The Tories could come third...

[EdwinH]

One recent poll has the Tories and LibDems neck and neck in seats. Other recent polls have the LibDems 1-5 seats behind.

This election is completely different to anything that has come before. So many factors have combined to hurt the Tories:

A) Widespread fury at 14 years of misrule.

B) Endless scandals, from PPE to Brexit mismanagement to Partygate.

C) Reform UK offering a viable protest vote for RW voters who would never consider voting LibDem, Greens or Labour.

D) Resurgent LibDems.

E) Dire Tory election campaign, maybe the worst in their history. D-Day, Sky TV, inside bets on the election date - you name it, they've blown it. Gaffe after gaffe after gaffe.

That leaves them uniquely vulnerable in a way they've never been before - and never will be again.

If the LibDems pull it off, with the help of widespread tactical voting, they'd get to be the Opposition, and face Labour at PMQs. The Tories would be stuck on the back benches.

It's hard to overstate how transformative that would be compared to the political experience of the last decade.

Yes but more likely the Lib (pointless) democrats will.

Possible but let’s face if hugely unlikely.

That's good but I'd hope Reform were fourth, not second.

Vote count doesn't matter. Only seats won.

Reform can't win many seats. They have widespread but pretty uniform support. So they will come second or third in many places, but they won't come top.

And because it's first-past-the-post, that doesn't win them anything.

The LibDems on the other hand are extremely effective at concentrating their vote in specific areas. So they can win lots of votes even with a smaller national vote share.

We can but hope.

The Tories can't hold anybody else to account because they're the ones who have screwed everything up.

All Keir Starmer would have to say at PMQs every week is

"Pipe down. I'm fixing YOUR mess."

Oh I'd love to see that!

Me too.

>gets popcorn<

We've had a Lib Dem MP for many years, he is the best MP I've known in my almost 50 years.
The most caring person who works tirelessly for his constituency and gets shit done to implement real, tangible, positive change.
So I wouldn't exactly label them as pointless. People overlook them, to their own detriment imo.

My Labour MP is like this.

I’m overlooking them because I’m voting Labour.

I agree, we had a super, approachable and effective lib dem MP for many years until they got voted out and replaced by a useless sack if s**te Tory MP who seemingly did nothing for the local community AT ALL. I've voted lib dem this time (the only viable option) and am looking forward to the Tory MP being booted out unceremoniously on their backside!

We're literally having a party.

Beginning to regret it now actually, I'd rather take my bra off and not be flapping around for guests but it could be an historic night.