Malc wrote:
The Labour figure barely changes
I know it's not going to be exactly 1-1, but it does bother me that in a general election those Conservatives might just make the effort to come out and vote. They can show dissatisfaction with Rishi now, but they'd still probably prefer him over any version of Labour.
First off I'm usually a fearful pessimist, having fearfully called Trump, Brexit and Tory landslides. These results however point to something different to me. First of all this is a bluer-than-blue constituency with Mid Bedforshire, and Tamworth is also pretty blue. I wasn't expecting the Tory leads to be heavily slashed but not for BOTH of these to flip. You can see some of the conservative votes going for lib-dem in Mid-Bedfordshire, I guess it's naturally easier for them to vote centre-right than centre-left.
Secondly I can perfectly see Tory votes also wanting to burn their own party down and rebuild it from within. I'd hope that somehow the centre-right regains influence within the Tory party, with the quiet semi-sane vaguely competent types who left during the Boris era coming back, but for any party in power for so long there comes the itching for a big civil war and that feeling of burning it all down and then fighting over ideology would be enough I think to disenchant some and actively turn a whole bunch of Tories who view Sunak with active malice going for (ugh) Reform or also staying at home. These results are going to fuel that feeling of, "We can't go on like this, let's end it now," while at the same time thoughts also are of, "Well Labour aren't completely communist, let's let them inherit this scorched land and then we can plan for the next one."
I don't think we'll see a historic 1997 Blair landslide, but I think that Kier's promise of boring competence combined with glitter of success is enough to make for a fairly comfortable Labour win. (Proceeds to knock on every bit of wood in the house, scratch the backstay, whistle, turn three times and cry out 'May the Lord and Saints preserve us!"