Two thirds of constituencies in Britain are small town or rural Leave seats.
Labour are kidding themselves if they think the path back to victory is through the commuter belt and bigger cities. They aren't even second in much of the commuter towns. The white working class have a massive disproportionate say in our system of fptp seats, like it or not.
Who knows how the culture war will wage over the next 5 years?
Anyway, on to other matters and the Irish GE scheduled for February 7th.
Last time Fine Gael (FG) won 50 seats on 25.5% of the vote with Fianna Fail (FF) winning 44 seats on 23.3% and Sinn Fein (SF) winning 23 seats on 13.8%.
2016 marked a comeback of sorts for FF after its disastrous 2011 result but it was still a long way below its traditional vote share while it was a poor result for Enda Kenny and FG losing a big share of its 2011 vote.
The last poll I showed had FF and FG level on 27%, SF on 20%, Labour and the Greens on 6% and the rest around the 1-3% mark.
I assume and presume neither FF nor FG would work with SF but if that's so coalition building ain't going to be easy on these numbers.
The question is whether Varadkar is in a better position with the smaller parties to build a Government than Martin.
Looking at some polling elsewhere, fascinating to see the Social Democrats in BOTH Germany and Austria collapsing to fourth place with the Greens now second in both countries.
Hamburg votes on February 23rd and the latest Infomap poll shows the SPD and Greens tied on 29% - that's a 16% swing to the Greens from the last state election. The other parties aren't much changed from their 2015 numbers.
Mr. Stodge, do you think that'll happen with or without a referendum?
I suspect there will be a referendum but the Conservative Party will pragmatically decide it is in our best interests to be back in the EU and that will be the basis of the "YES" vote to rejoin.
This isn't going to happen now or in even 10-20 years but beyond that think it entirely feasible,
I can't see Stephen Timms on there but I imagine he would be backing Starmer. Timms scraped home last month by 33,176 so East Ham has slid down to be only the 14th or 15th safest Labour seat.
Both the Conservatives and LDs improved by just shy of 3% which wasn't enough to save the LD deposit while the Conservative vote share was the highest since 2010 but still down on 2001. TBP polled 2%, the Green 1.6% and Kamran Malik got 250 votes (0.5%).
The swing from Labour to Conservative (and indeed from Labour to LD) was 4.8%.
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It gives very little confidence that this will not continue to happen on a regular basis.
Last time Fine Gael (FG) won 50 seats on 25.5% of the vote with Fianna Fail (FF) winning 44 seats on 23.3% and Sinn Fein (SF) winning 23 seats on 13.8%.
2016 marked a comeback of sorts for FF after its disastrous 2011 result but it was still a long way below its traditional vote share while it was a poor result for Enda Kenny and FG losing a big share of its 2011 vote.
The last poll I showed had FF and FG level on 27%, SF on 20%, Labour and the Greens on 6% and the rest around the 1-3% mark.
I assume and presume neither FF nor FG would work with SF but if that's so coalition building ain't going to be easy on these numbers.
The question is whether Varadkar is in a better position with the smaller parties to build a Government than Martin.
Looking at some polling elsewhere, fascinating to see the Social Democrats in BOTH Germany and Austria collapsing to fourth place with the Greens now second in both countries.
Hamburg votes on February 23rd and the latest Infomap poll shows the SPD and Greens tied on 29% - that's a 16% swing to the Greens from the last state election. The other parties aren't much changed from their 2015 numbers.
https://twitter.com/CLPNominations/status/1216736847461830656
This isn't going to happen now or in even 10-20 years but beyond that think it entirely feasible,
Both the Conservatives and LDs improved by just shy of 3% which wasn't enough to save the LD deposit while the Conservative vote share was the highest since 2010 but still down on 2001. TBP polled 2%, the Green 1.6% and Kamran Malik got 250 votes (0.5%).
The swing from Labour to Conservative (and indeed from Labour to LD) was 4.8%.