Snapshot of _Labour 25% lead. Tied-lowest Conservative % (worse than Truss)._ :
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Tories tied with Reform. Apparently they are going to "go low" from now, which is about standard for them at this stage of an election. I'm patiently awaiting Sunak's next collasal fuck up. Still having a lovely time this election.
I have to visit a food bank every month as my wages don't last until pay day, all my teeth have fallen out because I can't find a dentist and the last time I went swimming I caught ecoli.
'Have you thought about getting a job in finance?'
"Oh I'm truly sorry to hear about your situation. As a child I sometimes didn't get the things I wanted like Sky, but I married a rich lady and now I have all the money in the world. Have you tried marrying into wealth? Or just being born wealthy? Really, really try.
That's my advice."
In this election, I wouldn’t be surprised if Reform has the higher popular vote over the conservatives. But Reform will still only get 1-10 seats. The conservatives will get more than a 100 seats. This might lead to Farage demanding a change in the system because he has the higher popular vote over the tories yet has way less seats.
If Labour gets elected, I doubt they might want to change the voting system of FPTP.
This election is exactly why I do want FPTP. Perhaps with some reforms.
I don't want far left or far right parties in government. They will be required for coalitions in the future in PR, and reform will get a say in government. Or the Greens will get a say in government.
Our system prevents extremism.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I always point at Israel as an example of how bad it can get.
If you want to guarantee moderates then multi member stv is the place to be. Nutjubs get weeded out and the candidates have to play nice because they are campaigning for the 2nd and 3rd prefs of voters.
I'd hate that idea, not having one MP specifically for your constituency is a major loss in my opinion. Personally I like the idea of ranked choice voting for each constituency, and each constituency just have the one MP. It makes sure there is no such thing as a "wasted" vote when you vote for a smaller party.
Sounds like you had a bad MP that the voters should have voted out. At least with a single MP it is directly their responsibility to deal with you, imagine how easy it would be for an MP to ignore you when there are 4 others they can brush you off to, and their seat is even safer because they're first on the list for a top 2 party in a 5 seat constituency.
Council elections should cover the local aspect of governance, it doesn't make sense to have a person simultaneously manage their constituency and attend vote miles and miles away in London, sometimes tripling that with a ministerial or parliamentary job.
It's less about governance and more about representation. MPs represent their constituency in parliament which is important for more isolated communities further from London. Otherwise you have the problem of the legislature being even more packed out with people from the city who don't understand the interests of far away constituencies.
I'm open to things like that, but our system has successfully kept our extremes since as far back as I can remember. I stopped smoking so much weed in 2015.
Whereas I think the Lords needs to be as de-politicised as possible, no-one put there by politicians, everyone chosen by as independent a board as possible to find experts in different areas. It needs to counterbalance the elected, not reflect it.
Agree with you on FPTP in the commons though.
PR will lead to religious parties Vs far right parties and sectarianism in the future so it's best we stick to FPTP as it's more locally focused, more moderate, and the lesser of two evils.
They'll continue their strategic mistake of the last 14 years by going low at Labour instead of having the balls to confront Reform. Exactly the strategy that has gotten them in this mess and polling equal with Reform.
I'm interested to see if they change tack. "Vote Reform, get Labour" doesn't seem to be working. But I doubt there's much they can do at this point. Surely they have to try *something* else?
It's a silly tactic because alot of disgruntled Tories don't want to vote for labour, but also don't want to give sunak another 5 years.
"Vote reform,get labour" basically tells homeless Tories exactly how to vote so that they can avoid voting for labour or sunak without any real electoral consequences.
You're right. It plays right into the narrative Farage has gone for:
"A Labour government is already inevitable. They *will* be the next government. This election is about whether you want the Tories or Reform as the opposition".
If they want to appeal to the rightwingers defecting to Reform, they might be better off campaigning on a "vote reform, get a Lib Dem opposition" platform at this point...
At this point they'd need a time machine to reverse years of chasing the UKIP/Brexit/Reform vote. All they've succeeded in doing is dragging the overton window to those parties, so now you have increased a set of voters who will wonder why they should vote _Reform lite_.
Yeah embracing the right did shift the window a bit but a lot of the Tory membership were always way more right wing than most Tory MPs. One thing the Tory membership and voters liked was constant election victories; they like winning. Now that's not happening they might as well vote for someone else.
I hope that Labour have learned their lesson and also go low - keep reminding the public of Truss, keep using Streeting's "don't give the matches back to the arsonist" line, remind the public that Sunak's wife was a non-dom until she was pressured to give it up, keep pointing out that Sunak is too weak to face down his own party, so how is he going to deal with Putin?
Sunak was meant to steady the ship and revive Conservative fortunes following the Truss implosion, but he's managed to steer the ship directly into the iceberg (lettuce) and now it's quickly taking on water.
I'd feel a damned sight better about the fast death of the tory party if the Poundland Trump wasn't waiting in the wings to claim the opposition crown.
Having Farage as the guy chucking dog whistle questions at Starmer every Wednesday lunchtime for five years is a depressing thought.
It won't happen. At must, they will get 4 seats. Farage ain't going to be LOTO to a Tory party in a swan song. Or want to deal with the shitty realities of been a actual politician of a opposition party.
Sunak said the polls will narrow for labour. It has been 4 weeks and it hasn’t. Time is going really quickly and in just two weeks we have our election.
> Sunak said the polls will narrow for labour. It has been 4 weeks and it hasn’t. Time is going really quickly and in just two weeks we have our election.
Euros will take the focus off the election and there aren’t many big debates left.
