
In fact, the Liberal Democrats will lose over half of the seats they currently hold along with around half of their vote share. …
The feelings in the North of England will be similar to those in Scotland, in the south of England things may be different, I don’t know.”
I’m particularly interested in Southport, a Lib Dem seat, but in the North of England.
As you are obviously an expert (so much so that you need to keep your true identity hidden), could you tell me what the Southport result will be in 2015? This could obviously save us a lot of work over the next 10 months.
Simon, sad to say it could well happen in Southport. Local elections results looked good this year on paper, but majorities were down and closer than you would expect in some wards There is little Labour vote left to squeeze and if as I forsee the election will be for a majority one party government, the squeeze in Southport would be on us, from the Conservatives. I speak as one who spent a few years on the ground as a party worker in the old Ormskirk seat.
It’s always good to dream soon be May
After LDFoP’s antics this week you’d better hope none of those seats have a significant Jewish population. Montgomeryshire is possible, since 2010 was a bit of an aberration in its history (Lembit Effect) but I wouldn’t put money on any of the others, certainly not Ashfield.
Robin Wilde 29th Jun ’14 – 2:20pm
“………… you’d better hope none of those seats have a significant Jewish population. ”
I have no clue what this statement relates to.
The fact is that very, very few UK constituencies have a Jewish population of any significant size.
Robin Wilde might want to reconsider his statement as such logic can lead down the road of a type of politics which is very unpleasant and very illiberal.
Theakes, the Conservatives came THIRD in the local elections in Southport this year, with the worst result they have ever had in the area since before Queen Victoria was born. That follows the previous worst local election thy ever had and, previous to that, the worst General Election result they have ever had. The local Party is split with a councillor threatening to sue a former candidate and another one just defected to Labour. They have no candidate though a Hampshire yacht salesman who two years ago was touting himself as a UKIP candidate is now touting himself for the Tories.
The Lib Dems vote is not as high as it has been but with the opposition split three ways, the majority in the town looks rather healthy. Also the local team are far from complacent and we have a good incumbent MP standing again, one with a record of voting for what he says he will.
Laughable. Stop deluding yourselves.
The Lib Dems vote is not as high as it has been but with the opposition split three ways, the majority in the town looks rather healthy.
I had been about to post that my guess would be that the Lib Dems would hang on narrowly if UKIP support remains at current levels (and also if Simon Shaw continues to work extremely hard – to the extent of cutting down on LDV comments in favour of local campaigning). But that if the UKIP bubble bursts the Tories could take it.
Could I suggest that before any Lib Dem member expresses a view that none of these seats will be won they should test their opinion by spending at least one day campaigning with the local team in any one of these constituencies. They would find a warm welcome here in Montgomeryshire as I am sure they would in any of the other four constituences. There’s nothing like some fact finding on the ground to give support to any opinion.
If Theakes would like to spend a day here in Montgomeryshire, I promise not to divulge his/her true identity to fellow Lib Dem Voice readers. I will also give greater weight to his/her views on our chances of winning.
@John Tilley.
Think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
I suspect Robin Wilde is referring to a nasty slur against Ed Miliband reported this week.
”UPDATE: A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats says:
“This is not the party view in any way whatsoever. It is clearly inappropriate and offensive.
The link has now been removed, LibDem Friends of Palestine recognise it was a mistake.”
http://order-order.com/2014/06/26/libdem-friends-of-palestine-pushes-anti-semitic-miliband-slur/
@Simon Shaw “I’m particularly interested in Southport, a Lib Dem seat, but in the North of England.
As you are obviously an expert (so much so that you need to keep your true identity hidden), could you tell me what the Southport result will be in 2015? This could obviously save us a lot of work over the next 10 months.”
I’m an ex-lib dem activist called David Wallace, but my identity is really irrevant since nobody here will know me and nobody will care who I am.
My predictions for Southport –
Tory gain.
37% Tory
29% Lib Dem
20% Labour
14% UKIP
My prediction. Expect to lose around 40% to 50% of your vote even in seats where the local MP will have a personal vote as well as support for the party.
@theakes
“Simon, sad to say it could well happen in Southport. Local elections results looked good this year on paper, but majorities were down and closer than you would expect in some wards”
As Tony Dawson has correctly pointed out, you are rather adrift there. In fact the Lib Dem majority over the Conservatives was UP on last time (2012), and massively up on 2011.
