Boris falls into a mantrap
If there is truth in Harold Wilson’s adage that a week is a long time in politics, then two and a half years seems to be long enough to induce amnesia.
To call a general election in June 2017 proved to be a disastrous decision by Prime Minister Theresa May. The parliamentary majority won by David Cameron was lost through a decision based on opinion polls. What May failed to realise is that pollsters had been unable to access a representative cross-section of younger voters because younger voters do not engage with the media or forums inhabited by pollsters. The prediction of a landslide victory for the Conservatives proved completely wrong as the Labour Party gained over 40% of the vote, in defiance of every opinion poll.
Boris Johnson did not need to press for a general election. The withdrawal agreement he had negotiated was approved by 329 votes to 299 in the House of Commons. However, he became cornered by his own rhetoric and withdrew his bill when he could not secure its passage according to a timetable he had dictated.
When the opposition Labour Party withdrew its objections to a general election on 12th December, a more subtle premier might have wondered at what had caused a change in their thinking. A simple Commons majority was going to be enough to allow the election, and with the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party supporting the election, that majority was going to be achieved, but what caused the Labour leadership to become sanguine in their attitude?
The Labour Party is considerably stronger than the Conservative Party; with half a million members as opposed to the one hundred and fifty thousand people who belong to the Tory Party, it is three times as strong. More significantly, it has a much younger membership profile and a powerful grass-roots movement in the forty-thousand strong radical Momentum group.
The 2017 general election revealed that the Labour vote was much higher among younger voters: voters who neither watch television nor read newspapers; voters who are indifferent to opinion polls because no-one ever asks them how they think; voters who are reached through social media and peer groups.
A subtle prime minister would have pondered the wisdom of an election when his party is weak and elderly and when it is ill-equipped to reach the cohorts of the electorate among which it was heavily defeated in 2017. A subtle prime minister would have asked who was more likely to go out on a cold and dark December day, old age pensioners, or young people for whom 12th December is in the Christmas party season?
Seumas Milne, the director of strategy at the Labour Party, must be gleeful at the approaching poll. The 2017 election was a major success for him; if he achieves a similar success in 2019, when even the Conservative press are expressing doubts over Boris Johnson’s chances, then the prime minister will have fallen into a mantrap entirely of his own making.
I have not much feel for this GE. Well, beyond that the Scots will vote en mass for the SNP. NI will vote as usual with maybe a Green. Wales will have the usual city country split. Perhaps the LD will take a few from the Tories, or perhaps Plaid C might move east of the mountains.
I feel rather than believe that Labour is far far safer in the seats they now hold, and the belief that the Tories and Brexit will take seats is mere wishful thinking. But where they will lose it will be to the Greens and LibDems. And the Jewish swing due to antisemitism won’t matter for those seats have moved to the Tories with the increase of wealth in the areas, or rather the poor moving out.
It’s your area that might cause mayhem. With the Tory vote split the people just might return Labour and LibDems. This might also be true in the marginal farming areas too, like Cumbria. The rest, the Tory majority is just too large to overcome, and the same for Labour where they are ascendant.
But I have a feeling that things like the Tory MP’s laughing at Corbyn for wearing a green tie to commemorate those lost in Latimer Road when that tower went ablaze will push some who would never think of voting for anything other than Tory to staying at home. Call them the CofE, Dominic Greive section.
End numbers; I don’t really know. But if I was Johnson I beware of long grass. For while there has been a very vicious and vocal Leave segment. I feel there is a far far larger one where annoyance has been grinding since the vote.
I wonder why Austin and Woodcock were ever in the Labour Party. I can understand them suggesting voting for the Lib-Dems because they hate Corbyn but to suggest voting for the Tories is beyond me.