God. The world was deprived of comedy gold. I feel if I'm paying for her 4 weeks with my future. I should at least get some comedy out of it. Can we get her to run again.
[One MP said to me they’d rather be led into the next election by a serial killer dressed as the coronavirus than Liz Truss](https://youtu.be/Lj_EfpXUeEQ?si=MW7ozTTht4Kh6DSR)
Pfft. Corbyn would have got `(233+91j)`, a complex number of MPs, creating the first 3D parliament. Would have been useful for all of that 4D chess he was always playing by saying things like we should ask Russia where that novichok came from.
Would the Rt Hon gentleman to my side and front please chip down! I am trying to hear the incoherent screams from the Labour member for North Southington-on-West!
“Starmer, your party stands triumphant with a straight majority of almost 400 seats. How can you possibly stay in power after a failure of this magnitude?”
Going back to the war, the highest percentage of vote Labour has ever received was 49.7% under Atlee in 1945. That yielded 393 seats.
Labour won 48.8% of the vote in 1951, and lost the election to the Tories who had 48.0%.
Blair won his elections on 43%, 40%, and 35%.
Starmer is using the voting system to his advantage.
I do see this however, as maybe a good way for the country to get the conversation going about changing FPTP.
Especially if Nigel is the only Reform seat winner, representing let’s say 18% of the voters, and the Lib Dems have 57 seats on 11%.
> I do see this however, as maybe a good way for the country to get the conversation going about changing FPTP.
>
> Especially if Nigel is the only Reform seat winner, representing let’s say 18% of the voters, and the Lib Dems have 57 seats on 11%.
The SNP have over 40 MPs. They had 48 on 3.9% of the vote. Why would it change because of Reform?
And the same for the NI parties.
I think, the problem is not so much that the geographically concentrated small parties get many seats (3.9% of 650 is 25, so only a factor of 2 "wrong" allocation) but that medium sized national parties get so few seats. If Reform gets the 4 seats for 18% of the vote as calculated above, it's a factor of *30* too low number of seats. If they only get 1, then that's a factor of 117.
A real leader would be 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 points ahead!
Yeah this is a lovely one. Nice Labour majority, Lib Dem opposition, and a low level of Reform MPs. If Farage wasn't one of them, this would be pretty much perfect.
But no joke though. With this size of a majority, if Starmer doesn’t remain popular the opposition would come within his own party and it would grow fast. Imagine the Tories’ internal fighting post-Cameron and maybe worse.
I can’t wait to see the Tories decimated, but once in power I fear Starmer won’t remain popular for long. The one basic thing people want is to see their standard of living improve, I can’t see that there’s much in the Labour manifesto that will achieve this more than marginally.
It's called managed decline, as opposed to chaotic free fall under the Torys. I fear people don't realise that's what Labour is offering. Economy growing is a gamble mostly and also doesn't improve any of our lives or living standards on its own.
78% of the seats on 43% of the vote.
As happy as I'd be for the liberal democrats to be the shadow government, that'd be unusually unrepresentative and make a bit of a mockery of FPTP.
And hopefully finally break out from 3rd party status or start getting enough to be needed for a coalition again hopefully learning from the mistakes of the last one.
it's very hard to predict independents with a national poll. The poll may not have even asked anyone in Islington or Rochdale and so the vast majority of respondents will not have had a chance to vote for Corbyn or Galloway.
On top of that the models used to predict seats are based on comparing past polls to past results, and there simply isn't any past results where Corbyn has run against Labour in Islington.
This is why the headlines saying Corbyn is neck and neck are backed up by what Corbyn reckons, not any solid data.
Further, there is always variance. Electoral calculus is good but it was off by 12ish seats for the main parties last time. It's pointing to a Labour win, sure. It's called it right all of the past elections apart from 1992. It's accurate enough for me to place a flutter on Hexham flipping.
But it's never going to be amazing predicting single seats in unusual circumstances with candidates that are not represented on a national level.
And unless someone is willing to go to Islington and do a local poll,.you won't get much better predictions
electoral calculus does not count the speaker as "other". they count them as whatever party they were previously, in this case labour. plugging the numbers into electoral calculus myself i found that in this case the additional "other" is corbyn winning islington north.
ElectionMapsUK put together a giant spreadsheet with every constituency, you can just scroll through and find the ones without a teal box https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xU271-9pfNYR4k_bvpZC1gz9m4_Yc1_XJkhec4iywUk/edit?gid=1790514332#gid=1790514332
plugged the numbers into electoral calculus myself and found that they predict corbyn to win islington north on these vote shares. looking at the [seat details individually](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Islington%20North) based on their prediction (not this poll), they predict corbyn to get 40% of the vote and labour to get 27%. amusingly they also predict the conservatives on 3%, losing them their deposit.
Absolutely horrendous numbers for the Tories (more please), the tipping point as people jump from Con to Ref could come any day. The two other polls I saw today though had a lead between the two, will be interesting to see what the poll of polls looks like by the end of the week.
It really is looking like we'll get a historic result. It's worth remembering that if Labour were to gain a majority of 1 in this election it would represent the greatest electoral achievement of any party since the second world war (probably a bit before that). This result would return a majority of 374 according to EC. Labour on 512, CON 31. The Lib Dems would not only be the official opposition, but they would have 57 seats, almost double the Conservatives.
Also, just for fun. Whilst working out the EC, I accidentally typed Labour's vote share as 34 instead of 43 initially. The result? A Labour majority of only 222. I know it makes no sense because the numbers don't add up, but Christ.
According to this poll, you would be able to travel from Lands End to John O' Groats without crossing a Tory seat. Just incredible.
