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Post by crossbat11 on Dec 16, 2023 13:22:56 GMT
It appears that the maudlin' minstrel has been busking on Hastings Pier again, going through his catalogue of Donovan classics. Is Danny aware of his surprise sea front appearance, I wonder? We're both wrong CB, it was November 2019. Typical Crofty. I see he got out just before COVID swept through Hastings. Did he unwittingly take the virus up to the North East with him, though? |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 13:26:21 GMT
We're both wrong CB, it was November 2019. Typical Crofty. I see he got out just before COVID swept through Hastings. Did he unwittingly take the virus up to the North East with him, though? Well Cummings did make that trip north… 😱 |
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Post by crossbat11 on Dec 16, 2023 13:30:26 GMT
Typical Crofty. I see he got out just before COVID swept through Hastings. Did he unwittingly take the virus up to the North East with him, though? Well Cummings did make that trip north… 😱 I believe Crofty was the deep throat press informant of Barnard Castle who spotted Cummings in the woods when he was walking his curs that fateful morning. Crofty's curs not Cummings. Cummings was trying to spot distant objects in the woods as part of his driving test. |
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Post by Rafwan on Dec 16, 2023 13:40:48 GMT
pjw1961“ Incidentally, post election studies showed that more Alliance voters favoured the Conservatives as second choice than did Labour, so far from 'letting the Tories in', had the Alliance not existed, Thatcher's land side would have been even larger than it actually was. Foot, by the way, had even lower ratings as a potential PM than Corbyn ever did!” That is not what VI opinion polls said at all! Just before the Gang of Four marched their troops to the top of the hill (and back down again) in 1980/81, Foot’s Labour Party were scoring in the high forties, with the Tories languishing in the mid-thirties. It was the Falklands war that had voters rallying to Thatcher (as they did to Johnson in the early stages of the Ukraine war).
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Post by chrisc on Dec 16, 2023 13:52:46 GMT
pjw1961 “ Incidentally, post election studies showed that more Alliance voters favoured the Conservatives as second choice than did Labour, so far from 'letting the Tories in', had the Alliance not existed, Thatcher's land side would have been even larger than it actually was. Foot, by the way, had even lower ratings as a potential PM than Corbyn ever did!” That is not what VI opinion polls said at all! Just before the Gang of Four marched their troops to the top of the hill (and back down again) in 1980/81, Foot’s Labour Party were scoring in the high forties, with the Tories languishing in the mid-thirties. It was the Falklands war that had voters rallying to Thatcher (as they did to Johnson in the early stages of the Ukraine war). Or not according to Regis Professor of Political Science, David Saunders www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/government-popularity-and-the-falklands-war-a-reassessment/1D75F2894302A523AD0D7942CE3BCF8B |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 13:57:27 GMT
Well Cummings did make that trip north… 😱 I believe Crofty was the deep throat press informant of Barnard Castle who spotted Cummings in the woods when he was walking his curs that fateful morning. Crofty's curs not Cummings. Cummings was trying to spot distant objects in the woods as part of his driving test. This explains a few things, but are you sure you should be blowing his cover though, batty? (Not before a film deal, anyway) |
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steve
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Post by steve on Dec 16, 2023 14:17:01 GMT
"That is not what VI opinion polls said at all! Just before the Gang of Four marched their troops to the top of the hill (and back down again) in 1980/81, Foot’s Labour Party were scoring in the high forties, with the Tories languishing in the mid-thirties."
Which might actually be true but was totally irrelevant given that there was no possibility of an election in 1980, incidentally Foot didn't become Labour leader until November 1980 so he can hardly be credited for a Labour revival before he became leader.
Labour were polling at around 50% in November 1980, this has dropped to around 30% in the Falklands war and hadn't recovered at all over a year later.
Once people had come to know Foot a little better they didn't like what they saw.
