This thread exists to discuss British politics.
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- There is a dedicated thread to discuss LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom. That doesn't mean it's always off-topic here, but unless something's directly linked to political events, that's probably a better thread for it.
- There's also a separate thread to talk about your favourite British Prime Ministers.
Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
A procrastination in of itself
In popularity he did plenty well at the U.K. national level at certain times, in 2015 UKIP got 12% of the vote even with Cameron having promised a Brexit referendum and the natural reluctance people have when it comes to voting for a non-major party under FPTP. Now, due to FPT that 12% of the national vote got them 0 seats.
Farage actually left UKIP after 2016 and that caused them to tank in popularity for the 2017 election, then come 2019 he was running the Brexit Party (now called Reform and not officially led by Farage but still his in practise) and was enough of a threat to the Conservatives that Boris is alleged to have offered Farage a seat in the House of Lords in exchange for standing down a number of candidates. Farage stood the candidates down but never got the lordship.
Reform are now picking up a ton of votes that went Tory in 2019, but it’s not clear if they’d have stayed Tory anyway considering the Tory failure on immigration and the fact that many of them were Boris voters rather than Tory voters.
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Anyway, as noted in the LGBTQ+ thread: delaying the election to winter makes the assumption that your voters are both more driven and you're the one that doesn't need to campaign.
I don't think that likely goes for the Tories in the current environment, where their support is declining and their own MPs keep leaving.
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A procrastination in of itself
So to answer the question from the LGBTQ+ rights Thread.
While election timings can be used to nudge turnout it’s not like the US where there’s explicit voter suppression. A winter election is liable to reduce turnout overall (both by making voters not bother to vote of their own initiative and reducing the amount of campaign resources that campaigns have to turn out their vote) and depending on timing could hit student turnout.
University students can be registered to vote at both their university and their home address but often don’t both, students also have some very predictable busy periods where they’re less likely to vote (the start of the academic year where you’ve got Freshers, Christmas due to heading home and the night of exam season).
Now while a winter election could be to try and capitalise on low student turnout (that suggestion has been thrown at Boris for the 2019 election) it’s probably not. It’s probably just Sunak wanting to hang on as long as possible.
A winter election is expected to be bad for the Tories for a few reasons.
For US posters it’s worth noting that U.K. election campaigns are done heavily via what you’d call retail politics. Having candidates, other elected officials and volunteer activists doing phone banking, staffing stalls at public events or going door to door talking to voters and delivering leaflets.
So with that context in mind the Tories have a few problem with a winter election:
- While Labour get more student vote than the Tories the party has moved away from students under Starmer, he’s not as dependent on them as Corbyn was and their votes likely carry more weight at their parents across the country then in safe urban university seats.
- Tory voters and activists are old, that’s a demographic group that are especially likely to stay in when it’s dark and cold. That costs them votes and resources.
- Heating price increases are heavily associated with the Tory party so every voting jsut after getting a December/November heating bill is going to have voters be less likely to support the government.
- Delaying just pisses people off, they want the election done already. It’s the same mentality that hit Corbyn in 2019 due to his promise to have another refurendum on the actual Brexit proposal, lots of voters were turned off by that due to just wanting it over.
- Winter (especially a winter where the NHS is having trouble) sees a temporary demographic shift in the nation towards the younger end and that hurts the Tories. Or to put it more bluntly, there’s a chunk of Tory voters and activists who won’t survive the winter so aren’t going to be around to campaign/vote for the party if the election happens in January.
Farage's (second) party become a big thing on the European level, but never really took off domestically, right?
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