Labour can't win

[verdantverdure]

Unless absolutely SHEDLOADS of people who voted Conservative in 2019 vote Labour this time.

That's right, isn't it?

No one I know is voting labour either!

More handouts, high levels of unemployment, tax hikes, immigration will be worse, borrowing, and then there’s inheritance tax!

18 years now spending their Child trust fund free
money from the last labour government on vapes and beer!

Yes, that's right. I don't think it's just that they are right wing. I think it's their fantastic TikTok campaign and the fact that they promise something different, some change. That appeals to many. Obviously, there is the racist contingent too.

Erm no, I remember no such thing?

A Masters in Politics. Sure.

But they didn’t, did they?

Short answer, no.

Lets say there's a constituency that had the following results in the 2019 election:

Conservative 43% of the vote.
Labour 32%
Lib Dems 11%
Other parties 14%

Conservatives win the seat.

This time, reform take 20% of the conservative vote, and we get

Labour 32%
Conservatives 22%
Reform 20%
Lib Dems 11%
Other parties 14%

Labour vote share hasn't changed, but they've one the seat and their candidate becomes the MP. Repeat that in a load of other constituencies and boom, you have a labour government with a huge majority.

Welcome to "First Past the Post". It's shit. (And I say that as someone who's going to be deeply happy with a labour government.

Labour don't have to increase their vote massively (although it looks like they will come election day). They just need Conservative voters to vote lib dem, or Reform, or even just stay home.

Labour will win, but number of votes will have very little to do with it really. What really matters is how much the Conservative vote splits. And this election, no fucker wants to vote Tory.

What are you talking about? London is very Labour and has been for ages.

I don't remember that either, although perhaps we would have been better off with Corbyn. At least we would not have had to suffer Boris, Liz and Rishi.

It doesn't work like that, OP, because we elect MPs by area, not a PM by overall majority in the country. In my area the Tories consistently have a 25000 majority and it would take a massive swing to give Labour (or more likely the Greens or Reform, here) any chance of taking the seat. In other areas it would only take 5000 to swing. But whether it's 25000 or 5000 voting Labour, only one MP will be returned in each constituency. What matters is how it looks from constituency to constituency, not how it looks in terms of Mumsnet or overall national viewpoint. That's why voters on all sides should really be paying attention when constituency boundaries change.

It's also about who the parties are. Labour is in one of its more centrist incarnations and the Tories have also drifted righ to an extent that might put some Tory voters who are really social democrats right off. This time round, Labour is probably centrist and businessy enough to attract the vote of swing voters and leftish Tories who wouldn't have touched Jeremy Corbyn with a bargepole.

Finally, I reckon the Tories are just stale. There's nothing they can say. They've presided over a string of disasters - Brexit, the pandemic, Trussonomics, various corruption-type scandals - and the general consensus is that they have not dealt with any of them well. They've been in power too long to credibly blame Labour for their errors or to suggest that they will do anything differently. People want something different and will hold their noses to get it. Sunak didn't have a chance. No PM since Boris has had a chance and I think even Boris would struggle to win the electorate round at this point.

So it's quite a complicated picture but I think there's a decent chance that the polls are right.

I have not read one single post on MN from a Labour voter that supports this view.

We all know that it is going to be a very long, hard struggle.

I do think there'll be an increasing right wing following with younger generation of white kids.

There wasn't a GE in 2020...

The polls closest to the 2019 GE were accurate and predicted a Conservative win. A 2 minute Google told me that - you need to do your homework.

Your memory is faulty. The polls predicted a Tory win. And the election was in 2019 not 2020.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election

Yes sweetie I do, Middle Eastern relations and now work in corporate law. May be unimaginable in your world, the norm in mine

Yes, I've given several reasons for that. Some of it is anti immigration but I don't think it is the only reason.

And there's tactical voting, obviously, so you can't assume that only voters who are saying they want, say, the Greens or Lib Dems in will vote that way. In my area a vote for Labour is a vote thrown away, and I say that as a member of the party. That's the hard truth.

I find myself wondering how many soft/left Tories might vote Labour just to try to nix Reform...

I'm a little younger but - if I ever vote Tory - someone knows to invoke the POA

A masters in politics, but you don't even have a grasp of the polling in the run up to GE 2019? And that the election was actually in that year, not 2020?

If everyone voted the same way every election, there wouldn't be any point to having them.

Alot of conservatives just wont vote

There is no such thing as a “supermajority” in the UK.

It’s not unimaginable in my world, it’s very normal. But nobody in my world with a Masters in Politics would post what you do. They’d be embarrassed.

That's just a fantasy. I know people who work in these fields (immediate relatives) and they have an excellent standard of written English and general knowledge. You can keep going with your fantasy is you like but it is not persuasive.

Thank you! I'm baffled by this term. No idea what that means in the UK context unless it's a fancy way of saying "really big landslide".

Okay point taken, I’m not really taking a dig at Londoners specifically, just saying that even those with massive six figure salaries (who in my head mostly live in London) are on here complaining that they’re feeling less well off.