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The 2024 UK General Election - news, speculation and updates

Haven’t seen it mentioned but for all the obsession about number of votes rather than seats won, one aspect must be that more than half the country didn’t want to vote for Labour AND didn’t want Corbyn anywhere near power. The whole point of what Starmer did was make his party electable. So the more than half of people who still didn’t want to vote Labour were now OK with him being in power, and therefore happy to vote tactically or for Reform to get rid of the Tories and allow Labour to win. That was basically the whole problem with Labour under Corbyn - people actively didn’t want them in power.
Equally, the story of this election is that the tories just about died with the combination of johnson's lies, parties and the truss madness. EVEN THEN Labour only got the same % as Corbyn. There really was very little appetite for Labour.
 
Equally, the story of this election is that the tories just about died with the combination of johnson's lies, parties and the truss madness. EVEN THEN Labour only got the same % as Corbyn. There really was very little appetite for Labour.
This. I definitely think that lots of people were motivated to vote against Corbyn I think there was generally just more apathy about this election. Tory vote went down from 13.9 million to 6.8 million, and Labour down 10.2 million to 9.7. Marginals are always targeted and there is always strategy, I don't buy the argument that Starmers Labour were more tactically astute.
 
Quick, buiild a wall from Saltash to Bude and don’t let the fuckers back in ever. Portcullises, boiling tar, all that sort of shit.

There's only about 4 miles of land border to fortify, then it's just the Tamar. Only about seven major bridges to dynamite and the rest are single-track medieval jobs that would be easy enough to blockade.

Not that I've looked into it.
 
In the end, this year’s exit poll wasn’t really the most accurate of things. It predicted 133 Tory and 13 Reform. At 10pm, Kwarteng and Widdicombe were respectively making hay with those numbers. But we actually got 121 Tory and 5 Reform, which is proportionally quite a bit lower. It was good at predicting Labour, but not so much the rest
 
In the end, this year’s exit poll wasn’t really the most accurate of things. It predicted 133 Tory and 13 Reform. At 10pm, Kwarteng and Widdicombe were respectively making hay with those numbers. But we actually got 121 Tory and 5 Reform, which is proportionally quite a bit lower. It was good at predicting Labour, but not so much the rest
Not even that great with Labour given it predicted gains/holds in a bunch of seats they ended up losing.
 
In the end, this year’s exit poll wasn’t really the most accurate of things. It predicted 133 Tory and 13 Reform. At 10pm, Kwarteng and Widdicombe were respectively making hay with those numbers. But we actually got 121 Tory and 5 Reform, which is proportionally quite a bit lower. It was good at predicting Labour, but not so much the rest

Similarly, I didn't see much talk of 'swing' this time round because it's become pretty meaningless with 3 or more parties now getting significant chunks of the vote in most seats and fewer clear regional trends.
 
In the end, this year’s exit poll wasn’t really the most accurate of things. It predicted 133 Tory and 13 Reform. At 10pm, Kwarteng and Widdicombe were respectively making hay with those numbers. But we actually got 121 Tory and 5 Reform, which is proportionally quite a bit lower. It was good at predicting Labour, but not so much the rest
Went to bed shortly after that was explained...was down to turnout lower turnout screw with modeling
 
This. I definitely think that lots of people were motivated to vote against Corbyn I think there was generally just more apathy about this election. Tory vote went down from 13.9 million to 6.8 million, and Labour down 10.2 million to 9.7. Marginals are always targeted and there is always strategy, I don't buy the argument that Starmers Labour were more tactically astute.
People voted against Corbyn in the same way they didn't bother voting at all for Starmer or Sunak.
 
Over half the seats on 33.8% of the votes, it went Labours way this time but who's to say Tories or a Tory-reform coalition won't do same at some point.
They did for about 30 years, governing when there was a centre-left majority in the country. I say they get to suck it up for now. Applies to Farage too because he was a Conservative Party member back in the thatcher years.
 
Haven’t seen it mentioned but for all the obsession about number of votes rather than seats won, one aspect must be that more than half the country didn’t want to vote for Labour AND didn’t want Corbyn anywhere near power. The whole point of what Starmer did was make his party electable. So the more than half of people who still didn’t want to vote Labour were now OK with him being in power, and therefore happy to vote tactically or for Reform to get rid of the Tories and allow Labour to win. That was basically the whole problem with Labour under Corbyn - people actively didn’t want them in power.

I agree with this analysis except the "electable" part. You can still win elections with the majority of the population voting actively against you. The Tories managed that often enough.

I also think that the low voting share matters and it's not just the voting share. Labour and Starmer have not won an electoral base over to their mission. It's not even clear what that mission is. They won a third of the popular vote most of whom were just an anti-Tory vote. And winning by default has left the party with dozens of insecure MPs with low popular mandates in marginals mostly with the Conservatives or Reform as the alternative. These MPs will want to keep their seats and will avoid policies that scare small "c" conservatives.

By contrast Blair's government won a substantial share of the vote and although their "modernising" agenda wasn't particularly coherent, it was at least an agenda and they weren't afraid of combating "the forces of conservativism of the left and the right." Even Blair didn’t try to be for everyone.