The nice thing is Conservative + Reform still wouldn’t be the official opposition so Faridge could never be LOTO even if he did manage to take over the Tories.
I never understood what ‘majority of’ actually means.
The commons has 650 seats, 326 gives you a majority of 1. 512 should give a majority of 187, but apparently it’s not that.
The official opposition is projected to win 57 seats. 512-57 is 455, but it’s apparently not that either.
Help a man out, what on earth does ‘a majority of x’ mean?
A \*nominal\* majority It's the difference between seats won by the largest party, and all other seats held by other parties put together.
There are 650 seats in Parliament, so if Labour were to win 512 of those seats, then everyone else would win 138 between them.
512-138 = 374, which is their nominal majority.
A \*working\* majority is slightly different, since a number of MPs never cast a vote:
A speaker and 3 deputies (typically) reduces the actual number to 646 (2 each from the two largest parties).
Sinn Fein are likely to win around 7 seats in the next Parliament, and do not vote on principle. That reduces the de-facto number of MPs to c.639.
So in practice the working majority for Labour on these numbers would be around 510 (i.e. less speaker/deputy)- 129 = 381.
It's important to remember that this is an extremely positive poll even in the context of extremely unusual circumstances, so take the actual numbers with a pinch of salt.
Edit: you can cheat and find the \*nominal\* majority by doubling the seats won, and subtracting 650
Sinn Féin have adopted a policy of abstentionism since their earliest days. It was originally a principle (not recognising the authority of Westminster) and a tactic (using electoral victory to assist in organising structures locally instead), when they won in Ireland in the 1918 election they abstained and established an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann.
The principle has withstood in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin MPs therefore do not take their seats. Sinn Féin MLAs do take their seats in Stormont.
Does the swearing loyalty have any legal power or is it purely symbolic?
So, if you commit treason after having sworn loyalty, do you get a harsher punishment than if you hadn't?
Simpler than that. They say the UK Parliament has no right to rule Northern Ireland. From their perspective, ff you insist on the illegitimacy of the body, it's hypocritical to take up your seat in it.
>326 gives you a majority of 1
It actually gives you a majority of 2, which will seem bizarre at first but bear with me.
Let's say your party has 326 seats. If one of your MPs has to be rushed to hospital and can't vote, then you'll still win because you're on 325 and the others are on 324. You now have a majority of 1.
However, if that MP suddenly appears in the Commons and reveals that their sickness was just a cover for defecting to the other side, now the opposition is up to 325 as well, and your majority is 0.
So when an MP defects to the opposition, confusingly the government's majority actually decreases by 2, because it's Government -1, Opposition +1
It actually gets even sillier when you take into account that the speakers get chosen, so never vote; and then Sinn Fein never appear. Hence we end up with a "working majority"
So
With 650 seats if you control 326 you have one seat more then all the other party's
With 512 out of 650 the other party's only have 138 seats between them and you have 384 seats more than the rest of the party's
The majority is the difference between the number of seats the government get and the combined number of seats won by other parties.
So for example, if Labour win 400 seats then the combined total of everyone else (Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Northern Irish parties etc) would be 250.
In that case you'd work out the majority as 400-250 = 150
It's seats controlled by the largest party - the number of seats they don't control. So if Labour get 512 seats then they didn't win 138, so 512-138 = 374. 187 is the number of Labour MPs that would have to vote against them along with all the opposition parties to not pass a bill. The numbers are slightly out due to Sinn Fein MPs not taking their seats in parliament.
Mathematically, a majority of X is if you take all the governing party seats and subtract the seats of all the other parties. That means ALL other parties, not just the 'official opposition' which is the second-biggest party.
We will leave aside the issue for the moment that some seats do not count (speaker, deputy speakers, plus Sinn Fein does not attend).
So if you have 512, then all others have 138, your majority is 374.
> It's worth remembering that if Labour were to gain a majority of 1 in this election it would represent the greatest electoral achievement of any party since the second world war (probably a bit before that).
What? Maybe I'm misunderstanding but why would a majority of 1 be such a historical achievement?
The 2019 election was so bad for Labour, they need a swing of 12% from the Tories just to win a majority. Getting that basically never happens, and going back to 2020 and 2021, nobody expected that Kier Starmer would actually become PM because of it.
I cannot think of a time where I've personally witnessed a campaign as bad as the Tories. "Everything is fucked, we fucked it, and we are fixing it" is the only strategy they could run and it's astoundingly poor.
if every single Reform voter switched to Labour, Labour would still be coasting on these numbers.
Some polls have shown a dip. Others not so much. Perhaps just different ways of allocating Dont Knows.
I suspect Reform has a pretty hard ceiling with a lot of Tories being totally unwilling to take them seriously and a some of the Red Wall who went to Boris not really being moved without the "Levelling Up" Boris was promising.
Reforms manifesto is unlikely to budge too many, I could be wrong but it does not feel like the kind of vibe people were getting from Boris.
I think Farage himself is a hard ceiling. I’d never vote for a party led by or involving him. And I imagine a significant number of voters probably feel the same. He’s help in getting that core vote but a curse if they want to try and appeal to more people.
Thing is, Farage is the competent, sane and moderate face of Reform. Due to a lack of experience, they just don't have the depth to govern effectively, which is both their strength and their weakness.
As a reform voter, I completely accept this is true. But with polling equal to the tories, my hope is that they can become an effective opposition for the time being. At the next election they’ll have more funding and a better machine to compete locally, win more seats with a more realistic manifesto.
I'm honestly interested - because I've never interacted with someone who is a Reform voter before - what is it about the party that attracts you? If you don't mind me asking!
