General Election 2017

[Nick Burrows]

This "Labour were within 2000 votes of being the largest party" statistic, which I've seen banded about a few times, is misleading at best, and nonsense at worst.

One of the possible assumptions is that if you took the seats that Labour lost by least, and gave them extra votes from people who didn't turn out, they would win the election. This assumes that 100% of the people who didn't turn out would vote Labour. I don't believe that assumption works.

The alternative basis would be Conservative voters who would vote Labour. I can't immediately find a news item that says that for Labour, but here's an equivalently poor Telegraph article making the same comment about being 400 votes short of a majority: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06 ... -majority/

The reason that I think this is poor, is that in order to persuade people, there might have needed to be a different policy, or a better explanation of some policy. That's fine, and it may win votes in certain seats. But that might lose votes in other seats.

Labour were about 750,000 votes behind the Conservatives. If they were going to be the largest party, then they need to overturn much nearer to 375,000 votes to have a reasonable mathematical chance of being the largest party. Yes, it's mathematically possible with 2,000 votes, but I'd suggest winning the lottery, or being killed by an asteroid, are much more likely.

Simply "getting the vote out" (chasing up known labour supporters) in those marginal constituencies would have easily won them. Labour HQ completely misread what was about to occur and used their resources extremely defensively. Eg on polling day activists were instructed to go to seats already held rather than go to ones with a tory majority. The result was a waste of energy in seats that increased their majority, and no resources used whatsover in seats that turned out to be on a knife edge.

This wont happen next time.

There have been many occasions when the winner of the popular vote ends up with less seats, so i dont think the inclusion of an arbritrary figure of general votes required means much at all.

[John McKenna]

Polarisation is the name of the game now. It has been pointed out that after a period of political diversification - with the increased vote share of UKIP, SNP and to a lesser extent the Greens, etc. - there is now a reconsolidation back to the two-party race.

In N Ireland the reconsolidation/polarisation has also been at the expense of smaller parties, such as the SDLP, etc. And so the seven Sinn Fein candidates elected not to sit at Westminster, and adamant they never will, have become seven helpful dwarves to the DUP's Snow White (being played by Arlene Foster) and her wicked stepmother the May Queen.

I did overhear one of the seven dwarves saying that they'd oppose Snow & May via Brussels, Belfast & Dublin but not directly in the Palace of Westminster.

Though rumor has it that the dwarves are using their underground offices in Westminster to get closer to the newly-awakened-after-many-years-of-back-bench-slumber-no-longer-bonny Prince Jeremy Charming who has now become the Old Labour Pretender and the darling of his reconciled party.

Oh, and let's not forget that Nicola Queen of Scots and William (Salmond) Wallace are licking their wounds while waiting in the wings and dreaming of another chance of another Bannockburn.

What a peripherally polarised political pantomime - LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!! (I'm shouting at the actors not at the audience who can now only sit and stare.)

[Alex Holowczak]

Simply "getting the vote out" (chasing up known labour supporters) in those marginal constituencies would have easily won them. Labour HQ completely misread what was about to occur and used their resources extremely defensively. Eg on polling day activists were instructed to go to seats already held rather than go to ones with a tory majority. The result was a waste of energy in seats that increased their majority, and no resources used whatsover in seats that turned out to be on a knife edge.

There's absolutely no way of knowing that "getting the vote out" would have had the impact you expect. How do you know that "known Labour supporters" hadn't already voted, and all actually, the Conservative vote was the vote that hadn't got out, perhaps expecting a comfortable victory whether they voted or not?

There have been many occasions when the winner of the popular vote ends up with less seats, so i dont think the inclusion of an arbritrary figure of general votes required means much at all.

You're right that the winner of the popular vote doesn't always have the most seats. That's why I said "they need to overturn much nearer to 375,000 votes". My wording accepted that they might not need a majority of the popular vote to win the majority of the seats. It means much more than "within 2000 votes of being the largest party", which is just fanciful.

[Nick Burrows]

attacks will sensibly focus on Labour's 'moon-on-a-stick' economics

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/j ... nomy-needs

[Nick Burrows]

There's absolutely no way of knowing that "getting the vote out" would have had the impact you expect. How do you know that "known Labour supporters" hadn't already voted, and all actually, the Conservative vote was the vote that hadn't got out, perhaps expecting a comfortable victory whether they voted or not?

It is difficult to quantify, but there is some research that indicates it is effective. The experience on the doorstep also confirms this, ie people who had forgot or were unclear of where and how to vote, going because of your encouragement. You know who has not voted from tellers at the polling station feeding information back to the local HQ's.

It's difficult to claim that the Tory vote didn't come out, seeing as their vote share was massively increased also.

You're right that the winner of the popular vote doesn't always have the most seats. That's why I said "they need to overturn much nearer to 375,000 votes". My wording accepted that they might not need a majority of the popular vote to win the majority of the seats. It means much more than "within 2000 votes of being the largest party", which is just fanciful.

You say fanciful, I say fact!

[Alex Holowczak]

You're right that the winner of the popular vote doesn't always have the most seats. That's why I said "they need to overturn much nearer to 375,000 votes". My wording accepted that they might not need a majority of the popular vote to win the majority of the seats. It means much more than "within 2000 votes of being the largest party", which is just fanciful.

You say fanciful, I say fact!

Fair enough. I can see I'm wasting my time.

[David Sedgwick]

Tuesday 13th June: 10 man France defeat England at football.

Wednesday 14th June: Pakistan crush England at cricket.

So much for minority government.

[Mick Norris]

Tuesday 13th June: 10 man France defeat England at football.

Wednesday 14th June: Pakistan crush England at cricket.

So much for minority government.

Mike Yarwood's impersonation of Harold Wilson on the lines of we only win the world cup under a Labour Government (although of course we did win the U20 world cup on Sunday)

[Alistair Campbell]

I wasn't sure if my forthcoming comment belonged here, or on the "Strongest chess-playing politicians" thread.

I notice that the newly elected MP for Saffron Walden, Kemi Badenoch, claims to be a "keen chess and poker player".

Coincidentally, as Geoff Chandler will attest, there is a regular event held at Edinburgh Chess Club where players compete for the "Wolf of Badenoch" trophy. He (the wolf, not Geoff) was once known as "Scotland's vilest man".

It may be a quiz question to name other sitting MPs whose surname forms part of the name of a constituency.

[Matt Mackenzie]

They are nowhere to be seen on the ECF Grading database, however.

[Michael Farthing]

.. which, after all, applies to the vast majority of the chess playing population. Indeed, in the past week 100% of my opponents have not been on the grading database.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Yes, but I imagine it covers a greater proportion of those who like to identify as "keen chess players".

[Mick Norris]

Political donations

The reporting and publication of this data is key to providing voters with transparency about how political parties financed their general election campaigns.

not that we can do anything useful with the data

[Kevin Thurlow]

"not that we can do anything useful with the data"

true - it is rather sad that the entire cost of the election to the public would have paid for several thousand nurses. I think they would be more use to the country than several hundred politicians...

[MartinCarpenter]

Pedantry but I really rather doubt that in principle - you do need some people running the show to make it work well.

Of course I'm sure all those political donations were purely philanthropic