Danny

I did a fair bit of canvassing this election, and only a very small % of people who voted Labour said to us that their main motivation was stopping or 'softening' Brexit (and I can only remember one person using the term "Single Market" at all).

Irrespective of the 2015 manifesto, the Tories had done many things in government the previous 5 years that had royally pissed people off. And, for all that May's ratings have fallen through this campaign, they are still on a par with where Cameron's were on the eve of the election. Yet despite that, and despite Labour having a "Not Jeremy Corbyn" leader and running a "centrist" risk-averse strategy, they still failed miserably, because at the end of the day an opposition needs to give people something to vote for, and a reason to make the upheaval of change worthwhile, even if the incumbent government is woeful.

Except we had a leader other than Jeremy Corbyn at the last election, up against a similarly inept Tory campaign, and that leader still failed miserably. No matter how bad your opposition is, you need to offer something positive yourself if you want people to vote for you, something Corbyn's opponents within Labour still haven't grasped.

I'm going to predict that Labour will hold the Tories' #1 target seat, based on the canvassing I've been doing. Whether this seat is typical or not of the other battleground seats, I have no idea.

Posted without comment Mike Smithson‏ @MSmithsonPB TMay's YouGov 17% "best PM" lead over Corbyn is smaller than the 21% Jim Callaghan had over Maggie Thatcher before her GE1979 triumph

Have to say I don't really understand the idea that Manchester favours Theresa May. Let's face it, for a person who's whole shtick is competence and an ability to keep the country safe and shielded from danger, it's not a great look to have two major terrorist attacks happen on her watch within a few months. Whilst I don't think people will be uncharitable enough to actually blame her for it, it does rather drive home the reality that she (or, realistically, any leader) is not capable of keeping everyone safe at all times with the world as it is, thus undermining one of the main arguments for voting for her. Also worth saying that Corbyn and May are now pretty close to each other in personal favourability ratings (though May still has a lead on the "best PM" question of around the size that Cameron had over Miliband).

LOL, Labour Uncut has been predicting a Labour apocalypse everyday for years. I know for a fact that those supposed "canvass returns" in that article are bollocks because the feeling here is that Chester is a much more likely Labour hold than some of the traditionally "safer" seats round here. Interestingly, fox-hunting really seems to be doing a lot of damage to the Tories round here; I get the sense it's sort of punctured the image of Theresa May being more of a down-to-earth woman of the people rather than a "typical posh Tory". Plus the Labour manifesto has excited some people in a good way, including some Brexit voters. That said, I would guess the lead would widen again if the Tories shift the focus back onto Brexit, because there really is an underlying sense that the country would be better in negotiations with a Prime Minister who has a "strong hand" with a big majority, and no doubt Blair and Mandelson won't be able to resist sticking their oars in again with more nonsense that reverses the tentative LabourLeave gains that have been made in recent weeks.

The LibDems in this election decided on a daft strategy, and made it worse by picking a frontman totally unsuited to the strategy. All the talk of "the 48%" ever since the referendum completely overlooked that, for a substantial chunk of that 48%, it was only a borderline "head over heart" decision - and that, even for the chunk who really did feel passionate about it, it was going to be overruled by other issues once an actual General Election came into view. I would guess an "Ultra-Remain" election strategy would've had a ceiling of about 15% if they'd picked an appropriate frontman like Clegg, but they're going to fall short even of that, since a lot of that 15% probably didn't think much of Tim's musings about the sinfulness or otherwise of gay sex.

....the government could actually increase wages for social-care workers so that it's sufficiently attractive for British workers to fill the gaps left by migrant workers? Although I dislike the "immigrants are eroding our culture" bollocks, I'm getting tired of liberal commentators implying that young Brits are too "lazy" or "entitled" to fill the jobs that migrants fill.