Fptp denied the alliance the number of seats it deserved registering just 2% less than Labour but with just 23 seats against Labour's 209 not the switch from an unpopular Labour party.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Dec 16, 2023 14:26:25 GMT
pjw1961 “ Incidentally, post election studies showed that more Alliance voters favoured the Conservatives as second choice than did Labour, so far from 'letting the Tories in', had the Alliance not existed, Thatcher's land side would have been even larger than it actually was. Foot, by the way, had even lower ratings as a potential PM than Corbyn ever did!” That is not what VI opinion polls said at all! Just before the Gang of Four marched their troops to the top of the hill (and back down again) in 1980/81, Foot’s Labour Party were scoring in the high forties, with the Tories languishing in the mid-thirties. It was the Falklands war that had voters rallying to Thatcher (as they did to Johnson in the early stages of the Ukraine war). Or not according to Regis Professor of Political Science, David Saunders www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/government-popularity-and-the-falklands-war-a-reassessment/1D75F2894302A523AD0D7942CE3BCF8BCarfrew, Rafwan and Chrisc you are talking about something different (i.e. the pattern of polling 1979-83) from what I am. I am referring to post election studies and by definition they relate to the conditions that prevailed at the time of the June 1983 election. These are exercises undertaken by academics after each election where they question appropriately stratified samples of voters about how they actually voted and the reasons why. One of the 'push' questions asked of voters is about who their second choice would have been. In 1983, for Alliance voters, more favoured the Conservatives than Labour, not by a huge margin, but certainly enough to destroy the idea that in the absence of the Alliance, their votes would automatically have transferred to Labour (in reality, without the SDP, there would still have been the Liberals and that is where most would have gone.) The reason I can't give the source is that it is analogue - namely my copy of the Nuffield Election study for 1983 ("the British General Election of 1983, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, Macmillan, 1984) including the statistical appendix by John Curtice and Michael Steed. Unfortunately the post-election analysis section and appendices runs from page 269 to 373, so I'm afraid I'm not going to type it all out! But it is worth making two points: The Alliance vote in 1983, with a exception of a handful of seats where Labour defectors had a significant personal vote, behaved almost exactly like the Liberal vote had 1964-79, i.e. there is no evidence that the existence of the SDP caused some new and special damage to Labour specifically. The Alliance took more Labour 1979 voters than it did Conservative ones, but the cause of that was that Labour was very unpopular. The analysis is very strong on just how unpopular both Labour policies and the Labour leadership were in 1983 (far worse than 2019, btw). I wish I could quote it all, but here are a couple of polling facts from page 280. Asked "which party has the best policies" the Conservatives led Labour 46% to 23% (in 1979 it had been 40/35). To the question "which party had the best team of leaders" the Conservatives led Labour 55% to 16%! (Alliance 23%). In 1979 Labour had actually led on this 41 to 35. Even if the SDP had never existed Labour would have lost the June 1983 election heavily because they were frankly seen as unelectable. |
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Post by jimjam on Dec 16, 2023 14:33:03 GMT
I think the philosophical point about Labours' positioning is that whilst the electorate seem ready for a less austere approach from Government sadly the 'maxed out credit card' kind of rhetoric still has traction.
I thought a telling comment in the US from Mitt Romney was, to paraphrase, that Biden did not really have a normal mandate as his win was in essence due to Trump.
In this context I don't think a more left wing Labour program really has a mandate with the general public yet, even should Labour secure a comfortable win.
Thatcher waited until post 83 to introduce her more radical supply side reforms; restricting the directional change policies to macro-economics, especially the 1981 budget.
It was a source of disappointment to me that Blair tacked right rather than left after 2001.
Maybe I am naive but I believe a post 2028/9 Labour Government; having shown the roof has not fallen in and demonstrated competence in Government, will have more scope for meaningful change.
Colin - this is what I mean about Starmer ratchetting, not pivoting to uber Corbynite type policies post election.
In fact, I expect some more radical measures will be possible in the second half of the first term; and they probably need to do somethings to keep a greater part of the reluctant element of their support on board ahead of the GE in 28/9.
