That the Conservative party under the leadership of Rishi Sunak is in deep trouble leading up to the elections on July 4th is well known. But this week brought even more bad news for them with a new poll that suggested that the upstart Reform party under the leadership of political gadfly and provocateur Nigel Farage, has just barely edged ahead of them. This article looks at history of this party and what this swing towards them might mean.
Needless to say Farage, who has targeted to Conservative party since both appeal roughly to the same sections of the electorate, has seized on this latest poll to declare that his party now forms the opposition, not the Conservatives. His goal seems to be to attract disgruntled Conservative voters to vote for Reform. However, that risks splitting the right wing vote and giving an opening for Labour and Liberal candidates to squeak past them to win marginal seats.
In the third of his commentaries on the election, Jonathan Pie looks at the Reform party and its leader.
I know the feeling about tactical voting. We’re keeping a close eye on what’s going on locally, I really, really don’t want the Tories to win again, but BUT I am not sure I can bring myself to vote Lib Dem -- Labour don’t stand a chance here.
Jazzlet, which electorate are you in?
Brilliant.
Hazel Grove.
#3 flex
Beat me to it!
@Jazzlet, oy. My sympathies. Why so much Labour antipathy where you are?
Jazzlet please, please just suck it up and vote tactically. Or vote tory. Those are the options, as you know if your honest.
Utter garbage. The chance of the Tories being in government after July 4th is negligible. As you know if you’re honest. There are times when it is necessary to vote for the lesser evil -- if I had a vote in the US presidential election and lived in any state where either Biden or Trump could plausibly win, I’d vote for the enabler of Gaza genocide, because the alternative is even worse. But the current UK election is not such an occasion; vote for the party or independent candidate closest to your own views.
Please ignore KG’s comment, they’re obviously either (a) a Tory or (b) too young to remember the last time Labour “couldn’t lose” an election in 1992. Or too stupid to remember when everyone was so sure Remain would win that a significant number vote Leave just to give the goverment of the day a bloody nose… and we all know how that ended up.
Now is the time to be SURE the tory Party is not just beaten but DESTROYED. Principles can wait.
Not that brilliant; it’s Truss, not Trust.
badland @#6
It’s mostly surburban edge of town housing “I’ve got mine Jack, keep your hands off my stack”. The old constituency switched between Lib Dem and Tory, the new one will likely do the same. There are Labour local Councillors in some wards, but it is an uphill battle for them.
sonofrojblake and KG
Believe me we are keeping a close eye on the polling and other factors, if I have to I will bite the bullet. But Lisa Smart the Lib Dem has been their candidate since William Wragg (yes that William Wragg) won the seat after the retirement of the previous Lib Dem MP and has been working hard. She’s been on my doorstep recently as well as inundating us with how wonderful the Lib Dems are outside of elections, so she’ll have far more name recognition than the Tory or any of the other candidates come to that, I’ve not heard of any of them -- there are a Social Democratic, Labour, Reform and Green candidate in addition to Lib Dem and Tory. A lovely six way split to make it all the more complicated.
sonofrojblake@9,
The fact that you have to resort to stupid accusations which you must know are false is very telling. There is absolutely no parallel between 1992 and the current election. The opinion polls running up to the 1992 election are shown here. Those for the current election are shown here. Anyone who cares to glance at them will see that in the current case, Labour has held a lead of around 20% for the past 18 months and more -- ever since The Day of the Lettuce. Every survey, and every psephologist not employed by the Tory Party, predicts a substantial if not overwhelming Labour majority. While in 1992:
Completely fucking different, except to the eye of the deluded. As for:
No they fucking well weren’t. You may have been that stupid, but don’t project your stupidity onto everyone else. Here are the opinion polls running up to the referendum. The majority of those in the last week showed a small Remain lead, but nothing anyone with sense would have taken as anything close to a sure thing -- particularly as polling companies were dealing with a novel vote, polls for the week before mostly showed a small “Leave” majority, and there was an obvious reason why some “Leave” voters might have been reluctant to give their real intention in the last week -- the murder of Jo Cox MP by a neo-Nazi “Leave” fanatic on 16th June -- exactly one week before the vote.
