Next UK General Election thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I make no predictions here, but on a day-to-day level the parliamentary arithmetic isn't quite as catastrophic as is being implied as the SNP are not the most regular attendees and don't vote on English domestic issues. Governments have survived for a long time with worse positions (even if they weren't generally elected with them). Unless the government falls then an early election would only happen if the polls made it look enticing and what has just happened might not make that quite so tempting.

Like, rule nothing out but an unpopular government with a shaky hold on the Commons that lasts for quite a while is on balance the most likely outcome.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the flipside Walsall North does represent a particular type of Working Class/leave area that has been trending away from Labour for a long time now.

Ah, no, nowhere in Walsall is representative of anywhere else.* Seat would probably have been held with a different candidate; Winnick was an excellent parliamentarian but not exactly what voters these days are looking for in terms of a constituency MP...

Culture war nonsense does go down like catnip in parts of the seat though. Bloxwich used to elect fascist councillors - they ran as independents - on occasion before it was cool.

_{*Crossposting this from elsewhere...}

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[Filuwaúrdjan]

An important thing to bear in mind - and to anchor this discussion perhaps a little more - when discussing London is the not exactly small issue of housing...



In particular you should never forget that great ring of council estates in the inner city; one of the largest concentrations of public housing in Europe and something that immediately makes it very hard to draw hasty parallels with Canadian cities with their total lack of any serious tradition of municipal socialism. Battersea has been mentioned in this discussion and is a good example, as whatever the ups and downs of local swings there, Labour would not be competitive without the council estates in the north of the former borough. The increasingly low status of private renting - a return to what had historically been the norm after a few decades - is also now very important.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And that brings us to the main point really: British voting patterns are anchored firmly in the material. Class, money, status, property; exactly how they all interact and impact varies and many of them have becoming increasingly complex as we've moved to a service-dominated economy, but that's the core of it all. Sure there are other factors - in particular people tend to forget odd results have a curious tendency to correlate with notably strong and/or weak candidates! - but the overall picture is what it is.* This is really only something you see reliably in Canada in provincial elections in the West.

*And many of these other factors link in anyway; anyone pretending that there's no link between ethnicity and social status has got their head stuck very firmly in the sand...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm actually surprised at how much social housing there still is in Fulham (as compared to Putney excluding Roehampton). I'd always assumed it had completely and utterly gentrified - are they less solidly Tory than I would have assumed?

Labour won the three northern wards - Fulham Broadway, Fulham Reach and North End - in 2014 and fell just 53 votes short of picking up a seat in Sands End (the southern ward with the higher rate of social housing). These are o/c the four wards with the most social housing. Long way behind in Munster and Town, light years behind in Palace Riverside and Parsons Green & Walham. Khan didn't do as well there in the Mayoral election, but still won Fulham Reach and North End.

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Yes - a very distinctive pattern.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On Mortgaged v Owned Outright - how much of the latter is inherited?

Depends where in London; in the suburban areas - and areas developed as suburban to an extent still - a lot of the time they're houses on which the mortgage has been paid off, but as you get further in... "guess".