People seem to be forgetting there are a lot less Labour Leave votes in Labour Leave seats now than in 2016 because a lot of them switched to Cons in 2017. So BXP candidates in Lab Leave seats will usually take more votes from Cons (mostly Leave) than Lab (mostly Remain)
Farage, in short, is making the John Mann error of thinking most Lab votes in Lab Leave seats are Leave voters. They aren’t. By encouraging voters who went from ukip to Con in 2017 to switch back to Bxp in 2019 he’s helping Lab MPs defend such seats
Once again the date of Brexit May hinge on politicians’ inability to understand the ecological fallacy
Appreciate this May be hard to follow so will break it down:
1. Most Lab votes in Leave seats Farage is targeting voted Remain in 2016
2.The voters who will find BXP most attractive in such seats likely to be those who voted UKIP in 2015
3. Most of those voters backed Con in 2017
1. Most Lab votes in Leave seats Farage is targeting voted Remain in 2016
2.The voters who will find BXP most attractive in such seats likely to be those who voted UKIP in 2015
3. Most of those voters backed Con in 2017
4. Therefore, BXP will typically (tho not always) hurt Con more than Lab in such seats. Just as (and indeed because) UKIP’s collapse in 2017 benefitted Con more than Lab in such sets
TL;dr If you’re a Con running a May 2.0 strategy there’s no possible world in which a rebooted ukip 2.0 is helpful to you
This should read “fate of Brexit” but “date of Brexit” is actually a fun autocorrect
Also one rather important point I missed here - Lab to LD switching among the majority of local Lab voters who backed Remain could be just as important as switching to BXP among Leave voters
If Lab lose half their Remain vote to LDs they will lose a lot of Leave seats even if (a) they lose few Leave votes to BXP and/or (b) Cons lose quite a lot of votes to BXP. Remain splits don’t only hurt Lab in Remain seats
Some more thoughts on this, because its complicated and I'm still mulling it over. Another way to break it down is scenarios. I can see three scenarios where BXP help Cons in Lab Leave seats -two look unlikely to me, one perhaps a bit less so
1. BXP take seats off Lab directly that Cons couldn't win (e.g. in deeply anti-Tory but pro-Leave places). Doesn't strike me as v. likely because there just aren't many seats which are on 2017 numbers v strongly Lab and v strongly Leave *and* Cons are currently weak
So it would require either Con candidate in relatively strong position to stand aside based on faith that BXP would do better (why would they?) or Con vote to go over wholesale to BXP despite strong Con presence (why would they?)
Lab Leave seats where Cons totally flopped in 2017 seem unlikely to me to be places where a BXP candidate is going to overhaul a huge majority from a standing start.
Second scenario is that BXP candidate takes Lab Leave votes who would never vote Con, while Cons hold on to their 2017 Leave voters, thus putting Cons in a better relative position. That seems unlikely too given that much more of the Cons 17 vote than Lab 17 is UKIP 15 voters.
Third scenario is that BXP takes a chunk of firmly anti-Tory Lab vote, while LDs take a bigger chunk of Lab Remain vote, enabling Cons to come through the middle with the bulk of the Leave vote. That seems more plausible, but it requires things to fall *just right* for Cons
They would need BXP to take Lab leavers at greater rate than Con Leavers. Otherwise, they're better off with no BXP candidate and hoping LDs split the Lab Remain vote. In most cases, I doubt things would fall out *just so* - Cons are just much more exposed to Leave competition.
