2) LibDem voters seemingly voting for Tories in swing seats. Apparently voting for their nemesis was more attractive than Labour.
Really want to see some post-mortem polling on this to see exactly where the LD voters went. It's hard to put together a clear narrative at the moment.
But if you are talking about LD2010 voters, you are talking about a huge chunk of students who are now falling into the demographic who regularly go Tory. Young professionals/graduates trying to build savings and buy houses, expecting to climb into the higher tax band in the coming years. I don't think the Conservative policies are actually good for this group (which I'm broadly in), especially when it comes to housing, but they sound attractive if you weren't paying as much attention as you did at uni.
3) Labour still being attractive in population centres. Why? Does socialism still have a lingering appeal despite the big leap to the right? A map of electoral district basically colours red the dense urban areas, with a sea of blue elsewhere, save for Scotland of course.
You can put a lot of this on tribalism (which I actually expected to be stronger - you should never see Labour->Tory swing during a Conservative government in my book) and I doubt much, if any is down to ideology. Labour were trying on their fiscal responsibility pants and broadly failing to deliver the red meat to their red supporters.
People who identify with Labour as socialists may well have stayed home, but you should always depend on those who identify as Labour because fuck the Tories.
4) The next labour leader - Do they go for someone with more of a left wing approach (Stephen Kinnock) to get back to core Labour principles, or do Labour look to outmuscle the Tories in the "centre" via Chuka Unumma (who is a big fan of a "Blue Labour" approach), or do they take the fight to the SNP via Yvette Cooper? There is no catch all approach. Unumma gives them a fighting chance in England but concedes Scotland, Kinnock will reinforce the heartlands but make no inroads elsewhere, and Cooper will give the SNP some potential trouble but concede the South East of England.
Scotland is lost and you may as well entirely split off Scottish Labour as a
lost cause regional party now. I'd imagine that English Votes for English Laws will see itself bumped up the priority list of the new Parliament, right behind the new Snooper's Charter and alongside electoral district reform. Exactly how it would work (eg, could Scotish MPs could for a majority if they can't vote on confidence issues relating to England? How about budgets?) would dictate how many resources they should dedicate to fighting Scotland as a national party, but with a Conservative majority writing the rules to spite the SNP I can't imagine them being favourable to those north of the wall.
As for which way they will jump, I can't even imagine yet. I've already seen impassioned statements that they were too far left/right and need to take a serious shift to the right/left to compete again. There may be blood in this leadership battle.
5) UKIP and LibDem - time to call it a day? Or re-brand like mad?
UKIP have two major options;
1) Make their sole MP their leader and focus on fighting a referendum with him as their face. This has been pushed hard by many Kipper's I've read as he is considered an extremely smart and personable politician. But, despite being one of the more right wing, slightly scary Tories (
yay for climate change denial, guns and Nazi war crimes (!?!), boo to gay marriage, employee rights and the NHS) many consider him too moderate for the rank and file UKIP voters, especially on immigration. If he was the leader it would be to fight a referendum on policy grounds, not any future elections.
2) Find a new Farage. Can't imagine this will work. Rumour has it that UKIP has been held together largely by force of Farage's will. It's unlikely any new leader will be as effective at the task as he is, especially if they shift any further to the right. Having someone who can feed the base of the party what they would be effective in keeping up their momentum, but runs the risk of tearing the party apart and driving away other voters, especially on the run up to an In/Out referendum. I haven't seen a single name suggested in this role.
IMO, the smart bet would be make Carswell their leader and focus on the referendum. Then shift back to Farage as the party chairman or similar, leading into the next European elections. Use those to springboard into the next general election. My hope is they don't and suffer a nice fun BNP style implosion over the leadership and personality conflicts that tend to come with hard right parties.
I'll come back to the Lib Dems after reading some more.
EDIT:
Oh wow Survation.We had flagged that we were conducting this poll to the Daily Mirror as something we might share as an interesting check on our online vs our telephone methodology, but the results seemed so “out of line” with all the polling conducted by ourselves and our peers – what poll commentators would term an “outlier” – that I “chickened out” of publishing the figures – something I’m sure I’ll always regret.
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Topic: Sheb's European Megathread: Remove Feta! (Read 1780416 times)