Another example is if John Major had held the election in May 1996 instead of a year later, I would assume (although can't be certain), that Labour's landslide would have been noticably smaller, maybe 390 or so seats instead of 419. The longer you wait, the more resentment builds.
The funny thing is that John Major went with the election in early 1997 because the Conservatives had actually seen an up tick in the polls that winter, which was validated by the local elections that year. All indications are the Tories hit rock bottom in 1995 locals and recovered a bit from there.
This is always a risky tactic. The Tories tried it in Canada in 1993. Brian Mulroney resigned in favor of Kim Campbell, the Conservatives surged to first in the polls, and they called a snap election. As it turned out this was a mistake. Campbell has been insufficiently vetted under pressure and was a disaster, the campaign was aimless, and the end result was the loss of 159 of the party's 161 seats.
Miliband has not been tested under scrutiny, and while a general election campaign is unlikely to be long enough for him to get his sea legs it may well be long enough for the shine to wear off.
There is also the Scottish factor of dropping a Scotsman from University of Edinburgh in favor of an Oxford man. It removes the one issue Labour might have had against Cameron, his aloofness and background. Miliband is just as much a toff as Cameron, and has done equally little with his life. He has never held a job outside a think tank or politics, and that is one(among many) reasons he has toxic relations with the Unions.
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quote]
Right now I support David Cameron, but I'd probably switch back to Labour if Miliband was made leader. I was strongly against Labour's decison to increase the police detention period to 42 days. That is just awful. Its like 24 hours in America. Britain came up with
habeus corpus in the first place! The only reason it was passed was so that Brown could look "tough" in front of the voters, yet he'd lose anyway. [/quote]
Miliband is a hardcore Blairite, and I can't imagine the 42-day detention bothers him much. He might drop it out of sheer opportunism, but he is definitely to Brown's right in the party, not his left, and I am not sure that is really Labour's problem right now. If anything, the job of a new leader should be to consolidate the party base, not focus on swing-voters.
During the 1980s when they were in Alliance with the Social Democratic Party which broke off of Labour on the Right, they actually were over 50% and in first place. The Alliance won 25% of the vote in 1983, only 2% behind Labour on 27%. The Alliance only won 24 seats though, while Labour got 209.
The Lib Dem's problem is the electoral system. There support is spread in such a manner that even if they came first in votes(Ie. 34%, 32%, 32%) they would still be in a distant third place. They need to get up over 40 before they become competitive whereas Labour can win government from the mid 30s.
