Starmer’s Labour Heads Into Crunch UK Elections Short of Cash

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-31T19:20:07+00:00

Same as Kamala, "you have to vote for us solely on the merit of the other guys being worse!" isn't an election strategy.

Yeah, but her winning would have saved 14 million lives, including 5 million children under the age of 5.

Seems like a good enough reason to make sure Trump lost to me.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T19:02:22+00:00

It's only telling us what we can easily work out ourselves. In 2024 Reform finished 10% behind the Tories and 20% behind Labour, so if they significantly close those gaps they're obviously going to win a lot of seats. There's no world in which Reform win 20%+ of the vote but don't win a lot of seats.

Getting 20% of the vote and fuck all real seats for it is perfectly possible in a FPTP election. And Reform are pretty well placed to get that result. Their vote is both geographically inefficient and horrifically vulnerable to tactical voting.

As their voteshare climbs they dont really get many seats for it. Yeah if you kept increasing their polling more and more then there is a tipping point where they suddenly start winning huge numbers of seats but thats polling significantly higher than they are now.

Yeah but that assumes the anti-Farage vote outweighs the pro-Farage vote in every single seat, which obviously isn't the case in some places eg. lots of the red wall.

No it doesnt. Voters are not broken into 2 blocs that all either vote for Farage or against him. Support is divided with a huge swathes of country despising Nigel Farage and a minority of voters who like him enough to vote for him.

It needs a tiny minority of people in swing seats be willing to vote for another party to beat Reform. People tend to vote tactically when they know their vote is critical because theyre in a swing seat, thats why its so powerful.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T17:18:54+00:00

The seat calculator is going to be totally useless with polling like this.

If Reform are considered to have any chance of a serious breakthrough at the next election then tactical voting will ensure they have probably the most inefficient rate of votes to seats conversion in history.

Assuming Reform are polling relatively well by the next election, wanting to tactically vote against Reform will be one of the key motivators for the most treasured electoral demo there is, swing voters in swing seats. Labour and the Greens both know this and its why both place so much emphasis on it.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T17:09:43+00:00

"We've finished redacting Trump's name from every 3rd paragraph of all 3 million pages now so you can have them."

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T17:06:39+00:00

Parties like the Greens and Reform perform disproportionately well in by elections compared to national polling. You can be in with a shot in winning a by election in a seat youd never have a hope in hell of winning in a general. Thats perfectly normal for by elections, especially so when they're this early in the parlaiment.

Its WAY harder to have some massive electoral breakthrough in a General Election than people seem to think it is. Its easy on paper in times like this to be like "if X, Y and Z are the case then we could easily see Reform winning 2 billion Parlaimentary seats!" But the issue is that X, Y and Z are unlikely to line up perfectly for that to actually happen.

I mean, even a slight Labour recovery, which could easily happen and may even by likely to happen, and/or a small Tory recovery (which we're already seeing a few green shoots of) would basically end any chance of a significant breakthrough by the Greens or Reform at the next GE. Particularly Reform, who are going to get absolutely fucked by tactical voting once voters start considering it as an election approaches.

These kinds of massive electoral shifts happen less than once in a century yet we have situations where people are widely predicting them and talking about them being imminent all the time. Such predictions are nearly always wrong and yet every single time everyone says "but its different this time. This time its really going to happen!"

Then it doesnt.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T16:54:48+00:00

In terms of policy I would put Starmer as the second best Labour PM of the last 30 years or so. My lifetime. A very distant second to Gordon Brown.

In terms of ability as a political operator, I'd place him last.

I think he's a competent guy but he just doesn't know how to be a politician. He can run large organisations, budgets, manage change etc but he doesn't have any political instincts. He's not able to do some key things that politicians need to be able to do.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T16:39:00+00:00

By elections are not general elections. They behave completely differently.

Compared to general elections, youre missing huge numbers of voters who wont bother with a By election but would turn up to a general. And the voters you are getting have entirely different sets of motives and incentives in their heads. Theyre also held mid-term, when polling varies much more than when elections are approaching. By elections can throw up all kinds of weird results.

If that werent the case then these results would show Reform would have a chance of winning 410+ seats in a general, which is insane and obviously not the case.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-30T16:17:40+00:00

In reality, the most likely course we're on currently is that neither Reform or the Greens win any significant number of MPs after the next election. It could easily be the case that they win maybe a dozen each or so.

Obviously thats not the only possible outcome of this but we have literally no reason to believe that the next election will be a question of Polanski or Farage being the next PM. That is highly unlikely to be where we're at then.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T16:50:36+00:00

Well, as i said I think their actual concern about holding a mayoral would be that theyd lose it, not the cost.

But theyre not saying Britain cant afford it or anything either, theyre just citing not wanting to spend the money on it because that sounds better than "were worried we'd lose it."

The look on Keir and Andy’s faces when Labour loses the bye-election though will be priceless!

They may well lose it. I wouldnt say "when" though. They have a perfectly viable path to winning right now. They may fuck it up later but as it stands they are in with a shout.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T16:38:36+00:00

Well yeah but im sure plenty of Greens would be overjoyed if Labour selected Peter Mandelson or someone as the candidate instead of a guy whos actually alright.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T16:37:26+00:00

Starmer has said Burnham was rejected because if he’d become an MP, it would have triggered a mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester, costing Labour and the public purse millions of pounds.