The government Starmer is forming is a weak government despite the number of seats.
 
In the end, this year’s exit poll wasn’t really the most accurate of things. It predicted 133 Tory and 13 Reform. At 10pm, Kwarteng and Widdicombe were respectively making hay with those numbers. But we actually got 121 Tory and 5 Reform, which is proportionally quite a bit lower. It was good at predicting Labour, but not so much the rest
it was a weird election all round. And yes, exit polls are generally very close to the final thing with just the odd one that's decided by a couple of hundred either way got wrong. Indicative of a few things, I think, one of which is that the regional dynamics have shifted in a way that they couldn't predict when they were designing their sample. Support for refuck is markedly skewed geographically. Meanwhile, the Libdems have gone from finishing second or third in loads of places and first in a few to finishing first in quite a lot and nowhere in quite a lot, turning almost exactly the same vote share into way more seats.

They're going to be shifting their dials a fair bit for the next election. May get caught out again.
 
I agree with this analysis except the "electable" part. You can still win elections with the majority of the population voting actively against you. The Tories managed that often enough.

I also think that the low voting share matters and it's not just the voting share. Labour and Starmer have not won an electoral base over to their mission. It's not even clear what that mission is. They won a third of the popular vote most of whom were just an anti-Tory vote. And winning by default has left the party with dozens of insecure MPs with low popular mandates in marginals mostly with the Conservatives or Reform as the alternative. These MPs will want to keep their seats and will avoid policies that scare small "c" conservatives.

By contrast Blair's government won a substantial share of the vote and although their "modernising" agenda wasn't particularly coherent, it was at least an agenda and they weren't afraid of combating "the forces of conservativism of the left and the right." Even Blair didn’t try to be for everyone.

The government Starmer is forming is a weak government despite the number of seats.
Absolutely the bold bit. Starmer's whole mission has been about rooting out the social democracy of the Corbyn years, utterly dishonestly given that he said he'd stick by the 2019 key pledges. There was just nothing this time, save for managerial claims about efficiency. All that means they are another bunch of neoliberals, full stop, but it also means nothing was communicated to the voters. This whole victory was about a Tory Party that, let us remember, was ahead in the polls well into the Covid period and Starmer's leadership, that then chose to kill itself with lies and lettuces.

In a sense of course, being nothing, saying nothing and offering very little is a perfect strategy for winning when your opponents on the right are pretty much dead (and in competition with another bunch of headbangers). But as you say, an empty suit in No10 and a scooped out party of terrified drones is just about the worst mix imaginable to fight a rising tide of populism.
 
I mean, I'm pretty sure it has been actively described as 'anti-TU', even by those who are creating/supporting it.

It explicitly seeks to make it harder for trade union members to organise, take action, build and exercise collective power. That's pretty "anti-" to me.

And again, it puts more checks and balances on worker action than getting into government.
Of course it's Anti TUs, that's not the point...we have an Anti TU prime minister who has shown himself to ruthlessly stamp out the left in support of business, but admitting a policy is Anti something is to give strength to the arguement opposing the policy
So simply lie and say its completely reasonable, we are talking about politicians
 
Surely the low turnout / enthusiasm is in part because the overall result of the election was a foregone conclusion, and had been presented as such from the start? It’s not like people had to get out of bed to make sure they wouldn’t have a Tory government the next day. I doubt many considered it on a constituency basis, or felt that would mean anything to them, they just knew the cunts in charge would be gone whatever and didn’t need effort on their part to achieve this. I suspect most people can’t name their MP outside of the big names.

And yes, a bolder Labour Party might have gained more votes and kicked them even further down, and many of us would have loved to see the Tories in third place and not even given a platform to oppose the government, but in the world outside political nerdery I doubt many would know what that meant or care. Labour said little because they didn’t want to give the Tory machine (which includes much of the press) something to go at them with.

In the last couple of weeks the Tory strategy seemed to be to go after Reform to keep some of their core vote and prevent this made-up ‘Labour supermajority’ thing. Reportedly this had traction with anti-Labour voters, gave them a reason to stick with them, and looks like this may have worked given polls for a while predicting both them and Reform on around 19% - around 5% went back to the Tories and Reform dropped back to 14%.
 
The Spectator has been quicker than even the Telegraph in writing the 750-word demolition job. There will be a lot more of this. God knows who Tory lawyers have advised down the years.
A lot more is putting it mildly. We have 365x5 days of this across a multitude of papers. websites, and of course Goblin News, where Im sure Mogg will take up residence
 
Surely the low turnout / enthusiasm is in part because the overall result of the election was a foregone conclusion, and had been presented as such from the start? It’s not like people had to get out of bed to make sure they wouldn’t have a Tory government the next day. I doubt many considered it on a constituency basis, or felt that would mean anything to them, they just knew the cunts in charge would be gone whatever and didn’t need effort on their part to achieve this. I suspect most people can’t name their MP outside of the big names.

And yes, a bolder Labour Party might have gained more votes and kicked them even further down, and many of us would have loved to see the Tories in third place and not even given a platform to oppose the government, but in the world outside political nerdery I doubt many would know what that meant or care. Labour said little because they didn’t want to give the Tory machine (which includes much of the press) something to go at them with.