NB) I know some will disagree but imo 2017 was imo very much a Brexit dominated election and the high Labour vote was not an endorsement of the manifesto in the main
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 14:45:30 GMT
Carfrew, Rafwan and Chrisc you are talking about something different (i.e. the pattern of polling 1979-83) from what I am. I am referring to post election studies and by definition they relate to the conditions that prevailed at the time of the June 1983 election. These are exercises undertaken by academics after each election where they question appropriately stratified samples of voters about how they actually voted and the reasons why. One of the 'push' questions asked of voters is about who their second choice would have been. In 1983, for Alliance voters, more favoured the Conservative than Labour, not by a huge margin, but certainly enough to destroy the idea that in the absence of the Alliance, their votes would automatically have transferred to Labour (in reality, without the SDP, there would still have been the Liberals and that is where most would have gone.) The reason I can't give the source is that it is analogue - namely my copy of the Nuffield Election study for 1983 ("the British General Election of 1983, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, Macmillan, 1984) including the statistical appendix by John Curtice and Michael Steed. Unfortunately the post-election analysis section and appendices runs from page 269 to 373, so I'm afraid I'm not going to type it all out! But it is worth making two points: The Alliance vote in 1983, with a exception of a handful of seats where Labour defectors had a significant personal vote, behaved almost exactly like the Liberal vote had 1964-79, i.e. there is no evidence that the existence of the SDP caused some new and special damage to Labour specifically. The Alliance took more Labour 1979 voters than it did Conservative ones, but the cause of that was that Labour was very unpopular. The analysis is very strong on just how unpopular both Labour policies and the Labour leadership were in 1983 (far worse than 2019, btw). I wish I could quote it all, but here are a couple of polling facts from page 280. Asked "which party has the best policies" the Conservatives led Labour 46% to 23% (in 1979 it had been 40/35). To the question "which party had the best team of leaders" the Conservatives led Labour 55% to 16%! (Alliance 23%). In 1979 Labour had actually led on this 41 to 35. Even if the SDP had never existed Labour would have lost the June 1983 election heavily because they were frankly seen as unelectable. It may be the case that SOME, retrospectively, having already made the leap to abandon Labour via SDP, may then have preferred the Tories, but that does not mean they ALL would have. That’s a pretty crazy leap. Labour would still have taken an electoral hit. And sure, it turns out there were other factors that aided Tories recovery in the end - the Falklands war, and as I have pointed out before, the collapse in the price of oil that aided Tories in the run up to the election by lowering inflation and eventually ushering in a world boom, but that was rather lucky. The right of the party reduced Labour’s polling, trashing a winning position at the time, and they didn’t know when a subsequent fall in the price of oil before the election would subsequently assist Tories anyway. It might have fallen after the election… Labour took a substantial polling hit immediately following their actions, and the fact Thatch got lucky anyway doesn’t alter the fact they sabotaged the party’s prospects. (If someone sabotages something, then just because it turns out later it might have been wrecked by something else anyway, doesn’t mean the original saboteur isn’t hostile to your prospects, and they may have caused some extra damage that wouldn’t have happened otherwise). Similarly, Tories in 2019 rescued themselves from being behind Labour by switching to Boris and affecting to move left. But that doesn’t mean the actions of the right didn’t cost Labour seats. |
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Post by graham on Dec 16, 2023 14:57:19 GMT
And both times the right of the party acted against the leadership. The right within Tories also helped do for Major, and isn’t helping Sunak now. The right tend to be purists. Ridiculous. On both occasions the Labour Party moved sharply to the left and ordinary voters deserted them in droves. Those who can't draw the obvious lesson of that are being willfully blind. Voters did not desert Labour in droves in 2017 - indeed there was a surge in support. |
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Post by graham on Dec 16, 2023 15:07:16 GMT
