Someone claimed on Twitter a couple of days ago that there have only been four previous occasions when the main opposition party in the UK has had such a big lead in the opinion polls. In practice that means since the 1940s, because polling wasn’t around before that. The four occasions mentioned were –
* 1968-69, when Harold Wilson’s Labour government was suffering a severe spell of mid-term unpopularity following the forced devaluation of the pound.
* 1990, when Mrs Thatcher was about to be dislodged due to the public’s hatred of the poll tax.
* 1993-97, when John Major’s government was in its prolonged death throes.
* 2008, at the lowest point for Gordon Brown.
It’s not easy to double-check the claim that those are the only four periods on a par with the present day, but assuming it’s right, the fascinating aspect of it is that only one of the four saw the opposition party sail through to an easy victory in the way that had been anticipated –
* By 1970, Wilson had somehow turned it around for Labour. He even called a snap general election a year earlier than he needed to, and was fully expected to win. The Tories under Edward Heath did claim a surprise victory in the end, but they had to come from behind to do it, which certainly wasn’t what they had been expecting a year or two earlier.
* Labour’s big poll lead evaporated as soon as Mrs Thatcher was replaced as Tory leader in November 1990. Thereafter, the polls still made the 1992 election look competitive – but the polls were wrong, and Labour suffered a crushing outright defeat.
* 1997 was the one occasion when it was plain sailing for the opposition, with Labour under Tony Blair winning the landslide that the polls had been pointing towards for several years.
* The Tories did end up in power after the 2010 election, but only courtesy of a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats. Gordon Brown clawed things back sufficiently that Labour could have stayed in power if the Lib Dems had backed them.
So all of that suggests next year’s general election may not be the triumphal procession for Keir Starmer that both Labour and the media think. The Uxbridge by-election result would tend to support the theory that what is happening now is not akin to the mid-1990s, because it’s almost unthinkable that the Tories would have won any by-election at all during the latter John Major period, irrespective of local circumstances. Otherwise intelligent people like Ian Dunt are spectacularly missing the point about the Uxbridge result, which they are dismissing as caused by a specific issue that only has resonance in a tiny number of constituencies. In reality, what the result showed is that voters are still giving the Tories a hearing if a potent enough wedge issue can be identified – and Ulez is not the only such potential issue out there.
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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2023: This year’s fundraiser has now been running for well over two months, and it’s been partially successful – it’s around a quarter of the way towards its target figure of £8500. Please bear with me as I plug away at continuing to promote it at the bottom of every blogpost, because there’s very little point in leaving the job half-done – that would mean continuing with the current service for maybe two or three more months and then more or less stopping. We wouldn’t necessarily need to hit the full target figure to avoid that outcome, but substantial progress would need to be made. Why is it a bit harder to raise money these days than it used to be? Obviously it’s partly because of the cost of living crisis, but I think the bigger issue is that it’s far easier for a pro-indy blog to inspire people to donate if it’s pumping out a “purist” message that appeals to one of the two opposite ends of the spectrum – ie. either that the SNP leadership can do no wrong and deserve our unquestioning support, or that the SNP is unremittingly evil and must be totally destroyed. Scot Goes Pop has a much more nuanced analysis that is pretty much bang in the middle between those two extremes. But the glass-half-full way of looking at it is that £2000+ raised means that people still think nuance and independent thinking (alternatively known as “being in the scunnered middle”) have their place. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far, and anyone wishing to make a donation can do so HERE. Alternatively, direct donations can be made via Paypal (in many ways this is preferable because it cuts out the middle man). My Paypal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