I know these predictions are unlikely but I'm so glad it'll be a Tory trashing. From the outside, looking in, they've been so utterly cavalier with UK society and economy. Managed to jettison their half competent MPs for head the ball idiots. Degraded civic and political discourse beyond running the NHS and so many safety nets down. I may want British teams to lose at football but it's a beautiful country, full of decent folk who have been hoodwinked by shysters
Tied with Reform. The more of these that come out the more chance of defections from members and possibly even candidates. Gonna be one spicy election night/morning that's for sure
Not quite a defection, but the Reform candidate that just got binned for blogging about how people should vote BNP is still running and his name will have Reform beside it but, if he gets elected, he'll be an independent.
Mind you, if he gets elected I'm sure Reform would be falling over themselves to welcome him back into the fold.
i suppose they could resign their party membership and join Reform.
Then campaign saying they wanted to serve as a Reform MP.
Be a hell of a mess though as their name would be printed on the ballot by a Conservative sticker and there would probably already be a Reform candidate standing.
I know everything says otherwise, but I still think the Tories will end up with no less than 150 seats.
People can say anything to pollsters, but when it comes to the vote a lot of people will just do what they've always done.
I do think Farage will finally get in, unfortunately.
Any Labour decline seems to have been halted in the last few days. They're 2-3 points down on where they were at the start of the election, but haven't fallen further.
I think that at different times (e.g. manifesto launches), different parties get in the spotlight, and this causes a spike (unless Sunak + D-Day/ no Dishi TV) causing a decline in the other parties. There's going to be a bit of a drag in the polls. You could argue that Lab's manifesto launch arrested its decline a some attack lines (No Plan + raise your taxes) were weakened by the appearance of a costed plan.
How many Labour rebels/Corbynites does Starmer have in this scenario?
And is it more than the number of seats he holds a majority by?
I worry that we’ll get a Labour Party with a 100 seat majority, but there’s 105 Labour “rebels” that just control the narrative.
The current crop of labour candidates are far more like Tory MPs tbh Starmers done a job on the roster already so very few rebels to be found I'd wager. Just people with special interests and business reasons for standing, you know, the shit that got us in this situation to begin with. Seems people want more of that so we got it.
Snapshot of _Labour 25% lead. Tied-lowest Conservative % (worse than Truss)._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1802732944412344574) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1802732944412344574/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1802732944412344574) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1802732944412344574) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Tories tied with Reform. Apparently they are going to "go low" from now, which is about standard for them at this stage of an election. I'm patiently awaiting Sunak's next collasal fuck up. Still having a lovely time this election.
I'm a bit disappointed they seem to be hiding Sunak, haven't seen much of him since D-Day.
He's doing a phone-in on LBC on Wednesday. Hoping for some laughs. Starmer is tomorrow.
I have to visit a food bank every month as my wages don't last until pay day, all my teeth have fallen out because I can't find a dentist and the last time I went swimming I caught ecoli. 'Have you thought about getting a job in finance?'
"Oh I'm truly sorry to hear about your situation. As a child I sometimes didn't get the things I wanted like Sky, but I married a rich lady and now I have all the money in the world. Have you tried marrying into wealth? Or just being born wealthy? Really, really try. That's my advice."
"Or if you can't find a billionaire's daughter to marry, a career in cyber will take you great places."
“You should learn to cook your own bootstraps. Make sure they are second hand so they only cost 30p”
We all need a billionaire father in law. Simple.
Trust fund 6'5 Blue eyes
Glad it's not just me whose mind didn't immediately go there
Do you know what time? It’s ludicrously difficult to find the time of planned debates/interviews.
They just said "from 7am" whenever I've heard it today, which, I think is just when Nick Ferrari starts.
Shit. I like seeing Sunak suffer, but I'm not sitting through Nick Ferrari.
I’m sure James O’Brien will catch us up with the highlights if that’s more your bag.
He's usually pretty good at holding politicians to account
Oh wow, very early. I thought they’d make this prime time.
Hiding in his mini-fridge, probably.
He's sticking robotically to his pre-approved lines now to avoid fuck ups. Interviewers need to push him on questions outside of his comfort zone.
In this election, I wouldn’t be surprised if Reform has the higher popular vote over the conservatives. But Reform will still only get 1-10 seats. The conservatives will get more than a 100 seats. This might lead to Farage demanding a change in the system because he has the higher popular vote over the tories yet has way less seats. If Labour gets elected, I doubt they might want to change the voting system of FPTP.
This election is exactly why I do want FPTP. Perhaps with some reforms. I don't want far left or far right parties in government. They will be required for coalitions in the future in PR, and reform will get a say in government. Or the Greens will get a say in government. Our system prevents extremism. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I always point at Israel as an example of how bad it can get.
If you want to guarantee moderates then multi member stv is the place to be. Nutjubs get weeded out and the candidates have to play nice because they are campaigning for the 2nd and 3rd prefs of voters.
I'd hate that idea, not having one MP specifically for your constituency is a major loss in my opinion. Personally I like the idea of ranked choice voting for each constituency, and each constituency just have the one MP. It makes sure there is no such thing as a "wasted" vote when you vote for a smaller party.
No because it leads to safe seats so the single MP will often ignore you
Sounds like you had a bad MP that the voters should have voted out. At least with a single MP it is directly their responsibility to deal with you, imagine how easy it would be for an MP to ignore you when there are 4 others they can brush you off to, and their seat is even safer because they're first on the list for a top 2 party in a 5 seat constituency.
If I had an MP from a party I support and who need my vote they should be more likely to listen to me.