But in one sense you are correct, “it could well happen” in Southport (or anywhere else) if we are complacent, which is why we work hard all year round (yes, really!).
However my question was actually addressed at David who claims to be some sort of expert who already knows the result of the 2015 General Election. As he “knows” that we are going to lose “over half of the seats we currently hold” and be particularly hard hit in the North of England, I wanted him to tell me precisely what the result will be for Southport. It would just make things so much easier for us.
John Tilley,
This. hurryupharry.org/2014/06/26/lib-dem-friends-of-palestine-promote-atzmon/
@Simon Shaw
Well, would you like to make a bet on it perhaps? I bet the Liberal Democrats will lose over half of their MPs at the next General Election. If I’m wrong I will make a donation of £10 to your charity of choice?
@David
Oh, I thought you were some sort of psephological expert.
What you said (quite categorically) was “In fact, the Liberal Democrats WILL lose over half of the seats they currently hold”
What you are saying is that you are such an expert that you are willing to bet TEN POUNDS of your very own money that you are correct. I was expecting at least £1000 to back such a categorical statement.
Unlike you I don’t profess to KNOW the result of the next General Election. If you seriously think the Conservatives will win Southport by an 8% margin then it’s hardly surprising that you have other strange beliefs.
Fancy that now !
I did a search here for “Frozen Pensions” and what did I find ?
It said = Sorry, there are no posts in this category.
Steve Webb knows all about it having been adamant that this discriminative and irrational policy had to stop.
He was talking about the fact that a minority of ex-pat pensioners receive no annual uprating from the day that they retire should they be in or move to a country where the pension is frozen. This abominable state of affairs has been practised by governments for over 60 years so he was going to stop it and be fair to all pensioners treating them equally. Since being in the very position to do so as Pensions Minister what has he done about it ?
Well I will tell you – Nothing !
He even lied about the need for a reciprocal agreement being necessary with the country in order to ‘allow’ any uprating. The DWP continually spew out this tripe with his blessing.
Following on from this he writes into the new Pensions Bill clause 20 which will emulate the current government regulation that imposes the freezing or to put it correctly, the stealing of a pensioners entitlement to an indexed pension.
This is going to be a very prominent issue in the nexr election believe me so get writing your manifesto.
Perhaps a more appropriate title might be: “These are the kind of seats we might win if we elect a new leader who is unencumbered by cabinet collective responsibility.”
As a declaration of interest I’m a former Lib Dem voter though never unbending – I’d’ve voted for a good candidate from other parties, names from across the spectrum, sans UKIP, come to mind readily. I stopped supporting the national party after the NHS reforms as I thought they’d gone against so much of what they’d campaigned for and what they’d stood for during the Kennedy years (now he was an inspiring leader!). The party deserves a good stomping so the lessons are learned (they are currently not learned) but not so much of one that we return to two party politics or that too many of the best LDs go next year.
I’ve not voted for them in locals at my old address, I won’t vote for them in locals at my new one (and they are competitive in my ward, unusually for where I live!), I won’t vote for them in 2015 but I did vote for them in the Euros, as the European party did nothing wrong and were genuinely excellent. So, basically, I don’t support the party but any advice I give is well intentioned as it’s in my interest for them not to collapse altogether, equally I’ve no reason to see their situation with rose tinted glasses, nor to desire total destruction.
So with that in mind, I’d say it’s not impossible. Obviously this would be in the context of a net loss nationally but local swings against the national trend do happen, for instance the Tories gained one seat in 1997 (Christchurch) and lost one in 2010 (Eastbourne), given how locally focused the LDs are I’d imagine their swings vary from the national average relatively largely compared to the other major parties. Each was a special case but it’s hard to say until after the night what will be, certainly Watford and (to a lesser extent) OxWAb are unusual seats.
Gaining all five are extremely unlikely but I’d certainly not rule out one of these going yellow. Montgomeryshire is not unlikely to switch back if the local LDs have been doing well this parliament. OxWAb didn’t look promising on the Ashcroft marginals poll but would have been my first thought of a potential LD gain against the national trend, Evan Harris was very popular in Oxford itself and the new Tory MP is not but his choosing not to run again (wisely for him IMO) makes this seat flipping back less likely than it otherwise would have been. Watford could go three ways on paper, but it’s probably a red gain in practice. I don’t know much about the other two and don’t think they look likely from what I do know.
I’d’ve thought Winchester was possible as well but that loss seemed to have been more decisive than I’d remembered so… probably not!
