UK Politics
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Labour don't want to talk about Brexit because they're already on course to win the election by a landslide, so why do anything different to exactly what they're already doing? It's not about only getting one shot to get this right, it's just profound risk aversion. Labour's preferred outcome is for literally nothing to change in the political debate between today and election day.
Remember though that polling has shown for some time that, if a Rejoin referendum was held tomorrow, Rejoin would win comfortably. So Labour will be forced to change their approach on this when (probably sometime during the next parliament) the Lib Dems start getting more vocal on Rejoin, causing Labour to start bleeding votes to them - at which point the risk averse thing for Labour to do will now be to start talking about the issues that matter to the moderate pro-EU majority.
It'll be a repeat of what happened with the People's Vote campaign, where Labour failed to entertain the idea right up until the 2019 EU elections, where they finished 3rd behind the Lib Dems, losing even in solid-red Labour heartlands like Islington, which forced Labour to have to catch up with where Labour voters already were on this issue.
Are they? Do they have any major policies or plans at all, or are they just relying on “well at least we’re not the Tories, right?”
I realise I don’t read the news much any more (because it’s depressing AF), but I’ve not seen anything to make me think the morons that voted for Brexit, and then confirmed it by voting in Johnson would do anything different this time around. Sure, they’re turkeys voting for Christmas, but they’ve done it twice, why assume they’ll learn the error of their ways?
They've been polling around 20pts clear of the Tories for a long time. The Tories' numbers are hovering around the mid-20s, which is a level at which FPTP can lead to some really lop-sided outcomes. Some of the polls over the last year have even implied the Tories ending up the 3rd or 4th party in Westminster.
Well, I'll believe it when I see it. But please, just give me a minute to sit back and enjoy that mental image...
I'm afraid I'm a little sceptical of Labour winning. Not because I don't want them to win but because the voting in this country is fucked.
General election 2019, Boris got a "landslide" victory with "the largest ever vote for a single party" at 43% of the vote.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
The system is so fucked that Corbyn had 30% of the vote and still Labour lost 60 seats.
In 2015 the Tories kept power under Cameron with only 36% of the vote.
If a third of the population still think that Brexit has been a success, and you have to add the small handful of "always support Tory", then there may be still enough people in this place to keep them going because absolute numbers don't count, it's all about how well they are clustered.
Untill they are all kicked out, I don't know if I could believe it even if they announced that Labour has the majority of MPs.
Do you not looking at polling when you make statements like that? Labour have for some time been polling in the 40s, and the Tories polling in the 20s, and FPTP is brutal when you get that sort of polling differential.
If you take this week's latest YouGov poll (Lab 45%, Con 22%, Lib Dem 9%, etc) and plug it into Flavible, it gives a result of Lab 423 seats, Con 107, SNP 54, Lib Dem 40. This would represent a considerably worse defeat for the Conservatives than even 1997.
And I hope it is a massive defeat that takes them decades to recover.
However I have seen polling in the past election where May was going to get destroyed, where Brexit was unlikely, where Corbyn was going to be PM. A poll is just a poll.
Until we get the real numbers through I'm not going to hold my breath. This country has shown time and time again that we are great at picking the really stupid option.
I think we both agree that the opinion of the swing seats is a driving force of the Labour/Starmer narrative. Although Labour did not finish 3rd in the 2019 election, or am I missing something with "the people's vote".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48403131
This is what prompted Labour to finally endorse the People's Vote campaign in their 2019 general election manifesto.
I will read up on it, cheers. I am relatively new to looking at politics. The historical things I have to read up on.