In the UK, we’re all waking up to the prospect of a new government. The election was an oddity: Labour has converted a modest 35% vote share into a whopping Parliamentary majority; the Tories did somewhat better than suggested, on around 24%, but have lost more than two-thirds of their MPs. (The final figures were closer than most opinion polls suggested). But the election was not a story of Labour advances: they did little to increase their vote share (and neither did the Lib Dems, whose seats went up dramatically, from 11 to probably 71, on a virtually unchanged vote share). The real story was a fracturing of the Conservative coalition, with some voters locally going to Labour, some locally to the Liberal Democrats, and many going to Reform. One big question over the next few years will be how the Tories respond to this fracturing of that coalition. While they have long been divided and in decline, they no longer have Brexit to paper over their differences. Will they tack left, or right? (Answer: Electoral rationality suggests left; the demographics of their membership suggests right). Another is how Labour will attempt to sustain what is in fact a rather fragile electoral advantage in the coming difficult years, given that many wins were narrow, and given that they already appear destined to disappoint many of their voters.
Any predictions, then, about what the next four or five years hold for either Labour or the Conservatives?
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
nastywoman 07.05.24 at 10:18 am
‘Any predictions, then, about what the next four or five years hold for either Labour or the Conservatives?’
YES!
If Labour doesn’t do what the British Voters
LIKE –
they will be again voted out of power faster than they can say ‘Rwanda’!
(so much about the power of 21c Voters)
Alex SL 07.05.24 at 11:10 am
That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters. That is not a lot for a mandate, really. I also strongly assume real preference for Labour may be closer to 20%, only a lot of people vote tactically because they know their vote would be wasted on the smaller party that they actually support. What is more, reverse the splintering of the right, and the result is reversed without anybody shifting camps. The first past the post system is simply not fit for purpose.
My prediction would have been that Labour, having promised not to do anything that would improve the economy, will in 2029 have disillusioned many of its voters and lose against a reinvigorated, perhaps even more radicalised right wing party. Seeing these numbers I now realise that this could happen even if Labour has a lot of luck on the economy and entirely maintains its vote share, because it is so small to begin with.
As I wrote before, the ratchet applies across much of the Western world since the 1980s: conservatives sow fear of immigrants and promise to lower taxes, they win elections, then privatise, deregulate, suppress wages, and cut services until voted out. Then the centre-left wins an election or two on the promise of being less incompetent and less corrupt than the right, and does nothing substantial to re-nationalise, to re-regulate, or to re-build services. Rinse and repeat until we are in late stage of the Roman Empire territory and our social structure falls apart because nothing works anymore.
MisterMr 07.05.24 at 11:20 am
More or less what Alex SL said, Reform will simply be the “new right”, tories will either merge with reform or become a subordinate ally, everybody else will be part of a “center left” that has no real sense of identity and therefore breaks every 5 minutes.
Not very nice, I personally hope lefish parties (in the UK and outside of it) will find a way out of this problem, but currently I don’t see it: it is like the left has two souls (or perhaps even more) and cannot coalesce.
engels 07.05.24 at 11:37 am
That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters.
Yes: their vote share is much lower than Corbyn’s in 2017 (40%) and barely improves on 2019 (32.1%). Also the lowest turnout in 20 years.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/election-night-labour-wins-smaller-vote-share-than-corbyn/
Fits with Starmer’s aspiration to be a fake rerun of Blair I suppose.
Akshay 07.05.24 at 12:21 pm
Twitter user Flying_Rodent’s analysis of the last 45 years in the UK automatically leads to a prediction:
https://x.com/flying_rodent/status/1757000875241877788
Basically agrees with Alex SL@2 in more colourful language
CalgaryGuy 07.05.24 at 12:55 pm
Another seconding of AlexSL. England is not immune from the right-wing winds hitting Continental Europe. See also Pollievre here in Canada.
engels 07.05.24 at 1:12 pm
On the plus side, “stability of change” is a brilliant slogan that succeeds in sounding managerialist and Orwellian whilst strongly evoking Lampedusa.
RobinM 07.05.24 at 1:42 pm
Yes, I know, what happens in England is very significant. But in keeping with the tenor of the observations so far, I just wanted to remind (a) that Labour seems to have returned to dominance in Scotland and in Wales, and (b) that Scottish Labour was an important presence in “New Labour.”” My guess is that the latest Scottish Labour contingent at Westminster will be Starmerite to their core and that, being rigidly so, they’ll bear a lot of responsibility for sending the new Labour government down the awful path some others have suggested here.
