My post on Monday about it being the end for the Conservatives seems to have been reinforced by a Savanta poll and a detailed constituency-by-constituency analysis using something called MRP (Multilevel regression with poststratification - don’t ask me). It forecasts a Labour majority at the next election of 314 seats. This is not the number of seats but the majority over all the other parties! Labour would have 482 seats with the Tories on 69, an incredible number, especially given Johnson had a majority of 80 MPs three years ago that commentators suggested at the time would be hard for Labour to overturn in one election cycle.
It appears that Starmer is all but guaranteed to be the next PM.
Savanta says:
“The poll shows that the Conservative Party would be likely wiped out in much of the north of England, with the model suggesting that the party would not hold a single seat north of Lincolnshire, while also losing all of the seats in London, and conceding many seats in the South West to Labour and the Liberal Democrats.”
Think about that - not a single seat north of the Humber.
No wonder Tory MPs are jumping ship. I wonder how our own MP Nigel Adams will look back on his political career? Coming in in 2010, he seems to have been a bridge of belt-tightening austerity between catastrophes and supported the most inept, divisive and second most incompetent prime minister of all time (Truss being the worst).
Tory MPs are doing local canvassing pretty well constantly and must sense the tide has turned with a vengeance.
They might want to look at the Liberal party, which won a landslide in 1906 with 397 seats out of 670. It never formed a majority government again and was eventually replaced by the Labour Party as the main opposition. They were hopelessly divided by the war and their leader, Asquith was replaced by David Lloyd George who threw in his lot with the Tories to lead a coalition until he was deposed in Stanley Baldwin and the Tories in 1923.
The Liberals were torn by factionalism. While DLG was PM, Asquith remained as the party leader ty even though he lost his own seat in 1918. Asquith returned in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923, the anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals.
It's all reminiscent of the Tories in 2022, isn't it?
I see on Twitter some claim the Savanta result will never actually happen and they are probably right, these kinds of long-range forecasts are invariably wrong. However, I wouldn’t be so sure the actual numbers will be much better, they could be even worse. When public opinion begins to turn it is very hard to see how it can be turned back.
Sunak might be a bit more competent than Truss or Johnson, but he’s not very charismatic or a seasoned campaigner. He’s a technocrat. I'm not sure even the party members have ever really taken to him.
And while inflation dipped this morning - it's back under 11% - there is no doubt the worst of the recession is yet to come.
I can see the Tories being wiped out for a decade at the very least and if Campbell-Bannerman succeeds in getting the grassroots members more of a say in policy-making it wouldn't be a surprise to see them out of office for much longer.
A split must be on the cards, with the right shifting towards a UKIP/Reform party agenda while the rest go back to old-fashioned one-nation Toryism.
In my own mind, I am quite sure Brexit is at the root of it. Had Cameron won the referendum as he hoped, he would perhaps still be in No 10. Brexit created a flagship policy that half the party didn't believe in and it opened the door for the ERG nutjobs to gain control of the policy direction. The result is there is now no honesty in government since everything has to be orchestrated to present failure as success.
But you can't fool all the people all of the time.
To see how we are being seen outside, take a look at this article on the website of the US broadcaster NBC about Morecambe: Spiraling costs and crumbling public services leave millions in Britain struggling to live.
It is truly depressing.
And a story of our time is this one about an 89-year-old man with a broken hip having to be strapped to a plank and taken to hospital in a van because there was no ambulance available:
Melvyn Ryan, 89, was strapped to a plank in agony by his family with a broken shoulder & hip. There wasn’t a single ambulance available to bring him to hospital, so they did.
— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) December 13, 2022
Why aren’t you shamed into action @RishiSunak @Jeremy_Hunt? This is obscene.https://t.co/9kJOIwwWOC
Meanwhile, the government obsesses about a few asylum seekers washing up on beaches in Kent and forcing voter ID cards into law to prevent virtually non-existent voter fraud.
It is stories like the man in Wales with a broken hip which is going to destroy the Conservative party and it won't be before time.
