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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   1577 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 23, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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And they're off. Rishi Sunak has called a (technically early) General Election in the UK, Polling Day is 4th July. Effortpost to follow. Feel free to post questions you want me to cover.

Does Labour have a chance?

That is an easy one - Labour are going to win in a landslide. A 1997-scale landslide (Tony Blair's Labour got 43% of the vote and 418 seats out of 659, with John Major's Tories on 31% and 165 seats) would be a good result for the Tories relative to polling or public/media expectations. A Canada-style wipeout with the Conservatives not winning enough seats to fully staff the opposition front bench is definitely a possibility, though not a likely one.

Labour are 20-25% ahead in opinion polls vs. 15-20% at this stage in the 1997 campaign, and arguably that difference is bigger than it looks because the pollsters changed their methodology after favouring Labour in 1992 and 1997.

The "shy right-wing populist" vote that allowed Brexit and Trump to dramatically outperform polls isn't going to save the Tories:

  • There were never enough of them to overcome a 20+ point poll lead
  • In the UK (less true in America) it isn't clear how many of them are still alive - age is the big demographic gap in UK politics (whereas race and education are in America), but for various reasons British Millenials are not moving right in middle age the way previous generations did.
  • The government has pissed off right-populist voters through general incompetence, public sector austerity, and talking tough on immigration while not doing anything about it. If these voters exist, they are going to vote Reform or stay home in disgust, not vote Conservative.

Thanks, I haven't been following British politics recently.

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