Guano 07.05.24 at 1:58 pm
This article
https://archive.ph/UA68E#selection-2421.0-2421.196
says that Labour’s mission in the first term is to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce immigration.
(“Now, they could form a triangle with Starmer as the most powerful people in No 10, delivering his mission to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce migration in his first term.”)
Doing all three is very difficult, especially because the UK economy and public services depend on immigration. The strategy for reducing immigration is improving skills and education in the UK, which will take more than one term to filter through to reduced immigration.
Meanwhile there appear to be lots of voters who think that it is possible and essential that immigration is reduced, and few politicians who are willing to contradict them. That spells trouble.
“Now, they could form a triangle with Starmer as the most powerful people in No 10, delivering his mission to revive economic growth, restore public services and reduce migration in his first term.”
engels 07.05.24 at 2:04 pm
As to what might happen, the Guardian’s vox pop of the bourgeoisie might help. Bungs to green (and not so green) business, “stability around taxes” and “bold reforms” especially to planning law and pesky banking regulations might be on the cards… hallelujah and hosanna (to quote the Graun’s top thinker, Polly Toynbee, elsewhere in the same edition).
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/05/need-brave-business-leaders-react-labour-victory-industry-starmer
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/05/general-election-tories-politics-labour
notGoodenough 07.05.24 at 2:19 pm
To avoid repetition, I will simply say I mostly agree with Alex SL’s prediction. To justify my comment, I will however note the following
In 2019, approximately 10.2 million people voted for Corbyn; in 2024, approximately 9.7 million people voted for Starmer. This represents a decrease of ca. half a million voters.
My prediction: the former election will continue to be used as a justification that the UK rejects left-wing politics, while the latter will be held up as a demonstration that centrist neoliberal politics are overwhelmingly popular by comparison.
Chris Armstrong 07.05.24 at 3:51 pm
The Labour election campaign was often (and appropriately) described as a Ming Vase strategy: no surprises, avoid controversies, just don’t drop the damned thing. Since that worked quite well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by Starmer’s victory speech (which was full of references to service, decency, and competence but otherwise largely devoid of content), or by the ministerial appointments that are happening today (which seem to involve pretty much all of his ‘shadow ministers for x’ simply dropping the ‘shadow’ part). I’m beginning to wonder if Keir lays out tomorrow’s shoes and tie before going to bed.
Cheez Whiz 07.05.24 at 4:59 pm
Alex SL’s prediction is essentially Nigel Farage’s plan to become PM in 2029.
brian 07.05.24 at 5:38 pm
Short version. Both parties subscribe to the same bullocks about government spending with a model that has nothing to do with reality. Loans create money. Money is not a fixed amount. If economists ran physics we would still believe that heavy things fall faster, and there are 4 elements, earth, air, fire, and water.
Per Steve Keen:
The root problem, as I noted in my previous post (Substack;Patreon), is that both parties—and almost all of the bureaucracy, the media, and economic thinktanks, as a reader pointed out—have Neoliberalism “embedded in them”. They hold the belief, derived from supply and demand analysis, that the government borrows from the private sector when it runs a deficit, and that, therefore, a deficit reduces total savings.”
Subscribe to Steve’s Patreon account.
Harry 07.05.24 at 6:50 pm
The highly efficient use of tactical voting between Labour and LibDem supporters that AlexSL mentions, tacitly encouraged by both party leaderships. depends on each side feeling confident in the probability that the other side will play ball, and being very well-informed about which party is more likely to beat the Tories in your seat, which voters were. My guess is that conditions for efficient tactical voting will still be favourable in 2029. There’s a huge incentive for the right to reach a similar accommodation… (which of course might consist in an effective merger). Whether Labour can win again in 2029 depends very much on how vicious the internecine conflict within the right is, and how long it lasts.
Unless they get lucky with growth. If they do, they’ll probably be ok, and will spend much more than the Tories would, and more effectively, on public services.
