Maybe, maybe not.
Case for: Votes Lab has won since 2010, & particularly 2015, tend to be younger, more socially liberal, more concerned about environment & (crucially) have much lower partisan attachment to Labour party. So they're likely to be flightier when unhappy with Lab
Greens are the obvious place for such voters to go - as the party of "all the things people like me like, and none of the compromises/half measures of Labour". Likely to be particularly appealing to those attracted primarily by Corbyn, whose appeal was also "no half measures".
OTOH, as we saw in 2019, first past the post has a hell of a squeezing impact come election time. Lib Dems peaked at low to mid 20s in summer 2019, ahead of Lab on some polls. then collapsed like a punctured bouncy castle as voters forced to focus on binary first past post choice
In addition, Green voters are likely to be most concentrated in places Lab has least to worry about - ethnically diverse, graduate heavy big city seats where Labour majorities are currently very large indeed on average.
However, election day is a long, long way away, and so the primary political impact of the Greens is likely to come via internal pressure on Starmer and his team. A big Green surge would reverse much of Lab's poll gain since 2019 and make internal critics louder.
This could enable 2021 Lab to Green defectors to exert influence in a similar way to 2011-14 Con to UKIP defectors - protest defections to a smaller party could force a shift in the positioning of their old party by empowering internal critics who think like the smaller party.
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So, one more set of thoughts on Labour and patriotism. Last one for now, I promise. I think there are some interesting underlying similarities between Labour's patriotism headache and the Conservatives' traditional NHS headache
In both cases you have an issue where (1) A consensus "this is a good thing" view is held by lopsided majority of the country (2) A substantial & vocal group of activists within the party dissents from this view (3) (partly because of this) the party is less trusted on the issue
For example, with the Tories on the NHS. Since the foundation of the NHS, voters have suspected that the Tories cannot "be trusted" with it. That they secretly dislike it. That, given the chance, they would privatise it. Etc, etc. Lab campaigns always play on this.
Nerd trivia: The inauguration of Joe Biden means the beginning of the fifth period of time with 6 living Presidents. Four of the five periods have come since 1993:
1993-4: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton
2001-4: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II
2017-18: Carter, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump
2021-: Carter, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump, Biden
The earlier one was 1861-62: Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln.
There have never been seven Presidents alive at the same time
Another trivia 6 - there have been 6 Presidents who at one point in their lives were the only President alive:
Washington
Adams
Grant
T Roosevelt
Hoover
Nixon
Nixon is the only President who has been the only President alive and one of a set of 6 living Presidents
Three problems with Richard Burgon's contribution to the whole patriotism/flags debate - which was (1) voters who like flags and patriotism have their own party - the Conservative party (2) chasing them means taking young and BAME voters for granted
1. People who like flags and patriotism is "most people" (see Sunder Katwala's thread for evidence). So the argument amounts to "Labour should reject what most people think on this, and actively encourage them to vote Conservative if this is something that is important to them."
2. The "most people" who like flags in patriotism includes, actually, most young people and BAME voters. So if your concern is not to take such voters for granted - i.e. seeking to reflect their views not ignore them - then rejecting flags & patriotism is the wrong approach
I've been very positive about the UK's vaccine rollout, which has been outstanding.
But the successes this month only serve to throw into sharper relief the failures of last month, when a spineless got delated (again) taking the steps needed to avert catastrophe
The rolling 7 day average of cases in the UK has been halving about every two weeks since the peaked a few days after we, finally and belatedly, locked down in full on 5th January.
How many cases could have been averted if we had instead have locked down on 15th December?
Cases then, per @ganeshran , were running at average of 20k per day. Assuming same 2 week halving, we would have had:
10k per day around 29th Dec
5k per day around 12th Jan
2.5k per day around 26th Jan
Excellent analysis as per usual from Stephen. One idea he raises here which I think is really worth pondering is that welfare cuts for 2020s Cons could become like immigration for 2000s/2010s Labour: an issue they can neither dismiss, tackle or find a way to avoid"
And for symmetrical reasons. For Labour, immigration controls were a policy the voters they were targeting strongly favoured, but that their MPs, activists and media supporters loathed.
Big welfare increases are like that for Cons now - the voters they've targeted and successfully won over in the "red wall" etc favour a stronger safety net. But many MPs, traditional activists, and Con media hate the idea.