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UK Politics: Post-May Edition


mormont

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40 minutes ago, Traveller between Worlds said:

He won

He did very well, but Labour have fewer seats and fewer votes. What they had 'thrown at' them doesn't change that. They didn't win. It can be a moral victory, if you like, but it wasn't an actual victory.

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

There was still a fair bit of time left in the night at that point. The projections were firming but the possibility of the Tories having 10 less seats and SNP/Labour 10 more was still up in the air. It is a little...presumptuous rather than speculative though.

That's what I thought too, but there seem to be similar comments from Labour figures even early this morning, when the outline of the result was clear. It's a peculiar tack to take.

45 minutes ago, Denvek said:

Nuttall's resigning. Does this mean Farage is coming back like a bad smell?

Probably. Am I right in thinking that Nuttall was the only UKIP candidate to retain his deposit?

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3 minutes ago, mormont said:

He did very well, but Labour have fewer seats and fewer votes. What they had 'thrown at' them doesn't change that. They didn't win. It can be a moral victory, if you like, but it wasn't an actual victory.

Theresa May's own definition of winning and losing looks rather funny now:

 

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I think Ukip will become a hobby for Farage - something he potters around with in his shed on rainy weekends.

There was an amusing article in a spoof news site describing May as Margaret Thatcher's last horcrux.

good to see Salmond getting put to the sword.  The tory surge in Scotlan seems to be a reaction against indyref2 - if labour's chances hadnt been so rubbished in the media, i wonder if scotland would have voted more for them to stave off another referendum.

i also wonder what would have happens if Miliband had clung on in 2015?

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14 minutes ago, mormont said:

Probably. Am I right in thinking that Nuttall was the only UKIP candidate to retain his deposit?

Answering my own question, no. UKIP put up 377 candidates and of those, with one result left to declare, 14 have managed to retain their deposit.

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22 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Grand Coalitions are known as National Governments. The last time they tried that outside of War, it didn't go well for Labour:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1931

I can see why no side is willing to risk that again.

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So Conservatives+DUP is 328, which will be enough under any circumstances; though who knows how stable. I wonder though, if that was something like 322 instead, would there have been any chance of Sinn Fein finally taking their seats; just to stick it to DUP and generally cause trouble by rejecting every possible government.

I understand the reasons they don't get seated, but that'd be a hall of a thing.

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2 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Some fun trivia:

  • Theresa May's Conservatives got the same percentage of the vote (42.4%) as Thatcher did in 1983, and more votes than Tony Blair did in 1997. It didn't do her any good (and speaks volumes about 1983 being a case of vote-splitting).
  • Jeremy Corbyn's Labour is currently sitting behind only Tony Blair in 1997 and Harold Wilson in 1966 for most Labour votes in an election since 1951 (and hence has managed the most votes for a losing leader since 1951).

Obviously with any election, you campaign generally and pay special attention to constituencies that are in danger. But beyond that, is there anything more you can do in the circumstances? Can you say "due to the nature of this election and the return to two party politics, we should do x, y and z"? Or is there no measure by which May can be said to have done any worse than Thatcher in 83, based on raw campaigning? No measure by which Corbyn can be said to have done any worse than Blair in 01 or 05?

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So, it looks to me like a couple of things explain this epic fuckfest.

1. Young voters turning out for Corbyn. 18-24s, and many among us slightly older millennials were attracted to Corbyn's 'idealism,' 'authenticity' and spending promises, and maybe were also galvanized to vote by shock at Brexit. We all knew something like this could happen, but predictions of high youth turnout had been wrong before.

2. Snowball effect. As Corbyn surged people who wrote him off for being useless started to see him a new light. I suspect this explains the Scottish result in particular but it happened across the country. In other words, some of his unpopularity was founded on looking like a loser, and when he didn't any longe he picked up more votes.

3. UKIP voters. The % of UKIP voters who would ditch the party for the Tories was overestimated, and a substantial number actually went back to Labour. For those who understand the motives of UKIP voters, and the attitudes of Corbyn, this looks very bizarre, but tribal affinity to Labour is still strong and these voters heard what they wanted to hear when Corbyn spoke about immigration and Brexit.

