Reply With QuoteLocals don’t mean much, turnout is too low to forecast a GE.Originally Posted by SLUDGE FACTORY
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Labour short of majority by 30 seats
Electoral Calculus site ? .......Labour majority of at least 150 seats
Mmmmm
Locals don’t mean much, turnout is too low to forecast a GE.
I am very cynical of starmer getting a big majority , I will be happy enough with having to form a coalition with the liberals
I mean if a 50 seat majority is achievable then great but I just have my doubts
hmm
Evening.
The cynicism is understandable. I also suspect that 14 years of Conservative wins may create the scepticism. Starmer is no Blair or Thatcher. . I think Cameron would be third behind those two. But Sunak isn’t anywhere near. He isn’t as bad as Truss but I would put even John Major and Edward Heath above this goon. Perhaps even William Hague was better. I would say that Sunak is the Iain Duncan-Smith of 2024. I always come back to the 3 P’s: Policy, Personality and Persuasion. He has none. He is a sad little spreadsheet jockey and that is it. Empty shell, nothing to tell.
I would also remind of you of these points:
- Governments of 10 years or more are bloody rare. 14 is long in the tooth. Probability is hugely tilted against the Conservatives. Either you have to be special to win beyond 10 years, or the opponents have to be in a right mess in order to win again. For Blair and Thatcher this was true. Neither are true this time.
- Despite your reservation with Starmer and his lack of stardust, it is a relative game, not absolute. Starmer is average, but Sunak is the Daschund’s dog shit. Starmer is relatively better. Sunak is tainted.
- Funding. Labour are stealing the major backers of Conservatives: private equity, large banks and elite construction firms are all turning to Labour. Money funds campaigns.
- Economy: This is often the Conservatives calling card. Not this time. Inflation is sticky. By the time the November election comes it will be higher and interest rates too. Nobody feels good except the rich. You can’t win on that ticket.
- Perception: As with Major’s 1997 mob this governments has lost all it’s competent big beasts. Cabinet members are now no more competent than the Welsh assembly AMs, are bent or corrupt or sound useless. They don’t act nor sound like one.
- Credibility: Sunak is failing on 4 of his 5 promises: his credibility is a cooked goose
- NHS: In tatters.’In tatters’ matters to most people and the fact it is worsening and doctors local services being in a national mess will be too billing at the next election
- Key Battlegrounds: Labour are walking it on low turnout. Sunak is delaying a straight fight aa he is gambling on an economic fairytale by November. The fairy will have no tale to tell. That is for the birds.
There is no redeeming feature about Sunak at all. He is a spoilt, husband of a billionaire inheritee, with offshore activities, zero personality, zero charm, zero humour, zero track record, zero ideas ans surrounded by baboons with zero capability. He will be royally bummed in the general election, and I hope he fails to find the lube.
hmmm..
Cameron? The dodgy genius who came up with the Brexit referendum because he was sure the result would be remain? I’d put him above the four who came after him, but none of the other Prime Ministers I’ve seen.
As for Starmer, he’s a lucky man because it would appear that the election when it finally comes will almost certainly rest on the great swathes of the country that have decided this Government has to go - I detect no enthusiasm for Starmer as PM, but it’s hard to see how it doesn’t happen now.
This is just confirmation bias. Taking local election results and projecting them nationally is about as flawed as you can get, you want to trust it because it validates what you have been saying.
Does it even matter who wins? I mean, what difference will we see really? Look at the last 25 years……all we will see is probably a Labour win and years of moaning as they struggle to turn things around just blaming the Tory’s for ruining everything. People will start to lose it as they see no change and we are back to status quo again.
Now I am not saying this is WHY you think it but it highlights one of the few successes of Tory comms in recent times. The Tories have systematically been pumping news outlets with 'theres no enthusiasm for Starmer' for months now. They will up the ante now using the locals as evidence because most people won't recognise how stupid that is. They said the same with Blair.
https://twitter.com/AndrejNkv/status...16847355077034
It's a weird one because it is essentially an admission that the public would rather vote for anybody else but them, but in some mind****ery way, it does seem to cut through.
My breakdown of the Prime Ministers of my lifetime.
MacMillan and Douglas-Home, I can remember them being PM, but I was only eight at the time, so no opinion on them.
Wilson, wouldn't trust him an inch, but a shrewd politician.
Heath, a one nation Tory, stubborn and I'm not sure he was temperamentally suited for the job.
