Why was the Tory defeat in 1997 so heavy? One of the reasons was that the anti-Tory vote tended to coalesce around the candidate most likely to defeat the Tory in each place. Tactical voting in 1997 cost the Tories 30 seats, turning a bad defeat into a catastrophe.
Last night provides evidence that this is happening again, that in British politics there are now two blocs, the Tories and the anti-Tories. Take Tiverton. In the last two elections, Labour came second there. But in this by-election, they lost their deposit as their vote share dropped by 16 per cent.
This isn’t because voters in rural Devon are particularly unpersuaded by Keir Starmer but because anti-Tory voters quickly realised that the Liberal Democrats had the better chance of unseating the Tories and so turned to them. In Wakefield, we also saw tactical voting – albeit on a less dramatic scale.
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