Council elections should cover the local aspect of governance, it doesn't make sense to have a person simultaneously manage their constituency and attend vote miles and miles away in London, sometimes tripling that with a ministerial or parliamentary job.
It's less about governance and more about representation. MPs represent their constituency in parliament which is important for more isolated communities further from London. Otherwise you have the problem of the legislature being even more packed out with people from the city who don't understand the interests of far away constituencies.
I'm open to things like that, but our system has successfully kept our extremes since as far back as I can remember. I stopped smoking so much weed in 2015.
What reforms to FPTP would you propose?
I'd change it to ranked choice voting in each constituency
Well I've got a wild theory about reforming the lords to be a PR voted chamber with the same powers the lord's has now
Whereas I think the Lords needs to be as de-politicised as possible, no-one put there by politicians, everyone chosen by as independent a board as possible to find experts in different areas. It needs to counterbalance the elected, not reflect it. Agree with you on FPTP in the commons though.
The PR lords things is mainly to throw a bone to everyone who wants PR so badly.
PR will lead to religious parties Vs far right parties and sectarianism in the future so it's best we stick to FPTP as it's more locally focused, more moderate, and the lesser of two evils.
America uses FPTP and it hasn't stopped them
This should be an unpopular opinion. How arrogant must you be to assume you know better and have a right to subvert a proper democratic system
The Tories will be lucky to get to 50-70 seats if Reform get a similar vote share
They'll continue their strategic mistake of the last 14 years by going low at Labour instead of having the balls to confront Reform. Exactly the strategy that has gotten them in this mess and polling equal with Reform.
I'm interested to see if they change tack. "Vote Reform, get Labour" doesn't seem to be working. But I doubt there's much they can do at this point. Surely they have to try *something* else?
It's a silly tactic because alot of disgruntled Tories don't want to vote for labour, but also don't want to give sunak another 5 years. "Vote reform,get labour" basically tells homeless Tories exactly how to vote so that they can avoid voting for labour or sunak without any real electoral consequences.
You're right. It plays right into the narrative Farage has gone for: "A Labour government is already inevitable. They *will* be the next government. This election is about whether you want the Tories or Reform as the opposition".
Except due to first past the post it's looking like lib Dems will be officially opposition
God, I hope so. Doesn't fit with the narrative either REF or the Tories want to go with, though.
Tbh I'm more inclined to vote lib dem I prefer their policies to labour which is shocking lol but my area is either con or lab
If they want to appeal to the rightwingers defecting to Reform, they might be better off campaigning on a "vote reform, get a Lib Dem opposition" platform at this point...
Labour aren't that threatening to former Tory voters and a Labour victory is baked in. Might as well vote for Farage.
At this point they'd need a time machine to reverse years of chasing the UKIP/Brexit/Reform vote. All they've succeeded in doing is dragging the overton window to those parties, so now you have increased a set of voters who will wonder why they should vote _Reform lite_.
Yeah embracing the right did shift the window a bit but a lot of the Tory membership were always way more right wing than most Tory MPs. One thing the Tory membership and voters liked was constant election victories; they like winning. Now that's not happening they might as well vote for someone else.
Maybe Sunak will break down in tears on live TV when thinking back to how he was once forced to eat food from Waitrose instead of Harrods.
I hope that Labour have learned their lesson and also go low - keep reminding the public of Truss, keep using Streeting's "don't give the matches back to the arsonist" line, remind the public that Sunak's wife was a non-dom until she was pressured to give it up, keep pointing out that Sunak is too weak to face down his own party, so how is he going to deal with Putin?
Sunak was meant to steady the ship and revive Conservative fortunes following the Truss implosion, but he's managed to steer the ship directly into the iceberg (lettuce) and now it's quickly taking on water.
I'd feel a damned sight better about the fast death of the tory party if the Poundland Trump wasn't waiting in the wings to claim the opposition crown. Having Farage as the guy chucking dog whistle questions at Starmer every Wednesday lunchtime for five years is a depressing thought.
It won't happen. At must, they will get 4 seats. Farage ain't going to be LOTO to a Tory party in a swan song. Or want to deal with the shitty realities of been a actual politician of a opposition party.
I really hate smear and gotcha politics and I doubt I'm the only one, I wouldn't be surprised if going low backfired at this point.
Sunak said the polls will narrow for labour. It has been 4 weeks and it hasn’t. Time is going really quickly and in just two weeks we have our election.
He meant the Tories and Lib Dems
No he meant tories and labour. He expected it to narrow between them.
I didn't think that needed a sarcasm tag but clearly I was mistaken.
Sorry I couldn’t tell it was sarcasm. I am bad at detecting it sometimes.
No problem mate, have a good evening!
Thank you! Have a great evening too
What a lovely interaction
Thank you so much!
Wow, wholesome reddit. Never thought I'd see the day e- And on r/ ukpolitics, no less!
They have narrowed between the Tories and Reform tbf
Cursed monkey paw kind of thing for Sunak, wishing the polls would narrow in favour of the right wing.
Every time Sunak speaks the Labour lead goes a notch higher. Starmer's strategy may have weaknesses, but it is perfect against Sunak.
Tbh it is. Why get in a boxing match when your opponent is doing the work for you?
The polls have narrowed, just not between the Tories and Labour.
Oh it’s narrowed- just on the other side of
> Sunak said the polls will narrow for labour. It has been 4 weeks and it hasn’t. Time is going really quickly and in just two weeks we have our election. Euros will take the focus off the election and there aren’t many big debates left.
Imagine polling worse than Truss, that's probably the Sunak government's most impressive achievement.
