UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Oryxslayer]

Honest question: how possible do we think it is that Truss call's a GE to avoid yet another leadership challenge?

Boris didn't do it, perhaps because at the end of the day he knew the public façade that he had more electoral support than internal support was a lie, or perhaps because he knew who was holding the knifes and what their likely electoral fate would be. I don't think at this point anyone would deny that Boris will be attempting to rewrite the past year, return to leadership of the party after a loss, and comeback like an exiled savior.

But Truss...well she doesn't seem to fully grasp her position. If there is already talk about internal letters being sent, then her position is precarious. Its not to hard to imagine her believing that intensification of partisan activism, like has been done here, will in the end win her the day - it did in the leadership vote after all. Or she could slap a three-line whip on these type of issues, or maybe even this, in an attempt to force everyone to heel but it backfires spectacularly.

[Oryxslayer]

On discord I've been reminded of a post I wrote in 2019, so I'm going to quote it, partialy to collect accolades, but also to make what I think is a very important point.

This election, 2017, 2015 in Scotland, if they have shown one thing,  have shown that the electorate is incredibly volatile, and prior performance is no indication of future success. All current majorities are like the foolish man who built his house upon the sand, and could disappear tomorrow. Boris Johnson is not beloved now, and his support is conditional, but even if he was and it wasn’t there is no reason at all to doubt that Labour can win easily in 2024. No reason, that is, based on fundamentals and national conditions, plenty based on the track record of the Labour party.

If you consider yourself a serious follower of elections, as I believe most people on here do, you should never ever forget that politics is not a sports league, parties previous victories and vote totals do not accumulate allowing them to build an insurmountable lead. At each and every election their votes start from zero, and each one of those votes has to be earnt anew. This is especially true with the secular trend across western democracies towards increased swings and reduced party loyalties. Even after the biggest landslide, when everything seems most hopeless, there is no majority on earth so large that it necessarily takes 2 or 3 cycles to dislodge.

The Iron Law of electoral politics is that the pendulum always swings in both directions. There are unique conditions that can bias it's swings, such as in post-Civil War US, but it will eventually always swing in the other direction.


If there were people who believed in the thousand-year Boris Imperium, that's on them for their willful ignorance.

[Oryxslayer]

What are chances Boris Johnson returns as PM?  I am pretty sure if Boris Johnson was PM, party wouldn't be doing as badly.  Trailing sure, but not by 30 points.

I'd say about -10%, maybe less. I'm by no means any sort of authority on British politics, but I would think Sunak is probably the most likely leader if Truss gets the boot.

Yes, it's too soon for Boris, though you are a fool if you think he isn't rebuilding his machine for round 2. His ideal "restoration" would be after a Tory electoral loss, where he can play towards electoral hindsight. Its not hard now to imagine Tories see 2019 in rose colored glasses, and also seeing Boris's issues as forgivable when matched against recency bias, but he lacks the ability to prove all doubters as fools and the ability to overhaul the party to prevent future disloyalties - both things that would be available in the aftermath of any type of Labour victory.

[Oryxslayer]

What are chances Boris Johnson returns as PM?  I am pretty sure if Boris Johnson was PM, party wouldn't be doing as badly.  Trailing sure, but not by 30 points.

I'd say about -10%, maybe less. I'm by no means any sort of authority on British politics, but I would think Sunak is probably the most likely leader if Truss gets the boot.

Yes, it's too soon for Boris, though you are a fool if you think he isn't rebuilding his machine for round 2. His ideal "restoration" would be after a Tory electoral loss, where he can play towards electoral hindsight. Its not hard now to imagine Tories see 2019 in rose colored glasses, and also seeing Boris's issues as forgivable when matched against recency bias, but he lacks the ability to prove all doubters as fools and the ability to overhaul the party to prevent future disloyalties - both things that would be available in the aftermath of any type of Labour victory.

Issue with a Boris restoration after a defeat is he'd lose his seat in almost any election resulting in a Labour government, nevermind the sort of cataclysm the Tories face now. Of course, I suppose he could move to a safer seat, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

Boris Johnson (Con–Tiverton and Honiton) just imo

That particular seat would be a lol moment, but yes, the chatter a while back seemed to suggest that he would flee from the coming storm to some safe seat since  Uxbridge would likely be part of any Labour government. Of course things have gotten just a bit worse for the Tories since that prior rumor.

