Labour members already want PR, it's specifically the leadership who fear a loss of control. For the Blue Labour types especially, PR would be a fate worse than death, as in any future government, they'd either be forced to share power with more socially liberal parties (Greens, Lib Dems, SNP and so on) or be a sad rump party of enablers for the resurgent right.
You can compare and contrast with the way Blair courted the Lib Dems in opposition but then firmly shut the door on electoral reform once he won a landslide. On the one hand, Blair's sort of centrism could have dominated British politics for a very long time under PR (or even more so under AV - see e.g. Australia, where Green voters are effectively an asset for Labor and the most middle-of-the-road party tends to win). On the other hand, Blair himself would never again have had the kind of power he wielded with a huge Labour majority (particularly pre-2003), so it was a bad deal for him personally.
Yes, but my point is that if this doesn't count as an “extinction-level event”, I don't know what does.
For the next three years, they have a unique opportunity in that they can see the extinction-level event has arrived but they are still in a position to do something about it.
Thanks Andy - I blame Google for the error - I googled "Charge of the Light Brigade" and looked in images and this was the best one that popped up. To be fair I didn't check its origins
It is damning that so much of this family voting behaviour seemed to go on. I myself saw a man shuffle what I assume was his wife over to the desk at the polling station. Right by each other, talking the whole time. Truly astonishing.
Just to point out an error in the table on Green councillors in places were second. The table says there are no councillors in the Tottenham seat, but there is. Following a by-election in St Ann's ward they hold one. Indeed in seats in the Haringey borough it's those wards they will go after, that's where they are strong. In the Hornsey seat they are probably only going for Harringey ward, but all the others it's the Lib Dems who are making the running. This means there's an outside chance of the council going NoC.
Would also add that while people are hyper-ventilating about the Greens that they could also lose some seats. Yes they'll win a lot in the urban areas but they could lose quite a few in suburban (Richmond) and rural areas (interesting to see what happens in their Suffolk held seat wards). Recent polling on favourability showed that there likeability figures had dropped since Zak became leader.
Jeremy is right about Suffolk. Adrian Ramsey’s win in Waveney Valley and the Greens’ County Council seats are largely on the basis of disaffected Tory nimbies - many of them will stay at home now that Zack is reinventing the Greens as a Socialist Party
I live in Burnage, and I think the Greens only won here on the back of Hannah Spencer’s personal credibility and likeability. If they’d put up the usual middle-class, out-of-touch Green candidate instead, they wouldn’t have stood much of a chance.
The Greens current policies read like the musings of a utopian teenager who’s just discovered Marx theory. Like Reform at it's opposite end, the Greens seems far more comfortable with slogans than actual substance. Whether it’s Zack Polanski's inability to understand basic economics on the 'Rest is politics' podcast, unserious, wildly unpopular talk about open borders or simplistic “tax the rich and everything fixes itself” vibes, or culture-war positions delivered as if they require no scrutiny, or hold no nuance, such as the way they won't even allow their own members to hold gender critical THOUGHTS.
If anyone is genuinely backing Green on the policies alone (in their current form), they might want to give their head a wobble...
I've recently been reading about the 1981 Crosby by-election which was won by the SDP at a canter. Cue many stories about how the two party system was broken, no Tory/Labour seat safe etc etc. Remind me again what happened to the SDP? And neither the Plaid and SNP by-elections in 1966/67 led to a permanent upswing in their fortunes. In the longterm the Greens triumph may not mean very much. More important, as Rob suggests, will be the local elections. Which is odd, as Reform UK has discovered in Kent and elsewhere, when councils are now largerly no more than agents for central government.
"neither the Plaid and SNP by-elections in 1966/67 led to a permanent upswing in their fortunes"
I think that's a misunderstanding of how the first past the post electoral system has played out in the increasingly multi-party nature of Westminster elections in Scotland. There's a tendency to still see everything in terms of the "two-party swing" concept developed by David Butler after 1945 when Tory and Labour held over 80% of votes in all three parts of Great Britain. The SNP were founded in the 1930s and won an unusual Westminster by-election in the electoral truce of wartime 1945, but failed to win any further seats for over 20 years though never really disappeared (unlike the Common Wealth or ILP parties who also won such by-elections but largely disappeared soon after). After Ewing's by-election victory in Hamilton in 1967 however they pivoted to becoming a permanent and significant feature of Scottish politics, winning enough seats to have influence in a hung parliament in 1974 and gaining another sensational by-election victory in Govan in 1988. Even in 1992 when they only won 3 Westminster seats they had 21.5% of the vote, more than the LibDems in what had become something more akin to four-party politics by then. Since the rise of the Scottish Parliament, voters in Scotland have understood the differences between elections (and electoral sytems) - you only have to look at the dramatically different outcomes of the 2010 UK general election and the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections to see that (less than 12 months apart and at the time with largely the same electorate, though that is no longer the case).
