Someone claimed on Twitter a couple of days ago that there have only been four previous occasions when the main opposition party in the UK has had such a big lead in the opinion polls. In practice that means since the 1940s, because polling wasn't around before that. The four occasions mentioned were -
* 1968-69, when Harold Wilson's Labour government was suffering a severe spell of mid-term unpopularity following the forced devaluation of the pound.
* 1990, when Mrs Thatcher was about to be dislodged due to the public's hatred of the poll tax.
* 1993-97, when John Major's government was in its prolonged death throes.
* 2008, at the lowest point for Gordon Brown.
It's not easy to double-check the claim that those are the only four periods on a par with the present day, but assuming it's right, the fascinating aspect of it is that only one of the four saw the opposition party sail through to an easy victory in the way that had been anticipated -
* By 1970, Wilson had somehow turned it around for Labour. He even called a snap general election a year earlier than he needed to, and was fully expected to win. The Tories under Edward Heath did claim a surprise victory in the end, but they had to come from behind to do it, which certainly wasn't what they had been expecting a year or two earlier.
* Labour's big poll lead evaporated as soon as Mrs Thatcher was replaced as Tory leader in November 1990. Thereafter, the polls still made the 1992 election look competitive - but the polls were wrong, and Labour suffered a crushing outright defeat.
* 1997 was the one occasion when it was plain sailing for the opposition, with Labour under Tony Blair winning the landslide that the polls had been pointing towards for several years.
* The Tories did end up in power after the 2010 election, but only courtesy of a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats. Gordon Brown clawed things back sufficiently that Labour could have stayed in power if the Lib Dems had backed them.
So all of that suggests next year's general election may not be the triumphal procession for Keir Starmer that both Labour and the media think. The Uxbridge by-election result would tend to support the theory that what is happening now is not akin to the mid-1990s, because it's almost unthinkable that the Tories would have won any by-election at all during the latter John Major period, irrespective of local circumstances. Otherwise intelligent people like Ian Dunt are spectacularly missing the point about the Uxbridge result, which they are dismissing as caused by a specific issue that only has resonance in a tiny number of constituencies. In reality, what the result showed is that voters are still giving the Tories a hearing if a potent enough wedge issue can be identified - and Ulez is not the only such potential issue out there.
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A way to look at it is whether Labour have ever won from being out of power and so far behind - the answer is that they have not.
ReplyDeleteA lot of that buffer is red wall though which I'm amazed intelligent Tories could believe really went conservative ideologically rather than "get Brexit done". No idea what will happen but without Brexit as a key issue, I don't see a lot of the north staying conservative next time.
DeleteI think Dunt’s right: in the Major years, there was no London mayor who could have given his fellow Labour such a hard time by enacting such a policy. “Things Can Only Get Better” rang true enough because it really was the final days of a decrepit and depraved Tory government that had totally lost its mojo, the media wanted them out, and Blair’s Labour was as-yet spotless.
ReplyDeleteI was only a teen back then, not yet old enough to vote, and I found the wall to wall obsession with Blair’s lot creepy and off putting, myself. But the public bought the narrative, big time, and in he swept.
Starmer is no Blair, though. He doesn’t have the same intensity of media control that his master had in his prime. Labour’s also in a deeper hole from 2019 than Kinnock left them in 1992. It’s possible they could fail, or even (horror!) be left to rely on the shrinking SNP. But I don’t expect it.
"in the Major years, there was no London mayor who could have given his fellow Labour such a hard time by enacting such a policy"
DeleteIt wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference. The Tories were so unpopular in the mid-90s, and Blair was so popular, that no amount of local difficulties would have stood in the way of a Tory defeat in any by-election anywhere in the UK. Dunt is wrong: Uxbridge is a significant warning sign for Labour, and it ought to be taken seriously.
I don't understand why your fundraiser is taking so long. Your commentary on polls is honest, genuine and having gigged as a statistician I can say the figures are well interpreted though I didn't do politics which is a bit different from surveying economic, manufacturing or financial stuff.
ReplyDeleteYou don't spin polls as some do to show how wonderful the SNP are - or Alba for that matter. You do the figures as is, and that's rare.
Anyways at last my tenner is in. And think of this; if the 66% of the SNP membership who have their doubts about Yousaf all chipped in a tenner you'd be a half millionaire!
In Selby, the result was something of a "classic mid term" one, however you could have knocked me down with a feather when the Uxbridge result came through as a Conservative hold.
ReplyDeleteThe current Labour predicament has a pre-GE '92 feel about it, and Starmer is most certainly not a patch on Blair in terms of oratory skill, media performance and general social awareness.