Their ultra-cautious offer looks ludicrous now, and has done for a while. They could probably have afforded to commit to raising income taxes some. But nobody thought they even had a chance of winning this election 3 1/2 years ago, and even after Truss they couldn’t have anticipated that Sunak would be quite so useless, and even at the beginning of this election everybody assumed that the polls would narrow somewhat; Farage’s entry into the election was a surprise (without which we’d be looking at a small majority at best) and although everyone knew Sunak wouldn’t be a great campaigner did anyone really anticipate him being quite this awful?
“I’m beginning to wonder if Keir lays out tomorrow’s shoes and tie before going to bed”
Of course he does. And so he should. Don’t we all? (I mean I don’t exactly but that’s because my clothes are all the same so no choices have to be made).
Seekonk 07.05.24 at 6:55 pm
“Starmer’s victory speech was … largely devoid of content”
Since the Reagan-Thatcher era, UK Labour, like US Dems, have pretty much accepted the neoliberal view that economic policy should be made by private actors (i.e., rich people), not by government. I expect do-nothing obfuscation and obscurantism from Starmer. I fear that he will open the door to a Farage/Trump-like successor.
engels 07.05.24 at 7:02 pm
“Getting BlackRock to rebuild Britain”
https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1806361514820907238
engels 07.05.24 at 7:39 pm
Btw since this is a thread about Alex’s prediction, I broadly agree—I think I might have advanced something similar when CT was anointing Macron in 2017 (it gives me pleasure etc)—however I dissent from the implication that the centre-“left” is the stationary moment of the neoliberal ratchet: in Britain among other innovations they marketised HE and created the monstrous “work capability assessment” system the Tories would later use to massacre large numbers of the disabled (ofc they also joined neoconservative US in massacring millions of Iraqis and destabilised the surrounding region but that’s water under the bridge now apart from the waves of refugees and the breakdown of a law-governed international order).
Barry 07.05.24 at 11:04 pm
“That first part seems key: a lot of the media and social media seem to focus on the parliamentary seats when Labour only convinced one in three voters. ”
This is the same phase as we see on the Yank side of the pond.
The Tories, and their auxillary wing in the ‘liberal’ mass media will not deny the legitimacy of any election which the right lost. They will totally ignore the elections that the right won, and the fact that the Tories ruled the UK for 14 years under the same system.
From what I’ve heard, the Tories lost more seats due to the Reform Wing running as a separate party, but they’ll use that lost as further denial.
engels 07.06.24 at 12:36 am
Bbtw having encountered an unusually broad sample of British society today (mostly not far-leftists) I have to say the Guardian opinion section’s K-pop concert audience mood seems unrepresentative to put it mildly. Did they all do too many pills at Glasto?
steven t johnson 07.06.24 at 1:57 am
Don’t know enough about UK to really weigh in, but I am puzzled at the thought Sir Keir Starmer is insincere in aping Tony Blair’s push to the right. A knighthood is almost an official certification these goods are past their sell by date, no?
Chris Armstrong 07.06.24 at 8:20 am
Steven, Starmer did a job (he was the chief prosecutor for England and Wales) which is automatically rewarded with a knighthood when you finish. Of course, he could have refused it, and I wonder if he sometimes wishes he had – it does make him look conservative and establishment, and people like Boris Johnson sometimes mocked him for it (while dishing out knighthoods to his friends).
Sam 07.06.24 at 12:47 pm
I don’t think he’ll tack left, because the faction from which he derives most of his support hates the left, and enjoys “punching left”. Also, when has a Labour government in power ever governed to the left of its campaign?
They’re more likely to follow Farage all the way to the right – at least on issues like immigration.
engels 07.06.24 at 1:13 pm
The Blair comparisons don’t do justice to Starmer’s factionalism and extreme intolerance to even the moderate left.
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/06/keirll-fix-it
Chris Bertram 07.06.24 at 1:13 pm
Much talk about Labour’s vote share and how Starmer has actually done no better than Corbyn etc. But, Corbyn’s Labour vote was incredibly inefficient, piling up votes in the cities among young people and ethnic minorities and losing contests in post-industrial towns and the so-called “red wall”. Starmer has chosen to dump the city voters in order to chase the peripheral ones, betting correctly that Labour would retain enough in the cities to edge contests there and gain enough on the periphery to win those one too by a bit. BUT, the Bristol Greens (won one seat, 2nd in three) and the Gaza independents show the dangers Labour now faces in the cities if Labour annoys people there (as it will) and the Faragists loom on the periphery. So a Labour government, even with a large majority, trying to governm Macron-style from the centre, faces the prospect of a French-style polarisation, losing votes to the left in the cities and the far-right on the edges.