Carfrew, Rafwan and Chrisc you are talking about something different (i.e. the pattern of polling 1979-83) from what I am. I am referring to post election studies and by definition they relate to the conditions that prevailed at the time of the June 1983 election. These are exercises undertaken by academics after each election where they question appropriately stratified samples of voters about how they actually voted and the reasons why. One of the 'push' questions asked of voters is about who their second choice would have been. In 1983, for Alliance voters, more favoured the Conservative than Labour, not by a huge margin, but certainly enough to destroy the idea that in the absence of the Alliance, their votes would automatically have transferred to Labour (in reality, without the SDP, there would still have been the Liberals and that is where most would have gone.) The reason I can't give the source is that it is analogue - namely my copy of the Nuffield Election study for 1983 ("the British General Election of 1983, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, Macmillan, 1984) including the statistical appendix by John Curtice and Michael Steed. Unfortunately the post-election analysis section and appendices runs from page 269 to 373, so I'm afraid I'm not going to type it all out! But it is worth making two points: The Alliance vote in 1983, with a exception of a handful of seats where Labour defectors had a significant personal vote, behaved almost exactly like the Liberal vote had 1964-79, i.e. there is no evidence that the existence of the SDP caused some new and special damage to Labour specifically. The Alliance took more Labour 1979 voters than it did Conservative ones, but the cause of that was that Labour was very unpopular. The analysis is very strong on just how unpopular both Labour policies and the Labour leadership were in 1983 (far worse than 2019, btw). I wish I could quote it all, but here are a couple of polling facts from page 280. Asked "which party has the best policies" the Conservatives led Labour 46% to 23% (in 1979 it had been 40/35). To the question "which party had the best team of leaders" the Conservatives led Labour 55% to 16%! (Alliance 23%). In 1979 Labour had actually led on this 41 to 35. Even if the SDP had never existed Labour would have lost the June 1983 election heavily because they were frankly seen as unelectable. I accept the evidence that in 1983 Alliance voters were likely to have favoured the Tories over Labour - though that had ceased to be the case in 1987. In 1983 Labour's campaign fell apart in the final 2 weeks with a general sense of confusion and lack of campaign discipline. That is likely to have aided the late Alliance momentum as voters switched from Labour. The Falklands factor also hung heavily over the 1983 election - it bestowed credibility on the entire range of Thatcher's policies with the depressed state of the economy and massive unemployment being largely ignored or pushed aside. Had it not been for the 1982 conflict the result might have been very different - a Hung Parliament might have been a possibility.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Dec 16, 2023 15:14:59 GMT
Ridiculous. On both occasions the Labour Party moved sharply to the left and ordinary voters deserted them in droves. Those who can't draw the obvious lesson of that are being willfully blind. Voters did not desert Labour in droves in 2017 - indeed there was a surge in support. As there was for the other side. It was the referendum rerun election. |
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Post by Rafwan on Dec 16, 2023 15:44:02 GMT
pjw1961Hypothetical questions (e.g. how would you have voted if … ?) yield notoriously unreliable data (see any reputable Social Research Methods book). Similarly ex poste facto questions (why did you … ?) yield highly dubious data because validity cannot be assessed.
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 15:50:43 GMT
How much choice do they have, given the risk in delaying, is one question Col.. According to some the pace of the energy transition is such that if we leave it too long there’s a possibility we could get seriously left behind. Another question is how soon can some of the investment pay off, to help fund the next phase? (A third, is that if they are going to raise some money via tax, what’s the best way to do it without harming growth or alienating too many voters?) I don't know about risk of delaying and I don't think they will. But 6years ( to 2030) X £28 bn is a lot of money so when Con start asking how they will fund it , presumably they will have an answer . Yes tax is going to be a difficult issue for both sides. Con claiming they just cut taxes in the autumn statement with cuts coming in spring -Lab responding that frozen thresholds have wiped that out & more. Can Lab then admit to taxes for the Green spend ? Actually I'm not sure what electoral mileage infrastructure has when cost of living issues are uppermost concern for most families. Flash UK PMIs for December look like highest since June. But given an Autumn GE there isn't much time to see real economic effects. And who is going to believe a Tory promise ? There's a fascinating two pages in today's Times ( I think you read ?) on campaign possibilities and tactics. Looks like its going to kick off in the New Year -but with Lab's nag already way down the course Sunak has some work to do. 2024 has the potential to be a very significant year on so many fronts. Stimulating and frightening at the same time ! Thanks for your reply Colin. 