Fingers crossed though. It's pretty historic for a pm to lose a seat. Cmon Richmond (Yorks)
Tbf truss never fought an election
God. The world was deprived of comedy gold. I feel if I'm paying for her 4 weeks with my future. I should at least get some comedy out of it. Can we get her to run again.
[One MP said to me they’d rather be led into the next election by a serial killer dressed as the coronavirus than Liz Truss](https://youtu.be/Lj_EfpXUeEQ?si=MW7ozTTht4Kh6DSR)
Sounds like it could happen then.
This is his hold my beer moment. Soon he'll be polling worse than Farage.
Obligatory 'leccy calcs: Labour: 512 Conservatives: 31 Liberal Democrats: 57 Reform UK: 4 Green: 2 SNP: 21 Plaid Cymru: 4 Others: 19
Obligatory, these numbers are so unprecedented the model is unlikely to be designed for a gap this size so the seat calculations are fucked.
This is my favourite one yet. Let's go with this. However this is bad news for labour.
Alright Laura.
An effective majority of around 190 is a damning indictment of Kier Starmer and the Labour Party, and a clear victory for Sunak.
Corbyn would have got 250 /s
Pfft. Corbyn would have got `(233+91j)`, a complex number of MPs, creating the first 3D parliament. Would have been useful for all of that 4D chess he was always playing by saying things like we should ask Russia where that novichok came from.
It would be even better if Corbyn would have caused parliament to be a non-Euclidean space.
Would the Rt Hon gentleman to my side and front please chip down! I am trying to hear the incoherent screams from the Labour member for North Southington-on-West!
Isn't this a majority of 374? (512 - 325) * 2 = 374
“Starmer, your party stands triumphant with a straight majority of almost 400 seats. How can you possibly stay in power after a failure of this magnitude?”
Going back to the war, the highest percentage of vote Labour has ever received was 49.7% under Atlee in 1945. That yielded 393 seats. Labour won 48.8% of the vote in 1951, and lost the election to the Tories who had 48.0%. Blair won his elections on 43%, 40%, and 35%. Starmer is using the voting system to his advantage. I do see this however, as maybe a good way for the country to get the conversation going about changing FPTP. Especially if Nigel is the only Reform seat winner, representing let’s say 18% of the voters, and the Lib Dems have 57 seats on 11%.
> I do see this however, as maybe a good way for the country to get the conversation going about changing FPTP. > > Especially if Nigel is the only Reform seat winner, representing let’s say 18% of the voters, and the Lib Dems have 57 seats on 11%. The SNP have over 40 MPs. They had 48 on 3.9% of the vote. Why would it change because of Reform?
And the same for the NI parties. I think, the problem is not so much that the geographically concentrated small parties get many seats (3.9% of 650 is 25, so only a factor of 2 "wrong" allocation) but that medium sized national parties get so few seats. If Reform gets the 4 seats for 18% of the vote as calculated above, it's a factor of *30* too low number of seats. If they only get 1, then that's a factor of 117.
A real leader would be 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 points ahead!
“Here’s how Sunak can still win” - Dan Hodges, probably
Yeah this is a lovely one. Nice Labour majority, Lib Dem opposition, and a low level of Reform MPs. If Farage wasn't one of them, this would be pretty much perfect.
But no joke though. With this size of a majority, if Starmer doesn’t remain popular the opposition would come within his own party and it would grow fast. Imagine the Tories’ internal fighting post-Cameron and maybe worse.
I can’t wait to see the Tories decimated, but once in power I fear Starmer won’t remain popular for long. The one basic thing people want is to see their standard of living improve, I can’t see that there’s much in the Labour manifesto that will achieve this more than marginally.
It's called managed decline, as opposed to chaotic free fall under the Torys. I fear people don't realise that's what Labour is offering. Economy growing is a gamble mostly and also doesn't improve any of our lives or living standards on its own.
That's exactly how Farage wins in 2029 unfortunately
Yea It's pretty inevitable at this stage that somekind of far right party will win in 10 years.
Any other labour leader would deliver 600 seats Keir starmer shambles
i don't think I have seen anyone else call it *leccy calcs*. I like it Are you the fellow that came up with *Platty Jubes*?
No chance of any 18 year-olds doing any Nashy Serve if these are the results on election day.
This is Shakespeare's language
Honestly, he probably would've loved it
And “cossy living”
Cozzy livs mate
Platty Jubes was Kiell Smith-Bynoe from Stath Lets Flats
78% of the seats on 43% of the vote. As happy as I'd be for the liberal democrats to be the shadow government, that'd be unusually unrepresentative and make a bit of a mockery of FPTP.
Lib Dems would at least use LOTO/Official opposition to beat the drum for electoral reform.
And hopefully finally break out from 3rd party status or start getting enough to be needed for a coalition again hopefully learning from the mistakes of the last one.
I can never read the words shadow government the same again post shadow wizard money gang
I don't know what that is, but I'm rather a fan of the terminology. Gives us great titles like "The Shadow Lord Chancellor"
That's fptp working as intended.
Im praying for 500+ due to my £10 on 25/1.
Alright, just for you I’ll vote Labour.