[Oryxslayer]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

I hate to lend the "Boris is an electoral titan theory" credence, but there is an argument that even during the decline he kept the Tories trending water through appeal with a certain cadre of voters. Truss's actions just revealed to these voters that the Tories were no longer the party for these people, so this loaned/unique/circumstantial support all bolted at once for similar reasons and justifications. Essentially, the support was always conditional, so it didn't take much to jump ship.

[Oryxslayer]

Truss is sitting behind Mordaunt, smiling vacantly while Mordaunt answers questions for her. Surreal - even if she has dispersed speculation by showing up.

A soft-coup seems to be in motion, and Truss's actions suggest she didn't know just how few allies she had. Essentially, she's not going to be outlasting that Lettuce.

[Oryxslayer]

Johnson leading seems like a case of voters saying, "You're going to lose the next election anyway; please just put someone in who can do the job."

Nah, there are others capturing that lane. Johnson's support is "I don't look bad by comparison now, see?"

That said, in Johnson's ideal world he would come back a bit later than 1 month after his departure - memories still haven't fully vanished.

[Oryxslayer]

Is there anyone left here who would take Truss over the Lettuce?

[Oryxslayer]

The Lettuce Won.

[Oryxslayer]

So, how will history remember Liz Truss?

One of the worst and least effective prime ministers ever. A historical footnote in fifty years.

That or a well documented part of conspiracy theories, on whether she was truly a political agent seeking to destroy the Tories.

[Oryxslayer]

Interesting timing on that , since the court decision pertaining to potential referendums is coming soon.

[Oryxslayer]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-63727562?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-bbcnews&utm_content=later-31226638&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio

The Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland can not hold an independance referendum without the UK Government's consent.

Why has this not gotten more comment here?

So, what can Scotland do? Hold a 'plebicite' instead and dare the U.K government to not recognize the result if it's in favor of independence?

So the SNP are in a bit of a pickle. The present and past crop of leaders - no idea about the future ones - really, really, don't want to do this sort of thing. They see how this has faired for Catalonia and all it has done is encouraged both the PSOE and PP to use the spiked boot when the olive branch and bureaucracy fail, calcified the impasse between both sides, and turned Catalonia's provincial government into an electoral extension of the nationalists. None of this is beneficial towards independence if you actually believe in that project, and aren't a cynical opportunist looking to use identity polarization to make the devolved government into a patronage machine cause you hold all the leavers of power for decades. Also, the SNP really want to return to the EU ASAP after independence, so everything has to be nice and legal for Spain and others to allow them in.

But why are the SNP in this situation? After the 2021 election, the SNP promised to reinvigorate the independence question. One potential legal path was this argument, that they could hold a vote without Westminster approval. That's now gone, though the outcome was expected. Then there was the idea of becoming the kingmakers in a 2023/4 election, and extracting Labour into allowing a vote for support from their MPs. That plan was blown up when Boris left and the Tories electoral bottom fell out. Now there's the idea of running a single issue campaign in the next GE on independence, and treating the likely results as full endorsement. That however seems like setting yourself up to fail, since Labour at this point are almost certain to make the Scottish results a net loss for the SNP at minimum. Which leaves the SNP backed into a corner where the Catalan option is the easiest way out. It is also the option which would most destroy their credibility outside Scotland and potentially negatively effect their electoral brand since an amicable divorce rather than conflict has been the desired and marketed outcome for decades now.

And this is just the game theory aspects, there is plenty of internal bickering within the party right now over non-independence issues. There's the Westminster party leadership debate which finally erupted last week after simmering for months. Sturgeon is expected to leave the scene within a few years so positioning for succession  is another facet to their maneuvering.

[Oryxslayer]

And of course the one Scottish seat widely thought to have voted for Brexit - Banff and Buchan - was a traditional SNP heartland (even if it is currently Tory)

Yes, part of the SNP desire to rewrite the takeaways from the 2014 and 2016 referendum is driven by their post-2015 electoral base. Originally the SNP was a periphery party who appealed to those who felt ignored by all the traditional tickets. But once the SNP gained reliable control over the Central Belt, the periphery was no longer as high a priority, for various reasons. We can arguably sense this periphery worldview in the Brexit results in these regions, which has gradually sent people in these regions towards the Tories, and played out rather horribly for Salmond in 2017.

[Oryxslayer]

Ian Blackford has resigned as parliamentary SNP leader. This is obviously cause of the infighting, but its interesting it comes 1 day after a Scotland regional poll was finally released:

https://twitter.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1598000771085537280?s=20&t=zkU3N6...