28bn is roughly 1% of GDP? It compares with the stimulus following the banking crash. Roughly, from memory, the deficit rose to about 150bn? But 120bn of that was replacement rather than stimulus, replacing lost tax receipts and paying more welfare because of the job losses. But only about 30bn was extra stimulus, and within two years gdp went from minus 7% to over two percent. Not all that rebound is the stimulus though! If you put money into green tech though, it might take a while to fully pay off, when the new leccy generation etc. comes on stream. But there might be a more immediate boost as some of the money gets spent in the economy as part of building the green tech. But in the Times, their sources were saying that part of the reason Labour were slowing down on it was because they had been talking to the Americans who warned them that they were encountering planning bottlenecks, limiting their ability to invest quickly. Which is why Labour have started stressing planning more. Cost of living is indeed a big deal, but if the green investment results in cheaper energy it may well assist cost of living (directly in lower energy bills for consumers, but also lower energy costs for making things etc.). IF it happens quick enough, AND if not scuppered by something like those contracts they have signed before, tying the price of leccy to gas, when the leccy could have been rather cheaper. The pace of adoption elsewhere is something of note, and abundant cheap energy could give quite the competitive advantage. It increasingly matters even for things like AI… (Some things might give a quicker boost, like installing more battery packs to store more of the leccy wasted when the grid can’t handle it, but I’m not sure of the current economics - not sure but last time I looked the fall in battery prices appeared to have slowed a bit?) Haven’t read the Times piece, am about to read it now! |
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Post by mercian on Dec 16, 2023 15:52:29 GMT
steve posted a few of the local by-election results, but slightly surprised he didn't cash in on the full extent of what was a good night for them. Seven seats were up for grabs and the results were: Liberal Democrats held 3, gained 2 = 5; Conservatives held 2, lost 2 = 2. (P.s. Before Mercian says Labour are doing badly in not picking up any of these, this was a crop of largely semi-rural seats with Labour not in contention.) I did notice that in 2 of the 3 results that steve posted, the Tory vote rose in percentage terms, while Labour fell. Indicative of tactical voting by the left? |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 16:22:43 GMT
I think the philosophical point about Labours' positioning is that whilst the electorate seem ready for a less austere approach from Government sadly the 'maxed out credit card' kind of rhetoric still has traction. I wonder how much that kind of thinking still pertains? Has the impact of Covid and furlough, and how govt. funding enabled a quick rebound changed the way the public view things, where they now think governments are able to do more and should do so? (Plus the energy subsidy last winter). Attitudes towards nationalised utilities seem to have shifted leftwards? Just an idea, would there be any polling on such a thing? |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Dec 16, 2023 16:39:53 GMT
It may be the case that SOME, retrospectively, having already made the leap to abandon Labour via SDP, may then have preferred the Tories, but that does not mean they ALL would have. That’s a pretty crazy leap. Labour would still have taken an electoral hit. And sure, it turns out there were other factors that aided Tories recovery in the end - the Falklands war, and as I have pointed out before, the collapse in the price of oil that aided Tories in the run up to the election by lowering inflation and eventually ushering in a world boom, but that was rather lucky. The right of the party reduced Labour’s polling, trashing a winning position at the time, and they didn’t know when a subsequent fall in the price of oil before the election would subsequently assist Tories anyway. It might have fallen after the election… Labour took a substantial polling hit immediately following their actions, and the fact Thatch got lucky anyway doesn’t alter the fact they sabotaged the party’s prospects. (If someone sabotages something, then just because it turns out later it might have been wrecked by something else anyway, doesn’t mean the original saboteur isn’t hostile to your prospects, and they may have caused some extra damage that wouldn’t have happened otherwise). Similarly, Tories in 2019 rescued themselves from being behind Labour by switching to Boris and affecting to move left. But that doesn’t mean the actions of the right didn’t cost Labour seats. "abandon Labour via SDP, may then have preferred the Tories, but that does not mean they ALL would have. That’s a pretty crazy leap." Nowhere dd I say they all would, just that more favoured the Tories than Labour. