The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged

[Doobs]

with apologies to doobs again

We're mapping out what we can tell from where this election's air war is going. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39874420

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

You don't have to apologise if the graph is clear.  This one is much clearer than the one which confused me. 

I don't think there is much evidence that Corbyn is choosing his campaigning seats much differently to May.    There are only two "wasted" visits to big labour majority seats and there are a couple of "wasted" visits by May over there too.  There are similar numbers of red circles and blue circles in the marginals too. 

This whole, Corbyn isn't campaigning in the right places, narrative doesn't seem to have much evidence to back it up.

Please point out where I am wrong.

Not sure what the 'official' take on this is but it feels wrong to me that he's concentrating on Tory-held seats of varying majorities, which is a strategy you'd anticipate if you were expecting to gain seats and win an election, but which every piece of polling data tells you is not the case.  The safe Labour constituencies are also wasted efforts.

Logically, the best place for a party leader in a declining party to operate would be those marginally-held Labour seats in an attempt to defend them (which is precisely where May's visits appear to be concentrated).

Effectively the analysis looks like there's no effort being placed in these 'defend' seats, or (if you believe the reasoning) that Corbyn's name is so poisonous on the doorsteps that he's been deliberately kept away from them.

May's campaigning, in comparison, is exactly where you'd expect it to be - Labour-held seats, mostly marginals.

Yes, (and this was a point Nate Silver made in the US election) - if you take the current polls as being the current state of play, then you use that to guide where you go.

So, on current polling, every marginal Lab/Con seat from the previous election turns blue and the 'true' marginals are current Labour seats with a decent majority which are at risk if current polls hold up on election day. 

That is one strategy, but not the only one.  Losing by 50 seats is no more of a victory than losing by 150.  If you are playing a cup final and are 3-1 down, do you take off your striker and shore up the defense, or do you bring another on and try and get 2 or 3 goals.  I think Labour are knackered here regardless, but I don't have a problem with them trying to win. 

For Tighty.  I see no evidence that these graphs are showing that he is campaigning in seats with high momentum membership or high labour membership.  That feels to be the opposite of what Sheriff Fatman and Andrew T are complaining about.    Using any of the graphs you have posted, show me how the graphs show this.  It is attaching a narrative to a graph that can't possibly show this.  There is no detail on momentum or labour party membership on the graph.

No fan of Corbyn, but it feels that this is all a non story, and Corbyn isn't doing much wrong in where he is campaigning.   This makes no comment on any other of his strengths or deficiencies.

[TightEnd]

I'm not saying that high membership areas/high momentum is in those graphs per se,just that several commentators have highlighted that he is campaigning in seats with these characteristics

[AndrewT]

Absolutely Doobs, there's more than one strategy and going FTW is the default one. I'm just not sure that with a 15-20 point deficit it's the most pragmatic. In terms of election results, losing by 50 is better than by 150 as it give more scope for actual opposition and a better starting point for the next election. A pragmatic leader and organisation might think this way, but then, of course, cults don't tend to do pragmatism very well.

It could also be argued how much of an impact does local campaigning have these days, when every event is geared towards that evening's national news.

Meanwhile - 'Theresa it's a visit to a mental health charity today - remember to look engaged with the charity worker. Well, if you can't do engaged than how about vaguely interested? Failing that, at least manage human'

Click to see full-size image.

[Sheriff Fatman]

with apologies to doobs again

We're mapping out what we can tell from where this election's air war is going. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39874420

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

You don't have to apologise if the graph is clear.  This one is much clearer than the one which confused me.  

I don't think there is much evidence that Corbyn is choosing his campaigning seats much differently to May.    There are only two "wasted" visits to big labour majority seats and there are a couple of "wasted" visits by May over there too.  There are similar numbers of red circles and blue circles in the marginals too.  

This whole, Corbyn isn't campaigning in the right places, narrative doesn't seem to have much evidence to back it up.

Please point out where I am wrong.

