Last month I wrote about how the Lib Dems were at 23% in the London sub section of a YouGov Poll. Well today I’ve seen another YouGov poll breakdown and even though the numbers are ever so slightly worse for the party, it shows that there is a real consolidation of support for Tim Farron’s lot within the capital city and that it wasn’t just a rogue. You can see the chart below.
YouGov Poll – April 2017
The sense of opportunity to rebuild the base of the party in London town seems to be one that has been created by the EU Referendum. It also goes towards my hardening belief that the way we define ourselves is changing. Many people for years would have defined themselves along party lines more than ideologically. These days people are starting to define themselves by how they feel about our relationship with our European neighbours. In areas where the majority of people voted to Remain then these people will be far more inclined to come over and put their x’s in the boxes next to Liberal Democrat candidates then they would be had the European question not been first and foremost in their mind.
This of course doesn’t mean that in areas where the majority voted to Leave the European Union should be barren wastelands for the party. We have seen many huge swings in local by-elections
towards the Lib Dems in places which wouldn’t seem like natural Lib Dem territory based on the EU question. Just last week the Lib Dems took a seat off of UKIP. How can an area vote UKIP and then Lib Dem? Well that all comes down to who the motivated voters are and this is part of something I’ll get into more detail on at some other point in the near future.
My main point of this blog is that London is now in a bizarre situation where three political parties could all compete in many seats. There are still areas where the Lib Dems are not strong, this would in turn lead us to extrapolate that there are places where support is significantly beyond the 20% polling average across the Big Smoke.
I have heard of canvass data coming in, in areas which wouldn’t be considered natural Lib Dem territory which if replicated at the ballot box would be mind blowing. The next three years until 2020 will be fascinating to watch to see how Brexit impacts people. At the moment you have one set of people who think it’ll make their lives so much better and another group who believe it’ll make it so much worse. The probability is it won’t be as extreme as either set of people think but if jobs move out of the financial sector and London becomes less diverse then this will surely be a huge part of the Lib Dem platform in the capital.
Opportunity knocks for the party and from where it stood after what happened in 2015, I don’t think anyone really thought the party would be in a position to recover for a generation. Yet here we are. The party stands for something (not just to hold the Tories back) and when the party stands for something and the race to be Prime Minister seems to be less a race but more a foregone conclusion, it allows people to not only vote at the ballot box for the person they want to be PM (which they often do in close elections) but more about who best would represent their views and ideals.
Huge swathes of London wanted to stay in the EU. The Conservative party want to run out of the EU and Labour kinda sorta want to stay but if people say they want to leave then that is fine too. So we have three parties with two very strong points of view on this issue and one whose view changes with the wind (or the audience) and that means people will have a pretty clear choice.
21 months ago I thought the Lib Dems winning 20 seats across the country in 2020 would be a realistic aim. Today winning 20 seats in London seems like a stretch, a real stretch but do you know what? It isn’t just a pipe dream…
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