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is they were less appalled by the idea of a Thatcher government than a Foot one. As to the rest of what you say, it was clearly the left wing policies and leadership that put people off Labour in 1983. For example unilateral nuclear disarmament (p282 of the book previously mentioned) - 77% of the public disagreed with this, only 16% agreed. Even Labour supporters were 59% to 33% opposed. Leaving the EU was equally unpopular. Labour only led the Conservatives by small margins on even their strong areas (7% on the NHS, 3% on unemployment). Inflation was rated as the most important topic for 'you and your family' and the Conservatives led Labour by 7% on it. Nor were Labour regarded as credible (p281) - only 17% thought they would keep their promises compared to 31% for the Conservatives. The BBC election day survey (p283) found only 25% claimed confidence in Labour politicians ability to deal wisely with Britain's problems; the figure for the Conservatives was 75%. Essentially Labour were in a massive hole in 1983 and the idea that had the SDP not been formed Labour would have won that election is frankly delusional. |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Dec 16, 2023 16:46:30 GMT
pjw1961 Hypothetical questions (e.g. how would you have voted if … ?) yield notoriously unreliable data (see any reputable Social Research Methods book). Similarly ex poste facto questions (why did you … ?) yield highly dubious data because validity cannot be assessed. They are conducted by academics who will be fully aware of that. The British post election studies are well established and often produce evidence that slays popular myths. For example, it was this that showed the the relatively better performance of Labour in 2017 than expected was not the result of a 'youth quake' as journalists had guessed. Another myth, I'm afraid, is that the Liberal/SDP alliance cost Labour the 1983 election. www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-impact/the-myth-of-the-2017-youthquake-election/ |
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on Dec 16, 2023 16:59:13 GMT
Never mind Lulu, you probably know more about football than she does. She does. But only because of the knowledge of her male West Ham family. Discuss. (Slinks away). |
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Post by crossbat11 on Dec 16, 2023 17:27:15 GMT
I look forward to the forthcoming analysis of the 1987 general election and the appalling betrayals and backstabbing that the Labour leader Kinnock suffered at the hands of Labour's left wing. The Hatton led sabotage in 1985 when Labour took opinion poll leads, the Heffer conference walk out, the defections to Far Left parties, the Militant entryism and continuous Bennite plotting.
The McDonnell and Corbyn led Commons voting betrayal and sabotage that Blair and Brown endured. Would Blair have won bigger in 2005 had it not been for Labour left backstabbing and betrayals?
The truth is that Labour has always been riven by factionalism. Sometimes the left prevail as in the early 80s and mid 2010s, other times the right prevail. Sometimes they unite, other times they keep fighting.
History tells us that Labour only win when the social democrats are in charge though. As pjw1961 argues, 1983, 2017 and 2019 were pretty bad defeats for the party when an overtly left wing prospectus was offered to the electorate.
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 17:30:02 GMT
It may be the case that SOME, retrospectively, having already made the leap to abandon Labour via SDP, may then have preferred the Tories, but that does not mean they ALL would have. That’s a pretty crazy leap. Labour would still have taken an electoral hit. And sure, it turns out there were other factors that aided Tories recovery in the end - the Falklands war, and as I have pointed out before, the collapse in the price of oil that aided Tories in the run up to the election by lowering inflation and eventually ushering in a world boom, but that was rather lucky. The right of the party reduced Labour’s polling, trashing a winning position at the time, and they didn’t know when a subsequent fall in the price of oil before the election would subsequently assist Tories anyway. It might have fallen after the election… Labour took a substantial polling hit immediately following their actions, and the fact Thatch got lucky anyway doesn’t alter the fact they sabotaged the party’s prospects. (If someone sabotages something, then just because it turns out later it might have been wrecked by something else anyway, doesn’t mean the original saboteur isn’t hostile to your prospects, and they may have caused some extra damage that wouldn’t have happened otherwise). Similarly, Tories in 2019 rescued themselves from being behind Labour by switching to Boris and affecting to move left. But that doesn’t mean the actions of the right didn’t cost Labour seats. "abandon Labour via SDP, may then have preferred the Tories, but that does not mean they ALL would have. That’s a pretty crazy leap." Nowhere dd I say they all would, just that more favoured the Tories than Labour. