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

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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.

Unfortunately the present lot of young pretenders in Labour have the same outlook as Miliband and can't see why their usually faithful supporters have deserted them.
I suggest they have a chat with Frank Field and Alan Johnson before they choose their next leader. Unfortunately for Ed Miliband most of us stopped reading "Living Marxist" when we left university

See I don't think the Lib Dems did go to UKIP. I think it's more complicated. I think former Lib Dems will have split their votes between Green,Labour and Conservatives and this hides the former Labour and Tory voters who have gone to UKIP.

Oh and UKIP up about 6000 votes.

Surely all the lib dem voters didn't go to UKIP.

I would have thought there has been moves all across the board. Lib dem to ukip seems a big leap.

Cross post with irretating there

The Swing from Con to UKIP was higher than the swing from Lab to UKIP. Definitely they drew votes from all over and had policies that attracted a wide spread. But on average, I would say that more Conservatives went to UKIP and then more Libdems went Conservative. So the Tories won more Libdem seats and therefore won the election.

Looking at the figures I seem to remember that Cons gained 27 Libdem seats and Labour only 12. Con to Lab was 10 and Lab to Con was 8.

I'm just doing that from memory so they might be out a little.

Peter Mandelson has his own agenda.

A lot of Lib Dem vote in 2010 was protest/an alternative to Lab / Con rather than for their policies. The UKIP vote is similar so yes some people will hav switched between the two.

to address the OP - I disagree - I have been a party member for 30 years - I have been there so many times I have no space for the T shirts

it needs a period of reflection and change - it suffered a defeat - it's not dead!

We assumed former Lib Dem voters went to Labour and some fed up disenfranchised Labour went to UKIP. I do think it would be odd to flip from Lib Dem to UKIP.

Peter Mandelson has his own agenda.

Very possibly, but somewhere on the list will be getting a Labour Govt. elected. However, what I suspect Labour will do is to go all ideological ("Bring back clause 4") move to the left and so lose any chance of winning in 2020.

You cannot form a government a sizeable number of English seats and England as a whole, it seems quite clear to me, does not like left wing parties.

Blair and Mandy were on to a winner with New Labour and if Labour wants to get back into power they need to acknowledge this.

without a sizeable number of English seats

Interesting that people can't see a LibDem flip to UKIP, but can believe a (further left) Labour one.

David Cameron certainly thought UKIP voters were ex-Conservatives when he begged them to return. It was Conservative MPs that were switching.

I think the Conservatives ignore it at their peril.

In my own constituency, the LibDem was suspended (bizarre circumstances, but that's another story). It's strongly Conservative - Labour had no chance at all - but the Labour vote didn't really change much. What did happen is that UKIP replaced the LibDems as the second most popular party.

I don't believe the LibDem voters switched to UKIP: I believe they went to the Conservative vote and the right wing Conservatives switched to UKIP.

I don't doubt they attracted voters from all parties, but I do think it's much more complicated than "Labour lost the Election; their voters must have changed to UKIP".

If 4000 Tory voters moved to UKIP, and then 6000 Libdem moved to Tory it would show a Tory gain of 2000 a UKIP gain of 4000 and Libdem loss of 6000 with out it being disgruntled Libdems who jumped to UKIP

Unless you know who voted labour last time and double check the names I'm not sure how anyone can say that it was labour, Tory or Libdems that jumped

If that makes any sense

Exactly, Rufus ??

Labour lost because they chose the wrong brother. It's sad to say that but ultimately, that is why. David was the more personable of the two, he has the charisma and ability to say the right thing in the right place at the right time. Blair number two. I genuinely believe if they'd opted for David they'd have won. I told DH as soon as they announced they'd chosen Ed that they were doomed and would undoubtedly lose the next GE, it was obvious even then. He seems like a genuinely lovely man, I don't doubt that but lovely doesn't tend to win elections, lovely doesn't tend to make a good leader.

After having time to ponder over the weekend I'm sort of glad Labour lost. I'm glad because it forces them to have a long, hard look at where they went wrong and what they need to do to make a kick arse come back. It also gives the Tories five years to kick us all more where it hurts and should hopefully teach those who forgot or weren't old enough to remember the 1980s what a conservative government is like and why we don't want that again...

I don't know who labour will choose, they need to choose somebody with the strength and charisma of Blair just preferably minus the corruption. I'm hoping for Chuka. With the right leader they will bounce back in 2020.