I suspect we'll find more labour voters made up their minds late, while the Tory vote was locked in early.

The Tories should be thanking Ruth Davidson MSP on bended knees too, because if we hadn't defeated the SNP in some of their traditional heartlands we could really be looking at the coalition of chaos right now. England actually voted for a Lab-SNP pact, or the strong possibility of one anyway. Very odd indeed.

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2 hours ago, mormont said:

That's what I thought too, but there seem to be similar comments from Labour figures even early this morning, when the outline of the result was clear. It's a peculiar tack to take.

I mean, if you look at it outside the lens of the electoral win I think you can reasonably argue they did indeed win. That this outcome is better for Labour long term than a minority government in coalition with SNP. But electorally they did not win and those comments only make sense in the context of an electoral win.

The Tories seem pretty thoroughly fucked though, May's Prime Ministership in tatters even if she doesn't taste Boris's steel immediately, Brexit negotiations to conduct immediately and attempting to govern with a somewhat challenging minority government position. My observations of conservative leaders is that they don't tend to have the negotiating skills to hold that sort of thing together for a productive legislative term the way Julia Gillard did here. Their attitude towards negotiation is too often arrogant and entitled.

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My read/prediction of the elections: Tories lead Labour by 6-7 points overall and will get real close to 325 on either side.

Well, compared to the US elections my predictions were much better here (I had predicted Hillary would get roughly as many EC votes as the Tories got MPs)

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1 hour ago, Fez said:

So Conservatives+DUP is 328, which will be enough under any circumstances; though who knows how stable. I wonder though, if that was something like 322 instead, would there have been any chance of Sinn Fein finally taking their seats; just to stick it to DUP and generally cause trouble by rejecting every possible government.

I understand the reasons they don't get seated, but that'd be a hall of a thing.

I was wondering that myself - Sinn Fein being in a position to bring down a Tory-DUP Government and install a PM who is broadly sympathetic to Irish republicanism would really test their "oath" issues.

That said, by-elections during this Parliament are going to be very interesting - it literally will only take four Tory by-election losses, either to Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or the SNP, for the potential Sinn Fein scenario to come into play .

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Just now, Tywin et al. said:

So how exactly will this result affect the Brexit negotiations, given it was a huge loss for May? 

The DUP want a softer Brexit because of border considerations. May is going to have to back peddle (but let's face it, I could see the EU just waiting until the Tories knife her).

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4 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

The DUP want a softer Brexit because of border considerations. May is going to have to back peddle (but let's face it, I could see the EU just waiting until the Tories knife her).

Any chance they revive an attempt to redo the Brexit vote? It was insane to have be a simply majority the first go around. 

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15 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Any chance they revive an attempt to redo the Brexit vote? It was insane to have be a simply majority the first go around. 

Unlikely, given that the DUP is not anti-Brexit. Their main priority is to ensure that Northern Ireland has the same Brexit deal as the rest of the UK.

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1 hour ago, Chaircat Meow said:

So, it looks to me like a couple of things explain this epic fuckfest.

1. Young voters turning out for Corbyn. 18-24s, and many among us slightly older millennials were attracted to Corbyn's 'idealism,' 'authenticity' and spending promises, and maybe were also galvanized to vote by shock at Brexit. We all knew something like this could happen, but predictions of high youth turnout had been wrong before.

2. Snowball effect. As Corbyn surged people who wrote him off for being useless started to see him a new light. I suspect this explains the Scottish result in particular but it happened across the country. In other words, some of his unpopularity was founded on looking like a loser, and when he didn't any longe he picked up more votes.

3. UKIP voters. The % of UKIP voters who would ditch the party for the Tories was overestimated, and a substantial number actually went back to Labour. For those who understand the motives of UKIP voters, and the attitudes of Corbyn, this looks very bizarre, but tribal affinity to Labour is still strong and these voters heard what they wanted to hear when Corbyn spoke about immigration and Brexit.

I suspect we'll find more labour voters made up their minds late, while the Tory vote was locked in early.

The Tories should be thanking Ruth Davidson MSP on bended knees too, because if we hadn't defeated the SNP in some of their traditional heartlands we could really be looking at the coalition of chaos right now. England actually voted for a Lab-SNP pact, or the strong possibility of one anyway. Very odd indeed.