Callaghan, not much good - he made a big mistake in not calling an election in autumn 1978 and I don't say that with the benefit of hindsight, I thought it at the time.
Thatcher - hated her, but cannot deny that she changed the country and so was a very significant politician.
Major, think he gets a bad and somewhat unfair press, had an almost impossible job, but winning in 1992 was impressive even it ended up being a poisoned chalice.
Blair, my first impression was I don't like you, but that opinion mellowed until the invasion of Iraq - that will define his career, but he was a substantial figure who got a lot right.
Brown, think his heart was in the right place, but another who may not have been suited temperamentally to be PM.
Cameron, caricature tory (was never going to effectively sell the "we're all in it together" line), had an air of authority, but his judgment was flawed.
May, conscientious, but ineffective - has the ever been a worse election campaigner than her in 2017?
Johnson, charismatic (never seen it myself mind), but a serial liar - should never have been allowed within a million miles of the job because he never treated it with the respect it deserves.
Truss,
Sunak, petulant, with nothing in common with the ordinary "man/woman in the street" and zero political skills.
Just a reminder, after 13 years of a labour government, Cameron couldn't get a majority. The dark arts of media training and pr were in his corner but people were generally holding their nose and voting for him. It's easy to look back on Cameron as some well polished statesman after what we have seen since but it's worth remembering that in fact he didn't really capture the imagination of the public at large.
What evidence do you see of enthusiasm for Starmer? I can understand his caution in a way, but he needs to increasingly get on the front foot in the coming months.
The Tories have got little left to campaign effectively with and targeting Starmer seems a sensible way for them to go to me because I dont' see the same attitude towards him that there was towards Blair leading up to 1997. I did warm to Starmer somewhat when I heard he'd been self deprecating about his speeches a while ago, I think that a bit more of that would go down well with voters (think a lot of Johnson's appeal came from that).
I don't really know what you are expecting, people dancing in the streets chanting his name? Centre ground policies aren't going to excite people, economically left policies are political suicide because the UK is run by those with vested interests. Starmer has consistently gone for the 'im more ethical and efficient than the Tories' and it has worked if the polls are to be believed.
The country is ****ed to almost incredible levels (via Tory lack of vision and incompetence in combination with 'acts of god'). If labour make grand promises they can't achieve, they will be judged accordingly. What are labour meant to actually do with a country with broken underfunded public services, near record tax burden, low wages, enormous debt and consistently flat lining growth? A slow grind is the only way, maybe they won't be given multiple terms to try and fix things, maybe they aren't capable of fixing things, which knows.
I would prefer them to have more vision/ambition but we are where we are.
For me, a couple of things are clear;
Firstly, Labour are nailed on to win the next General Election. No Tory politician would bet their kids inheritance on them winning.
Secondly, local elections are a really really bad way to assess how a general election would go. Turnout is paltry, there's different issues at play, there is perhaps six months to go, different candidates, lots of places didnt vote, it's being compared to the 2021 results which were a Tory high water mark etc etc etc.
That said, a few things could get change things. I don't think they can change the result, but they can change the scoreline.
Has the local elections been enough of a kicking? People often like to punish govts and local elections are a way to do with less riding on it.
Will the economy improve further?
Possibly. I think the reality is the era of high inflation and energy prices are in the past. Fingers crossed. That will only help the govt even if the reality isnt anything spectacular.
Will the legal and illegal immigration issues come under control?
Big issue. Will be a bounce if they can. If they can't it leaves the door open for Reform or for Labour but Labour will then have to deal with the problem with limited likelihood of success.
What happens with Reform and the Workers Party of Britain?
No explanation needed really. Both could take big chunks from the main parties in various different location
Will any game changing shock occur?
No one was Covid, Ukraine etc. Surprises can change things.
I think the true picture will be somewhere in the middle
From a personal perspective I want the Tories given a complete hammering
My friends are labour or liberal voters
I don't know any from our conversations that think he's got any sort of mmmmphh about him
I think if labour had elected a housewives choice like Blair......but without his paper smiles and lies ......they would be romping home
I think middle ground liberalism is the way to go but the liberals are shocking so I am holding my nose as always and voting Labour......but not for starmef
Can't disagree with any of that really. I am not sure we are in that place where an event can fix it for the Tories though. Under Corbyn, any big event would yield the 'holy shit, what mess would Corbyn have made of this', on almost every metric Starmer/Labour are seen as my more competent and the general attitude seems to be 'this would have been handled better by anybody but the Tories'. That is just the way things go, it was possibly unfair on Corbyn and it's possibly unfair on sunak but they have fully earned the distrust of the public many times over.
