John Curtice has just crunched the numbers for the BBC and found that if this swing happened across the country at the next election, there would be 497 Tory MPs and only 100 Labour ones. Clearly, this isn't going to happen. But it will concentrate the minds of Labour backbenchers.
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Comments
Frank
May 23rd, 2008 8:28amThat would be 100 too many!
salieri
May 23rd, 2008 8:34amWERE
John R
May 23rd, 2008 8:42amIt won't happen, but Labour down to about 120 to 130 MPs is possible and I think quite likely.
Aidan
May 23rd, 2008 9:36amI remember David Alton winning the Liverpool Edge Hill by-election for the Liberals (as they then were) by a landslide in the 70s. The swing was so massive that, if repeated at a general election, the Liberals would have won almost every seat in Great Britain, and the Ulster Unionists would have been the Opposition.
Nicholas
May 23rd, 2008 10:21amI long to see a parliament with no Labour MPs in it.
John
May 23rd, 2008 10:48amErr, yes, Aidan, but that's hardly comparing like with like. The Libs were not the second largest party, and they had not had a PM in several generations, and they had not just inflicting a catastrophic local election defeat on the government, and they had not just won the London mayoralty.
Tiberius
May 23rd, 2008 10:51amSimon Hughes aired that view quite convincingly on QT last night, Nicholas. Imagine a country with a 100 less hand-wringers on the back benches.
Edward Atkin
May 23rd, 2008 11:06amAnd how many of those left would represent English consituencies ?
Chingford Man
May 23rd, 2008 2:06pmIf the turn-out was 58pc, and the Tories won just under 50pc of that, by my poor maths that means that the Tories won the support of just 29pc of the electorate, after a high profile campaign and the spectacle of an imploding Labour Party. Am I the only person who thinks that the Tory result was not quite as fantastic as it is being painted?
PD Oxford
May 23rd, 2008 3:18pmAn excellent entry that sums up Labour's stupidity is here at labourhome. Well worth a read:
http://www.labourhome.org/comments/2008/5/23/12754/6149/23#23