Evidently yours can. Of course if you care only about minimising the number of Tory MPs, you would vote for the candidate most likely to beat the Tory. In Clacton, that’s Nigel Farage. So I guess you, unlike Jonathan Pie, would vote for him if you lived in that constituency -- where Pie says he would tactically vote Tory! But I’m not keen on Starmer getting a huge majority and above all, given that the chances of a Tory government after July 4th are negligible, I consider it important to maximise the Green vote, as the best way to exert some leftward and pro-climate-action pressure on Starmer.
(aside: the title has a couple of letters missing -- “scourge”, shurely?)
Of course. No parallel.
In 1992, the Conservative party were in power. This time, it’s the Tories.
In 1992, the opposition were Labour. This time, it’s the Labour Party.
In 1992, the incumbents had been in power for 13 years already. This time, it’s 14 years.
In 1992, we had a relatively new male Prime Minister in post who’d never contested a general election because the previous female PM had been deposed because of an unpopular policy. This time, we have a relatively new male Prime Minister in post who has never contested a general election because the previous female PM was deposed because of (massive understatement) an unpopular policy.
Nah, no parallel at all.
It appears to be your contention that the electorate is composed mainly of “anyone with any sense”. Rather my point is that they (and I include literal members of my own family in this) are… not. And literally the only evidence I need is the result of the referendum.
Now, THAT is an interesting conundrum. Seriously -- thanks for suggesting that. I don’t live in Clacton thank Bod, but if I did… I have to say I’d be tempted. I mean, I wouldn’t… I’d go so far as to say I couldn’t. But my pencil would hover over that box for a moment. Why? Well, it’s interesting that you mention the Greens.
Famously the Greens have had precisely one MP, ever, Caroline Lucas. Her tenure has been precisely that of the Conservative government -- 2010 to 2024 (she’s stepping down this time, like a record number of Tories are). And in that time, legal protection for the environment in the UK has been comprehensively dismantled. I say this with some direct professional knowledge, as for a significant period of that time I was working as a process engineer and project manager on a number of chemical manufacturing sites regulated and inspected by the EA. I can tell you from that experience, and from conversations with uni friends who actually work for the EA, as well as personal lived experience and an eye on the news, that while the Green party have had their one MP, government oversight of the environmental impact of industry has been gutted and the environment in this country is in a measurably much worse state than it was in 2010. So I can see just how much a fringe pressure group with one MP is able to influence that national agenda -- less than not at all.
So would having Farage’s
companyparty represented by one frog-faced git in the Commons make a difference? You’ll have to go a long way to convince me it would make any difference at all. He’s a sideshow on the level of George Galloway, a self-interested grifter who’s just interested in being on the telly and making money. He’s not Hitler -- he doesn’t believe his anti-immigrant rhetoric. His first wife is Irish. His second wife (the one he used taxpayers’ money to pay to be his secretary) is German. Currently he’s banging a French former waitress. There’s a conspiracy theory you could spin that he’s a deep-cover Labour agent trying to destroy the Tories permanently, because that would be about as credible as the job they’re doing on themselves.No, I wouldn’t/couldn’t vote for him, even if that was the tactically sound thing to do. But I honestly don’t think it’ll make any difference if he does win.
Finally, in response to this:
I’ll look to not one or two but FOUR sources on where a tactical vote to unseat the Tories should go in Clacton:
https://tactical.vote/clacton/ -- Labour.
https://www.getvoting.org/constituency/E14001174?postcode=CO15 -- Labour
https://stopthetories.vote/parl/clacton -- Labour.
https://tacticalvote.co.uk/#Clacton -- Labour.
Gosh, look at that. Unanimity. It’s almost as though you haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about and didn’t bother to check. Who’d have thought?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/13/dirty-waters-how-the-environment-agency-lost-its-way
Good job we had that one Green MP the last 14 years, eh?
sonofrojblake@14,
Typical that you completely ignore the polling evidence I linked to, which shows that the current election is vastly different from either the 1992 election, or the referendum. Of course you do, because you have no answer to it other than obfuscation and distraction.
You really don’t understand what “parallel” means, do you?
Where the fuck do you get that piece of tripe from? Your claim was that:
I simply pointed out that no, everyone was not sure of that. I wasn’t, for example, and nor were many people I knew -- because, in contrast to the current election, the polls showed it was likely to be a close vote. Now, they show that the Tories are going to get hammered, as all the relevant experts agree (go on, find me a psephologist who says otherwise, and is not obliged to do so by being employed by the Tories). But presumably you were sure Remain would win, and maybe you only associated with similarly stupid people.