engels 07.06.24 at 2:05 pm
This is good on the precarity of Starmer’s en marche. Nice vase you got there…
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/majority-without-a-mandate
RobinM 07.06.24 at 2:12 pm
I take Chris Bertram’s point, that Starmer seems to have successfully played the existing electoral system, just as, say, Trump or Biden will again successfully play the US Electoral College system. But that will not quieten down the criticisms that these systems are in some sense undemocratic and unfair. Indeed, there is already quite a lot being said about the disparity in Britain between the partisan proportions of the votes cast and the partisan distribution of seats in the H of C, a related consequence of the electoral system. And there must surely be some disquiet somewhere about the decline in turnout—though that’s surely something some (some even in the Labour Party) will be celebrating as a sign that ‘the wrong sort of people’ are disengaging from even a minimal political role.
engels 07.06.24 at 7:59 pm
Meet the shad cab:
Reeves: ‘There’s not a huge amount of money’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cldyeykzp33o
Life on benefits will not be an option under Labour, says Liz Kendall
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/04/life-on-benefits-under-labour-will-not-be-an-option-says-liz-kendall
Labour would ‘hold the door open’ for private sector in NHS, says Wes Streeting
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-private-sector-nhs-wes-streeting-2760505
Two-fifths of Starmer’s cabinet have received funds from pro-Israel groups, Declassified UK finds
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/two-fifths-starmers-cabinet-have-been-funded-pro-israel-lobbyists-declassified-uk
engels 07.07.24 at 2:15 am
Er cabinet. I forgot Jacqui Smith:
How Jacqui Smith racked up £157,000 in expenses claims (including £2,500 for her husband the porn film fan)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1165985/How-Jacqui-Smith-racked-157-000-expenses-claims-including-2-500-husband-porn-film-fan.html
John Q 07.07.24 at 10:02 am
“So a Labour government, even with a large majority, trying to governm Macron-style from the centre, faces the prospect of a French-style polarisation, losing votes to the left in the cities and the far-right on the edges.’
I’ve been making this general argument for ages now
https://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system/
In this context, what we need to hope for is to keep Trumpist support low enough that they can be beaten by a coalition of soft neoliberals and the left, and that this coalition should actually form. Given the irrelevance of neoliberalism to the actual problems we face, this coalition should eventually be dominated by the left
novakant 07.07.24 at 11:32 am
I will grant myself the privilege of being relieved that the nasty and dangerous party has lost power. Just looking at the evaluation of the environmental policies of the parties gives me some relief and hopefully the Lib Dem and Green Party successes add a little bit of pressure in that regard. The Tories were, unsurprisingly, absolutely terrible when it came to the environment.
While unfortunately neither Labour nor the Tories will let go of FPTP out of self interest, it seems that despite the odds we are on the way to a multi-party democracy, which is a good thing.
I share Chris’ and John’s concerns, but I’m sure Starmer is aware of this as well.
Generally it might be good to remember Bismarck’s definition of “politics as the art of the possible”.
steven t johnson 07.07.24 at 2:44 pm
RobinM@27 Was there any such talk about the inherent unfairness of FPTP when the Tories got a lopsided number of seats before?
As I understand it, the Bush people had prepared a campaign against the Electoral College to be undertaken if Gore had won the EC and lost the popular vote. If Biden carries the EC this fall by slim majorities in a number of states but Trump is reported a massively lopsided majorities from Red States, resulting in his first winning vote, I am somehow certain the Trumpers would instantly reverse their 2016 position that only the EC counts.
In other words, is this what is going on with “a lot being said…?”
engels 07.07.24 at 4:20 pm
Was there any such talk about the inherent unfairness of FPTP when the Tories got a lopsided number of seats before?
Yes: the Lib Dems never stopped complaining about it (until now?)
RobinM 07.07.24 at 6:05 pm
While I don’t doubt, Steven @ 32, that there are those who respond to FPTP or the EC depending on whether it favours or disfavours their partisan wishes at this or that election, there are surely some people who take a rather less partisan position on these matters.
