Rachel Reeves 'I was wrong', **I was lying

The cynical reason why the Tories would never have done it is that they heavily relied on the pensioner vote. Labour had little pensioner vote to lose in comparison. It is as simple and as cynical as that,

So using your own logic, you must be admitting that Labour punished pensioners because they were 'Tory' voters .......... Wow thanks for clarifying what we already knew.

I agree the Falklands were a lot to do with it, but the economy is the traditional number one in this game. It is the only hope Starmer has that he can turn people into thinking that Labour are the party of good economics, the opposite of the traditional view that they crash it. I'm not that hopeful though. It has fundamental weaknesses.

sorry not buying that at all Steve. You are right as far as you go about how anything can happen , as they say a week being a long time in politics , but wrong to use thatcher and the tories unpopularity in 1981 and compare it to starmer now.

The political landscape is massively different , and of course, you once again cant think outside the two party box when you talk of having no love for starmer , but hating the tory alternative more. 

We are in a multi party system now Steve , like it or not , and both tory and labours vote share at its lowest ebb in modern history. You also discount the fact however much you dislike thatcher , she won the popular vote in 1979 taking nearly 4 million votes more than starmer  did 45 years later , and she did that off the back of a much smaller uk electorate. 

Badenoch may improve the tories standing , im not sure , but I think Farage will hammer both tory and labour . While your analogy about anything can happen to starmers enemies over the course of the next 5 years rings true , it also works both ways. 

Thatcher had a core support of circa 13 million conservatives backing her over the course of her three electoral victories , I doubt nearly half a century later , starmer has a core labour support of even half that backing him.

 Unlike thatcher and blair , starmers problem is he has no real mandate to govern. 

Yes and even fewer voted for any of the other parties. None of the above was the clear winner. And yes, Labour's huge majority and the large increase in Lib Dem MPs were both born of the same phenomenon. Tactical voting against the Tories by voting for whoever was best placed to defeat them.  There was relatively little positive support for Labour - or the Lib Dems for that matter - just a desire to be rid of the Tories at any cost.

Of course things were made even worse for the Tories by Reform doing so much damage to what was left of their vote. In many places they took enough votes away from the Tories to deny them victory without gaining enough to win themselves, gifting seats to Labour that the Tories might otherwise have held. My own seat of Plymouth Moorview is a typical example where the combined vote of the Tories and Reform - who came second and third respectively - was comfortably larger than that of the Labour winner. Were it not for Reform. Johnny Mercer the sitting Tory would most likely have won. This pattern was repeated all over the place. Labour thus largely has Reform to thank for the massive size of it's majority. Were it not for them, the Tories would have held many more seats and Labour's majority would have been far smaller. When you also factor in anti-SNP tactical voting in Scotland which I suspect is a one off, the cards couldn't have been stacked more in Starmer's favour if he had dealt them himself.