To think the labour party faces a serious battle for survival.

[sunshield]

The Labour party is in a unwinnable battle, Scotland has gone forever, for any 'English/Welsh' party of any description. There are only a few Labour seats south of Warrington (Merseyside is of course out of sync with most of England). The Labour Party are almost extinct in the South West/East. It could not pick up seats in Derby/Nuneaton which are areas of Skilled/Semi Skilled Workers . s controlled by Liberal Oxbridge Educated academics , who believe they know better and expect the "plebs" to do as they are told and vote for them , without allowing them to ask questions (It is not for them to ask Questions of their betters!".

The Labour Party refused to listen to people like Frank field , opting to go down the left wing path to destruction, coming up with 'targeting' 50-100 thousand Nom Doms" for dogmatic and sound bite reasons, not for any sound financial reason. The same can be said of the Mansion Tax idea )what the hell is Stamp duty , if it is not MANSION TAX. If that idea had been carried out , suddenly you would have found a drop in house price values, or a slow down of purchasing of expensive housing, meaning a drop in revenue from stamp duty as well as "Tourists" non doms putting their houses up for sale and making plans for relocation, causing restaurants , hotels serious issues meaning job losses. The biggest issue though would of course of been all the people employed by the rich foreigners to look after them in the UK Nannies/Gardeners Cooks /Drivers. Rich People who place no demands on the state they use private schools Private Health Care their own Security. Why have policies designed to drive "tourists" out of your Country. The answer to that of course is that this policy plays on the "Envy" of people, not on benefit to the country and that is crutch of the problem for the Labour Party, instigating policy ideas based on crass assumptions about their "voters" ideas or what they have read in their studies at Oxbridge.

They have less understanding about normal people and their lives, views aspirations than the "BULLINGDON" lot. This is because they at least understand who to market products or "seduction" because their own Businesses that need to earn money.

The Labour Party is doomed unless it can realise , nobody outside specific inner city areas or union leaders are interested in tired old sound bites about rich people.

skiptonlass said what I meant but far better.

Labour definitely wouldn't win with me having to do a debate.

I wish I knew Tanith.

Meh, politics is cyclical, I can remember pundits declaring that the Tories were a spent force after Blair's first landslide victory, Labour will come back. I agree with you on Frank Field OP, he's one of my favourite politicians and I think the country would genuinely be a much better place if he was PM.

skiptonlass, you should go into politics.

Agreed skiptonlass.

If you look at the Election Map of 2015 on the Telegraph Website you will see the Labour party have 6 distinct areas where all but about 10 are located. South Wales/Midlands /Yorkshire/London and Merseyside noting that even the Labour Party strong area in the North West disappears 15 miles away from Merseyside or South of Central Manchester.

NB Classing Stoke as Midlands.

No, you misunderstand Best - what I mean is, why do you think the UKIP voters are ex-Labour? The evidence points to them being disgruntled right-wingers.

why do you think the UKIP voters are ex-Labour

Because in some seats UKIP gained votes at Labour's expense - reducing their majority massively.

I would suggest that a lot of traditional Labour voters are actually conservative in outlook. They wouldn't dream of voting for the Conservative Party (not their party) but will happily align with UKIP.

You have also got a serious problem , when you are calling the 16 million Voters who either Voted Conservative 12 million and UKIP 4 million . Ukip voters are either Racist or Stupid and Conservative voters are selfish greedy and take pleasure in peoples downfalls!.

If the Labour party and followers believe this nonsense, that is constantly sprouted on here , than labour will be in opposition for ever. The Labour Party have first got to stop thinking that the only reasons people don't vote for them is because they are either Racist Stupid or Selfish!.

That is the very first step they need to take to recover. Don't "Diss people who don't agree with you" engage and accept their point of view and try and formulate policies that work for them.

Rich people are often heavy consumers of state resources as pointed out above, and indeed, if their riches came from business rather than just being inherited, they profit from the healthcare and education systems that enable the country to furnish their companies a skilled and healthy workforce.

Not to mention that many rich people are in receipt of considerable state benefits, directly in the form of housing benefit, indirectly in the case of tax credits that allow them to pay low wages.

The benefit of health and education belongs to the individual recipients, not their employers. If some individuals would have been less attractive employees but for past government contribution to their health and intellectual capital, businesses could simply employ someone else instead. There is no shortage of healthy people to employ in any country in the world, and it's inconceivable that there'd be a shortage of educated ones in a country as rich as the UK, even if there were no free state education.

Rich people do not receive housing benefit. Specifically, if they are landlords, it's irrelevant whether their tenants use housing benefit to pay their rent. If tenants get housing benefit, that's a subsidy to the tenant. You can't count the same money as a subsidy twice by claiming it's a subsidy to the landlord as well.

If the rich collectively are the business owners, and are getting cheaper workers as a result of tax credits, they're only getting their own money back. Where do you think the money to pay tax credits comes from?

Nice try, Grovel and Iknow, but I don't believe it

I'm sure it would suit the Conservatives if everyone believed that voters deserted a left wing party to vote for a far right one, but the evidence is otherwise.

UKIP did well everywhere, not just in Labour areas. They are now the second largest party in my strongly Conservative constituency.

Prior to the Election, it was Conservatives - MPs and supporters - who were disillusioned with their Party and defected to UKIP. There's no reason to suppose their voters were any different.

What happened in the Election was the complete collapse of the LibDem vote. It's far more likely that they replace the missing Conservative voters that had changed their allegiance to UKIP.

Labour needs to ask why the LibDem voters went to the Conservatives, not waste time chasing a far right vote that will never choose to support Labour.

See here on the two tribes of UKIP yougov

I think in the north east and South Wales, there was a large UKIP vote in traditional Labour strongholds. They came second in a lot of places. I do think fears around immigration had much to do with this. Typically in many of these places there are very fepw immigrants. In more multicultural places eg London, Labour continued to do well and UKIP not so well.

I can't work out ukip supporters at all.

I was telling outside the polling station and those that voted ukip were from such a broad spectrum.

Labour was kidding themself if they even thought they win with millband in charge! Everyone i spoke to hated him... No idea who else could take over now.

So in my constituency, Tory gain from Labour with UKIP 3rd.Tory increased their vote by 1000, labour only lost 100 votes. Where did the 4500 UKIP votes come from. Don't tell me they were former Lib Dems?

My Constituency was very similar to best and thats what I was wondering. Infact the numbers are so similar, it could be the same one.

In Wales NRomanoff?

lucy what is it about Cameron that convinces you he understands your way of life? To me he seems just as metropolitan as Miliband does. What am I not seeing?

Ukip got similar figures here, Dixie. UKIP and Toryies took votes from Labour/lib dem.

Best No not wales. Just double checked, its very similar but numbers are slightly off.

Labour lost to Conservative but wew only down by 11 votes on 2010.

Lib dem are down 6760 votes

Conservatives also did very well in the local council elections too, with over 500 plus seats.

Peter Mandelson was on Andrew Marr this morning, he said Labour are now pretty much back to where they were in the 1980s . It was interesting viewing.

I was thinking about where all these UKIP votes come from and what I imagine happened is that Labour and Tory gained votes from former Lib Dems, but at the same time both parties lost votes to UKIP.

My mind rebels at the thought of Lib Dem voters going UKIP.