We've been through this before, but the idea that 'substantial' numbers of UKIP voters either a, people who switched directly from Labour or b, were people who were willing to switch directly back, simply isn't substantiated by any data.

See this article, for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/03/regressive-alliance-stopping-tories-harder-ukip-brexit-conservatives

Only 6% of UKIP voters in April declared an intention to switch to Labour. I've previously linked another article giving a 5% figure, and other articles showing that former Labour voters were a minority of UKIP voters in 2015, and largely had first defected to the Conservatives before switching to UKIP.

The concept of the horny-handed flat-capped Labour voter who switched to UKIP because he was worried about immigrants competing for his job is a hard one to dislodge in people's minds, but it isn't borne out by the facts. I'm sure if you do the data, you'll find most of those 2015 UKIP votes went to Tories and were associated with Tory gains, while in constituencies won by Labour, UKIP voters split between staying home, voting UKIP or voting Tory.

In fact, that's exactly what the fifth graph here suggests:

https://www.ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-4ad7-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b

As for Scotland, that surge in the Tory vote is interesting. I'd put it down to three things: first, direct switching from SNP voters who favour Brexit. Second, lower turnout (turnout in Scotland was actually down, rather than up as in the rest of the UK). Third, voters switching to the Tories from Labour, masked by other voters defecting to Labour from the SNP. That last helps to explain why Labour gained seats without gaining vote share overall. This might have been anti-SNP tactical voting, which would also explain Lib Dem gains.

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Just now, mormont said:

We've been through this before, but the idea that 'substantial' numbers of UKIP voters either a, people who switched directly from Labour or b, were people who were willing to switch directly back, simply isn't substantiated by any data.

See this article, for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/03/regressive-alliance-stopping-tories-harder-ukip-brexit-conservatives

Only 6% of UKIP voters in April declared an intention to switch to Labour. I've previously linked another article giving a 5% figure, and other articles showing that former Labour voters were a minority of UKIP voters in 2015, and largely had first defected to the Conservatives before switching to UKIP.

The concept of the horny-handed flat-capped Labour voter who switched to UKIP because he was worried about immigrants competing for his job is a hard one to dislodge in people's minds, but it isn't borne out by the facts. I'm sure if you do the data, you'll find most of those 2015 UKIP votes went to Tories and were associated with Tory gains, while in constituencies won by Labour, UKIP voters split between staying home, voting UKIP or voting Tory.

In fact, that's exactly what the fifth graph here suggests:

https://www.ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-4ad7-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b

As for Scotland, that surge in the Tory vote is interesting. I'd put it down to three things: first, direct switching from SNP voters who favour Brexit. Second, lower turnout (turnout in Scotland was actually down, rather than up as in the rest of the UK). Third, voters switching to the Tories from Labour, masked by other voters defecting to Labour from the SNP. That last helps to explain why Labour gained seats without gaining vote share overall. This might have been anti-SNP tactical voting, which would also explain Lib Dem gains.

I, and most Tories who thought we'd increase our majority agreed with this analysis. We didn't think UKIP voters would go back to Labour, often, as you say, having left many years before. But throughout the night we saw big increases in Labour's votes in seats where UKIP's vote collapsed. The Tories were not picking up enough of those lost UKIP votes, so some presumably did go to Corbyn. I don't doubt that we still gobbled up a majority of the UKIP vote, but it looks like rather more than 5-6% went to Labour.

Can't see the graph.

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3 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

But throughout the night we saw big increases in Labour's votes in seats where UKIP's vote collapsed.

UKIP's vote collapsed everywhere, so that's not really telling.

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14 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Unlikely, given that the DUP is not anti-Brexit. Their main priority is to ensure that Northern Ireland has the same Brexit deal as the rest of the UK.

Interesting. I thought all the small states in the UK opposed Brexit. 

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Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Interesting. I thought all the small states in the UK opposed Brexit. 

Scotland did. Wales didn't. Northern Ireland overall did, but the DUP as a party (and they are only one party in NI, albeit the largest) were and are pro-Brexit.

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