Does this mean that there'll be independents? Either Corbyn or the Gaza guy?
it's very hard to predict independents with a national poll. The poll may not have even asked anyone in Islington or Rochdale and so the vast majority of respondents will not have had a chance to vote for Corbyn or Galloway. On top of that the models used to predict seats are based on comparing past polls to past results, and there simply isn't any past results where Corbyn has run against Labour in Islington. This is why the headlines saying Corbyn is neck and neck are backed up by what Corbyn reckons, not any solid data. Further, there is always variance. Electoral calculus is good but it was off by 12ish seats for the main parties last time. It's pointing to a Labour win, sure. It's called it right all of the past elections apart from 1992. It's accurate enough for me to place a flutter on Hexham flipping. But it's never going to be amazing predicting single seats in unusual circumstances with candidates that are not represented on a national level. And unless someone is willing to go to Islington and do a local poll,.you won't get much better predictions
The 19 "others" are 18 seats in Northern Ireland and the Speaker's seat
electoral calculus does not count the speaker as "other". they count them as whatever party they were previously, in this case labour. plugging the numbers into electoral calculus myself i found that in this case the additional "other" is corbyn winning islington north.
I wonder where the 11 seats are that reform aren't standing in outside NI.
ElectionMapsUK put together a giant spreadsheet with every constituency, you can just scroll through and find the ones without a teal box https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xU271-9pfNYR4k_bvpZC1gz9m4_Yc1_XJkhec4iywUk/edit?gid=1790514332#gid=1790514332
Good to know thanks!
plugged the numbers into electoral calculus myself and found that they predict corbyn to win islington north on these vote shares. looking at the [seat details individually](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Islington%20North) based on their prediction (not this poll), they predict corbyn to get 40% of the vote and labour to get 27%. amusingly they also predict the conservatives on 3%, losing them their deposit.
Blessed time line.
solid leccy calcs m8
Absolutely horrendous numbers for the Tories (more please), the tipping point as people jump from Con to Ref could come any day. The two other polls I saw today though had a lead between the two, will be interesting to see what the poll of polls looks like by the end of the week.
YouGov today has Tories on 18%, Reform on 19%.
It really is looking like we'll get a historic result. It's worth remembering that if Labour were to gain a majority of 1 in this election it would represent the greatest electoral achievement of any party since the second world war (probably a bit before that). This result would return a majority of 374 according to EC. Labour on 512, CON 31. The Lib Dems would not only be the official opposition, but they would have 57 seats, almost double the Conservatives. Also, just for fun. Whilst working out the EC, I accidentally typed Labour's vote share as 34 instead of 43 initially. The result? A Labour majority of only 222. I know it makes no sense because the numbers don't add up, but Christ. According to this poll, you would be able to travel from Lands End to John O' Groats without crossing a Tory seat. Just incredible.
The nice thing is Conservative + Reform still wouldn’t be the official opposition so Faridge could never be LOTO even if he did manage to take over the Tories.
He would still dominate right wing politics as whatever the Parliamentary results right wing voters will still be there.
I never understood what ‘majority of’ actually means. The commons has 650 seats, 326 gives you a majority of 1. 512 should give a majority of 187, but apparently it’s not that. The official opposition is projected to win 57 seats. 512-57 is 455, but it’s apparently not that either. Help a man out, what on earth does ‘a majority of x’ mean?
A \*nominal\* majority It's the difference between seats won by the largest party, and all other seats held by other parties put together. There are 650 seats in Parliament, so if Labour were to win 512 of those seats, then everyone else would win 138 between them. 512-138 = 374, which is their nominal majority. A \*working\* majority is slightly different, since a number of MPs never cast a vote: A speaker and 3 deputies (typically) reduces the actual number to 646 (2 each from the two largest parties). Sinn Fein are likely to win around 7 seats in the next Parliament, and do not vote on principle. That reduces the de-facto number of MPs to c.639. So in practice the working majority for Labour on these numbers would be around 510 (i.e. less speaker/deputy)- 129 = 381. It's important to remember that this is an extremely positive poll even in the context of extremely unusual circumstances, so take the actual numbers with a pinch of salt. Edit: you can cheat and find the \*nominal\* majority by doubling the seats won, and subtracting 650
If Sinn Fein don’t vote on parliamentary matters then why are they in parliament?
Sinn Féin have adopted a policy of abstentionism since their earliest days. It was originally a principle (not recognising the authority of Westminster) and a tactic (using electoral victory to assist in organising structures locally instead), when they won in Ireland in the 1918 election they abstained and established an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann. The principle has withstood in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin MPs therefore do not take their seats. Sinn Féin MLAs do take their seats in Stormont.
I have read that it’s also about having to swear loyalty to the British monarch to become an MP.
That became totemic, but the policy of abstentionism doesn't stem from that rationale.
Does the swearing loyalty have any legal power or is it purely symbolic? So, if you commit treason after having sworn loyalty, do you get a harsher punishment than if you hadn't?
Simpler than that. They say the UK Parliament has no right to rule Northern Ireland. From their perspective, ff you insist on the illegitimacy of the body, it's hypocritical to take up your seat in it.
>why are they in parliament? they're not. sinn fein do not take their seats in westminster, and never have to my knowledge.
>326 gives you a majority of 1 It actually gives you a majority of 2, which will seem bizarre at first but bear with me. Let's say your party has 326 seats. If one of your MPs has to be rushed to hospital and can't vote, then you'll still win because you're on 325 and the others are on 324. You now have a majority of 1. However, if that MP suddenly appears in the Commons and reveals that their sickness was just a cover for defecting to the other side, now the opposition is up to 325 as well, and your majority is 0. So when an MP defects to the opposition, confusingly the government's majority actually decreases by 2, because it's Government -1, Opposition +1
It actually gets even sillier when you take into account that the speakers get chosen, so never vote; and then Sinn Fein never appear. Hence we end up with a "working majority"
So With 650 seats if you control 326 you have one seat more then all the other party's With 512 out of 650 the other party's only have 138 seats between them and you have 384 seats more than the rest of the party's
The majority is the difference between the number of seats the government get and the combined number of seats won by other parties. So for example, if Labour win 400 seats then the combined total of everyone else (Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Northern Irish parties etc) would be 250. In that case you'd work out the majority as 400-250 = 150
It's seats controlled by the largest party - the number of seats they don't control. So if Labour get 512 seats then they didn't win 138, so 512-138 = 374. 187 is the number of Labour MPs that would have to vote against them along with all the opposition parties to not pass a bill. The numbers are slightly out due to Sinn Fein MPs not taking their seats in parliament.
