getcapewearcapefly retweetledi
As a Manc, not enough people listening to @robfordmancs who has been anticipating the Green surge for sometime and pointing to some quite striking potential results in London in May…
strikes me that the polls got the by election completely wrong underestimating the Greens (although the predictive betting markets had it spot on - interesting)… that the frame of this by election was almost entirely wrong, this was never ripe territory for Reform… the big cities of the North are quite different to the towns, North West quite different to N East, bar Newcastle (theories?), and that is not just about ethnicity, plenty of left white working class in this city preferring Green to Reform.
but seems odd to reduce the Green victory to a story about one community when it’s clearly something quite structural and quite an obvious mirror image of what happened to the Conservatives on the right due to ukip/ reform now happening to Labour on the left, partly the inevitable and predictable result of a strategy that banks its urban liberal base and seeks to appeal to voters in Reform facing seats.
The consequences are pretty seismic… even for a majority Government. eg can imagine the Greens saying and offering a multitude of things the Labour base actually wants to hear on eg Brexit now, in the same way Ukip did on the opposite side, and having all sorts of impacts on Labour’s internal dynamics and ability to drive through tougher parts of its agenda.
Already Labour backbench voices want a strong statement of intent from the Chancellor at the Spring Statement on Tuesday, but that we have been told is going to be a policy free event (though we anticipate a more substantive strategic economic policy push in the middle of next month).
Interesting times.
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