Sorry if I’m being dense, but if Clegg attacks Brown, that’s good for Labour. If Clegg attack’s Cameron, that’s good for Labour. This looks a bit too much like Kreminology to me.

Yes, I think that it is good that Clegg seems to be cozying up to the Conservatives because it means that he will retain more of the voting share he took from the Conservatives than Labour.

This improves the situation for Labour and now “vote Clegg get Cameron” is the more likely refrain.

It also means that Cameron is going to be questioned more on electoral reform. After all this is widely seen as the “price” of a Lib Con coalition. This makes it awkward for Cameron because of course he’s not in favour of change like this, change that really matters.

I am not sure I buy that.

I think most of the Lib DEm vote has come from pissed off Labour voters. The Tories got about 31% at the last election and they are now polling 34–35ish. I expect that rise of about 3-4 points has has come mostly from Labour voters.

The rest of Labours decline has gone to the Liberal Dems. I can’t see many Tories switching to the Lib Dems because they think Cameron is not right wing enough.

Have not seen any polling on UKIP, but that is one to watch because I expect most of their voters to vote Conservative. They are, after all, mostly pissed off tories, and UKIP only really does well at European elections because Tories feel they can use their vote to send a message to the tory party.

Well, don’t forget the 40% of voters who didn’t bother last time. I reckon turnout will be higher; that’s going to affect the current polls and May 6th. It’s not necessarily voters coming “from” one party or another.

There’s an important point being missed here in all this talk of Lib-Lab this and Lib-Con that: Brown is finito unless Labour wins outright, and only then if Labour does well in terms of both seats and votes. Brown Out is something we can all agree on in these fractious times, from the cabinet down.

Obviously, it would be foolish to start popping the corks before he’s actually left, and they may have to take him dead or alive, but …..

Libdems could clarify things by saying exactly whose policies out of the two other parties they prefer. The silence on this is going to wreck the results. Over 60% of the population are to the left of all the parties. People will cast their vote for Clegg because he offers something ‘different’ from the other parties. Some of those votes will come from disgruntled Labour voters who are now going to think twice about voting Libdem since he gave that weekend interview. Disgruntled Labour voters are not going to put a cross next to Clegg’s name just to watch him cosy up to the Tories. He hints in that interview that he would abandon them.

sally @2:

I think most of the Lib DEm vote has come from pissed off Labour voters. The Tories got about 31% at the last election and they are now polling 34–35ish. I expect that rise of about 3-4 points has has come mostly from Labour voters.

The rest of Labours decline has gone to the Liberal Dems. I can’t see many Tories switching to the Lib Dems because they think Cameron is not right wing enough.

The polls seem to agree, although the poll in question shows that 8% of Tory voters from 2005 might now vote Lib Dem (compared to 21% of Labour’s 2005 total).

I think what we have to confront here is the fact that the core vote of both Labour and the Tories is lower than what we’ve tended to think in the past. Labour probably has 21-25% of the electorate who will vote Labour forever, and the Tories possibly have a little more than that, but these figures are in long-term decline. Even at their weakest point in 1983, Labour still managed 27.6%, higher than what some polls are giving them now despite having the advantage of incumbency and the last vestiges of the 1997 landslide. What’s even more shocking is that the Tories are scarcely doing better than Labour. William Hague led the Tories to 31.7% of the vote in 2001 and today ComRes has them on… 32%.

There has been a silent withering of support for both parties in the last 25 or so years. My own pet theory is that 1983 (with the SDP/Liberal Alliance polling just behind Labour at the election, and polling well ahead of both Labour and Tories until the Falklands war re-wrote the script) was a warning to both parties that the public wanted an alternative. However, both parties misinterpreted it badly. They saw the failure of the SDP/Liberal alliance to win the election as proof that no alternative to Labour/Tory was possible, and proceeded to become more arrogant in their dismissal of public opinion. The 1983 election killed off any chance of Thatcherism being a one-term aberration, and resulted in the death of both one-nation Conservatism and working-class Labourism, with both parties rebuilding themselves as “neo-liberal” centralising parties. Both parties believed – not unjustifiably – that the electoral system meant that a third-party challenge was impossible, and that there was no need to focus on democratic grass-roots organisation; instead, winning the media war and securing the support of the Murdoch empire was more important. By the next election, in 1987, Peter Mandelson was running Labour’s campaign and the rest, as they say, is history.

