UK Local Elections 2021

[Silvanus]

2017 was an unexpectedly good peformance for three reasons. Firstly, the fact that Jeremy Corbyn had been hiding under a rock as leader as he was thoroughly traduced, and this finally allowed him to get some camera time and turn out to be not as bad as he'd been portrayed. Secondly, the worst Conservative general election campaign since 1945. Thirdly, that the election was in part a continuation of the Brexit disagreement, where Remainers heavily threw their lot in with Labour (as Brexiters jumped ship to the Tories).

In the excitement of Corbynmania, the turnout for under-35s went from around 48-52%. Given the proportion of the population they represent, that equates to about an extra 1% to Labour's vote share. Labour needs turnout in this age range to be vastly higher, and there is no guarantee it ever will be: youth turnout has pretty much always been substantially lower than the national average.

The Labour base will not win an election. Never has, never will. This is not the USA, where two monolithic parties split the country pretty much 50:50. Labour and Tories alike rely on bases which are a much smaller percentage of the electorate with a much higher percentage of voters willing to switch party allegiance.

Not just the young; the industrial/ northern working class as well. Observe that it wasn't just a depressed turnout for the Tories after an abysmal campaign: the youth turnout may have still been unimpressive, but Labour's turnout was significantly higher nationally, beating Miliband, Brown, and Cameron. Labour's 2017 voteshare would have been enough to win any previous election since 2001.

Some of that is due to courting new sectors and new voters. But its more explicable through turnout.

 

[Silvanus]

The liberal elite charge is going to be chucked at anyone from London, just the way us vs them works now. Maybe some people in the red wall would like to see people who sound like them getting somewhere in politics. I recall people liking Prescott.

Someone like Rayner, for goodness sake!

She's an effective communicator; she reflects the traditional Labour voters in the north; she's got good policy credentials, and doesn't have the baggage of Corbyn. She's liked by the left and (generally) by the centre of Labour. And she provides a perfect, down-to-earth opposing image to a snobbish Etonian.

 

[Baffle]

Someone like Rayner, for goodness sake!

She's an effective communicator; she reflects the traditional Labour voters in the north; she's got good policy credentials, and doesn't have the baggage of Corbyn. She's liked by the left and (generally) by the centre of Labour. And she provides a perfect, down-to-earth opposing image to a snobbish Etonian.

Yeah, I voted for her in the leadership elections.

 

[Silvanus]

Yeah, I voted for her in the leadership elections.

D'you mean deputy? In the party leadership she stood aside for the (much less talented) Long-Bailey.

 

[Baffle]

D'you mean deputy? In the party leadership she stood aside for the (much less talented) Long-Bailey.

Yes, but it was one vote IIRC (that is, I voted for both positions at the same time). I voted for Long-Bailey for leader because I wanted the party to stay on the left.

 

[Silvanus]

Yes, but it was one vote IIRC (that is, I voted for both positions at the same time). I voted for Long-Bailey for leader because I wanted the party to stay on the left.

Fair enough. I like most of her positions but would have much preferred Rayner to run for leader as the far superior communicator (and still on the left).

 

[Agema]

Not just the young; the industrial/ northern working class as well. Observe that it wasn't just a depressed turnout for the Tories after an abysmal campaign: the youth turnout may have still been unimpressive, but Labour's turnout was significantly higher nationally, beating Miliband, Brown, and Cameron. Labour's 2017 voteshare would have been enough to win any previous election since 2001.

Some of that is due to courting new sectors and new voters. But its more explicable through turnout.

Well, no.

What happened is that most of the third parties had rolled over and died. The minor parties had grown to over 30% of the vote since the 1960s. Chiefly the Liberal Democrats back in the 90s - 2000s, then they collapsed after 2010 but the Brexit Party reared up instead, and then that died with the referendum done and its raison d'etre ended. So with all other options exhausted or useless, the voters had little place to go but to Conservative and Labour, giving the two main parties a combined vote unseen since the 1970s. Turnout was actually little different, just 2% up on 2015 and 3% up on 2010.

 

[Silvanus]

Well, no.