Don’t let this talk of isolated gains imply I think the LDs will have a good night. Losing over half of their MPs is well within the realms of possibility and the damage done this parliament will hamper recovery post-Clegg. They’re in trouble but the wind’s often blowing in unusual directions somewhere in the country.
I wonder why some of the people who comment here bother to read Lib Dem Voice as they clearly have no interest in or support for our Party.
@John Kelly
I thought it was quite obvious, John.
The objective of many of them is clearly to undermine the morale of genuine Lib Dem campaigners like you and me. That doesn’t mean we have to let them.
John and Simon, realistic targeting is vital to success. I would have categorized Southport as masters of this science.
There are seats that can be self sufficent and win. I don’t think there are many more than a dozen of these but they have the expertise and the reputation and the local resources to win despite a background of support across the country of around 8%. Southport is one of these.
However the rest are in urgent need of cash, perhaps some campaigning expertise and volunteers to staff telephones. Do we spread these resources over 50 further seats? If we do, we risk losing a good number ‘on the night’ by slim margins and losing many more by considerable margins. It seems sensible to concentrate these mobile resources on a maximum of 25 further seats, and perhaps even dividing these 25 into a first rank of 12 or 13, until such time as the background vote rises substantially.
Why does the national vote matter when ‘all politics is local’? Because credibility is a factor at the margin. Tactical voters look for ‘the best place for my vote’. Former LD voters look for signs of improvment. People generally seem indisposed to vote for people who they don’t think have a realistic chance of winning. We do have a trust issue eminating from the leader. So the national position erodes the effectiveness of local campaigns to convince people that ‘around here it’s the Liberal Democrats or X’ and voting LD is a good thing to do.
Now, taking these 25 realistic ‘targets’, most have had Lib Dem MPs for many years and have good local campaigning expertise. So what they need is money and people to help them make contact. Let’s give them every penny we have. Lets also reduce the wasted resources at the centre to further this end.
OK, I also happen to think that a new leader will make a huge difference to position of that political frontier … would make seats 13 – 25 more easy to win and would make the new frontier 25 – 37.
But notwithstanding that I think the second great danger to us in maximizing our LD MPs in the 2015 Parliament is choosing the wrong targets, fighting on the wrong frontier, or spreading our limited resources too thinly and pushing resources to certain seats that shouldn’t have them while (opportunity cost) diverting them from seats held by less favoured Liberal Democrats.
How is that disloyal or counterproductive?
@Simon Shaw:
Or there’s myself – about 2 years ago I got increasingly angry with what I saw as the general direciton of coalition policy and the fact that even when the LibDems proposed workable centre-ground, socially fair measures in good faith, the Tories either disembowelled them or claimed the credit. I was sorely tempted to vote Labour. I began flirting with this site as a way of wrestling with these feelings, trying to check out whether I was really resolved in my frustatration with the party I had instictively sided with for years.
And now I’m a member, although still frustrated, and keen that the party builds unity, not collapses.
When I do post angrily (which I have done), I am not trying to destroy the morale of others; It’s not all one-way traffic round here.
@ matt (Bristol):
Therapy for disaffected Lib Dems, then? I had vowed never to look at LDV comments again (contributors like John Kelly and Simon Shaw are all too few) but I believe I have actually learned something this morning.
@ John Kelly
“I wonder why some of the people who comment here bother to read Lib Dem Voice as they clearly have no interest in or support for our Party.”
I would have thought it was self evident, as with all blogging site the intention is to to affect opinion, create uncertainty, demoralise, and in the case of blogs like LibDemVoice, ConservativeHome and LabourList, bring a touch of reality to what would otherwise be the intense head in the sand navel gazing of tribalists.
Blogs are simply a form of debate, how can you have a debate when you are all members of a mutual appreciation society. Without the non LIbDem views, how would you form and understand the views of the wider community, and how could you formulate coherent policies for the politics of today.
You might not like what you read on blogs, but they are simply a lens into the views held by millions of voters, they might not reflect your vision of the world, but they are reflective of the direction the world around you is inexorably moving towards.
I’m a Kipper but I applaud LibDemVoice for being brave enough to allow dissenting voices, in contrast to ConHome and LabourList who have become so frightened of their own sychophantic shadows, that they have banned most of the dissenting voices from the sites, and are now a pale imitations of their former selves
You are not going to win the arguments on the doorstep alone anymore, the world has moved on, the battles have to be won across the blogs by an online army that reaches everywhere. If you can’t rise to that challenge, preferring the safety and relative security of your in house comfort zone, then you have lost the will to fight, and have already de facto lost the war.