I hope that 2010 will be a come-uppance for both parties. They’ve been living on borrowed time for too long and they both need to rebuild themselves as genuinely engaging democratic parties or face obsolescence. The Lib Dems are proftting from being a party built on local activism, internal democracy and a leadership that can be held to account – and defeated on policy issues – by the party membership. From the blogosphere I can tell that there’s no shortage of ideas amongst the Labour and Tory grassroots, but the difference with the Lib Dems is that the party actually listens to what their members has to say, at least to some extent (and David Miliband has the nerve to describe the Lib Dems as the anti-politics party).

My advice to Labour would be to get back to being a democratic party with frank internal debates and some involvement for members in candidate selection and policymaking. Do I think they’ll do this? No, frankly, I don’t – I suspect that Miliband will end up as leader, no doubt thanks to the support of Mandelson, and I can’t imagine two people less likely to institute the kind of change that Labour would need.

Obviously, it would be foolish to start popping the corks before he’s actually left, and they may have to take him dead or alive, but …..
Did he kill your cat

sally @2:

I think most of the Lib DEm vote has come from pissed off Labour voters. The Tories got about 31% at the last election and they are now polling 34–35ish. I expect that rise of about 3-4 points has has come mostly from Labour voters.

The rest of Labours decline has gone to the Liberal Dems. I can’t see many Tories switching to the Lib Dems because they think Cameron is not right wing enough.

The polls seem to agree – see Political Betting for today’s ComRes (tried linking to it but this seems to be stopping my comment from showing up). There’s one important difference thought – the poll in question shows that 8% of Tory voters from 2005 might now vote Lib Dem (compared to 21% of Labour’s 2005 total).

I think what we have to confront here is the fact that the core vote of both Labour and the Tories is lower than what we’ve tended to think in the past. Labour probably has 21-25% of the electorate who will vote Labour forever, and the Tories possibly have a little more than that, but these figures are in long-term decline. Even at their weakest point in 1983, Labour still managed 27.6%, higher than what some polls are giving them now despite having the advantage of incumbency and the last vestiges of the 1997 landslide. What’s even more shocking is that the Tories are scarcely doing better than Labour. William Hague led the Tories to 31.7% of the vote in 2001 and today ComRes has them on… 32%.

There has been a silent withering of support for both parties in the last 25 or so years. My own pet theory is that 1983 (with the SDP/Liberal Alliance polling just behind Labour at the election, and polling well ahead of both Labour and Tories until the Falklands war re-wrote the script) was a warning to both parties that the public wanted an alternative. However, both parties misinterpreted it badly. They saw the failure of the SDP/Liberal alliance to win the election as proof that no alternative to Labour/Tory was possible, and proceeded to become more arrogant in their dismissal of public opinion. The 1983 election killed off any chance of Thatcherism being a one-term aberration, and resulted in the death of both one-nation Conservatism and working-class Labourism, with both parties rebuilding themselves as “neo-liberal” centralising parties. Both parties believed – not unjustifiably – that the electoral system meant that a third-party challenge was impossible, and that there was no need to focus on democratic grass-roots organisation; instead, winning the media war and securing the support of the Murdoch empire was more important. By the next election, in 1987, Peter Mandelson was running Labour’s campaign and the rest, as they say, is history.

I hope that 2010 will be a comeuppance for both parties. They’ve been living on borrowed time for too long and they both need to rebuild themselves as genuinely engaging democratic parties or face obsolescence. The Lib Dems are profiting from being a party built on local activism, internal democracy and a leadership that can be held to account – and defeated on policy issues – by the party membership. From the blogosphere I can tell that there’s no shortage of ideas amongst the Labour and Tory grassroots, but the difference with the Lib Dems is that the party actually listens to what their members has to say, at least to some extent (and David Miliband has the nerve to describe the Lib Dems as the anti-politics party).

My advice to Labour would be to get back to being a democratic party with frank internal debates and some involvement for members in candidate selection and policymaking. Do I think they’ll do this? No, frankly, I don’t – I suspect that Miliband will end up as leader, no doubt thanks to the support of Mandelson, and I can’t imagine two people less likely to institute the kind of change that Labour would need.

Good points Rob.

I think 1983, and 1997 from two different sides showed how odd our voting system is, when a party getting about 42% gets turned into 150 odd majority. Both Tory and Labour have both abused the system. The poll tax was a classic in the way a minority view was rammed through.

I think Clegg would be silly to enter into any agreement with the tories because their agenda is to keep the winner take all system.

@9
And Labour’s agenda is also to keep the winner take all system.