If Cameron’s temporary boost was all due to the Euro vote, why does Clegg’s line follow such a similar pattern?

Adam

Differentiation

The Euro vote issue was good for cameron because it made him look like a “proper” Tory who won’t let those nasty foreigners get away with nuffink.

At the same time it was good for Clegg because it gave him a chance to say some stuff not in line with government policy that he has no power to influence (that’s what Lib Dems have always done best).

The Clegg situation is less a concern for Lib Dems than Dave’s is for the Tories, one would think.

Clegg’s just another leader for them and not particularly indicative of their future plans. They can dump him and bring in some one different who might take the party in a different direction.

Cameron was the centre-ground “get elected” leader for the tories – whose personal ratings helped drag an otherwise unpopular party to the brink of election victory. So their next leader needs to be similar to Cameron to give them a chance of winning elections, while at the same time his falling rating makes him less able to be that leader and emboldens the swivell-eyed wing of the party to think that a lurch to the right in their next leadership would be as successful or more so.

Lib Dem electoral prospects are shot – the Tories are loading the gun with which to shoot themselves.

If Milliband and New Labour want to recapture those 5 million lost core voters, they need to stop cosying up to Blair.
Nobody in my family will vote Labour as long as Blair, Mandelson, Campbell, etc., etc. as still returning to their vomit.
You may as well tell Labour voters that the ballot papers are contaminated with polonium 210.
Remarkable, 97 years to build, 13 to destroy – what a legacy?

Barrie J

5million lost core voters?

When and where did Labout lose them?

Doesn’t it alarm anyone else that all these ratings are negative? Translation – the public hates all three!

I’d love to agree with you Sunny, but it’s not the most convincing graph. What I see is three lines all on a more or less consistent downward trend. If Miliband’s numbers stay where they are for a couple more months, we can probably say something, but at the moment we can’t tell if it’s just a blip.

It’s also worth noting that all three lines are heavily in the negative. Hardly a ringing endorsement of anyone.

Richard

“hates” is a strong interpretation – negative opinion need not be so severe as to literally mean hate. And with cynicism around politics being mistaken for intelligence, along with the obvious party imbalance that means all leaders have two party’s supporters ready to “dislike” – the widespread negative polling is not at all surprising and not even that alarming.

Surely questioning the number of ’5mil lost core voters’ is a tad difficult given how ridiculously low election turnouts have become as time goes on. If it falls any more, I’ll have a tough time believing we have any democracy left in this country with parties negotiating themselves into power with no true mandate to rule.

Regardless of the number, and it must be big, Labour does have a lot of lost core voters. I suspect at the last general election a lot of them just didn’t vote at all. I wasn’t one of them, but I didn’t vote Labour. I wanted Blair and his stink out. Now it’s time to ensure that we never see Tory administration in this country again for at least another 5 generations, if ever. But for that to happen, the Labour party needs to never become ‘Diet Tory’ ever again. I still believe the people at the top of political parties being from a nearly entirely elitist background is a grave problem that will continuously cause any party to struggle to really make policies that effect everyone positively. There’s too much of a bubble at the upper end of the political spectrum, regardless of party. And it’s so bad that grass-roots, ordinary people who wanted to enter into politics to make a difference – based on what is more than likely a much more balanced, widespread life of experience than that of a career politician (from uni onwards), never mind those that are from privileged backgrounds as well – just wouldn’t ever be taken seriously.

It’s very sad. The people that govern our country just do not ‘represent’ us. That single fact alone will always have a huge effect on approval ratings.

Steve CK

Agree that it is sad that our poilitical system has so professionalised and become such a middle class clique that the public at large has switched off.

But where does the 5million core voters lost figure come from? I don’t understand what it means or when they were lost or whatever. Does “core” mean in places like Scotland, Wales and the North? Is 5million at the last election or since Attlee was in charge?

Hence I asked.

margin4error: I wouldn’t describe them as “core” voters, but Labour did get 5 million fewer votes in 2010 than it did in 1997, accompanied by declining general turnout. Very few of those “lost” voters appear to have gone to the Conservatives, though – almost of them either went to the Lib Dems, a minor party, or – very often – just stopped voting at all.

Getting half of those lost voters back would put Labour comfortably ahead of the Conservatives without needing to convince a single Conservative voter, and given how few of the current Conservative voters appear inclined to even consider voting Labour, it’s probably an easier task for them too.

I did not bother voting at 2010 I just looked at labour and the Tories and basically it made no difference who won for me anyway.

Labour was talking about the squeezed middle it had serious problem talking about council housing calling them affordable housing, they had serious problems talking even today about working class or even low paid, after Brown it was hoped to return to something like serious government and we got the joker Cameron and the comedian Osborne and to be honest Newer labour does not look that clever either it has to bring back Blair who is now pushing for his son to be an MP. god help us all

@9. margin4error

Agree that it is sad that our poilitical system has so professionalised and become such a middle class clique that the public at large has switched off.

True, and not just that. All three main parties have signed up in varying degrees to the same neo-liberal agenda. Which basically involves signing power and state assets away to global corporate interests, while cracking down harder and harder on dissent at home with ever more draconian “anti-terrorism” measures.

Is it any wonder that the public views them all with contempt?

The Lib Dems stood out from that to some extent until about the time that Charles Kennedy stood down, and since then it has become a clone of the other two parties. Labour has started making some (very small) steps away from the post-Thatcher consensus, and has seen its poll ratings rise

cim

thanks for the response. Some on on another thread who used the figure (without the word “core”) got back to me with an answer. In fairness, her links suggest that many may have been lost to the tories rather than to lib dems or non-voting – but the analysis seems a bit vague.

At least I know now what the 5million figure is. And whoever they are, Labour obviously need to get them back.

Graham

Not sure I buy into the “signing assets away” bit. Labour nationalised the railways, some hospitals and some banks between 1997 and 2010 – and I’m endlessly explaining to people that the state still owns assets under PFI, which tends to be where such criticism wrongly stems.

signing over power however, or more acccurately and importantly. accountability – is very much a cross-party attitude. And again, I suspect this stems from a rather “professional politician” mentallity that management of stuff is more important than a vision.