Similar to how some people strangely think Keir Starmer's Labour was more popular than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, when they actually got 1 million votes less, the movements in votes and the movements in Westminster seats are very different things.
At the risk of mimicing Rachel Cunliffe (who before the last general election told viewers of BBC "Politics Live" that she lived in Jereny Corbyn's constituency, that he wasn't a particularly active local MP, that he had little of a personal vote, and would flop in the general election) my personal experience of the Greens in Leyton & Wanstead isn't of a party expecting to make many gains.
I live in a Redbridge ward which was once very safe for the Tories but now has three Labour councillors with big majorities. True to the criticism of both the Tories and Labour, we do only hear from these parties in the lead up of an election, but at least I have already had a pretty good local election leaflet from the Tories, and the same leaflet has gone out in the adjacent (now Labour) ward, but there's no evidence of any activity from the Greens.
I cannot comment on what might happen in Leyton (in Waltham Forest), and of course if there is a big enough surge for the Greens they may win seats in both London boroughs, but I think Redbridge is more likely to see independents triumphing, bearing in mind the bulk of the seats are not in Leyton & Wanstead but in Ilford North and Ilford South.
If the data tell the story, the Greens are now the Intifada party .. selling their soul to the devil ..
"2024 General Election (official, certified results) The Greens won 4 seats and received 6.8% of the national vote. That 6.8% is the last official, nationwide, certified vote share.
How long until Labour finally decide to push the big red nuclear button labelled “Proportional Representation”? They are running out of time to do so.
Labour don’t want to give up their position as one of the two big parties which can win a majority at Westminster on a minority of the vote.
Under PR, they’d just be one of many parties.
They’d need an extinction level event to move on this, but then they might not be in a position to do anything about it.
Labour members already want PR, it's specifically the leadership who fear a loss of control. For the Blue Labour types especially, PR would be a fate worse than death, as in any future government, they'd either be forced to share power with more socially liberal parties (Greens, Lib Dems, SNP and so on) or be a sad rump party of enablers for the resurgent right.
You can compare and contrast with the way Blair courted the Lib Dems in opposition but then firmly shut the door on electoral reform once he won a landslide. On the one hand, Blair's sort of centrism could have dominated British politics for a very long time under PR (or even more so under AV - see e.g. Australia, where Green voters are effectively an asset for Labor and the most middle-of-the-road party tends to win). On the other hand, Blair himself would never again have had the kind of power he wielded with a huge Labour majority (particularly pre-2003), so it was a bad deal for him personally.
I should have put Labour leadership as I was aware that many Labour local parties had a different view on PR.
Yes, but my point is that if this doesn't count as an “extinction-level event”, I don't know what does.
For the next three years, they have a unique opportunity in that they can see the extinction-level event has arrived but they are still in a position to do something about it.
The idea that keor starmer os actually capable of passing legislation is laughable. He's too busy flying off to other countries
A very good read as usual, thank you.
A teeny point...the cavalry picture is of the Scots Greys at Waterloo, not the Light Brigade in Crimea. :-)
If it helps, that charge also ended disastrously with the British cavalry being described as the worse led in Europe.
Thanks Andy - I blame Google for the error - I googled "Charge of the Light Brigade" and looked in images and this was the best one that popped up. To be fair I didn't check its origins
You seem surprisingly blasé about illegal postal votes harvesting and family voting, Rob.
It is damning that so much of this family voting behaviour seemed to go on. I myself saw a man shuffle what I assume was his wife over to the desk at the polling station. Right by each other, talking the whole time. Truly astonishing.
Just to point out an error in the table on Green councillors in places were second. The table says there are no councillors in the Tottenham seat, but there is. Following a by-election in St Ann's ward they hold one. Indeed in seats in the Haringey borough it's those wards they will go after, that's where they are strong. In the Hornsey seat they are probably only going for Harringey ward, but all the others it's the Lib Dems who are making the running. This means there's an outside chance of the council going NoC.
Would also add that while people are hyper-ventilating about the Greens that they could also lose some seats. Yes they'll win a lot in the urban areas but they could lose quite a few in suburban (Richmond) and rural areas (interesting to see what happens in their Suffolk held seat wards). Recent polling on favourability showed that there likeability figures had dropped since Zak became leader.