[Oryxslayer]

Forbes would also be the more conservative candidate economically. Which will win plaudits in some quarters but creates difficulties in others.

It would very possibly make the "left of Labour" schtick in the central belt a bit harder to pull off.

It's however very easy to be left of Labour today. Certainly in contrast to 2017 when the SNP got a central belt fright.

Labour's problems electorally, which you can trace back as far as 1987 (relative to rUK) in it's old Scottish heartlands are exactly as they always have been.

Correct.

Labour lost scotland because it drifted too much to the right on the economy under New Labour.

Glasgow with it's extreme poverty has always been a political paradise for socialist politicians.

They didn't exactly rebound much when they shifted much further left under corbyn.

Yes, in 2019 Labour performed significantly worse in the Scottish popular vote than they did in 2015. Their modest dead cat bounce seats wise in 2017 can mostly be attributed to the plunge in the SNP vote (the SNP ran explicitly on the unpopular promise of a second referendum and suffered accordingly) and some degree of unionist tactical voting. I am somewhat sceptical of the argument that Labour has fallen back in Scotland due to being insufficiently left-wing. Whilst it certainly has been handy for the SNP to have a succession of Conservative governments in Westminster against which they can pose as a ‘progressive’ alternative, it seems to be far more the case that SLab’s problems derive principally from being seen as insufficiently Scottish as opposed to insufficiently progressive.

Don't forget all the structural, systematic, and internal failures within Scottish Labour that allowed the SNP to win power 15 years ago, and then subsequently coopt many of Labours political machines, leaving the party in an identity and organizational crisis until a few years ago.

I have always perceived these problems to have stemmed not from any ideology or personage whatsoever, rather they emerged because Labour insiders, in their hubris, assumed Scotland to be 'theirs' and electorally safe, and nobody else could or would seriously challenge them. So the politics of safe seats and internal machines played out until the voters had enough, and voted for change. And the plurality of voters quite liked what followed from that change, and so proceeded to realign Scottish politics in their image.

[Oryxslayer]

One thing to note is this agreement scuppers (and for good) the insane plan of the Johnson government to simply ignore the rules around the NI Protocol, legislation for which was technically still moving through parliament and which will now be scrapped. Dodging a completely stupid and entirely unnecessary trade war is a good thing from pretty much any sane perspective. Another thing to note is that, and for various different reasons, this will make the process of moving towards greater alignment between the EU and the UK easier over the medium-term.

This I think is the reason for the outcome. Because while it appears the EU has a lot of leverage,  the UK here has the gasoline and matches. Nobody except maybe the true blue Tories and the DUP wants a situation that encourages a return to vigilante violence. Maybe this will change if SF forms the next Irish govt and pursues accerationism, but for now all actors want the status quo. Therefore,  the UK threatening with brinkmanship encourages both to seek an amenable outcome.

[Oryxslayer]

The Lib Dems look pretty out of contention in Argyll + Bute, so my assumption is that the SNP win on a heavily split field (God knows what order the other parties are in). Lanark + Hamilton East has enough residual Labour support that I would assume they will quite easily squeeze a lot of the Tory vote, whether it’s enough to win I’m not sure.

North Ayrshire and Arran is similar to East Renfrewshire, being seats where the Tories were clearly stronger in 2019 but which had Labour history and you’d expect on current polling couldn’t be won by the Tories but the SNP vote share will only be in the 30s. Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock is also in this bucket. In these seats how much campaigning the Tories and Labour do will matter a lot, as will any media narrative about Scotland being a Labour vs SNP battle.

Put it this way, whatever the past couple of elections say about a constituency, if in the 2024 general election the Tories are sub-20% and Labour are over 30%, then basically every urban/Central Belt constituency should see Labour outpolling the Tories, especially as the general election Labour vote has already been artificially squeezed by both the Tories and SNP in these places but remains stronger in local elections (with a lot of voters being willing to vote Labour in the right circumstances). 

Aye, that pretty much tracks. The Lib Dem coalition that used to deliver them rural Highland seats seems to have just dissolved, with the singular exception of Jamie Stone, who seems to cling on by the skin of his teeth each cycle. And aye - Labour should outpoll the Tories across the Central Belt if current polling holds, and they're leading the Tories by 10-15%.

