Well if he served 5 years and took Labour into the 7th May 2020 election I would anticipate that by the following Friday lunchtime the Conservatives would win by a landslide of their own 1983 proportions, maybe even bigger, with Labour popular vote at 25%. I don't see it happening though, and am even doubtful if he will genuinely end up elected leader despite all the so called polling evidence.

The August 2015 silly season is in full flow but hard headed reality will soon bite if Corbyn pulls off the leadership. It won't be as pretty as some of these overly idealistic people seem to think. I do appreciate the fresh vigour he's brought to politics though and if he got it I'd hope for him to be a huge success, but sanity says otherwise, boring as it is to say so.

Ironicall,y Clegg and his campaign for a central moderating coalition partner makes far more sense if Corbyn and the hardleft take over Labour. They might even pick up some MPs facing deselection by the Militants.

As it is its, precisely the wrong time to go left. It reduces any chance of getting Lib-Con seats back, and leaves them competing with Labour - when the voters who stayed with them, were pro-2010 coalition.

Worse, the estimates are the Liberals lose 3 more seats to boundary changes.........

2020 is going to produce a return to good old 5 factor party politics - with the SNP replacing the Liberals , UKIP's fate unknown, and the Ulster Protestants possibly decisive if it ever gets close. The question is where Labour's vote will go to?

Well unless an event or issue where the Tories split in half happens, you may well be right.

If Corbyn wins by up to 60% as the polls keep possibly suggesting then there will be no Labour party split. That's democracy and it can't be contested. Even without the new supporter numbers tallied in Corbyn is on course to win. So the £3 membership thing will not change the result other than to possibly make Corbyn's winning % higher. All the outcries within Labour are coming firmly from the camps of Kendal and Cooper. Once its over they will lick their wounds and get on with it. While the Right wing media who thought Corbyn would be unelectable as a PM are suddenly running scare stories about him because they realise they backed the wrong horse. Its laughable.

The Tories themselves face a much bigger problem and its one that has been brewing for decades. Even with the migrant problem support for staying in the EU is over 50%. One poll even had it on 65% so unless something drastic happens the die hard right movement in the Tories to pull us out of Europe is going to end in tears. Cameron will take the fall for not getting a better deal for the UK and probably quit then to ease the tensions but Tories pissed off are most likely to flock to UKIP just like what happened with the SNP rise.

Full on drama ahead. As I said in another thread, Tories in full glee at Labour ripping themselves apart should be looking at the trouble brewing in their own back garden first.

Labour will have a core vote which would vote for a donkey with a red rosette in the same way that Tories had 30% of vote in their wilderness years. Trouble was it was concentrated in their safe seats. No use whatsoever in terms of getting elected into government. Corbyn is not going to get votes in aspirational middle England. He is going to tax them into poverty! Equality for all.

We have a new poll!

ComRes/Indy (changes vs election):

CON 40 (+2)
LAB 29 (-2)
LIB 8 (=)
UKIP 13 (=)
GRN 4 (=)

Labour polling lower than the Tories did in 1997

It must be the Corbyn factor Ho! Ho! Ho!
I do miss Jol

They got 31% didn't they? Mind you stacking up votes in safe seats didn't matter.

What impact do the 2018 boundary changes make to each party? Is this info anywhere? I think I'm in my third constituency without moving house!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/...hanges-5676529

Boundary changes don't include reducing no of MP'S Are there figures for 350?

Sorry you've lost me now. The next set of boundary changes will reduce the number of constituencies to 600, they're one and the same thing. This has been written into law since the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011

The reduction to 600 seats should have happened under the coalition but the LDs reneged on their manifesto promise to deliver it and voted on amendments to delay it into 2018, but I don't think there's any dispute about the number of seats that's now law, it's just how they will be drawn up that needs voting in

Given they heavily favour (or remove the injustice) to the tories it's a no-brainer that it will be pushed through as soon as poss

Sorry I didn't realise that. I knew Lib Dems had scuppered the boundary changes / reduction of MP'S so assumed it was only changes to boundaries that were on statute book. Tories still going for reduction of MP'S in manifesto.

Interesting that now the Tories have a majority more people seem happy to back them now. Also interesting that UKIP are still holding onto their vote share. Scary to think what the CON figure would be if UKIP didn't exist.

Yeah as far as I recall the 600 was written into the law at the same time as the AV referendum. Then the review of the boundaries was kicked off, the reports came back, and it was at the time of voting to accept the changes that the LDs kicked it into the long grass.

Of course it could be unpicked again but that would require new legislation, whereas the upcoming changes in 2018 are as a result of picking up the ball from the long grass (if I can stretch the metaphor).

They will have to redo the proposals of course, as those produced back in 2013 (I think) were based on the old electoral register - and a few million names have been crossed out since then. So what does finally go through in 2018 won't be exactly as per that mirror link I gave

...which is also a pile of unauthenticated and unverified rubbish. Why should we be taken in by this nonsense while the polling failure inquiries are still ongoing? Until they fully implement all the recommendations of all the inquiries (which will be at least a year away) then anything that they issue and produce will be suspect.

In any other area of business life, the chief executives would have all had to resign over such a resounding failure but they haven't and they are still in place.

There's one thing that I've been thinking about that I haven't heard anyone else talk about regarding Labour Leadership - I might be miles off as it's a genuine personal view.

I've watched social media and polling and the general pre-election noise that gets made prior to the Scottish Referendum, the 2015 General Election, and now this Labour Leadership race and I think there is an age issue that skews expectations.

I suspect the younger generation (under 30 say) is both, on average, to the left of the average voter and more active on social media regarding starting campaigns, hashtags, and all that sort of stuff in a sort of modern phenomena, and has less people shy to polls, and is benefitting from a general politicisation of the young which I think is higher in recent years than before. I think this has lead to polls being a bit off in recent contests.

So I wouldn't be shocked if the results of this Labour contest is somewhere between Burnham's own poll and some of the others which had Corbyn up at 57% I think. It would be interesting if he got about 46% or so of first votes because he could then fall short despite being so near given the fact the others are so publicly against him or he might just crawl over the line.

Not liking the poll ☺

The issue at general election was more the media who set 'their' agenda on the opinion polls. Herding took place with polls fitting the expected outcome in the end. It's been good of late folks not doing what the media (in particular BBC) expected them to do. Cameron kicked it off by not doing as he was told participating in debates.

I agree with you in regards to social media. Twitter/Facebook in particular got the referendum result completely wrong and its Twitter and Facebook were the most support for Corbyn is.

I think Burnham will just nail it through the second choice votes. I think Cooper signed her death papers when she went on an anti Corbyn rant so if he does indeed top the first vote its now unlikely his supporters would back her as second preference giving what she said about him, whereas Burnham is now backtracking on Corbyn which is a wise move. So if Andy has a high enough first showing and very good second showing he should just edge it.

Which is pretty much the exact same way Ed beat David in 2010.

I would have thought that, generally, Corbyn's 2nd preferences would go to Burnham rather than Cooper anyway

Its hard to call but Cooper burned her bridges when she insulted him so any votes she may have picked up from his supporters have been lost.

I must have missed that "insult" - what did she say of him?

ComRes Poll (Scotland):
#SNP 48%
#Conservatives 23%
#Labour 14%
#LibDem 7%

One day, people will look back on this period and wonder why, with so many signals available, Labour just didn't get what was going on.