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is they were less appalled by the idea of a Thatcher government than a Foot one. As to the rest of what you say, it was clearly the left wing policies and leadership that put people off Labour in 1983. For example unilateral nuclear disarmament (p282 of the book previously mentioned) - 77% of the public disagreed with this, only 16% agreed. Even Labour supporters were 59% to 33% opposed. Leaving the EU was equally unpopular. Labour only led the Conservatives by small margins on even their strong areas (7% on the NHS, 3% on unemployment). Inflation was rated as the most important topic for 'you and your family' and the Conservatives led Labour by 7% on it. Nor were Labour regarded as credible (p281) - only 17% thought they would keep their promises compared to 31% for the Conservatives. The BBC election day survey (p283) found only 25% claimed confidence in Labour politicians ability to deal wisely with Britain's problems; the figure for the Conservatives was 75%. Essentially Labour were in a massive hole in 1983 and the idea that had the SDP not been formed Labour would have won that election is frankly delusional. You are arguing a different point to the one I made. I said they acted against the leadership. I have accepted other factors were involved in deciding the electoral outcome. And in particular the rise in Thatcher’s polling due to the better economic conditions due to oil price etc. that helped many economies at the time. The study posted earlier also put her recovery down to economic improvement. But to try and ignore that the hiving off of a load of the party into a separate entity might well have had a negative polling impact, is something else, esp. when polling fell in step with the Limehouse declaration. And in any event my main point was that the right opposed Foot while he was polling well compared to Tories. Corbyn’s policies polled better than expected circa 2017 too, which didn’t make the right very happy either. Here’s Kinnock with his son, finding 2017 “perplexing” m.youtube.com/watch?v=bv0OepoPzhk |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 17:37:11 GMT
History tells us that Labour only win when the social democrats are in charge though. As pjw1961 argues, 1983, 2017 and 2019 were pretty bad defeats for the party when an overtly left wing prospectus was offered to the electorate. Partly because of the media, partly because the right refuse to cooperate when it’s the left in charge. (In 2019, Tories also affected to move left after Labour had been leading in the polls). As you say, there indeed is factionalism, because the right and the left want a number of very different things. It isn’t very reconcilable. Similar problem in Tories. But it may change due to economic conditions in the longer term, if middle class prospects decline |
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Post by alec on Dec 16, 2023 17:50:27 GMT
Ah, we're back to 1983. Labour must be doing well!  |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 17:57:48 GMT
Ah, we're back to 1983. Labour must be doing well! It’s cropped up before when Labour weren’t doing so well |
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steve
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Post by steve on Dec 16, 2023 18:05:04 GMT
Avoiding a premier league lose is fine however Captain Tom Lockyer went beyond necessary methods by having a heart attack on the pitch and we weren't even losing.
He appears to be recovering well.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Dec 16, 2023 18:09:18 GMT
That is not what VI opinion polls said at all! Just before the Gang of Four marched their troops to the top of the hill (and back down again) in 1980/81, Foot’s Labour Party were scoring in the high forties, with the Tories languishing in the mid-thirties. It was the Falklands war that had voters rallying to Thatcher (as they did to Johnson in the early stages of the Ukraine war). Sounds like the dream ticket for labour is when its left and right work together. Once the right refused to play any more, then voters abandoned them, and that makes perfect sense. Why vote for a party rowing with itself? |
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Post by James E on Dec 16, 2023 18:22:28 GMT
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Danny
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Posts: 10,352
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Post by Danny on Dec 16, 2023 18:25:56 GMT
I wonder how much that kind of thinking still pertains? Has the impact of Covid and furlough, and how govt. Funding enabled a quick rebound... Did it? Lets imagine there had been no furlough scheme. Would lockdown have been obeyed? I doubt it! Rioting more likely. Did the subsidy enable a rebound, or did it enable lockdown? Lockdown of course was a massive drag on the economy, so we could have simply not had both. To what extent would the rebound have happened automatically, because people had pent up demand which needed to be satisfied? |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
Member
A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
Posts: 6,692
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Dec 16, 2023 18:33:13 GMT
lol, I’ve said it before then James. Said it on the old board. (The originator of the basic idea though, was Roger Mexico). |
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