As the SNP are the people for the 3 unionist parties to beat North of the border. And the need to save the union appears to be causing the 3 national parties to think differently. Down South it's the Tories who are dominant, and tactical voting has been mostly in Labour's direction with the favour rarely returned.

The Tories have also benefited from the collapse of UKIP, but that hasn't been so much tactical as voters genuinely considering them more relevant than UKIP.

It's that there were hardly any additional seats anywhere this time where voting LibDem would have beaten a sitting Tory.

And Tim Farron did a lot to depress his own party's vote by wavering on LGBTQ rights, and by early on ruling out a coalition with Labour(he took a lot longer to rule out any and all arrangements supporting the Tories).

That's made the Liberal Democrats task in 2017 even more difficult.

But it's worth noting that the Greens had similar results this time round, and they don't have the Liberal Democrats coalition baggage. The Lib Dems and Greens were able to co-operate in a few places like Brighton Pavilion and that is something that needs to be developed further.

(especially on the local level) that was largely due, from what I read, to two factors

1) A lot of Green voters in 2015 were people who voted Green because they wanted to vote for a clearly left-wing party, who felt Labour was not that party in 2015 but was in 2017, and thus shifted back to Labour;

2) Right before polling day, the Greens withdrew their candidates in about 30 Tory-Labour marginals.

If there is a snap election in the next year, it is likely that the price for further cooperation between the Greens and Labour would be a Labour commitment to implement pr for Westminster elections at the earliest possible date. Once that is in place, the "progressive alliance" some talked out this time would actually be possible(and would actually be progressive).

What was the result in your constituency, btw?

...my constituency went Tory for the first time since the 1930's thanks to a dreadful "triangulation" campaign by the incumbent Labour MP, including sending a 4 page statement in favour of fracking to every house in the local area. (There is a proposal to explore for shale gas in my area, which everyone expects would lead to fracking. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of local opposition)

UKIP vote collapsed into the Tories, in spite of said Labour MP trying very hard to out-Brexit them, and Lib Dems and Greens both lost ground due to tactical voting, which was a pity as they were both much better than what Labour were offering.

Bit of mixed results where I am. Labour took Derby North and the key bellweather marginal of High Peak, but went backwards elsewhere in the county.

More info on the "Who's Your MP" thread, now including videos attacking my new Tory MP for his fondness for parking charges when on Westminster council!

Last edited Mon Jun 19, 2017, 03:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Didn't mean to make you repeat yourself. Thanks for the information.

That MP was probably in the anti-Corbyn cabal. If her constituency party still had the power to deselect, Labour would likely have held the seat.

Natascha Engel never mentioned Corbyn in public, and certainly never attacked him publicly, but there were plenty of rumours about her not getting on with Corbyn or Momentum, and she made a point of not putting Corbyn on her election literature. She may well have alienated a lot of people in the local party.

There were also rumours that she had lost her enthusiasm for politics, and the Tories chucked everything but the kitchen sink at winning here where Labour did not.

Sounds as if she may only have stood again to make sure the seat was lost. It was amazing how may people in the PLP went kamikaze on Jeremy at the start of the campaign.

Some have had the decency to apologize for costing the party the election. Many haven't.

Lots of different trends emerging from the election.

It all changed massively when the Tories brought out their manifesto. That was the moment the Tories started to lose out thanks to policies like the dementia tax that hit their most important block vote, namely the elderly.

Basically the Tories went for a landslide but ran a terrible campaign which cost them an overall majority.

May's manifesto did her no favors, true.

But the announcement of that manifesto wouldn't have made too much difference, I think, if the PLP had had the kind of manifesto many of its members indicated they wanted...a manifesto that pledged to cut almost as much as the Tories and reduced the difference to "it's enough that it's US doing it".

Voters were only going to change their minds if they had something clearly different to vote FOR.

Clearly, the result was a rejection of the austerity consensus.

I can assure you that the Conservative manifesto, complete with dementia tax and the "Theresa May uber alles" election campaign did cost the Tories support. Also that for the most part, the Labour party put the infighting to one side for the duration of the election campaign.

Just for your information, the aforementioned "Who's your MP?" thread is here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10887759

and this thread is also very good as it's from the time that the election campaign was turning away from the Conservatives

https://www.democraticunderground.com/108813018