Of course the Lib Dems have a very good chance of winning Southport as the MP iwnats Clegg to go.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/southport-rebel-mp-john-pugh-7173896
There are few seats the Lib Dems can be 99% certain of holding – mainly these are places where the opposition starts so far behind it can’t make up the ground in one go. Looking at past results, lcoal elections, euro-election etc I would say – Tim Farrons seat, Charles Kennedys Seat, Orkney and Shetland, Bath, North Norfolk, Leeds North West, probably Southport, Colchester, John Thurso seat, Bristol West. – that makes 10.
Obviously there are others that could be held – but what has to be stressed time and again for the hard of thinking is that the party is on 8% in the polls. The base line vote for Lib Dems is 2% plus what ever local activity and history adds.
It is worse than when the liberals didn’t contest half the seats, because at least then where we stood candidates we averaged about 18% of the vote.
We are all entitled to be pessimistic but equally there is no need for us to be unduly pessimistic. Caracatus’s list of seats omits such seats, in no particular order, as Hazel Grove (a very likely hold on 2014 local elections results), Twickenham (does Caratacus really think that Vince Cable will be defeated ?), Lewes (again, will Norman Baker be defeated ?), Carshalton and Wallington (likely hold on 2014 local election results), Sutton and Cheam (ditto), Thornbury and Yate (again, does Caratacus think that Steve Webb will be defeated ?), Brecon and Radnor (popular local MP ), Yeovil (Caratacus may not like David Laws, but the seat seems safe enough), Birmingham-Yardley (likely hold on 2014 local election results), Cheltenham (likely hold on 2014 local election results), Ceredigion (popular local MP), Sheffield Hallam (again, Caratacus may not like Nick Clegg, but the seat is pretty safe and is indeed a likely hold on 2014 local election results), and Eastleigh (very likely hold on 2014 local election results). There are other probable/possible holds as well, but these examples should be enough to demonstrate that in any circumstances we are likely to win more than 10 seats.
@Caracatus
“Of course the Lib Dems have a very good chance of winning Southport as the MP wants Clegg to go.”
The MP also kept his tuition fees pledge – which must make him a great disappointment to Simon, but marks him as one of the better Lib Dem MPs for the rest of us.
Hugh P – well 12 more seats making 22, putting exactly in line with UK Polling report.currnet swing projection – however, Twickenham – looking at the local results and the Oakshott poll, so not a 99% chance of holding it, however rather than go through seats an quibble over them, the point is that 22 seats would be a dire result – it would mean the seats we held would be extremely vulnerable to another election and most of the seats we didn’t win would be so far behind as to be not worth contesting. All from a leader who for promised to double the number of Lib Dem MPs to 126. It’s all a bit tuition fee like – I know I said double but what I meant was reduce by a third.
Everybody Is saying that we will lose half our seats – that would make us on 28 seats – I’d be over the moon if we still had 28 seats at the next General Election. Realistically, with use at 7% in the polls (and having been at a Euro Count this is where I believe we actually are at) I think we will not make double figures. We should not be spending any money on seats where we are trying to make gains. Instead we should scrap central cash given to target gains and do seat polls on our held seats. The ones still in play we should funnel our cash too, the other should be written off.
Realistically we could probably defend a few more seats if we piled some cash in.
Lib Dems need to wake up and smell the coffee. We are heading for annihilation. Everyone thinks it is going to get better, but it hasn’t over the past 12 months in fact the polling has got significantly worse. Why do we not think it is going to get even worse over the next 12 months ?
Tim13
Why is Jasper Gerard included in the list? There seems no logical reason for this, other than his wide network of contacts from his media days and (perhaps) his reputation as an Orange Book “ultra”!
Hmm, imagine the scene:
Returning Officer: “I declare Jasper Gerard duly elected as the Member of Parliament for Maidstone and The Weald”
Me: (thinks) “Tory Hold”
Seriously, Jasper Gerard’s book The Clegg Coup, which was all about how Nick Clegg had taken over the Liberal Democrats and pushed it firmly towards the Tories, was the equivalent of tying a “Kick Me” notice to the party – only in front, not behind. It is this sort of thing that makes it impossible to defend the party, so why I can no longer campaign for it. Here I am, all ready to put out the lines to all those voters I’ve won over the years that the attacks on us are unfair, that what looks so bad coming from this government is just a necessary compromise due to the situation, and kick, whoomph, right in the balls, Gerard says, no, it was all planned all along, the Liberal Democrats really have been taken over by economic right-wingers, so if you’re voting for them because you thought them to be the best chance for the left in the place you live (e.g. places like Kent), you’re wrong, go off and vote Labour (as the Nick Clegg’s outgoing director of strategy said people like me should do).