It is a separate point, but it was you who raised "freedom of movement" (frankly, I don't think a lot of the public know what that specific term actually means -- my mum thought it meant few/no queues at Customs when going on holiday, rather than the right to settle permanently in another country). My point was specifically that Labour "moderates" like Keir Starmer don't seem to be advocating a substantial reduction in immigration, and then it was you who countered that he supported "ending freedom of movement", which as you now rightly say doesn't necessarily equate to lower immigration. People didn't just vote to regain "control" over immigration only to choose not to use those controls, and they certainly didn't vote to end the current immigration rules only to essentially sign up to the same system in some kind of EFTA arrangement like Keir Starmer seems to be implying. Rightly or wrongly, people voted for less immigration as an end goal, and realistically Labour probably aren't going to get anywhere electorally until they accept it. If the Labour "moderates" think that, in spite of that, they should carry on advocating the immigration status-quo as a point of principle anyway, then that's fine, but they can't then claim they're the ones who know how to make Labour "electable", with all their patronising mantras about "principles without power is pointless" or whatever, if they're knowingly pushing forward a platform which has even less public support than a Corbynista economic platform has (as a comparison between Labour's and the LibDems' results in a few weeks will show).

Has he? In one of his BBC interviews a few weeks ago, he said that he thought Britain should be prepared to consider a free trade deal with the EU even if the price of that was immigration being no lower than it is now.

And this is another way in which "Remain" commentators are playing right into the Tories' hands. All the ridiculously overblown talk about how Brexit would immediately mean the apocalypse, how impossible it will supposedly be to make it work - it's all meant that, because the public thinks the background is supposedly so unprecedentedly difficult, they're now crediting May with Churchillian levels of bravery and genius just because she's managed to keep things going without the sky falling in, because she seems vaguely in control of events, and because she manages to put forward a Brexit plan which sounds superficially plausible. When in reality, her only success has been to avoid the predictions of total economic catastrophe which were always ridiculous and overhyped in the first place.

Isn't this the equivalent of when I used to say Labour should promise to spend "x" and "y" because the public didn't have a problem with them, and you would say it wasn't just about the substance of the policy, it's about the tone? So it is with Brexit - even if the substance of Labour's position wasn't something people disagree with too much, if the Labour spokes-people they see on TV are only ever talking about what they want to do with the EU and only talking up the negative aspects of Brexit and talking in terms like wanting to be "close and collaborative", then people are going to wonder whether deep down Labour were really committed to leaving the EU at all. And that would be even worse with someone like Keir Starmer, who let's face it looks and sounds like the caricature of a hardcore EU supporter. IMO, and I say all this having actually done some canvassing these past couple of weeks for the first time in years, the next Labour leader will need to convince the public that they accept Brexit; that a substantial reduction in immigration is an essential part of it; and that a hardline stance in the negotiations is essential if we want to get a good deal for the country (to my surprise, not all that many people have been saying "Labour would just end up keeping us in the EU", which is a small mercy because that really would've killed the party stone-dead with the LabourLeave voters who are still in play for Labour this time - but there is a fear that Labour would be too eager to keep the peace in the negotiations and would just end up folding too easily, make concessions to the EU too quickly - and this definitely is something people who voted Remain feel just as strongly, because they think a too concessionary stance in the negotiations would end up with the worst of both worlds, out of the EU but on terms which are shit for Britain).

If the council elections last week are any guide (big if), Alex Salmond is in big danger of losing his seat.

This has just never been supported by evidence, though. In fact, the main changes have been huge numbers of Remain voters thinking we just have to go ahead with Brexit now. There was a poll a couple of months ago which showed only 21% of people wanted Brexit to be blocked or overturned in a new referendum. 21% is the exact same % of people saying they want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister in the latest YouGov poll, which puts into perspective just how few takers a "stop Brexit" message would have! The overwhelming feeling no matter how people voted last year seems to be that you can't just override a democratic decision, and that, even if the decision last year was the wrong one, we're now so far down the road that we just have to make the best of it.

In fact, the thing that sums up most how clueless Labour "moderates" are is that they the buzzword theyre still using is that Labour needs to "modernise" - an odd conclusion when the reason for their problems is getting SLAUGHTERED with elderly voters (Labour have a small lead with all voters under 50 in an average of recent polls).