Not sure what the 'official' take on this is but it feels wrong to me that he's concentrating on Tory-held seats of varying majorities, which is a strategy you'd anticipate if you were expecting to gain seats and win an election, but which every piece of polling data tells you is not the case.  The safe Labour constituencies are also wasted efforts.

Logically, the best place for a party leader in a declining party to operate would be those marginally-held Labour seats in an attempt to defend them (which is precisely where May's visits appear to be concentrated).

Effectively the analysis looks like there's no effort being placed in these 'defend' seats, or (if you believe the reasoning) that Corbyn's name is so poisonous on the doorsteps that he's been deliberately kept away from them.

May's campaigning, in comparison, is exactly where you'd expect it to be - Labour-held seats, mostly marginals.

Yes, (and this was a point Nate Silver made in the US election) - if you take the current polls as being the current state of play, then you use that to guide where you go.

So, on current polling, every marginal Lab/Con seat from the previous election turns blue and the 'true' marginals are current Labour seats with a decent majority which are at risk if current polls hold up on election day.  

That is one strategy, but not the only one.  Losing by 50 seats is no more of a victory than losing by 150.  If you are playing a cup final and are 3-1 down, do you take off your striker and shore up the defense, or do you bring another on and try and get 2 or 3 goals.  I think Labour are knackered here regardless, but I don't have a problem with them trying to win.  

For Tighty.  I see no evidence that these graphs are showing that he is campaigning in seats with high momentum membership or high labour membership.  That feels to be the opposite of what Sheriff Fatman and Andrew T are complaining about.    Using any of the graphs you have posted, show me how the graphs show this.  It is attaching a narrative to a graph that can't possibly show this.  There is no detail on momentum or labour party membership on the graph.

No fan of Corbyn, but it feels that this is all a non story, and Corbyn isn't doing much wrong in where he is campaigning.   This makes no comment on any other of his strengths or deficiencies.

If anything, the Corbyn data suggests to me a lack of strategy on Labour's part, more than anything else.  May's data makes sense into where it's focused (and there'll always be some outliers - presumably a marginal seat visit might take in a nearby constituency which is one of the safe seats for either party).  Corbyn's data seems to be concentrated on seats that the Tories already hold quite comfortably which, under any logical strategy I can think of, are the last ones that would impact the result.

To me, as pure raw data, it does seem to be focused on something other than winning this election.  However, I'm equally puzzled as to how those big, safe Tory seats are somehow relevant to the next chapter in the saga of Labour's leadership and future direction.

[Sheriff Fatman]

I think the data would be more revealing if we had a comparison available of the other, high-profile, campaigners on each party.

If the Corbyn data showed a dramatically different picture to other Labour shadow cabinets members, for example, then it would point towards a specific strategy for him.  Logically, you'd expect the wider data to correlate to the individual leader data if it was part of an overall strategy, which would presumably be based on high activity in key marginals, and relatively little elsewhere.

[Doobs]

Corbyn gone all Justine Henshaw-Bryan taking out that cameraman.  BBC going to have to drop the bias or Laura Kuenssberg will be next.  Wouldn't surprise me if she was the target. 

[hector62]

Judging by what I have seen in the leaked manifesto, Corbyn should be campaigning in the old coal mining areas promising to re-open the pits and get Britain digging again. It worked for Donald.

[MintTrav]

an interesting read

The Remain delusion: "the 48%" do not exist - new blog

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/remain-delusion-48-cent-do-not-exist

Not really a surprise, a fair chunk of remainers accept democracy and are happy to go with the result. It is the the 25% of vocal remoaners that are left. If there was another ref tomorrow I reckon leave would get a bigger win because some of the remainers that believe in democracy would vote the other way out of principle.

People throw about this "if you believe in democracy" phrase a bit too much without stopping to think about it.

I say this because the EU referendum seems to produce a lot of evidence that we should doubt democracy, rather than believe in it. 

