UK Election: Labour facing worst election result since 1983
The worst election in the postwar period for either of the UK’s major parties was the 1997 General election for the Tories – down to 165 seats, the Tories lost 178 seats from the notional, post-redistribution numbers and the final results the next day, falling to 165 seats. It would take them 13 years, 2 more losing elections, an economic meltdown, and a coalition agreement to get off the opposition benches. Going back to that period, there was a lot of crap spewed by Conservative politicians who knew the danger that was coming and didn’t have any way of stopping it. They clearly knew they were speaking crap, but they had to say it – the performative art of not conceding you’ve lost, so as to try and leave things as easy as can be for the new leader. That is what Labour are doing right now.
They are staring at their 1983 result again, except without Scotland – a result which would have meant around 160 seats back then. Without Scotland, which new polling is showing to be gone – with Edinburgh South probably gone, even – and the Tories on the march across most of the North, and the Lib Dems and Labour splitting most of the Remain vote across the south, the Labour Party is walking into a decade further in opposition. The thing is, we know they know this. Two stories this week prove they know the disaster is coming.
For Tom Watson – deputy leader of the party, Brown-ite plotter, and generally seen as the head of the Corbyn-sceptic movement, such as it is – to not re-contest his West Bromwich East constituency was not about renewal or spending time with family or any other reason people may admit – it was about the fact that Watson’s no fool and he was in trouble – in a lot of in, in fact – back home. He was down 6% per the LeanTossup model, with a good chance that the mini-revival in the Midlands seen up to that model run might have been… overly optimistic for him, as opposed to a true statistical signal. Watson wouldn’t have left if he thought he was home and dry in West Bromwich, and the fact that he left shows the way that Labour’s political class – the people who see the internal polling, who get the strategy updates, who hear from candidates – feels about this race.
The second story is the leak about the Labour Party having co-leaders – a male/female, Leave/Remain, City/town combo split leadership in some “there’s more that unites us than divides us” fantasyland nonsense thought up by some very clever (read: morons) came up with as a solution to the problem that well off Remainers who you need to vote for you in the south and leavers in industrial areas of the North don’t actually agree with each other. But beyond that, why is that story leaking now? There’s an election, and everyone in Labour is behind Saint Jeremy, n’est pas? Nobody would ever be on maneuvers for the leadership, since there won’t be a vacancy when Jeremy wins? Oh, sorry, I slipped into fantasyland. There’s obviously going to be a vacancy, because Corbyn is very clearly going to lose, and everybody knows this.
https://leantossup.ca/labour-knows-their-fate/
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