2010: Labour's Teutoberg forest?

[matgb]

There are times when I nearly remove a few blogs from my reading list, but just stop myself. One of them is written by Chris, who lives in Torquay. But sometimes, he comes up with a gem. This is one of them:

In 1992 Tony Blair mounted a daring expedition from Labour's heartlands to capture as much enemy territory as he could. Confronted by a worn out and divided enemy his raid was as successful as it was audacious. He managed to capture vast swaths of formerly Tory territory sweeping all before him like an all conquering Caesar.

Like Caesar Blair was eventually stabbed in the back by those that he had once thought his closest allies, but unlike Caesar the band that he was leading was not safe in their own territory at the time. They where still deep in the enemies native territory and desperately trying to find ways to hold their position.

Labour is now under Blair's rather less able former adjutant have found themselves, un-supplied, surrounded, and cut off from their reserves.

Go read the rest. Seriously. You have to excuse the typos and spelling, the best spell checkers can only help dyslexia so much at times, but the whole post is both spot on and very well observed.

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I have, as it happens, been to the Teotoberg site, Arne took myself and the_prince there when we stayed on after a tournament he organised, very scary to see how little space the Romans had to try to fight in, one of the best implemented ambushes in military history methinks.

Comments

[mooism.livejournal.com]

So take something like the recent ICM poll (Con 45%; Lab 25%; LD 20%) and say ahaha, what if there was a 5% Lab → LD swing from that (Con 45%; Lab 20%; LD 25%)? And then you feed these figures into Electoral Calculus for a laugh (Con 424; Lab 123; LD 74) and start crying because even then Labour easily form the official opposition in parliament, retaining all the credibility that goes with that.

Labour would have to step up their hole-digging programme something chronic for them to even have a chance of being the third party in parliament. It’s a possibility, sure, but not a particularly likely one.

And anyway, a couple of other polls say there’s been a bit of a Labour recovery at Lib Dem expense.

[matgb]

Don't like Calculus, it works swings out weird, and especially doesn't account for anti-Labour LD-Tory/Tory-LD swings, which are palpably happening in a lot of places (Crewe especially).

If the tactical anti-Labour effect is as strong as it seems to be on the numbers, we're looking at LDs on roughly the same number of seats as Labour (about 110-120 each). While I've no doubt at all that it's not going to be that bad, the pure national swing number crunchers don't seem at all able to take into account the number of LD/Labour marginals.

Specific example, where I now live is held by a Labour MP. It'll be Tory next time, but Labour is already wiped out at the council level, and we're looking at Lib Dems strong 2nd next time—if Labour go from 1st to 3rd, then their remaining activists and voters are much more likely to go with the anti-Tory candidate that can actually win.

Of course, it's all just hypothetical number crunching, and I'm not discounting that LDs could do really badly as well, but unless the targetting operation goes completely to pot, it shouldn't. I suspect tories will leapfrog us in some seats, but not many.

[andrewducker]

It's about now that you really expect Labour to start making noises about electoral reform...

[matgb]

*cough*
http://electoral-reform.org.uk/events_list.php

[andrewducker]

Yay!

It's _just_ possible that Labour are willing to change the face of politics in order to keep the Conservatives out. I shall cross my fingers.