Psephology of GE15
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In an earlier article I explained how and why the Conservatives are set to win the upcoming General Election. Now their opinion poll lead is starting to open out, as I expected. So let’s take a further look at what is going on. (Highlighted text is links to further articles. Please click on these).
Yesterday’s Opinium poll: CONSERVATIVES 35%. LABOUR 33%. UKIP 15%. GREENS 7%. LIB DEMS 6%.
The General Election is really 650 separate, first past the post elections. In each of these the sitting MP should have a huge advantage . The overall national polls have to be deeply interpreted in order to see what they will produce on the ground.
In GE10 the Libdems received 23% of the vote, giving them 57 seats, they have lost nearly three quarters of their support by joining the coalition. As we approach the election the Libdems want to take credit for all the many coalition successes whilst disowning all the hard choices that had to be made. This is obviously a pack of lies and will lose them even more votes among those who are capable of independent thought. However GE15 will not see the Libdems wiped out. Most of the votes they lose will be in constituencies where they don’t have a standing MP. But they will still lose a chunk out of the 57. What is far more important for GE15 is where the 17% of voters who are disillusioned with them transfer their allegiance to.
UKIP are a disgrace, “A Bunch Of Fruitcakes, Loonies And Closet Racists” is very accurate indeed. They were the darlings of the BBC when it was thought that they were splitting the Conservative party. Now that the BBC have realised that Farage is taking far more Labour than Conservative votes they have turned against him. People try to buttonhole the various demographics that are attracted to UKIP, but the reality is that they share one unifying feature. UKIP supporters are uneducated. Let’s face it, they have to be. Closer to the election UKIP support will collapse as voters return to their roots and because their support is fairly evenly spread it won’t translate into as many seats as you would expect. In fact they will need to work hard to hold onto the two that they stole.
Labour are in a funny position. They are traditionally one of the two huge parties of Great Britain, with massive popular support among the working class and those sections of the middle class who have never worked in the real world. But now in Ed Miliband andEd Balls they have two utterly inept leaders who are very evidently totally unsuited for the jobs that they are after. Everyone with half a brain or more can see that they would do a lot of harm to all of us if they achieved power. So Labour are shedding a lot of voters. And they are moving over to UKIP, The Green Party and the SNP. In GE10 in Scotland Labour won 41 seats, Libdems 11, SNP 6 and Conservatives 1. Expect upheaval. Scotland has suddenly become very highly politicised and Labour are going to be the biggest losers.
Labour have tried to “weaponise” the NHS in the election. But the simple truth is that the NHS is far safer with the Conservatives. Also Labour have tried to politicise the removal of subsidies paid by taxpayers to finance bedroom squatters, but most people can see that this is fair. Likewise they are trying to make an issue out offoodbanks when any fool can see that free food is going to be popular. And finally, they are telling a lot of lies about austerity.
The problem the Conservatives have is that they took over the country immediately after Gordon Brown’s huge recession had shrunk the economy by 7% and have run the country whilst our largest trading partner, the EU, has been very badly depressed. Despite these impairments they have been a great economic success, growing the economy to be bigger than it was before Gordon Brown’s recession and reducing the government budget deficit by half in real terms. Whist doing this they have greatly increased personal tax allowances for the lower and middle paid,whilst hammering the rich really hard. Ever since 2010 George Osborne has been closing tax loopholes and making speeches that he would continue to do so. Recently Labour have cottoned on to this, but the truth is that they did nothing about it whilst in power.And many of the Labour front bench are major beneficiaries of these loopholes. The stink of their hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Which brings us to The Green Party. They portray an image of idyllic coexistence with nature where the land is verdant and we all live in cute Cotswold villages and hug trees. Nothing can be further from the truth. They are evil nutters who have not one, but two diseases. They are socialists to the left of Labour, fueled by their bitter envy, who believe in punishing success and rewarding failure. Their second disease is that they are Luddites who want to hammer our quality of life and take us back to the 17th century. No cogent, educated human being could possibly vote for them. Which explains why they are so popular with the young and uneducated. If they ever achieve any power in Britain it will be an unmitigated disaster.
But the reality of British politics that if the General Election was just in England then we would nearly always return a Conservative government. These elections are won and lost in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where there is a whole alphabet soup of political parties. The very good news is that Labour have been in power in the Welsh Assembly since 2011 and have made an immense mess of everything, as you would expect. So Labour can look forwards to losing a lot of Welsh votes in GE15 to add to the Scottish votes they have already lost. Labour and their fellow travelers traditionally have a poor foothold in Northern Ireland and this should continue. So for once Labour might lose the election in places where they have previously won.
I really cannot see the Conservatives losing GE15, the alternatives are all so unpalatable and self evidently bad for Britain that surely our population are clever enough to reject them. Let’s also hope that there is no coalition this time, so the Conservatives can do a proper job, unhindered by lefties of any flavour.