Partially just curious about whether seats like Argyll and Bute are potential "reach seats" for the Conservatives in the following few cycles (under a Tory leader palatable to Scots, like 2017 Theresa May) - or whether they've missed their chance, and Labour become the defacto "not-SNP" party again after a recovery (even a modest one) next year. Lots of these places were quite comfortable for the Tories pre-1997, and as we've seen in 2017, those ancestral voting patterns seem to still hold some sway - particularly in the rural, farming parts of Scotland.

Tbh - most of this is feels uber-hypothetical right now. It feels like the rules of political gravity change with every election up here, so until we have some consistent polling, I'm just enjoying the chance to speculate about what's next.

Completely agree, it’s not like there’s much doubt about which party would win Argyll and Bute (or pretty much all of the Tory held/realistic target seats) if it were in England or even Wales, and the Tories would have won it in 2017 without the Lib Dems residual vote (there aren’t many Scottish seats where the Tory vote went UP in 2019). The difficulty for the Conservatives is that 2017 looks like it might be their high point, and as we saw in 2019 there’s no guarantee that a squeeze on the Labour vote will necessarily go to them rather than the SNP.

The Scottish Labour Party is a shadow of its former self, but their vote distribution is good enough that they could win a dozen or more seats on current polling (they would very likely win more than the SNP if they drew level), and once they reestablish themselves as Scotlands 2nd party they will win back a bit more of the soft unionist/anti-SNP vote, particularly in specific constituencies (an overlooked factor of the past few election is soft Labour voters viewing Labour as now irrelevant in their constituency and switching their vote accordingly).

And yeah, this is all speculation by us, there’s a not-insignificant chance the SNP vote crashes enough and the Tory vote modestly recovers to the point that the latter make some freak gains on mid 30s vote shares (it’s not like the rural SNP vote is all a bunch of closet Labour supporters, and Yousaf is an awful match for these sorts of voters).

I'm just also going to add here that voting behaver among Unionist party types have had 10 years to normalize to tactical voting at its now showing on all levels. Not every voter does of course. Labour rebounding will absolutely squeeze the Tories in the central belt and with SNP swings they'll make gains. This is where the most seats are so yeah, its why the Tories have lost votes overall in Scottish polling.

A more peculiar situation may play out in the areas that are clearly now Tory though: the Northeast, Borders, and a few other scattered areas. SNP -> Lab voters won't be voting tactically, but if Labour's base in these areas is still going Tory to defeat the SNP then the swinging voters might push the SNP total below the essentially static Tory vote.

[Oryxslayer]

The impression that I get is after 10+ years of adventuring with fixed wedge issues and and clear policy proposals, Davey or those behind him are recognizing that is not beneficial. Instead, the amorphous party that stands for 'the opposite of whatever policies proposed by the regions incumbents' seems to be the operating order. We will get a data point on the state of the Lib-Dems in a few weeks, but that tactic appears to be working in a time-for-change environment.

[Oryxslayer]

Websites are running with the SNP rumor right now that Sturgeon herself might be taken in next...

[Oryxslayer]

On the basis of current polling they look set to lose a fair chunk of their 2019 vote (because falling from 12% to 8 or 9% is a big drop, even if it doesn’t look it due to their low starting point). I don’t think that this will harm them too much when it comes to trying to make gains in Tory seats as I expect their vote to be far more concentrated than it was last time round. In 2019 their vote share went up almost everywhere, even in pro-Leave seats, due to their sucking in ardent remain supporters and Labour protest votes, and many of these votes will probably return to Labour come 2024, other than in areas where they are definitively the main challenger (although that doesn’t make those seats an automatic Liberal-Democrat flip - in 1997 there were a number of Tory seats that they failed to win even though they were, on paper, the main challenger on the basis of the ‘92 results, due to how much the Labour vote increased).

In terms of national strategy, yeah the Lib-Dems don't seem to have one right now besides taking advantage of voter anger. But from their current position - do they really need one? If 2024 proves to be the time-for-change election we expect, 15-25 currently conservative seats should just fall into Lib-Dem hands by nature of their past results. That's probably fine if you are starting from such a low point in Westminster.

However, there are rumblings that tactical voting may be rising presently because voters specifically disapprove of the Tory party (not Sunak right now) and a solid chunk of the voters Labour has gained in polls come from politically engaged demographics. This isn't something that would be caught by national trackers, nor is it that controllable by the Lib-Dem apparatus. But we will know if it exists in two weeks - there are plenty of councils where Labour have nothing and its the Lib-Dems (or in one case the Greens) who are threatening the Tories for control.