A map to ponder.

twitter.com/VaughanRoderick/status/596967966647971840/photo/1

Similar to what I was saying Up thread about the allocation of Labour seats all being in 6 distinct areas. Outside these areas there can be 100 miles between Labour seats.

I am a life-long Labour voter, but I voted Green last week.

I worked in Rural North Wales a couple of years ago. The people were mostly very friendly, kind and hospitable; so not wishing to offend them, but it was an abject and depressing place to be. Economically speaking, there was just nothing there and I mean nothing. Traditional industry has long gone - fair enough, but these are Labour areas; Labour since year dot and yet despite all the years of a Labour Govt. Nothing has been done, by them, to address the desperate condition, the poverty and decay of these places and these communities. Blairism after all just turned out to be a continuation of Thatcherism.

I'm not surprised that as soon as an alternative nationalistic, political party crops up, like the SNP in Scotland, people jump all over them. To that extent Labour have only themselves to blame IMO.

Also as a then Labour voter, I wanted at least an apology, over the appalling carnage Blair is responsible for in Iraq. Not to mention the untold billions in tax payers money it all is costing. Money that could have been spent on public services/ job creation here. I wanted a commitment by Labour to scrap pointless Trident missiles and the ludicrously high defence budget they were committed to. I got none of that. Nothing on scraping the austerity budgets (the same as the Tories), tuition fees etc etc either. A Labour Govt would have given us more of the same.

Still, 5 years is an eternity in politics. Perhaps they can wangle their way in next general election? Can't wait!

Without saying the 'obvious' having looked on Electoral Calculus, Labour have got a huge battle ahead of them. The reason being on seats such as Nuneaton Morecombe Warwickshire North Rugby . The Conservative majorities are quite high at least 12%. These are seats that are absolutely essential to win for any 'comeback'. The fore-mentioned Warrington South seat now as a useful 2750 Majority. This is quite extraordinary based on the pre-election constituency betting stated by Red Tooth.

It is also evident that Labour With the exception of London and inner Birmingham , is very weak south of the line of the River Mersey.

I'm in Yorkshire and although there are some very poor working class areas what Labour failed to understand that most of the people who live there are hard working and aspirational. My peers who have been successful often have parents from very working class backgrounds who used to be staunch Labour supporters.
They don't want hand outs and don't want anyone else to have them either. They would rather know that jobs are going to be created for their children than that their children will have benefits to rely on. People round here generally do feel we should have a welfare state to support those in need but that there should be tighter checks and balances on that and people need to do more to help themselves.
Yorkshire is booming,last year we created more jobs than France and The Conservatives recognised this and D.C actually spent a bit of time up here during the campaign, while we have been largely ignored in the past.
I am not from a wealthy background and neither is DH but we have both started businesses that are successful and it felt like Labour considered us in the same way that they would Starbucks or some Indian sweatshop, as the enemy.
Until Labour can appeal to people who want to help themselves and be rewarded for that rather than just those who need extra help then people with aspirations won't support them. The Conservatives won some traditional Labour seats here both at a National and Local level and the Libs lost a lot of Local seats too.
Nothing wrong with people who NEED that help, I'm happy and proud that I live somewhere that helps people who need it but Labour isn't perceived as a party that's helps " those who help themselves"

Labour lost because they chose the wrong brother. It's sad to say that but ultimately, that is why. David was the more personable of the two, he has the charisma and ability to say the right thing in the right place at the right time. Blair number two. I genuinely believe if they'd opted for David they'd have won. I told DH as soon as they announced they'd chosen Ed that they were doomed and would undoubtedly lose the next GE, it was obvious even then

Totally agree. As soon as they announced Ed was going to be leader I knew they'd lose the next election.

Grammar school gets a respectable mention in the education of many politicians

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100018840/revealed-the-labour-mps-who-attended-grammar-schools/

odd that Labour are proposing to abolish those that remain!

Well they can propose because it won't make much difference !.

This should also be a signal to finally give the go ahead to the Sevenoaks satellite grammar school .

What I don't get is why the Op is talking about Labour's survival when they actually have 232 seats.

Not good, and of course they need to improve if they're going to win elections, but survival?! Surely that's a discussion the LibDems should be having, given that they now have just 8 seats?