Harry 07.07.24 at 6:15 pm
I think that the Labour Party conference has regularly considered resolutions in favour of some unspecified form of PR, and i thought that a resolution passed at the 2023 conference, no? Its very popular with Labour members, and with some unions (who believe, rightly or wrongly, that it would strengthen the left). The vulnerability of Labour’s majority (given its low share of the vote, and its dependence on the strong performance of Reform) give them a reason to support PR. But even if they strongly supported it, its hard to make it a priority given everything they’ve inherited and the indifference of voters to constitutional issues. The last time electoral reform was considered was in 2011 when a national referendum on replacing FPTP with AV (not really a form of PR) was rejected decisively.
Daragh McDowell 07.07.24 at 7:14 pm
So a couple of thoughts on what was a very weird election –
1) Labour’s vote share – I go back and forth on how significant the 34% figure is. I’m a PR advocate because FPTP is democratically indefensible, but I’m also not sure I agree with Chris Bertram’s analysis about what happened with those missing votes. Basically this election result was nailed on from the start – a lot of the Labour ‘excess’ vote took the opportunity to give a free kick to Starmer and might reasonably be expected to return home when things tighten up a bit. In this sense its a little like the 2017 election – there was a widespread (correct) assumption that Corbyn couldn’t possibly become PM so it was safe to vote Labour to kick May for her terrible campaign. When it was an actual choice, a not terribly popular Tory leader (Johnson) was able to run a pretty mediocre campaign with a simple offer and absolutely bury Labour. I don’t think the Tories are going to suddenly discover that tacking endlessly rightward was a bad strategy, and will make someone like Badenoch or Braverman leader. That is, someone who doesn’t fix the competence problem and will conclude that trans issues and turning the racism dial rightward is the way to win.
In other words I think the odds of ten years of Starmer are pretty solid (followed by Phillipson, Reeves, Nandy or some other ambitious female Labour MP not yet identified as a potential leader). The key take away is that under the system as it is Starmer took Labour from an epochal defeat to a massive majority in five years, which should lead to the conclusion that he and his team are indeed Very Good at Politics, but I suspect won’t. The “broad but shallow” mandate could also be good from a party management perspective if handled skilfully – If Labour is going to build on this result its going to have to deliver results, particularly in planning reform and housebuilding. Being able to tell a bunch of possibly recalcitrant MPs on thin majorities that their hopes of a second term depend on a rising tide lifting all boats is probably a more effective strategy than “2024 isn’t going to happen again, so just accept you’re here for five years”, which is what was was going to be the case when Labour was expected to win over 40% and 450+ seats.
2) Labour has been in power for less than 72 hours but so far the signs are good. Timpson, in particular, is the kind of ministerial appointment that should be taken as evidence that Starmer is more progressive than the popular caricature suggests. Also – rail renationalisation. Great! Engaging with the mayoralties and devolved administrations is also a sign that regional development is probably going to get more constructive and practical attention rather than vague bullshit about ‘levelling up’. Giving Burnham the resources to pursue development projects in Manchester is much more likely under Labour for political reasons and likely to be both effective and popular. Above all we can be very confident Starmer will have zero time for the idea that he should be bound by things he said in the election campaign if they prevent him from doing things that will improve the state of the country in government. This is also good.
3) The Tories probably got saved from outright oblivion by Nigel Farage indulging in a bit of ill-timed Putin-snuggling at the end of the campaign. That said, for building up Reform going forward the five seat caucus is probably the perfect result for them. If Farage had found himself at the head of 13 MPs, of whom roughly half couldn’t be trusted not to show up to parliament in a replica SS uniform, he would have been spending all of his time trying to wrangle a parliamentary party and absolutely hating it. As it stands, Farage, Anderson, Tice and the other two are a tight enough unit that they can maintain discipline and maybe even avoid having to vote on controversial bills while also benefitting from a lot more short money. That said, they’ll all be subject to declarations of interest which will be very, very funny when Farage fills out his.
4) The Tories themselves look like they’re going to straight up ignore the fact that they lost dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats and fool themselves that if they can just add Reform’s vote to their own everything will be hunky dory. This is an idiotic strategy particularly given Reform’s vote is probably a lot more heterogenous than just ‘pissed off right-wing Tories’ and can’t be trusted to move over en masse. They’re in a bad position in that if they DO try something like merging with Reform they’ll just add to the Lib Dem tally, but if they don’t its not clear where their niche in the market is. Oh dear what a pity never mind.
