General British politics discussion thread

Indeed the only way such a scenario happens is if FPtP is killed and then Labour will likely split too.

Think that was John Reid. The same one who allegedly said "Oh f***, not health" when appointed as minister.

UK needs a lot more of this sort of fact-checking and calling out of blatant lying as part of interviews.

Michelle Donelan got her arse handed to her by Victoria Derbyshire

I think she's pretty good, think Emily Maitlis is streets ahead but is focused on her News Agents podcast right now, which I get why her and Sopel do it, but I think they come across more as political commentators than journalists when it's their own show they are on.

Think Beth Rigby is quite good as well.

It's funny how the Tories, have been trying to build 'Singapore on Thames' since the brexit referendum. But in order to own a car in Singapore, you need to buy an ownership license that currently costs over a hundred thousand dollars

What's particularly galling is that Labour will get in at the next election and immediately, like 10 nanoseconds later, the Tories, from the opposition benches will start screaming about the need to level up, to deal with climate change etc etc etc and the UK media will collectively forget who was in power 2010 to 2024 and will start effectively running an election campaign for the Tories after about 6 months.

And Labour are no saints, they'll spend 80% of their time blaming the Tories for the state of things (rightly) but it will be easy for them to be painted as the dog that caught the postmans van and didn't know what to do with it then.

Turnout at bye-elections is often low. This can complicate the interpretation. Sometimes its helpful to look at the raw figures. In this case, in round figures:

Labour fell from 18,500 (at last GE) votes to 17,800.

SNP fell from 23,800 votes to 8,400 votes.

Tories fell from 8,000 votes to 1,200 votes.

Labour will be delighted with this result, obviously. This is a marginal seat, which has switched parties between Lab and SNP at every election since 2005. This time round, it will have been seen as a must-win for Labour, but they have done more than win it; they have won it with a majority of 9,000.

Both the SNP and the Tory votes have collapsed. I think this reflects the fact that both parties are thoroughly demoralised, though for different reasons, and their supporters are despairing or alienated.

Honestly, I don't think the coincidence of polling with the Tory conference will have helped. The overwhelming impressions created by the conference are (1) chaos and incompetence; a flip-flopping government; (2) fruitcakery everywhere; and (3) a party more interested in fomenting and fighting culture wars than in delivering government. It has long been recognised that the median political position of Tory MPs is well to the right of the median political position of Tory voters (the same is not true for Labour MPs and Labour voters, interestingly). But I think we may now be reaching the point where moderate right-of-centre voters are concluding that the current Tory party is simply not in the same political space as them, and they respond (at least in this bye-election) by staying at home.

8000 not 800 for the tories I am assuming?

Interestingly Scot Ind is holding up and ahead by 4 points,9Blair Institute) So the SNP brand may becoming disentangled from Ind, that's a good thing.