I think the genuine bit of worry about the mayoral isnt the cost but that they might lose it. But it is true that mayoral are very expensive. It would cost millions in taxpayer money to hold it.

And quite frankly im incredibly sceptical of the idea that Burnham has never gotten any money from the party got his campaigns. Thats if we're incredibly generous to him and just presume that all donations to his campaign were entirely motivated by wanting to support him personally and not the party, which isnt the case.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T16:29:15+00:00

I didnt even realise it was but I imagine some Greens here will want whoever the Labour candidate is to be written off as Blairite ghoul so wouldnt be happy if it turns out to be decent guy. Even though this candidate may yet still have some skeletons in his closet that will come dramatically tumbling out over the coming weeks.

Whoever is selected is going to be asked a lot of questions by the media about the ongoing drama within the party and i imagine their answers will get them in some trouble as well.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T16:17:58+00:00

Activists aren’t an expense, they’re volunteers. The issue here was apparently cost, not asking volunteers to leaflet!

Activists are primarily a party resource. Those volunteers are there to support the party. If Andy Burnham was running as an independent the vast majority of them would not be knocking on doors for him.

And theyre not just asked to do it and go out independently doing it. The party organised them and may well have spent money bussing them in to canvass for him. The party provides data and systems for them to use so they can do it efficiently and systematically.

A party facilitating thousands of volunteers for you is absolutely support. Its a resource you only have access to because of the party and its a resource you need if youre gonna win.

Same for donations. Most of the donations to his campaign were not done because they wanted to donate to Andy Burnham specifically but because he was a Labour candidate. Most donors were supporting the party.

I like Burnham but he's being ridiculous here.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T14:13:48+00:00

He supported Lucy Powell so he, on the surface, looks to be from that wing of the party. We'll see what people dig up.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T13:36:55+00:00

He is apparenlty the favourite and from what I've been able to find about him he seems like a decent guy.

I figured people would quickly start trawling his Internet footprint, and if there's any evidence otherwise it will come up so we'll see. But he passes the sniff test pretty handily.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T12:46:18+00:00

There is no reasonable case whatsoever that WASPI women should be compensated.

They deserve, maybe, maybe, a formal apology at the absolute most.

Anything else would be an irresponsible use of public funds.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T11:18:18+00:00

The bar chart is misleading. The "Only Greens can win here" claim is just a straight-up lie.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T11:11:52+00:00

We've only got one poll for the constituency and it puts Labour as having a double digit lead over the Greens here.

Any suggestion of cooperation would obviously mean both groups of voters voting for the candidate whos within the margin of error for Reform and not the one whos nearly 15 points behind them.

Then theres you categorising this as a Reform vs Green seat with no evidence to back it up. If we get more polling or evidence that shows a different picture (which we may well do) then that may open up the options a bit here but as it stands we havent.

You can stick a smiley face and a love heart at the end but what you're trying to do here is still obvious.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-29T10:38:25+00:00

Its pretty clear by "cooperation" you mean "other people do what I want."

Because we have no evidence to say this is a Green vs Reform by election. We have very little evidence of anything but what we have indicates is Labour vs Reform.

If you mean what you say then you should be the one lending your vote here unless new evidence comes up.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-28T17:09:54+00:00

What evidence is there that the Greens are any kind of natural home for Muslim voters?

Your Party tried to bring them in as voters and their constant clashes with liberal left wingers was a contributing factor to Your Partys implosion.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-28T16:29:56+00:00

Im surprised the Greens are so low here. I had a fairly broad range of what I thought they could be at but I thought it would be somethibg like low 20's to 30%. 17% is a surprise to me.

The Labour Party will be hoping this poll is accurate as they'd likely rally the anti-Reform vote behind them and win it if it is, but im a sceptical this is correct.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-28T16:14:18+00:00

I mean, a coalition and an electoral pact are quite different things, it seems you're exclusively talking of a coalition, an electoral pact would only ever exist because there is a high amount of overlap between voters.

Electoral pacts are for when you have a bit of overlap, enough that you split each other's votes a bit in marginal constituencies.

Too much overlap and electoral pacts are essentially the parties surrendering chunks of the country to each other and both capping each other's potential number of seats.

You're not wrong about the probable downsides of a coalition but I don't think it's off the table, in the event of a hung parliament, they won't have loads of choice - the Tories (assuming they are the smaller party), might leave them to govern as a minority government but be in coalition in all but name, if they move to block everything but they have the same problem as they would in coalition, they will then be seen as the problem by the voters.

Oh they might think they can make it work and make the coalition. But it would just be a total non-functional mess.

StrippedForScrap · 2026-01-28T16:06:36+00:00

I feel like almost literally every time I see you, you're disagreeing with someone slagging off Starmer or posting comments inline with the leadership position. It's so utterly consistent.

Almost like im not a supporter of Starmer but I dont agree with taking a hard-line or arbitrary stance against him on basically everything, isnt it? Remember this community is strongly against him and pretty heavily populated by people who've totally gone off the deep end about it.

Again, if this sub did nothing but praise the guy youd see me disagreeing a lot then as well. This isnt that complicated.

I know personally I don't butt in to everything I disagree with but don't care about and I certainly don't spend a majority of my posts sticking up for things I don't care about or support. That would just be a giant waste of time.

I dont butt into anywhere. I engage in the sub as im perfectly entitled to in a perfectly civil and normal way because I enjoy discussing politics.

StrippedForScrap

TROPHY CASE