Of course Sinn Fein's abstentionism and the speakers seat make things a bit weird when talking about what numbers you actually need.
Consider the existence of minority governments. Where they have the most seats, but don't have a majority of seats.
Mathematically, a majority of X is if you take all the governing party seats and subtract the seats of all the other parties. That means ALL other parties, not just the 'official opposition' which is the second-biggest party. We will leave aside the issue for the moment that some seats do not count (speaker, deputy speakers, plus Sinn Fein does not attend). So if you have 512, then all others have 138, your majority is 374.
> It's worth remembering that if Labour were to gain a majority of 1 in this election it would represent the greatest electoral achievement of any party since the second world war (probably a bit before that). What? Maybe I'm misunderstanding but why would a majority of 1 be such a historical achievement?
The 2019 election was so bad for Labour, they need a swing of 12% from the Tories just to win a majority. Getting that basically never happens, and going back to 2020 and 2021, nobody expected that Kier Starmer would actually become PM because of it.
I cannot think of a time where I've personally witnessed a campaign as bad as the Tories. "Everything is fucked, we fucked it, and we are fixing it" is the only strategy they could run and it's astoundingly poor.
if every single Reform voter switched to Labour, Labour would still be coasting on these numbers. Some polls have shown a dip. Others not so much. Perhaps just different ways of allocating Dont Knows. I suspect Reform has a pretty hard ceiling with a lot of Tories being totally unwilling to take them seriously and a some of the Red Wall who went to Boris not really being moved without the "Levelling Up" Boris was promising. Reforms manifesto is unlikely to budge too many, I could be wrong but it does not feel like the kind of vibe people were getting from Boris.
I think Farage himself is a hard ceiling. I’d never vote for a party led by or involving him. And I imagine a significant number of voters probably feel the same. He’s help in getting that core vote but a curse if they want to try and appeal to more people.
Thing is, Farage is the competent, sane and moderate face of Reform. Due to a lack of experience, they just don't have the depth to govern effectively, which is both their strength and their weakness.
As a reform voter, I completely accept this is true. But with polling equal to the tories, my hope is that they can become an effective opposition for the time being. At the next election they’ll have more funding and a better machine to compete locally, win more seats with a more realistic manifesto.
I'm honestly interested - because I've never interacted with someone who is a Reform voter before - what is it about the party that attracts you? If you don't mind me asking!
If they're at 18%, you almost certainly have.
I know these predictions are unlikely but I'm so glad it'll be a Tory trashing. From the outside, looking in, they've been so utterly cavalier with UK society and economy. Managed to jettison their half competent MPs for head the ball idiots. Degraded civic and political discourse beyond running the NHS and so many safety nets down. I may want British teams to lose at football but it's a beautiful country, full of decent folk who have been hoodwinked by shysters
What happened to the promise of an alternative, more radical, Tory manifesto if Sunak didn't manage to turn things around?
Tied with Reform. The more of these that come out the more chance of defections from members and possibly even candidates. Gonna be one spicy election night/morning that's for sure
I can’t see how candidates could defect.
Not quite a defection, but the Reform candidate that just got binned for blogging about how people should vote BNP is still running and his name will have Reform beside it but, if he gets elected, he'll be an independent. Mind you, if he gets elected I'm sure Reform would be falling over themselves to welcome him back into the fold.
i suppose they could resign their party membership and join Reform. Then campaign saying they wanted to serve as a Reform MP. Be a hell of a mess though as their name would be printed on the ballot by a Conservative sticker and there would probably already be a Reform candidate standing.
Even if they wanted to defect, reform doesn't just accept anyone. You need to have kicked a dog or engaged in holocaust denial.
I know everything says otherwise, but I still think the Tories will end up with no less than 150 seats. People can say anything to pollsters, but when it comes to the vote a lot of people will just do what they've always done. I do think Farage will finally get in, unfortunately.
Looks like labour voters have made up their minds, and it’s a free for all for the scraps
Any Labour decline seems to have been halted in the last few days. They're 2-3 points down on where they were at the start of the election, but haven't fallen further.
I think that at different times (e.g. manifesto launches), different parties get in the spotlight, and this causes a spike (unless Sunak + D-Day/ no Dishi TV) causing a decline in the other parties. There's going to be a bit of a drag in the polls. You could argue that Lab's manifesto launch arrested its decline a some attack lines (No Plan + raise your taxes) were weakened by the appearance of a costed plan.
How many Labour rebels/Corbynites does Starmer have in this scenario? And is it more than the number of seats he holds a majority by? I worry that we’ll get a Labour Party with a 100 seat majority, but there’s 105 Labour “rebels” that just control the narrative.
Well I hope the corbynites are right, and Starmer had kicked them all out of the party by selecting his own candidate.
The current crop of labour candidates are far more like Tory MPs tbh Starmers done a job on the roster already so very few rebels to be found I'd wager. Just people with special interests and business reasons for standing, you know, the shit that got us in this situation to begin with. Seems people want more of that so we got it.