It was reasonably clear that on a narrow win for leave that the majority of eligible voters actually wanted remain.  You can work this back from knowing that a big proportion of the younger voters behaved like the young people they are, and just couldn't be arsed to vote.  This together with  far smaller proportion of the older voters making the same mistake, hence the vote didn't really reflect the will of the people.  Knowing that 70% of the younger voters were remainers and 70% of pensioners were leavers means that on the day democracy didn't produce the result the majority of the eligible voters wanted.

But we can take this further, and we know about 600,000 people are dying each year.  The vast majority of these people are the over 65s coffin dodgers.   So we are losing maybe 500,000 over 65s a year, so each year we lose 200,000+ people who wanted to leave over those who wanted to remain.  By contracst we have 800,000 28 year olds becoming eligible to vote each year, so we are gaining 300,000+ eligible voters who want to remain. 

So each year the vote is naturally swinging towards remain by over half a million people a year.  The EU exit is going to take us until March 2019 if everything goes smoothly, which is the best part of 3 years.  In that time the eligible voters will now be for remain by another 1.5m+.  This is on top of what looks a reasonably clear EU majority in the first place.  The referendum result was only 1.25 million more in favour of leaving than staying.

So in March 2019, or whenever it is, we are going to get a situation where a clear majority of the population doesn't think what we just did was a good idea.

And this is before we even start to consider the amount of lies fed to the populace by the remain campagin and the tabloids over the years.     

If you still believe that this is all about believing in the will of the people then you should vote remain in a second referendum.  You really should.

And if you still believe that democracy is perfect, it just isn't.  Obvioulsy better than any tried alternative, but believe in it?  No thanks.   

I didn't have you down as one of the bitter ones looking for any justification as to why we should stay in 

I had you down as a respecter of the "will of the people".  Get respecting it and stop filling this board with all this leaving nonsense.

Will of the people is all that matters.  I am sure Farage agrees here.

I respect the vote so yes, there is no nonsense we are leaving and taking the whiners with us. 

Besides there is a huge assumption you have made that nullifies your point. You have assumed that voter intention does not change as people get older, you correctly point out that older people are more likely to vote out, so it's very possible their vote might change with age, there is a general swing across the population from left to right with age, so it could very well happen with the in/out vote too.

That last point is very valid woodsey.

I think, irrespective of who won, the idea of re-running the EU vote is just crackers.

If people don't turn out to vote on such a critical issue, more fool them. 

Yup, that point was made very quickly after the vote when many of the kids were crying in their milk, fact is if they had bothered to vote they might well have swung it the other way. If only they could have got their heads out of their phones, their arses off the sofa for long enough to actually go and do it.

Your point about a significant number of people gradually changing their views, and becoming more conservative, as they get older, is true. I don't think it is the case that we just missed the tipping-point due to conservatives dying and being replaced by progressives, and that the result would have been different, just for that reason, if only the vote had been held a couple of years later. If that was the case, the crossover point would have been reached long ago.

Where I think you are wrong, though, is in claiming that a vote held at a particular time, when most of the implications were unknown to the politically-engaged, never mind the general electorate, must hold sway, just because you got the result you want. Nothing could be as undemocratic as refusing to allow the electorate another referendum before making the biggest change of our lifetimes to our country. That would be the case even if the general knowledge of the effects was the same as before, considering what a dramatic change we are facing but, in fact, a lot has surfaced or been understood better since the first vote and we will also learn the country's future situation by then. Anyone who believes in democracy would want another referendum, based on much more information and much more time considering everything, before we make such a major and difficult-to-reverse commitment.

[nirvana]

To want a second referendum isn't fundamentally anti democratic in my view. In a minor sense it feels that way if you were on the 'winning' side but I think that is more because of the style of the campaign from the 'losing' side which was characterised by a superior attitude, brinkmanship and hubris and made it crystal clear that this was a one-time irreversible vote etc.

