According to election experts John Curtice, Stephen Fisher and Patrick English, the Brexit Party may have significantly cut the scale of Boris’s 2019 victory by standing candidates in the election. By modelling the behaviour of Labour Leavers elsewhere, they argue that in the absence of a Brexit party candidate, 70% would likely have turned to the Tories and 30% would have stuck with Labour, potentially winning the Tories 25 more seats. It is an interesting contention – if you accept the premise. Arguably we saw this in play during the Hartlepool by-election…
Though the Brexit Party may have unintentionally helped Labour, Farage unilaterally chose not to field candidates in seats with incumbent Tory MPs, resulting in Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab clinging on where they otherwise wouldn’t have. Curtice, Fisher and English’s book, The British General Election of 2019, was published yesterday.
This morning, Zarah Sultana accused the Conservatives of attempting to suppress working class votes with the introduction of voter ID laws. According to Sultana, low income voters overwhelming vote for Labour, so any such measure would have to be a deliberate political calculation on the part of the Tories. As Michael Gove immediately pointed out, however, that just isn’t true: low income voters are now more likely to vote Conservative than Labour. Introducing voter ID laws (irrespective of the other arguments against them) would not advantage the Tories as Sultana claims.
Guido made a similar point on Twitter soon after. As YouGov data from 2017 showed, class is no longer a reliable indicator of how people vote – that year, a middle class voter was just as likely to vote Conservative as a working class voter. The political axis of the country has shifted.
Sultana was having none of it, firing back with a graph which depicts ‘working-age voters by income‘, and appears to show that most voters earning less than £29,000 vote Labour. Conveniently ignoring all voters above 65, as though everyone above that age makes millions…
She had to ignore those voters, because otherwise her argument would fall apart. An extensive report by Matthew Goodwin and Oliver Heath for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) revealed just how far Labour has drifted from its traditional working class base:
“The Conservatives are now more popular with people on low incomes than high incomes. Labour is as popular with the wealthy as with those on low incomes…Low-income voters, who have been central to driving recent political change, played a central role in putting the Conservatives into power and Labour into opposition.”
In the 2019 election, the Tories scored a 15-point lead over Labour amongst people of all ages on low incomes. In fact, they’re actually more popular with working class voters than with the wealthy. The Conservatives aren’t the party of the rich, and Labour aren’t the party of the poor.
If Labour ever want to win another election, they need to understand all this. Judging by the latest polls, they’re a long way off…
The Electoral Commission has just released the final combined spending tally for the 2019 general election in December and European elections from the preceding May. No surprise to anyone that the Tories outspent rival parties to win that 80 seat majority. What was a surprise was that the Swinson led LibDems outspent the Labour Party to win only 11 Westminster seats at a cost of £14,426,931. That works out at £1,311,539 per seat…
Still better than the £5 million the Brexit Party spent for nil Westminster seats. Though you might think that was a good investment if you believe that it enabled a majority Tory government to “Get Brexit Done”…
Spending returns for those who spent over £250,000 at last year’s general election were due to be reported to the Electoral Commission in June. Due to the pandemic, the deadline was extended and reports are being released in batches. The first batch includes five parties and five non-party campaigners…
- Tories £16,486,696.62
- SNP £1,004,952.73
- Plaid Cymru £183,914.55
- The Independent Group for Change UK £29,556.52
- UKIP £8,761.00
The non-party campaigners released so far spent…
- Momentum Campaign (Services) £500,458.19
- Jeremy Hosking £484,248.00
- Led By Donkeys LTD £458,237.89
- Best for Britain £422,498.20
- Centrum Campaign Limited £199,581.42
Guido waits with bated breath to see Labour and the LibDems’ returns…
New figures released today by the Electoral Commission reveal how much dosh was sloshed out by non-party campaigners in the 2019 general election below the level of £250,000. Just two anti-Brexit groups spent almost £300,000, with ‘PV Media Hub Limited‘ spending £151,550 under the name of ‘Vote for a Final Say‘, and ‘Scientists for EU Ltd’ spending £124,340. Money well spent…
Other groups’ spending included:
- Working 4 UK Limited: £189,905
- Energy Networks Association Limited: £157,016
- Mainstream – The Campaign Against Extremism: £134,457
- Avaaz Campaigns UK: £122,558
- Make Votes Matter: £121,799
- Real Change Lab Limited: £120,488
- The League Against Cruel Sports: £107,569
- Campaign Against Corbynism: £106,081
Political parties and non-party campaigners that spent over £250,000 in the election submitted their spending returns last week. Guido looks forward to the data being published…
The LibDem’s general election internal post mortem is out and it is the usual tragi-comedy. Not quite as funny as the time after the 2015 general election, when they wrote to Lynton Crosby asking him to tell them how he crushed them…
It opens by saying 2019 was
A disastrous General Election year, many years in the making. To say that the outcome of the general election on 11 December 2019 was a bitter disappointment for the Liberal Democrats is a big understatement. We emerged with one seat fewer than we had achieved in 2017, the party leader Jo Swinson lost her seat…
The election was actually on 12 December. They can’t even get that detail correct in their review into what they got wrong.
The review concludes that their campaign was a disaster waiting to happen:
While decisions made in 2019 certainly frustrated our electoral prospects, the underlying lack of preparation is a bigger cause for concern. There was an opportunity for us to win more seats in 2019 but the main causes of that failure are the decisions made over the course of many years, before Brexit was even conceived.
Though Brexit was a key factor, the report reckons hardcore remainers and leavers were 25% of the population each. The party’s campaign therefore ignored the 50% of the population who just wanted the Brexit issue to go away and the pain to stop. Will they learn?
Come on down Layla…