5) The left-wing is jubilant due to the success of the Greens, Gaza independents and Jeremy Corbyn. I think this is probably short sighted. I have no notion of the politics of the Gaza independents who were elected but will note that one who narrowly wasn’t is Akhmed Yakoob, whose policy views on Israel-Palestine may appeal to Owen Jones, but whose social views are unlikely to do the same. The Telegraph shrieking about sectarianism is clearly sotto voce racism but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Gaza block voter base isn’t a million miles away from Reform’s in terms of basic values and priorities, minus the white-power racism.
Similarly, the Novara media types seem to have convinced themselves that the Green party is the new vanguard of democratic-socialism without considering that its national electoral coalition might be more complicated than that. For every Bristol student progressive in there there is also a country-side turbo-NIMBY – call them Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Greens.
What happens to Jeremy Corbyn in all of this is intriguing. Personally, I think it speaks to the immense strategic short-sightedness of the UK left that they poured significant resources into making him an irrelevant backbencher for largely sentimental reasons when they could have been doing something politically useful, but you won’t see me complaining. I could see him trying to form some kind of left-wing ‘popular front’ on the backbenches with the Greens and the Gaza independents which, for the reasons outlined above, would probably collapse in on itself extremely quickly. As I’m always in need of a good laugh and it is for the good of the country that Corbyn’s energies be diverted into the least harmful avenue available to them I hope this happens.
6) The “Starmer as Macron, Handmaiden to the Far Right” argument: Well for one thing, its just an exit poll but it looks like Macron’s gamble seems to have paid off, so I dunno, maybe the people who have continually failed to gain political power may want to give a bit more credit to the people who have, and perhaps even try to understand why.
As a nudge in that direction – the French left made a deeply unpleasant egotistical narcissist with terrible politics and a cult-like following that repels most voters its standard bearer in the presidential elections. In the current legislative elections it made him a key figure in its coalition and a likely candidate for prime minister. France Insoumise is now projected to come behind Macron’s Renaissance.
While Jeremy Corbyn differs from Melenchon in that the former’s anti-semitism is more down to a kind of passive indifference rather than the latter’s active hostility, both men continually and reliably cap the ambitions of the political forces they affiliate with due to their manifest unsuitability for political leadership.
The Corbyn cultists doing their absolute best to preserve Corbyn’s potential to be a challenger to Starmer from the left exponentially increases the chances of that project failing. The Tories are likely to make a similar, inverse mistake on the right flank.
Obviously Starmerism is going to live and die on economic results, which will in large part be shaped by events beyond his or any UK politicians control (a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan first among them). But the signs so far that while his coalition may be narrow and vulnerable his opponents on both sides are likely to simply vacate the field.
engels 07.07.24 at 8:16 pm
This is more like it
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-pm-attal-i-will-hand-my-resignation-monday-morning-2024-07-07/
John Q 07.07.24 at 9:26 pm
Big mistake of Libdems in 2010 was to agree to a referendum on AV. They should have demanded legislation as a condition of coalition.
Labour should legislate AV, but won’t. They prefer taking turns with the Tories to anything likely to produce leftish minority governments or coalitions.
engels 07.07.24 at 9:37 pm
it looks like Macron’s gamble seems to have paid off, so I dunno, maybe the people who have continually failed to gain political power may want to give a bit more credit to the people who have, and perhaps even try to understand why. As a nudge in that direction – the French left made a deeply unpleasant egotistical narcissist with terrible politics and a cult-like following that repels most voters it’s standard bearer… France Insoumise is now projected to come behind Macron’s Renaissance.
Check your Bloomberg terminal.
Daragh McDowell 07.07.24 at 10:06 pm
@John Q
Agree on the legislation but I don’t think the Tories would have worn it and opens up the path to it being legislated away. And ANY party that gets in under FPTP is going to have a strong incentive not to reform. The idea that there’s a permanent progressive majority in the UK is a myth, and you’d get plenty of right wing governance under PR too.
Alex SL 07.07.24 at 10:41 pm
Daragh McDowell,
I find your analysis rather odd, and it seems all designed around a distaste of Corbyn. Don’t get me wrong, despite leaning towards them myself I don’t claim that Corbyn’s economic policies appeal to >50% of the electorate, but it seems rather obvious that the 2017 and 2019 elections were about Brexit, not about the qualities of the party leaders, except those of Johnson only to the degree that he promised to get Brexit done easily and without downsides, which appealed to people after three years of gridlock.