Jeremy is right about Suffolk. Adrian Ramsey’s win in Waveney Valley and the Greens’ County Council seats are largely on the basis of disaffected Tory nimbies - many of them will stay at home now that Zack is reinventing the Greens as a Socialist Party
Not up for this round of local elections but I imagine a similar picture in Herefordshire where they have a few councillors and one Parliament Seat.
Interesting read, as always.
I live in Burnage, and I think the Greens only won here on the back of Hannah Spencer’s personal credibility and likeability. If they’d put up the usual middle-class, out-of-touch Green candidate instead, they wouldn’t have stood much of a chance.
The Greens current policies read like the musings of a utopian teenager who’s just discovered Marx theory. Like Reform at it's opposite end, the Greens seems far more comfortable with slogans than actual substance. Whether it’s Zack Polanski's inability to understand basic economics on the 'Rest is politics' podcast, unserious, wildly unpopular talk about open borders or simplistic “tax the rich and everything fixes itself” vibes, or culture-war positions delivered as if they require no scrutiny, or hold no nuance, such as the way they won't even allow their own members to hold gender critical THOUGHTS.
If anyone is genuinely backing Green on the policies alone (in their current form), they might want to give their head a wobble...
I've recently been reading about the 1981 Crosby by-election which was won by the SDP at a canter. Cue many stories about how the two party system was broken, no Tory/Labour seat safe etc etc. Remind me again what happened to the SDP? And neither the Plaid and SNP by-elections in 1966/67 led to a permanent upswing in their fortunes. In the longterm the Greens triumph may not mean very much. More important, as Rob suggests, will be the local elections. Which is odd, as Reform UK has discovered in Kent and elsewhere, when councils are now largerly no more than agents for central government.
"neither the Plaid and SNP by-elections in 1966/67 led to a permanent upswing in their fortunes"
I think that's a misunderstanding of how the first past the post electoral system has played out in the increasingly multi-party nature of Westminster elections in Scotland. There's a tendency to still see everything in terms of the "two-party swing" concept developed by David Butler after 1945 when Tory and Labour held over 80% of votes in all three parts of Great Britain. The SNP were founded in the 1930s and won an unusual Westminster by-election in the electoral truce of wartime 1945, but failed to win any further seats for over 20 years though never really disappeared (unlike the Common Wealth or ILP parties who also won such by-elections but largely disappeared soon after). After Ewing's by-election victory in Hamilton in 1967 however they pivoted to becoming a permanent and significant feature of Scottish politics, winning enough seats to have influence in a hung parliament in 1974 and gaining another sensational by-election victory in Govan in 1988. Even in 1992 when they only won 3 Westminster seats they had 21.5% of the vote, more than the LibDems in what had become something more akin to four-party politics by then. Since the rise of the Scottish Parliament, voters in Scotland have understood the differences between elections (and electoral sytems) - you only have to look at the dramatically different outcomes of the 2010 UK general election and the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections to see that (less than 12 months apart and at the time with largely the same electorate, though that is no longer the case).
Similar to how some people strangely think Keir Starmer's Labour was more popular than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, when they actually got 1 million votes less, the movements in votes and the movements in Westminster seats are very different things.
At the risk of mimicing Rachel Cunliffe (who before the last general election told viewers of BBC "Politics Live" that she lived in Jereny Corbyn's constituency, that he wasn't a particularly active local MP, that he had little of a personal vote, and would flop in the general election) my personal experience of the Greens in Leyton & Wanstead isn't of a party expecting to make many gains.
I live in a Redbridge ward which was once very safe for the Tories but now has three Labour councillors with big majorities. True to the criticism of both the Tories and Labour, we do only hear from these parties in the lead up of an election, but at least I have already had a pretty good local election leaflet from the Tories, and the same leaflet has gone out in the adjacent (now Labour) ward, but there's no evidence of any activity from the Greens.
I cannot comment on what might happen in Leyton (in Waltham Forest), and of course if there is a big enough surge for the Greens they may win seats in both London boroughs, but I think Redbridge is more likely to see independents triumphing, bearing in mind the bulk of the seats are not in Leyton & Wanstead but in Ilford North and Ilford South.
If the data tell the story, the Greens are now the Intifada party .. selling their soul to the devil ..
"2024 General Election (official, certified results) The Greens won 4 seats and received 6.8% of the national vote. That 6.8% is the last official, nationwide, certified vote share.
On the day that Labour voted to restrict the right to a jury in trials the question surely isn't Reform or Labour, but (almost) Anyone but Either.
I'm wondering if the possibility of a Tory/LD govt after the 2029 GE is seriously underpriced.
Greens destroy Labour.
Trump destroys Reform.
Badenoch and Davey share the spoils.
Thanks Rob. Having read that I just want to start drinking. And it's 9am.