@Simon Shaw: “The objective of many of them is clearly to undermine the morale of genuine Lib Dem campaigners like you and me. That doesn’t mean we have to let them.”
Or maybe, just maybe, members of the electorate and exd-LD voters such as myself are voicing our disappointment in your party, as we have the right to do in a democracy. After all, this government has undermined the morale of many millions in the nation, millions who believed your “no more broken promises line”. It is a bit odd, though isn’t it, for a politician to be upset that members of the electorate are voicing their opinions. Not a really liberal position, is it? So forgive me if I don’t feel bad about the hurt feelings of such hard-done-by politicians such as yourself. Let’s call it a trade off: your party has hurt feelings due to the electorate being upset at your actions while people such as myself struggle to be able to afford enough to eat due to measures like your Bedroom Tax.
Michael Berridge: in my case it was rehabilitative therapy.
All I’m saying is that (whilst I actively dislike and have called out some very angry, nihilistic posters with an oppositional, not to say paranoid approach), not everyone who posts to say that they don’t like the current direction of the party is part of an apparent conspiracy to destabilise the party, just as it is equally untrue to say that everyone who posts to say that they feel the party could do better than expected and they like Nick Clegg is a Tory puppet (or whatever other odium has been heaped unpon Simon Shaw’s head in the past).
I quite like some of what SImon Shaw says, and I profoundly disagree with some of the other stuff, but I respect that he is a sincere LibDem with a long heritage in the party.
David – your predictions really are a triumph of anger over reason. You ignore local election results, which have shown the Liberal Democrat vote in seats we hold generally holding up very well, with occasional excellent performances in other seats where we’re strong. You ignore polling – by Lord Ashcroft as well as us – in held and winnable seats. That you are angry, I understand, and I take no pleasure in the current situation especially as we’ve been devastated in many areas where we had a strong local government base and were working hard – and as you point out for Scotland, where we’re weak we’re being hammered. But the present discussion is about likely results in the 2015 general election. For that, it’s sensible to look at local polls and at local election results, and those seem to suggest 35 to 45 seats retained – still a bad result of course, and one that should make us think carefully about our leadership and direction.
As for the possible gains, it can only be disgust at the idea that we could win anything that makes you rule out Montgomery and Oxford West/Abingdon. The former is a seat we’ve won in the vast majority of contests, won comfortably through the 1990s and the following decade and lost because the local people had got fed up with their MP’s remarkable antics. We now have a well-established, hardworking local candidate. As for Oxford West, while Evan Harris was an excellent MP, he had begun to seem in the media like the atheist rentaquote if Richard Dawkins was unavailable and I feared before the election this might hurt him. Since then, we’ve chosen a new candidate and had a series of impressive local election wins. The other three I consider very unlikely. I’m not saying we WILL win these two seats, but I do think any calm and evidence-based assessment will say we MIGHT well win them.
People have listed seats above that are clearly bankers – by which I mean that they should win on their own resources and at this level in the national polls. They should therefore not be receiving centrally directed mobile resources.
But people have also listed seats which I think are much more marginal and they have done so based on local election results this May and also in a few cases because of the findings of Ashcroft’s recent poll of LD/Con marginals.
What the Ashcroft polling also reveals is high levels of support for UKIP, which was also a factor in a number of local wards in seats people above have thought were not loosable. For the next few months we should assume that the UKIP vote will halve from these levels in the general election of 2015. If there is no erosion of their vote by say September things should be reconsidered. We should watch like hawks if and where that UKIP vote goes.
There is an argument favourable to LIberal Democrats that the Con to UKIP voters will stay UKIP because of their intense dislike of Cameron/CameronianConservatism. But I think this is questionable and that, in all but perhaps 10/20 seats, these electors will return in large measure to the Tories, even if grudgingly, to ‘keep Miliband out’.
There is also an argument favourable to the Lib Dems that the Lib Dem to UKIP voters are more lilely to return to us. But the counter argument is that these are the right wing vote that could indeed stay with Farage, their hero. This also applies to Labour to UKIP voters for similar reasons.
