A return to two-party politics? Dont believe it

[Denzil_DC]

This unexpected outcome of the General Election has led some commentators to claim breezily that the United Kingdom has returned to two-party politics. But it masks some big shifts. While it is true that it has been several decades since the two major parties achieved a combined vote share of over 80% as they did on Thursday, it is far from clear that this is the “new normal” of British politics.

This time, voters ‘learnt’ from the 2015 result – they decided to try and game the system. In 2015, 9% of voters said they’d be voting tactically. This time, the figure was double that – 20%, according to BMG polling for the Electoral Reform Society. A common result of this second guessing – with one in five voters ‘holding their nose’ at the ballot box – is that the contest becomes reduced to a decision as to which of the major parties is likely to defeat the other major party. This in turn supports and increases the dominance of the two biggest political parties, polarising around one or two divides.

What lies behind all this is our antiquated voting system – literally designed for two parties. Yet even as more voters coalesced around the Conservatives and Labour than they have for years, still neither of them could win the election and form a majority government.

The fact that the two of them were taking their largest vote share in many years and we have still ended up with a hung parliament is not evidence of going back to “two party politics”, but of how the system is fundamentally bust when you have 21st century voting patterns and a broken 19th century voting system.

http://www.democraticaudit.com/2017/06/13/a-return-to-two-party-politics-dont-believe-it/

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Not much more to this article at the link, but this chimes with what I've been saying about Scotland's "one-party state" in the current political climate - tactical voting is key, parties assume that voters are "theirs" at their peril, and if we have another election this year, the results may be even harder to call.

[T_i_B]

1. Scottish and English politics do differ in this regard

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.

[Ken Burch]

3. It's not so much the favor not being "returned".

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).

[T_i_B]

4. The point about Lib Dems slipping back to 3rd or 4th in many places is fair

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.

[Ken Burch]

5. In the Greens case(and yes, cooperation between Greens and left-LibDems could be interesting)

(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?

[T_i_B]

6. As I have posted incessantly in other threads...

...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!

[Ken Burch]

7. Sorry, hadn't seen the other posts you made on this.

Last edited Mon Jun 19, 2017, 04:55 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.

[T_i_B]

8. It was a she rather than a he!

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.

[Ken Burch]

9. She, then. I didn't know your former MP's name or gender when I posted that.

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.

[T_i_B]

10. Best to look closely on a case by case basis

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.

[Ken Burch]

11. Thanks for the observations.

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.

[T_i_B]

12. Having see the election campaign at first hand in a marginal seat....

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

[Denzil_DC]

2. Another note of caution from John Harris, including the dangers of pendulum swings and brexit:

Corbyn is chiming with the times. But no one can predict anything any more

... even though the Corbyn effect was big, it did not explain everything that happened in the election. In many places, this was a collective and collegiate surge, authored by people inside and outside the party. Labour has a specific and long-standing identity in Wales, which was used to see off the Tory threat in fine style. The same applied in Greater Manchester. As exemplified by what happened in Brighton and Norwich, Labour did well in many places thanks to votes borrowed from the Greens and Lib Dems, whose supporters gladly switched despite the fact the Labour leadership wanted nothing to do with the politics of the so-called progressive alliance. There may have been even more gains if the party had toned down some of its old-school tribalism.

There were also limits to the surge that, as the euphoria subsides, Labour needs to think about. In Scotland, the party put on fewer than 10,000 votes. Despite the “dementia tax”, the Conservative lead among people over 70 was estimated to be 50 percentage points. And the syndrome whereby former Labour voters went first to Ukip and then the Tories was real and widespread – as evidenced by a handful of Labour losses in the Midlands, and other places where the Tory vote went up thanks to voters supposedly at the sharp end of austerity. ... Looking ahead, one thing above all others is likely to underline the complexities of Labour’s position: Brexit, parked as an issue during the election, to the party’s great benefit, but inevitably set to come roaring back.

...

Corbyn’s advance, I have heard lately, is proof of the demise of the politics minted by New Labour and Bill Clinton’s Democrats, and “the end of centrism”. Maybe that’s true; given that this approach had no answers to the huge issues crystallised by the crash of 2008 and a whole set of questions around deepening inequality, that would not be a bad thing. But I suspect that 21st-century politics is much more uncertain, and the way that Corbyn went from zero to hero within weeks is further proof of how politics flips around in a world beyond tribal loyalty, and the quicksilver reality in which we find ourselves.

Events of all kinds now seem to move at light speed. And look at how wildly the political pendulum swings: from Obama to Trump; from the SNP triumphant to Nicola Sturgeon in sudden abeyance; from Europe supposedly in hopeless crisis to the twin leadership of Macron and Merkel; and from the Brexit victory to the glorious shocks and surprises of last week.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/17/corbyn-chiming-with-times-jubilant-insurgent-labour