Whilst labour are the party that I have generally voted for ......I have never voted Tory.....for all my voting lifetime they have been hopeless , apart from the early Blair years
I thought Ed milliband was shocking but corbyn was a disaster
Starmer is thankfully better but it's not a high bar
People go on about Andy Burnham but the world will stop turning before he's in the running I think
I would prefer a lab , liberal , independent , green modern all together party but they are all so pathetic
Yesterday a labour mp was in the BBC studio saying that the green party were irrelevant , a minor party and couldn't even run Brighton Council properly
Ff sake .....the common enemy is the Tories
I vote Labour because I can't stand the tories not because the Labour party are demi gods
It’s as I said a while back, I see no evidence of any enthusiasm for Starmer,whereas there was enthusiasm about Blair around pre 1997. Blair’s Government remained pretty popular until the Iraq war and still won an election after that, but I can see the polls turning against Labour pretty quickly if they win in a few months time, partly because Starmer will be proving that he’s as uninspiring as a Prime Minister as he is as a leader of the opposition.
Lots of talk about how Labour are losing votes in certain cities because the younger electorate, who were behind Labour under Corbyn, are switching to the Greens - they think they’ve got a good chance of beating what’s her name Debonair, who I think is still in the shadow cabinet, in her seat in Bristol.
Greens are like UKIP - a pressure group with claimed domain knowledge of a specific areas. But even if you agree with the Greens policies, they lack funding, are full of hippies (who don’t make good leaders) and lack any strategy. In that sense they suffer the same faultlines as Plaid Cymru.
UKIP and now Reform at least have one or two leaders who are powerful, have worked in high politics and are savvy with social media, PR and can draw on wealthy finance.
The Parliamentary system also prevents Reform or Greens making headway due to inability to win seats, despite being able to get votes. Labour have a chance to change that, but they have the odd strategic conundrum in that changing the voting system would allow Lib Dems, Greens and Reform to become more highly represented and votable. Turkeys and Christmas? I think Labour will talk reform but they won’t do it. It isn’t in their interest as a top two party to concede Parliamentary seats to minor parties who would then present new threats. Strategically it is best to have one enemy in the Conservatives, be able to be the leading opponents or winners.
Plaid? Plaid in my opinion have had 10-15 years of opportunity to get it right. I find Plaid interesting because if they were backed and advised by a professional team they should be able to be at least competitive with Labour and mimick SNP success. But they are like the Greens and Lib Dems in that they are full of teachers, intelligent academics, nice people with a vision that is like the SNP. But they are so weak as a political machine it is incredible. They have weak finances, a lack of data analysis, poor strategy, awful leadership, weak tactics, a lack of street fight, good campaign management, limp PR: all the stuff required to be professional winners. They have no sense of realpolitik either. They work with the SNP closely allegedly, but don’t appear to replicate any of their methods.
The SNP were no different to Plaid in that far from being Lefties they are hotpotch of centrists, Tartan Tories, Social Democrats and Socialists - who coalesce around Nationalism. Plaid has plenty of people who are moderate, centrists and fair but not woke. If Plaid positioned themselves in the moderate centre as Salmond and Sturgeon initially did (until she moves Left and woke), then sorted out the professional stuff I mentioned, then Plaid should be winning more often in Wales. But their soft idealism just doesn’t land with most Welsh people who want a combination of pragmatic solutions to every day problems, but with a Welsh flavour.Like the Greens and Lib Dems, they can’t seem to mature as a party beyond “enthusiastic students and sixth formers”.
Politicians shouldn't need stardust. That's how shallow our Country and the World has become.
I want my Politicians to be competent, honest, decent people who have the best interests of the Country at heart.
spot on, there was a debate on radio4 where the 'pollsters' all said pretty much the same thing. Locals turnout too low to predict, people vote for different reasons, and that you really need to look at the differential ie if Party A have not increased their previous vote but Party B have decreased their vote - it just means the other hasnt turned up - which is different when it comes to a GE.
If Starma gets in - it'll be like going back to the 1970's - for all the wrong reasons. Good for me though - as that usually means stupid public sector projects - massively inflated rates, project over runs etc
I would love a strong rainbow alliance of Labour, Liberal, greens , independents
Bristol is a very left of centre city
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