What happened is that most of the third parties had rolled over and died. The minor parties had grown to over 30% of the vote since the 1960s. Chiefly the Liberal Democrats back in the 90s - 2000s, then they collapsed after 2010 but the Brexit Party reared up instead, and then that died with the referendum done and its raison d'etre ended. So with all other options exhausted or useless, the voters had little place to go but to Conservative and Labour, giving the two main parties a combined vote unseen since the 1970s. Turnout was actually little different, just 2% up on 2015 and 3% up on 2010.

2019 is the only general election the Brexit Party contested, so that explanation doesn't follow the timeline.

And the Lib Dems were down just 0.5% on 2015... and yet Labour gained 9.6%.

The only third party to experience a drastic collapse between 2015 and 2017 was UKIP. So unless you're suggesting UKIP voters en masse shifted to Labour in its furthest-left incarnation for decades, then I don't think this explanation holds much water.

An Oxford/ Manchester report found that official turnout figures were significantly under-estimated in 2017, because double-registrations had artificially inflated the number of registrations, on which the turnout is calculated; they estimate actual turnout was likely to be in the high 70s. Labour was clearly a larger beneficiary of this than any other party.

General election turnout ‘far higher than thought’

Voter turnout in the UK is 9 percentage points higher than official estimates suggest, according to a study.Figures recorded a dramatic rise in turnout to 68.8

www.thetimes.co.uk

 

[Agema]

I mean, Corbyn absolutely was made out to be part of the liberal elite ('Have you seen how much his house is worth?!'), but there's no denying the difference in their roots.

No: Jeremy Corbyn is not made out to be the liberal elite, he is the liberal elite. "Hampstead socialist", as dedicated scumbag Nick Griffin of the BNP called them, or as more successful professional scumbag Priti Patel described them, "North London metropolitan liberal elite". Granted, one of the characteristics of the liberal elite is normally a high education level and Corbyn fails on that one, but he ticks all the other boxes.

Working class people don't see in Corbyn a man who's familiar with their lives and has battled up from nothing to carry the flag for working class people in parliament. They see a poncy, ineffectual, middle class hand-wringer... and honestly it's hard to say they are wrong.

Momentum is a liberal elite movement. When Priti Patel said "North London metropolitan liberal elite", she was accused of implying Jews. And indeed, take a look at Momentum's founders. It's immensely popular mostly with relatively affluent university graduates. Momentum is the product of a party that has already become absolutely dominated by well-meaning but disconnected middle classes, who are still talking for the working class rather than being of them. And mostly the same patronising, schoolteacher liberal types implicitly treating them a load of bigots.

 

[Agema]

2019 is the only general election the Brexit Party contested, so that explanation doesn't follow the timeline.

UKIP, whatever. Same thing, different name.

And the Lib Dems were down just 0.5% on 2015... and yet Labour gained 9.6%.

The only third party to experience a drastic collapse between 2015 and 2017 was UKIP. So unless you're suggesting UKIP voters en masse shifted to Labour in its furthest-left incarnation for decades, then I don't think this explanation holds much water.

Voters don't flow in that sort of direct way. From 2010-2015 the Liberal Democrats collapsed and UKIP grew... a lot. But this doesn't mean all those voters went straight from LD to UKIP. Parties re-triangulate in all sorts of ways, policies change etc. to pick up voters from here and there. And likewise will there have been all sorts of shifts around the other parties too. Obviously in 2017, what you also have is a massive ton of tactical voting, chiefly around Brexit.

If we took a really simple vision of 2017, we could imagine that the Tories picked up the lion's share of UKIP and other Brexity voters, but then lost another load of their voters with a terrible campaign. In the end, the two cancelled each other out, and the beneficiary was Labour.

 

[Silvanus]

If we took a really simple vision of 2017, we could imagine that the Tories picked up the lion's share of UKIP and other Brexity voters, but then lost another load of their voters with a terrible campaign. In the end, the two cancelled each other out, and the beneficiary was Labour.

That would explain Labour performing well relative to the Tories. It doesn't explain a massively increased voteshare in a single electoral cycle.

If Oxford/Manchester are correct, and actual turnout was significantly higher than official figures reported, that does.

Look at the numbers of votes cast, and it's clearer: 30.1+ million in 2017, against approximately 24.4+ million in 2015. That's a percentage increase of ~23%. That's unignorably large.

