The collaspe of the Liberal Democracts has in terms of who holds the seats taken us back to the 1970s.

[sunshield]

What is evident with the collapse of the Liberal Democrats is that the allocation of seats and who has them has come down to affluent and non affluent areas.

This is making it simple to guess what colour the seat is, by looking at 'house prices'. This previously was not as simple as this as a number of Lib Dem seats were relatively affluent places such as Kingston, Twickenham and Cheadle in Greater Manchester where centre left voters gave their vote to the Lib Dems. The most extraordinary thing that has happened is that many of these 'marginal' seats have know become safe Conservative seats the most unbelievable one being Harrogate and Knaresbourgh that up until 2010 was a very safe Lib Dem seat and only a 1000 vote majority Conservative win in 2010 has know a 'huge ' 16,371 30.7% Conservative majority. This is another huge obstacle facing the Labour party in recovery the size of majorities the Conservatives have gained in seats.

[heylilbunny]

Labour has seriously misjudged and not just areas outside London. The Lib Dems collapse in London also brought the Tories back to most (if not all) those seats lost by LDs. By abandoning the white working class and concerns of people who are WWC, especially men, Labour has alienated large swaths of it's support. While the Conservatives were able to offer their message in a more universal manner. I have not ever voted Conservative and don't intend to but the message of who and what you would get with them was a lot clearer than the Labour message.

Also the Labour "intelligentsia" is very off-putting to many people. They are a class apart who like to tell us all how to think and behave or shout us down, turn their backs or cut us off. I find them massively out of touch and patronizing. Not that the other parties are not too - but somehow Labour think they are different and unique when they are really not.

[Indiestarr]

It's very true. Centre left voters defected not to Labour, as they might have been expected to, but to the Tories, UKIP and the SNP. Labour had the opportunity to soak up these disaffected voters let down by broken promises and the reality that liberalism is at heart pretty empty. But they blew it. Almost all the Tory gains were former Lib Dem seats. I suspect that many of these voters were either reluctant, not making up their mind to vote Tory until the last minute in the absence of a preferable alternative, or that they didn't vote at all, allowing the Tories to win by default.