Jesus wept, you have endless reserves of stupidity to call on. I was quite specific:
A strong Green vote will indicate to Starmer, and those around him, that he can no longer assume that the left, and those who prioritise the need for climate action, have nowhere else to go. Got it yet?
Now, let’s take a look at your “tactical vote in Clacton” suggestion.
https://tactical.vote/clacton/ says:
In other words, it completely ignores the fact that a Reform Party UK Ltd. candidate -- specifically, it’s owner, Nigel Farage, is standing. It clearly produces its advice without taking into account such special local circumstances.
https://www.getvoting.org/constituency/E14001174?postcode=CO15 says:
So clearly it is not giving advice to those who prioritise minimising the number of Tory MPs above all. It is assuming that those interested in its advice will not be voting for Farage. If you scroll down, you will see a poll result, which shows Reform Party UK Ltd. expected to win, with the Tories second, and Labour third. (Note: this is an MRP poll -- see below.)
https://stopthetories.vote/parl/clacton cites four polls. All of these are based on MRP methodology (and at least one was taken before Farage shoved the Reform Party UK Ltd. candidate aside). None of them are based on extensive polling in the constituency itself. You don’t know how MRP works, do you? What is done is to take a relatively large poll -- but still generally less than 100 votes per constituency -- and use both the expressed voting intention, and a bunch of demographic information (age, gender, sexuality, occupation, previous voting behaviour…) from all those polled. This enables the pollster to estimate that of (say) male 30-45 heterosexual manual workers who voted Tory last time, so many percent will vote Tory, so many Labour, etc. Then they look at the distribution of the demographic categories in each constituency and derive an estimate of votes for each party in that constituency by applying the national proportions for each demographic category. What they don’t do is look at specific local circumstances such as the individuals standing for election. (So the fact that even without doing this, the MRP Survation poll of 15th June cited by the second of your links shows Reform Party UK Ltd. ahead in Clacton is particularly striking.)
https://tacticalvote.co.uk/#Clacton is very short on information as to how it reached its recommendation. It says:
It doesn’t say which polls, so clearly can’t be relied on.
I can’t find a poll focused on Clacton since Farage announced he would stand, but one taken in January asked how people would vote if Farage was standing. Result: relatively easy win for Farage.
So it’s exactly as though you haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about and didn’t bother to check. Who’d have thought?
Latest MRP poll indicates Farage will win Clacton.
So if this poll is anything close to being right, and barring the appearance of video of Starmer biting the heads off live kittens, there is fuck-all chance of anything other than a large Labour majority, and vanishingly small chance of the Tories coming third behind the LibDems in seats or third behind Reform Party UK Ltd. in votes.
At last, a (small) poll of the Clacton electorate post-Farage-standing:
In case #18 is not completely clear, the poll figures (with the Tories second on 27%) predict a rather easy win for Farage. So, sonofrojblake, I’ll repeat the question: who would you vote for if you lived in Clacton? I’d vote for Natasha Osben of the Green Party of England and Wales, but there’s a choice of nine, including the man Farage shoved aside, two additional far right swivel-eyed loons, and what presents itself as a single issue outfit, the “Climate Party”. As far as I can tell this is genuine, though deluded, but it’s difficult to be sure (its leader has been interviewed on both GB News and Talk TV -- far right TV stations in the UK, think Fox News). In the last elections for the Scottish Parliament, a so-called “Independent Green Voice” -- a fascist front group -- probably cost the Scottish Green Party two seats.
Another MRP poll. This one doesn’t show Farage winning, but notes:
@19: Labour, for what good it would do. They align most closely with my views. On those polls, tactics seem redundant.
And another MRP poll. This one (which again indicates no Reform Party UK Ltd. seats, including Clacton) is the most extreme I’ve seen, showing Labour with 516 seats and a Commons majority of 382 -- and the Tories only 3 seats ahead of the LibDems (53 to 50). Clearly at present MRP polls are giving a huge range of results -- but all showing big Labour majorities. This is the only one suggesting the LibDems could have more seats than the Tories.
…And yet another. Central estimates:
Labour 425 (+223)
Conservatives 108 (-257)
LibDems 67 (+56)
SNP 20 (-28)
Reform UK 5 (+5)
Plaid 4 (±0)
Green 2 (+1)
The poll linked @23 again has Farage winning Clacton.