Election Madness.
Ken has posted on the election prospects of the Tories.
His case is strong, perhaps stronger than he thinks.
I won't go into details, but I spent much of Sunday poring over the Election Results of 2001, from here (PDF file).
The thing I was investigating was who came first and reasonable second in each constuency. I defined reasonable as within half of the winning votes.
Now, overwhelmingly, it was Labour who managed to win by more than double the Tory vote, in places like Leeds, Liverpool, etc. The Tories only managed this this in single figures worth of seats, and the Lib-Vermins in only one or two.
Overwhelmingly, most seats were between Labour and Tories, very often voery close, with the third party running miles (unbridgeably miles) behind. The Lib-Vermins came second in a handful of seats, and almost always in opposition to the Tories, very rarely chasing Labour - even in Liverpool where they hold the council.
In Scotland and wales, I noted that the SNP and Plaid Cymru very rarely managed to come a reasonable second, i.e. they are the weak opposition in those ocuntries.
This suggests several things.
1) That Labour would benefit from an efficient electoral system that could convert all their wasted votes into seats.
2) That in some cities the Tories are virtually non-existant (I'll qualify that, Labour often won overwheelmingly with quite low votes, so perhaps Tories aren't bothering in Leeds, or the low turnout is stay away labour voters not wasting their time).
3) Following on from that, it indicates why when Labour got its disasterous 27% in 1983 it still got more than the Tories with their 32% in the last election.
Why am I bothered with all this. Well, it shows that the real support, whichever way you cut it, is still with the capitalist parties. The rag-tag-and-bobtail Trot groups standing in the election - i.e. all the other parties with 'Socialist' in their party name, managed a combined 180,000 votes, about as many as UKIP (who won no seats). Labour got ten million or so.
Finally, it shows the Tories are a substantial political force, with substantial ideological support within the working class. This cannot be ignored.
Voting Labour and leaving that support untouched, voting Labour and leaving Labourites minds unchanged, will just leave the threat of the right-wing electoral storm untouched. We need to win hearts and minds, not votes.
posted by Bill at 08:17
2 Comments:
The upper working class and middle class are the powerbase of any country. Labour represents the lower working class, and bleeding heart Oxbridge graduates. In a democracy any party that visibly attacks the upper working class and middle class is heading straight for electoral defeat - eg Labour in the 80s. Labour, therefore, had to disguise it's socialist identity with a Tory face = Blair. But Labour is still pure commie. The problem is that the upper working class is stupid and so continues to support these commies even though they are attacking them indirectly. The middle class know the true identity of "New" Labour but aren't sufficient by themselves to get the Tories back into power.
The Tories will get back in power when Basildon turns blue. But until Brown comes to power Labour will continue to appear ok to the interests of the upper working class.
I so hope you commies regain the visible leadership of Labour. The day you and your commie bum chums do Tory victory will be at hand.
Sorry, Anon, but we're the enemies of the Labour party, the ultr-left zealots who have never supported it. I disagree withw ho you think labour supports. I've always viewed them as being sentimentally attached to privileging industrial capital over financial, and drawing in the skilled manual working class as well as the liberal professional classes in support of that.
Blair's real coup was to start supporting financial capital, and thus heal the rift within the ruling exchelons...
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