And regarding whether the Tories will fail if they continue tending right, see Meloni and Le Pen plus the UK system allowing somebody like that to win an absolute majority with 30% and change, as we just saw. Unless one assumes the UK electorate is uniquely immune to anti-immigration propaganda and anti-intellectual grievance (ahem, Brexit, anybody?), a far-right government is much easier to establish in the UK than in continental Europe. Case in point, France with its two-round voting system that allows candidates to back down as they just did; that couldn’t happen in the UK.
In the end, the fundamental problem with the centrism espoused by the likes of Scholz, Albanese, Biden, and Starmer is that it fails to grasp that radical change is a matter of societal survival. Quite apart from inequality and the growing concentration of power in the hands of a few billionaires, we needed to get to net zero yesterday unless one day we want the population of Denmark (and Bangladesh, and Florida…) to starve in refugee camps in surrounding areas, and that won’t happen if we leave things largely to the market.
And, what engels wrote. Amusing to read a comment saying that Melenchon is poison, google “french elections”, and find that his alliance has won the most seats… polarisation, instability, and wild swings are the flavour of our times, as voters flail around trying to find somebody who can get a handle on our growing number of permacrises.
J-D 07.08.24 at 1:12 am
Insisting on AV without a referendum would clearly have been more in line with considerations of Lib Dem partisan advantage, but the proposal for a referendum wouldn’t have been as easy for them to resist with arguments consistent with their stated principles. Obviously AV would give the Lib Dems more seats (and probably even more influence even for the same number of seats, or votes), but if you are arguing ‘AV will do a better job of giving the voters the Parliament they actually want’ then it’s difficult to consistently resist the argument that the voters should be allowed to say whether they actually want AV. (Why the voters did reject AV I don’t know–I mean, there must have been more than one reason why people voted the way they did, and I could hazard a guess at what some of those reasons might have been, but I have no idea which were the most important in swaying the aggregate result.)
Having mentioned considerations of principle, though, I add that there was a different option open to the Lib Dems in 2010 which would have combined consistent defensibility on principle with partisan advantage: they could have announced that their purpose was to represent in Parliament the principles for which they stood and which their voters had endorsed, not make deals with other parties, and that in the Commons they would take each vote on its merits. The predictable consequence (not that they would have had to say this) would have been the formation of a minority Conservative government. In some ways, without the constraining presence of any Lib Dem ministers, that government might have been worse than the actual Coalition government, but on the other hand their legislative agenda would almost certainly have been significantly constrained by their prccarity of their position in the Commons. Be that as it may, the outcome would almost certainly have been more to the future advantage of the Lib Dems as a party, compared to the actuality in which they still have not recovered from the damage that clown Nick Clegg did to them. (I am aware that they have just done well in terms of seats won in the Commons, but my point is confirmed by looking at the vote share. In ten elections from 1974 to 2010, the lowest vote share for the Lib Dems or their predecessors was 13.8% for the Liberals in 1979; in four elections from 2010 to 2024 it’s never been that high again. The Lib Dems now, nine years since the coalition came to an end, are still less popular with the voters than David Steel’s Liberals in 1979.)
John Q 07.08.24 at 5:11 am
“the proposal for a referendum wouldn’t have been as easy for them to resist with arguments consistent with their stated principles. ”
What principles are these? There’s no general tradition of making decisions by referendum in the UK. In 2019, the LibDems ran on a promise to rejoin the EU without a second referendum.
Unless they are regular enough that people get used to the idea, as in Switzerland and some US states, referendums are a terrible way of deciding anything, with people voting mainly out of fear or the desire to give someone a kicking.
J-D 07.08.24 at 5:35 am
Maybe I buried my point in my comment, so I’ll repeat just that part:
The underlying principle, to be even more explicit, is that the voters should get what they want.
J-D 07.08.24 at 5:38 am
I am making no general suggestion about the merits (or demerits) of referendums as a mechanism; I’m just saying that once the Conservatives had proposed a referendum it would have been difficult for the Lib Dems to resist the proposal (even if, privately, they agreed with your reasons for thinking that referendums are a terrible idea).