Opinion polls were once a very reliable indicator of which way people would vote. These days they are much less so. It is easy enough to interview a couple of thousand people that represent a cross section of the public. It is much harder to be confident that the cross section that has spoken to you will reflect the people who will actually turn out and vote or that the people who didn’t want to speak to you don’t have different views from those who did.
Recent polling numbers
Despite all those difficulties it is possible to say a number of things with reasonable confidence on the basis of polls taken since the utter shambles of the Truss government.
1. Support for the Conservatives has dropped like a stone
Most polls are showing those who intend to vote Conservative hovering around 25% of those interviewed.
2. The average voter is well to the left of this government
Typical polls are showing support for the Conservatives and the far right combined at around 30%, whilst those who intend to vote Labour, Lib Dem, Green, or SNP represent more than 65% of those sampled.
3. The far right is not going away
As the Conservative vote has collapsed, some of it has transferred to the far right who are now achieving polling figures that are just about equal with the Green Party.
Will people forgive and forget the last 12 years?
Many commentators are assuming that voting intentions will change significantly before the next election as Rishi Sunak works hard to market himself as a safe pair of hands that has cleaned up the mess. That is, of course, possible and may well take place. It is also possible that the majority of people have had enough and aren’t in the mood to forgive and forget. It isn’t easy to claim that the Conservatives are a safe pair of hands when it was on their watch that so much has gone wrong.
Between now and the next election there will be over a hundred thousand new mortgage borrowers getting new fixed term contracts every month on much worse deals, lots of people seeing their rents rise, rapid rises of food prices, and huge new power bills to pay despite subsidies. Most people don’t spend hours analysing politics. They just get on with their lives and vote against any party that inflicts pain on them.
That pain is going to be relentless. The obvious party to blame is the one that is in power. The decline of the Conservative Party vote might therefore prove to be long term. Indeed, if they lose the next election their future as a significant part of the British political landscape is far from secure. Their factions hate each other and are only held together by a desire for power.
Opportunities and threats
For the far right, the decline of the Conservatives represents an opportunity. For true believers who have emotionally signed up to the ‘populist’ vision, evidence isn’t the main influencer. Blind faith is.
A significant proportion of right-wing voters appear to think that Brexit hasn’t gone wrong because it was a daft idea from the start, but because it wasn’t done enthusiastically enough. The same people tend to think that Liz Truss didn’t cock up the economy in a few short weeks by following their bonkers theories to the letter. They think she messed it up by not doing those stupid things for long enough. They think she was betrayed and should have gone harder and faster.
For those who are to the left of the current government this represents both a huge opportunity and a serious risk. If anything even remotely resembling over 45% of voters put their cross besides the Labour Party then they will win an absolutely gigantic majority at the next election.
With victory comes expectation. Barak Obama inspired US voters to elect him twice with the slogan “Yes we can!”. Unfortunately, the change that many poor American voters saw on the ground was simply not up to their expectations. That failure to deliver on big improvements on the ground made it easy for Donald Trump to go on the attack. Not everyone who voted for Trump was a rabid fanatic. Around 13% of those who voted for Trump had voted for Obama.
Scared to tell the truth?
At the moment a lot of people seem to think that all efforts should be directed to getting rid of the Conservatives and that we shouldn’t take the risk of alarming voters by talking about controversial issues like Brexit. I think that is a huge mistake. We have to get this change right or it will come back to haunt us. It is not enough to just get rid of a bad government. If the government that replaces it lets people down, then the bonkers far right will come out of the woodwork with a vengeance.
You don’t beat the far right by refusing to challenge its ideas. Silence on the damage of Brexit leaves space for a lot of noise from true believers and allows their narrative to grow stronger. If the leaders of a party are scared to stand up and tell the truth to voters in red wall areas before an election, what confidence can we have that they will be brave enough to take necessary actions under the pressure of government?
Get it right
What you vote for is more important than what you vote against. The five years after the next election could easily be dominated by one monolithic voting block under the control of the leaders of a single political party. If that leader proves tame and acts as if all voters want is a return to the days of Tony Blair, then we are going to need every voice we can get speaking out in parliament for more progressive policies. Because if what is delivered falls well short of expectations then the far right will be all too ready to exploit neglected communities for their own unpleasant ends.