I was thinking more of Keir Starmer and other "moderates" (not to mention Blair and Mandelson themselves) who are still constantly wittering on about "hard Brexit". Not to mention that most of the vocal "moderates" on Twitter and the Labour blogosphere are people who were aghast at Corbyn supporting Article 50. Are we really still on this patronising idea that "Labour voters" would've followed the party leader like sheep in voting Remain if only he'd been more "passionate"? Ruth Davidson is an example of just how limited party leaders were on the referendum last year - she had North Korean-style personal ratings with Scottish Tory voters, and gave a very "passionate" case to Remain during a primetime TV debate - yet a majority of Scottish Tory voters still voted to Leave in spite of that. People were able to make up their own minds regardless of what the leaders of the parties they support said.

And yet, even if the defeat is as bad as opinion polls are indicating (and it probably will be), I for one still would think Corbyn should stay on as leader on the basis of being the lesser evil - the "moderates"' big idea STILL seems to be to try to backslide on Brexit, which is easily as electorally-toxic as anything Corbyn stands for.

No getting it around it now, Corbyn needs to go. The electoral results in the first half of 2016 were not as bad as the media were presenting - now, they are as bad as presented, if not even worse. A 6.5% swing away from the opposition in a mid-term by-election is off-the-charts terrible -- the closest I can find in recent times was a 3% swing from the Tories to Labour in one of the early byelections in the first Blair government.

Yeah. Some elections expert produced estimates for every constituency, based on demographic data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wTK...t#gid=893960794 B&B was the only Scottish constituency estimated to vote Leave, although Caithness and Moray were both very close.

By the logic of being bound by your constituents, the SNP MP for Banff & Buchan should (probably) have voted for Brexit :P

The Tories completely misunderstood why they won the 2015 election. It wasn't because of "economic security" at all -- it was because, just like most of the successful campaigns of recent years, they pointed to some villains (in the Tories' case, the villains were immigrants, welfare claimants, and most importantly, the "uppity Scots") and implicitly made the message "if we take something from those villains, there'll be more for People Like You". A happy-clappy "centrist" message of "we can all be winners" as peddled by Clinton and Miliband just can't compete (whereas a Bernie Sanders-style campaign of identifying different villains - namely greedy rich people, banks and big multinational companies - would atleast have a chance of beating the populist right at their own game).

Whether it was "reality" or not, it was still horrible politics. The whole tone of what he said sounded arrogant and presumptuous, reminding people of the humiliation when Britain was seen as "America's poodle" in the Blair years (something which was never just confined to lefties). Hence why, from that day on, Leave being the "patriotic" choice became MUCH more widespread belief than it had previously, to prove to ourselves that we don't just do what we're told by other countries.

This was the main reason I voted to Remain -- because, as shite as the EU is, and as infuriating and offensive as I found the Remain campaign, having all the European countries on the same page in a big club atleast offered the chance of SOMEDAY forcing the biggest countries and big companies who run the global economy and global trade arrangements to change their ways. I still think a campaign along those lines, with a message along the lines of "let's stick with the biggest gang in the playground so that we can get our way over China, Putin and Trump" would've had a much better chance of success, present those other countries who we'd be vulnerable to after Brexit as a greater evil than the EU. Instead, the genius Remain strategists somehow thought it would be a great idea to run a campaign with a message of how great the economy was during the middle of a living-standards Depression, and how bad it would be if some selfish rich big businessmen and bankers decided they didn't want to grace our shores with their presence anymore, topped off with regular doses of a US President thinking he's entitled to give instructions to us on how we should vote -- all of which combined to present a Leave vote as the only way to stick up for national pride and for the "little guy".

I really doubt the public are going to stomach these "global free trade deals" May has been banging on about. One of the main reasons Leave pulled in a lot of working-class voters was precisely because people felt our economy was being controlled by "Brussels"/Germany -- they're not going to agree to have our economy controlled by the US/China/whoever, as would be inevitable with the kind of "deals" that are being talked about. Apart from anything else, it would raise the risk of parts of the NHS being effectively privatised.