 

[Baffle]

Working class people don't see in Corbyn a man who's familiar with their lives and has battled up from nothing to carry the flag for working class people in parliament.

Working class people don't see that in any politician. Well, except Farage.

 

[Agema]

Look at the numbers of votes cast, and it's clearer: 30.1+ million in 2017, against approximately 24.4+ million in 2015. That's a percentage increase of ~23%. That's unignorably large.

I can't help but point out that in a general election the votes are, in the most literal way imaginable, counted. For every constituency, on the night, they read out the totals everyone standing in that constituency got.

Adding all these votes up came to a total of 30.7 million votes in 2015 and 32.2 million in 2017.

I do not understand how this reseach group managed to count such significantly different figures.

 

[Agema]

Working class people don't see that in any politician. Well, except Farage.

Well, yes. That's because for an outsider to be taken seriously amongst the elites, they must adopt the trappings of the elites.

It nearly always requires supreme self-confidence, power and independence that comes from being born of the elites to behave otherwise and get away with it.

 

[Baffle]

Well, yes. That's because for an outsider to be taken seriously amongst the elites, they must adopt the trappings of the elites.

It nearly always requires supreme self-confidence, power and independence that comes from being born of the elites to behave otherwise and get away with it.

That is something about Starmer that I do feel bad about for him -- he always seems a little uncomfortable, whether that's because of a working class background not fitting it where he is now or not. It seems unlikely, given his career, but he does.

(I understand he's very good in the PMQs, but I'd rather be at work than watch that.)

 

[Hades]

This is sadly a little outdated now.

 

[Agema]

That is something about Starmer that I do feel bad about for him -- he always seems a little uncomfortable, whether that's because of a working class background not fitting it where he is now or not. It seems unlikely, given his career, but he does.

(I understand he's very good in the PMQs, but I'd rather be at work than watch that.)

Well, he was a lawyer, and a very successful one, but that doesn't necessarily translate well to the sort of entertainer-leader required these days. It's a frustrating requirement, because what it mostly achieves is to relegate potentially good leaders into also-rans and promotes facetious, lazy buffoons like the current PM. (I have a lot of time for relatively boring leaders, as long as they can get the job done. Unfortunately, sometimes a really inspirational leader is needed, although I'm not sure Labour has one.)

I think possibly Starmer's biggest problem that makes him feel uncomfortable is that half his party wants him to fail. You can almost taste the satisfaction from the likes of Owen Jones in the Guardian at the prospect of the Tories winning the next election, so that the Corbynites can have another shot. Labour losing the next general election is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because from this point in, Starmer going to be undermined every step of the way by a big chunk of his own party and half of what little left-wing media this country has is going to gleefully join in the right-wing media curb-stomping (as also happened to Corbyn, of course).

This is part of why I don't think it's particularly true that England is a conservative country. I think it's more that the British left is politically dysfunctional.

 

[Silvanus]

I can't help but point out that in a general election the votes are, in the most literal way imaginable, counted. For every constituency, on the night, they read out the totals everyone standing in that constituency got.

Adding all these votes up came to a total of 30.7 million votes in 2015 and 32.2 million in 2017.

I do not understand how this reseach group managed to count such significantly different figures.

They didn't, it was my own shitty maths. Ignore me.

 

[Agema]

They didn't, it was my own shitty maths. Ignore me.

No worries. We all do it sometimes.

 

[Baffle]

I think possibly Starmer's biggest problem that makes him feel uncomfortable is that half his party wants him to fail. You can almost taste the satisfaction from the likes of Owen Jones in the Guardian at the prospect of the Tories winning the next election, so that the Corbynites can have another shot.

Honestly, this is exactly how Corbyn supporters felt about the last run. Massively sabotaged from the inside. Yeah, there's people who lionized him, but a lot of us just saw our best chance of a win in a decade (though yes, I was motivated by what I see as a genuine drive for positive change) and were bitterly disappointed it went to shit. And was encouraged in that direction by the party.

What makes me most despondent is that we see all the mad, bad shit the Cons get up to, and they just get in over and over. Like, no one cares about it. The money we pay in taxes is going on jobs for the boys and dodgy expenses claims rather than social welfare and the NHS, and if you mention it it's like you've grassed up a nun.