Finally people seem to take comfort in those local election results in held and formerly held seats with first rate campaigning teams. But these do well locally because they are expert in differential turn out in realtively low turn out elections. In 2015 those voting will probably double from 2014 levels. Yet these extra 50% will not vote in the same proportion as those who voted this May. In these places we have got a larger proportion of our vote out that Labour and the Conservatives will get out in a general election.
So, my judgement is that quite a few of the seats that people above have rated as very good prospects have a much harder fight on their hands, unless we have a boost in our poll standing (for reasons gieven above) and unless we have a hard and unsentimental targeting strategy.
Now, all this may be considered navel gazing and, if such a targeting regime is being put into action, it would be. But given the considerable disquiet about the ‘campaign resource’ in the Euro elections, do you think someone is overseeing just such a strategy? Or are they directling resources to seats that we shall lose by some margin and in so doing endagering seats that could be won by 200 or 300 votes?
That is what the Gurling Report should be challenging. Will it?
Somehow, at Conference, we have to carve out a way for some to save face and retire from their current position. You did your best dear friend(s) but the party, as always, is more important than you, so step down. It will take guts, but you can do other things and even raise our Liberal banner higher elsewhere. Hanging on for a bad outcome will finish your career. We don’t want you to be a failure but hanging on too long and you will be just a failure. Do the best thing for yourself, your party and your country.
Others will come forward and give us a chance to raise the banner of Liberalism before we lose so badly that a come-back will take many years, maybe so badly that there’s never a come-back in our lifetime. The membership asks you to change roles this year, at Conference. Maybe you can look to Europe. But please listen to us. Thank you for all you tried to do. Being in Coalition delivers unequal outcomes but a brave leader sees the way for the party to survive and like a battle, lives to fight another day.
We must have a chance in 2015 and you can give it to us. Thank you.
We’re not winning very many seats from a base of 6-8%.
Even if we have a new set of policies, or at least resurrect the old popular ones, no-one will believe we will implement them unless we have a new head of party.
Simon, just to be clear I am a Liberal Democrat, have voted Liberal, Liberal Alliance , Liberal Democrat, have worn my shoe leather off at by elections, held every constituency post there, have been a councilor and party member for almost 50 years, up to 18 months ago, when I could see the writing firmly on the wall. Problem now is that wall has come down and ain’t going to be rebuilt until we get a new leader.
The Liberal Democrats could win a landslide victory if the party adopts the Orange Booker’s policies. Especially if they adopted the viewpoint posted in Andrew Chamberlain’s post that it must redistribute income; “If it’s Grimond’s liberalism that Orange Bookers are seeking to reclaim then policies that seek to redistribute the means to allow people to stand on their own feet independently of the state should be part of the mix. Perhaps then liberal economics will be seen by more people as a key part of the solution to society’s ills.”
A Posiwid economic system would do this at source. People could freely subscribe to a new system because it would be in their own self interest to do so. This includes billionaires, benefit claimants and trade unionists alike.
meanwhile back in the rela world, Lord Ashcroft plls put the Lib Dems in fifth place in Norwich South, a seat where we currently have an MP. 22% points behind Labour in Bradford East, 35% points behind in Brent Central, and 34% behind in Manchester Withington.
http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2014/07/lord-ashcroft-my-new-poll-suggests-that-labour-would-win-17-seats-from-the-libdems-were-the-election-held-today.html
@Caracatus. Meanwhile, the real world is dysfunctional. The economic system, which is a manmade social construction creates excessive wealth and excessive poverty. And booms and busts. Where is the freedom and fairness in that? The solution is to change the economic reality/system. To build justice and freedom as an inexorable output of the economy.
As a graduate in Politics, I can confirm that the Lib Dems look favourites to win Montgomeryshire. Arguably they have the best candidate, and an immense tradition in this constituency.> It will probably be their only gain in the 2015 election.
Nick Fenn was one of the nicest men I have ever met. Born in 1936 he was a borough council candidate in Marden, Kent in 2014. He was serious about winning as part of the campaign to elect a better MP in 2015.
He told us that he had stood up to an hour of vigorous questioning from PM Margaret Thatcher and presumed his career had ended. She gave him a knighthood. His obituary is in the Daily Telegraph, page 25, across six columns.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/09/22/sir-nicholas-fenn-diplomat-at-the-heart-of-great-events–obituar/