In the last couple of weeks the Tory strategy seemed to be to go after Reform to keep some of their core vote and prevent this made-up ‘Labour supermajority’ thing. Reportedly this had traction with anti-Labour voters, gave them a reason to stick with them, and looks like this may have worked given polls for a while predicting both them and Reform on around 19% - around 5% went back to the Tories and Reform dropped back to 14%.

I think the reason I'm interested in marginals is that it helps unpick the motivation side. I mean we have two pictures here; 1. the Labour vote is broad and very shallow. Voters were uninspired and apathetic to Starmer's message, which increased vote share to minor parties. Come the next election and 5 years of pressure from the media, Labour is in a very difficult position (heavily dependent on what the blues do over that period). 2. The Labour vote is broad, but actually more robust than it appears. People felt able to vote for minor parties, but - with at least some level of economic recovery likely - will probably return to Labour if things get tight in 2029. (though not quite sure how this fits with the idea that tactical voting helped Labour, but anyway)

Honestly don't know which is more true. But there are areas where localism is important. I looked at Suffolk coastal because politics there are heavily defined by new energy infrastructure (that and family there); Sizewell C is huge, and there are plans for landing points for offshore wind. This constituency is expected to deal with something like 30% of UK energy infrastructure. Drive through and you will see signs about this everywhere. In political terms it's Therese Coffey's old seat, that should also motivate Labour types and tactical voting. In sum those motivated to vote Labour there should be more aware than average, and more inclined to turn up to the polling station. But they weren't. And green voters who should have voted tactically didn't. Sure, to actually understand this would require going more in depth, I'm just looking at broad election stats here. Could definitely be missing a bunch of stuff... But I think it's at least a reasonable argument.

Labour doesn't need Suffolk Coastal of course. It's a surprise bonus. But they do need Bolsover, and they managed to get a whole 600 extra votes over 2019 there. With Blair the low turnout came in 2001, 1997 was a lowish but fine 71%. Are people really convinced that we're going to see an explosion of interest come 2029?
 
I think the reason I'm interested in marginals is that it helps unpick the motivation side. I mean we have two pictures here; 1. the Labour vote is broad and very shallow. Voters were uninspired and apathetic to Starmer's message, which increased vote share to minor parties. Come the next election and 5 years of pressure from the media, Labour is in a very difficult position (heavily dependent on what the blues do over that period). 2. The Labour vote is broad, but actually more robust than it appears. People felt able to vote for minor parties, but - with at least some level of economic recovery likely - will probably return to Labour if things get tight in 2029. (though not quite sure how this fits with the idea that tactical voting helped Labour, but anyway)

Honestly don't know which is more true. But there are areas where localism is important. I looked at Suffolk coastal because politics there are heavily defined by new energy infrastructure (that and family there); Sizewell C is huge, and there are plans for landing points for offshore wind. This constituency is expected to deal with something like 30% of UK energy infrastructure. Drive through and you will see signs about this everywhere. In political terms it's Therese Coffey's old seat, that should also motivate Labour types and tactical voting. In sum those motivated to vote Labour there should be more aware than average, and more inclined to turn up to the polling station. But they weren't. And green voters who should have voted tactically didn't. Sure, to actually understand this would require going more in depth, I'm just looking at broad election stats here. Could definitely be missing a bunch of stuff... But I think it's at least a reasonable argument.

Labour doesn't need Suffolk Coastal of course. It's a surprise bonus. But they do need Bolsover, and they managed to get a whole 600 extra votes over 2019 there. With Blair the low turnout came in 2001, 1997 was a lowish but fine 71%. Are people really convinced that we're going to see an explosion of interest come 2029?
Is there much local opposition to the plans? This kind of thing seems like it could badly fuck up Labour in 2029 if they mess it up.
 
Is there much local opposition to the plans? This kind of thing seems like it could badly fuck up Labour in 2029 if they mess it up.

I mean it's a UK coastal constituency with a lot of holiday homes and various AONBs, disrupted charming walks etc, so absolutely. And tbf that's probably also why the greens increased their vote rather than drifting Lab. Would be interesting to see how things played out in more industrialised bits (Felixstowe) relative to the rest.
 
Men are rapists! Men commit 98% of sexual offences. TWs are men. Keeping men out of women's spaces (regardless of their self-proclaimed identity) is sensible risk reduction. (funny, I got a warning for using the word cunt but I bet you don't for doing the same). Left-wing misogynist men are the same as right-wing misogynist men. Both misogynists. Neither give a shit about women's safety.
Just to think, this is what your mind is like. What a messy place.
 
Labour doesn't need Suffolk Coastal of course. It's a surprise bonus. But they do need Bolsover, and they managed to get a whole 600 extra votes over 2019 there. With Blair the low turnout came in 2001, 1997 was a lowish but fine 71%. Are people really convinced that we're going to see an explosion of interest come 2029?
The other factor for both Labour, and Tory, is that once people vote elsewhere/don't vote once then they are more willing to do so again in the future.
 
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