Well I believe Katie Hopkins endorsed UKIP at the last election. It is also very unfair to associate the majority of the Tory Party with the Hopkins-esque hard right it would be the lazy equivalent me of accusing the majority of Labour of being Seamus Milne-esque hard left. Sure there is a chunk of the Conservative Party which is deeply unpleasant and certainly deserves the label ‘nasty party’ but they are vey much a minority and a shrinking minority at that as the grim reaper whittles down their numbers year upon year. While I doubt the Tories will ever move as far to the centre as Ken Clarke or Anna Soubry they will end up closer to that than to Katie Hopkins or Phillip Davies. Of course if PR comes in the whole point is moot as you will likely get a new ‘Wet Tory’ party anyway.

As to Rivers’ point about lots of people ‘wanting’ to be Tory voters but can’t at the present time I assume you are referring to people who live in wealthy Liverpool wards like Church and Woolton as well as in Sefton? In your experience what would the Tories have to do or say to fix this problem and can they do it without ripping the rest of their coalition apart? I presume this goes to the heart of why the Tories are doing so badly in most large conurbations except in the really wealthy areas.

Pepps
“As to Rivers’ point about lots of people ‘wanting’ to be Tory voters but can’t at the present time I assume you are referring to people who live in wealthy Liverpool wards like Church and Woolton as well as in Sefton?”

Not just there as I’ve said before I’ve been doing a fair bit of campaigning in Warrington South as of late and the sentiment was still very much present there.

“In your experience what would the Tories have to do or say to fix this problem and can they do it without ripping the rest of their coalition apart?”

I think it comes in several forms, first clear out the ancient dross like Bone and Leigh or at the very least force them to enter the 21’st century, make them attend seminars on LGBT issues and feminism or something, anything to get them to stop spewing the total crap they come out with from time to time.

Also there is still the presumption (that polling suggests is even felt by people who vote Tory) that the Conservatives only care about the rich, avoiding brazen tax cuts for the wealthiest and privatisations that the public clearly oppose is certainly one way to help.

Also the Tories really do need to find a way to reach out to the public sector many of whom are extremely wealthy but fear the Tories since they seem to presume their just an overpaid quango and the first chance they get the Tories will make them redundant. The most obvious ways of making overtures to the public sector are obviously the most expensive (give them more money) so that might be problematic but I’d say some genuine heartfelt overtures to public sector unions might be the way to go. Treat them as friends not “the enemy within”

And when Screaming Lord Sutch is king of the world I can have a free unicorn…

Maxim
As unlikely as it is to happen Ruth Davidson as Tory leader would be a terrifying prospect as a Lab supporter. If the Tories united behind her I think she’d be brilliant, even I find her incredibly endearing. the consolation prize is that as PM she’d probably be a very fair and balanced leader.

‘if Labour capitulates to this political consensus after 2020 then there won’t be a left-wing party in British politics’

You could have said when Labour were led by Blair – they were barely a Social Democrat party

In my opinion what Labour really need to do if they do go down to the much predicted Tory landslide in 2020, is to focus on winning back the scores of white working class voters who have deserted them in droves over the past decade and they will only do that by going down a socially conservative root which will be impossible in a party dominated by socially liberal MPs almost exclusively from metropolitan/urban areas

On so many levels things do look decisively grim for the Labour Party at the moment

RIVERS10 – Tania Mathius ‘a good ‘un”? Ruth Davidson “incredibly endearing”?

What is wrong with you, man????

I have been looking at the new Conservative marginals in London and do think that Labour could repeat their 2015 performance here. Remain London is likely to swing against the likely Lab to Con swing in the UK as a whole.

I believe that Enfield, Merton & Wimbledon Central, Croydon Central and Hendon could all fall. I also think that the results in the semi notional Conservative marginals of Harrow & Stanmore, Hampstead & Golders Green and Brentford & Chiswick could all much closer than the notional majority.

Future gentrification in Hammersmith & Fulham will sustain the notional Conservative majority there and Labour are being built out of Battersea as 1000’s of new Tories will be occupying Nine Elms by 2020.

The strong Labour performance in West Central last year, however, and the high number of Remain voters will mean that The Cities of London & Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea could be relegated from ultra safe Conservative seats to being semi-safe Conservative seats. They will become less strong constituencies for the Conservatives than somewhere like Kettering, so gone are the days of Kensington South and its successors being the safest Conservative seat anywhere.

While they are semi marginal, the Leave vote was stronger in Erith & Crayford and Hillingdon & Uxbridge so I would not see these seats at being at any risk of falling to Labour.

The new notional marginals of Kenton and Finchley & Southgate would be strong Conservative prospects if outside London, but within London I would expect Labour to comfortably increase the notional majorities.

On paper, Bermondsey & Waterloo, Twickenham and Kingston & Surbiton should be the most obvious Lib Dem targets but there could be an impact of the loss of the Lib Dem incumbency and the gain for the Conservatives of 5 years of their incumbent.

We will not know for certain what the trend will be in London until the London Borough elections in May 2019.

The only notional Labour marginals (Con 2nd) are Kenton and Finchley & Southgate. I don’t see the Conservatives gaining these but I could see Labour gaining Enfield, Hendon, Merton & Wimbledon Central and Croydon Central despite heavy loses outside London. I think the Conservatives will poll more strongly than 2015 in Leave constituencies but more poorly in Remain constituencies.

Merton & WimbledonCentral…Kenton…hardly the most important part of Harrow….when I see the ghastly new names and proposals, I wonder if the boundary changes will actually happen. But I suppose the discrepancy between electorate sizes can’t be left indefinitely.

Part in Brent part in Harrow.

There’s a poll in today’s Standard:

Lab: 37%
Con: 34%
LD: 14%
UKIP: 9%
Green: 5%

If true the Lib Dems have doubled their vote in London in the last two years (Brexit obviously beeing a big factor).

No surprises here – compared to 2015/16 Labour down quite a bit, Tories static, LDs recovering (but not to pre-2010 levels), UKIP down. There are quite a lot of Lab seats with small majorities in London, so even this sort of swing, smaller than national polls, could be very damaging.

And then, of course, there’s Richmond and whether the Lib Dems can consolidate their byelection gain in a seat they held fairly recently

It’s about the same the national swing is 4% this is 3%

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New YouGov poll finds support for a burqa ban in all regions outside of London, including support for a ban in Scotland.