Election Year or Fear!

[ramAnag]

I'll explain it for you. If say Labour had won a council seat with 30% of the vote previously, if that vote in this election is split between say The Green party, Labour and Lib Dems, for simplicity I'll say 10% each, and the Cons or other parties get 9%, then Reform only need to get 11% or more to win that seat without any Labour voters switching to Reform.

Obviously in practice its obviously more complicated than that but the principle is correct. A simple anlaysis of the votes cast for each party for each seat shows that in the main thats what has happened.

Of course some people who voted labour last time will have voted reform but the majority of votes that formerly went to Labour have gone to other parties and not Reform. A considerable number of people who voted Conservative last time have voted Reform, indeed that is where most of their votes have come from.

What we have is a situation where the voters have split on both the left and the right of politics thus enabling Reform and to a lesser extent The greens and Lib dems to win seats.

This is even more so in the Welsh and Scottish elections, where Plaid and SNP were the major winners.

At the risk of the usual brickbat from the usual suspects, I think that’s an excellent explanation.
There are exceptions, eg Barnsley, but generally speaking I agree that that’s exactly what’s happened and is in line with my earlier 26/74% reasoning as regards why Farage will not be the next PM.

If one looks elsewhere we seem now very similar to France and Holland where there is a significant right wing element - let’s say somewhere between a quarter and a third - but sufficient resistance (appropriate word that) to stand up to those who wish to further the politics of division and hatred.

As regards Starmer. He may not last much longer, I’m obviously unsure, but I don’t get quite why he is being made the fall-guy. Not sure anyone could have inherited the mess he was left and turned things round in less than two years, especially with Trump causing chaos from the sidelines for at least the last three months.
Starmer may not be charismatic but, certainly in comparison with his immediate predecessors, he has appeared statesmanlike throughout. Those who wish to take advantage would do well to remember, ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’