I think it's natural , based on the yah boo campaigns that were fought, that the winners want to tell the losers to gtfo when they then start to challenge the very process of a single referendum.

On balance I just think it is a deeply flawed process for making a huge decision and I thought that at the time.  If we consider the readings, the re-readings and amendment process that the simplest of legislation goes through before it becomes law it seems the height of madness to trust the voters in a single vote to make a good, rationale decision.

Pretty sure the referendum process should be scrapped, or change quite radically when used, to allow for some kind of staggered decision making that, to mint's point, allow people to suck it and see for a bit and perhaps moderate their initial view in the light of experience.
.
Having said that, I think the rules were known for the Brexit referendum, it was a very simple, yes/no question and it was campaigned on heavily for >12 months. I can't abide politicians aftertiming the result and now wanting to change the process that they actually campaigned behind because they felt it gave them the best chance of killing the idea of leaving.

That said, people make mistakes and whilst I can't imagine ever supporting the concept of a 2nd referendum, if there was one I wouldn't think it was particularly undemocratic. If we Brexiteers have a conviction about it being in our collective best interests I don't see any reason why we shouldn't want to campaign again in the belief that we would win the argument again.

[PokerBroker]

Judging by what I have seen in the leaked manifesto, Corbyn should be campaigning in the old coal mining areas promising to re-open the pits and get Britain digging again. It worked for Donald.

Or he could turn his back on the many who need this sort of manifesto.  But fuck it lets just continue to privatise the shit out of everything, introduce more food banks, cut benefits for the most vulnerable continue funding a bomb that will never be detonated. 

I despair at the state of this island. I don't see anything bad in the manifesto Labour have had leaked. 

[Doobs]

In what way is the economy rigged?  I just watched a video from one of Corbyn's bright young things supposedly about the rigged economy and am genuinely none the wiser.

To me this suggests that there is lots of illegal goings on, and such suggestions were only made by those in tin foil hats.  So person A only pays less tax than person B, because he is related to Lord Snooty kind of thing.

I understand how the rich do better in life as a whole, but that is because they start with more money.
I understand that those who go to public schools do better, but that is down to a better education and better connected friends/parents etc.
I understand how powerful people like to speak to other powerful people.  Human nature means that most people choose to interact with people that are going to improve their lot.
I understand why some fella with a public school/Oxbridge background may find it easier to get inside some companies than I do.
I even think things like crime, bribery and nepotism are always going to happen whether or not you rig the economy or not.

There are lots of these kind of things, but they are all explainable without any rigging going on.
For instance, I don't like the fact private schools get charitable status, but once they have it, then I don't think treating them like you would any other charity is rigging the economy.  You are on a bit of a slippery slope where you start picking which charities get which charitable status on political grounds.

So where is the rigging going on, and what does it involve?     

[DungBeetle]

Did I mishear or does the manifesto actually propose fining companies that pay staff high salaries?  Isn't that encouraging companies to hoard cash and thus the most absurd policy from a revenue raising point of view? 

[DaveShoelace]

Click to see full-size image.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/populist-personalities-the-big-five-personality-traits-and-party-choice-in-the-2015-uk-general-election/

The Big Five Personality Traits and party choice in the 2015 UK general election

This pretty much conforms to every stereotype you have about the main political parties, absolutely fascinating.

If you even remotely find this interesting, this book is a must read btw

[Jon MW]

Click to see full-size image.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/populist-personalities-the-big-five-personality-traits-and-party-choice-in-the-2015-uk-general-election/

The Big Five Personality Traits and party choice in the 2015 UK general election

This pretty much conforms to every stereotype you have about the main political parties, absolutely fascinating.

If you even remotely find this interesting, this book is a must read btw

The fact that, "This pretty much conforms to every stereotype you have about the main political parties..." is pretty suspicious but not necessarily wrong, but after a quick look it doesn't seem to say anywhere what the sample size is. Is it in one of the links? (for example)

[TightEnd]

Click to see full-size image.