Wipeout: the odds narrow

I’m often asked at events to predict Labour’s likely majority and I never know quite what to say. I like to be data driven but the best models are spitting out numbers that, if you say them out loud, make you sound like a crazy person. A 260 majority? For Keir Starmer? Really?

As long-term readers will know I’ve been more bullish than most commentators about Labour’s chances since we started this substack. Last summer I wrote a post explaining why a Conservative wipeout – defined as winning fewer than 100 seats – was entirely possible.

At the time the prevailing consensus was that there would be a “swingback” to the government. But there has been no sign of this. The Labour lead is higher now than when I wrote that post and the Tory percentage has dropped a few points. It now sits below the level it was when Liz Truss was deposed. They haven’t hit 30% in any poll for over five months – something that has never happened to a major party.

In recent weeks there has been an undoubted shift in coverage, with even supportive newspapers finally acknowledging the Conservatives are in deep trouble.

Despite this, it’s still hard to believe a wipeout will really happen. As Jonn Elledge wrote recently there are a whole string of cognitive biases and historical precedents that make us assume the final result can’t be what the polls suggest. We are terrible at believing data when it tells us something extraordinary is about to happen. Few truly thought, in 2015, that Labour would be wiped out in Scotland, or the Lib Dems completely eviscerated nationwide, even though polling showed both were entirely plausible outcomes.

It means that the prospect of a wipeout is still being underplayed and the consequences, which would be monumental for British politics, not properly thought through. So in this post I’m going to try and be objective. First I’ll look back at the five reasons I thought a wipeout was possible last summer and see how things have developed since then. Then I’ll look at what it might mean in practice to have a Tory party reduced to 70 MPs, for a Westminster system that’s predicated on having two main parties.