[Oryxslayer]

However, there are rumblings that tactical voting may be rising presently because voters specifically disapprove of the Tory party (not Sunak right now) and a solid chunk of the voters Labour has gained in polls come from politically engaged demographics. This isn't something that would be caught by national trackers, nor is it that controllable by the Lib-Dem apparatus. But we will know if it exists in two weeks - there are plenty of councils where Labour have nothing and its the Lib-Dems (or in one case the Greens) who are threatening the Tories for control.

Partly agree. The tactical voting situation should happen nationally to some degree, but local elections can be a bad guide to it. There are plenty of areas where Labour have little organisation and the Lib Dems are the main non-Tory party for council elections, but nonetheless Labour are challenging if not clearly 2nd place at the general election. Some of this is because the Lib Dems are good at local elections, but it’s also down to the ‘national tactical vote’ where a lot of voters don’t really know much about their local situation and just default to the ‘obvious’ non-Conservative option nationally, the Labour Party. There’s also a lot of semi-detached voters who only show up at general elections, and these people are very much not Lib Dem inclined. So there will be places where the Lib Dem local strength is a precursor to them gaining the constituency next election, and others where it is yet another false dawn.

Oh of course, I'm talking about the inclination in general, not the feasibility of transfers from Lib-Dem local voters to Lib-Dem national voters. The Lib-Dems being the natural opposition to the big parties in their strongholds might give them a large councilor intake on May 4th, but their voters then go back to the big two come a GE. (Though you can find a few places where the Lib-Dems are clearly looking to the future, such as in Mid Devon where they are hoping to convent the voters who swung for the by-election into a reliable base)

[Oryxslayer]

Yes it appears there was a valiant rear-guard effort last night to use the NVS figures to suggest Labour isn't going to win a majority (something that was taken as a granted by the same people really until the summer of '22!) and now it will be pretend the results haven't happened.

The best part of taking the NVS as an absolute truth is that the Tories are still going to get pushed well below 200 seats. Only difference is that and the models you can find easily enough online is that the Lib-Dems would have a massive seat count compared to now or any time in recent history.

Honestly, there is some truth in expecting the result to land in between the polling and the NVS, if nothing dramatically changes in outlook. The Conservatives are going to activate what voters they can  who are presently ambivalent, and pull back those who are presently responding Reform. That will net them enough voters to hold the seats online models suggest might go Labour right now, but you would never expect them to in a GE. But tactical voting and Lib-Dem focused targeting means they'll probably proceed to lose 20-30 seats to the Lib-Dems that weighted swing modeling can't pick up.

And obviously the worst case for Conservatives is the South and Southwest are just as Orange as they were a day ago, but the national vote is still just as red as polling suggests.

[Oryxslayer]

She deserves a lot more credit than she gets politically; she is a very effective politician and I think the Greens would have done better if she had stayed leader in 2015 but then it would have been hard to do three jobs well.

The size of her majority, especially in 2017, is a sign of her own strong brand- you would imagine a strong Green candidate who runs with every leaflet having an endorsement from CL would do well and would carry a large part of that vote over; but equally it’s hard to tell especially with Labour having a relatively strong performance in Brighton lately.

There is this interesting opportunity for the Greens to realign  now that their sole MP is retiring. As mentioned,  Brighton may not be so easy of a hold, between the personal vote vanishing, the Greens presently poor local reputation,  and Labour’s large national vote share. The local elections though suggest that the Greens have plenty more potential outside their traditional city center targets. Obviously there are all the caveats, but Nature NIMBYISM might give the Greens more targets in a Labour year - especially if they form another pact with the Lib-Dems - rather than running as a party to the left of Labour. And starting from a blank slate makes that change theoretically simpler.

[Oryxslayer]

I see Starmer unveiled BBBB today

(The fourth B is for British)

[Oryxslayer]

The Welsh constituencies are positive proof of the need to Bring Back the Welsh Sunday, even if only for people serving on boundary commissions.

As someone who attempted to draw a better Welsh map...losing 8 seats doesn't exactly make the remapping easy and in many cases sensible.  It's not the worst place on the map though, Cumbria loses two seats from a very tight geographic area, forcing some questionable decisions.


Overall though the English portion of the map seems more sensible,  at least under the present patterns of development, than last review.  Especially IMO much of southeast England and Hertfordshire.