Have we found Reform's achilles heel? – with Luke Tryl

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0:22Tim Shipman: Hello, welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm James Heale and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman, the political spectator, and Luke Tryl. as the Executive Director of More in Common. Now, Luke, you've got some polling out today talking about how different parties regard each other. Tell us about it. So we've been looking at propensity, as it's called, to vote tactically. That is, how willing would voters of different parties be to vote for a party that wasn't their first choice, usually in order to try and stop another political party? And we know tactical voting is particularly important in multi-party politics.

0:56And there's a pretty clear pattern that emerges, which is that voters on the left, so voters for Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, are much more likely to say that they would consider voting tactically for one of those other parties than parties on the right. So for instance, if you look at Labour voters, 77 % say they'd at least consider tactically voting Lib Dem. 69 % of Lib Dems would consider the Greens. 76 % of Greens would consider Labour. Very high numbers. But it's asymmetric. Because if you look at the Tories, for instance, only 45%, so under half of Conservatives, say they'd consider tactically voting for reform.

1:42In fact, more Tories, 50%, say they'd consider tactically voting Lib Dem than Reform. Reform voters are a bit more likely to say they'd consider the Tories, 60 % would, but it's still below those numbers on the left. So it's reinforcing, I think, this pattern we're seeing, which is that voters are mobilising in lots of cases to stop reform. We see that through quite high turnout, we've seen in some by-elections. We also see that in terms of willingness to vote tactically. And even, and this is the most interesting thing, you see some Labour, almost half of Labour voters, just over half of Liberal Democrat voters, willing to consider the Tories and vote tactically for them.

2:27And I think we saw some evidence of that in the local elections in places like Bexley, Bromley, Broxbourne, where it was more of a Tory reform fight, traditional left voters switching to the Tories, all of which adds up to a potential problem for reform unless they're polling much higher.

2:45Tim Shipman: And Luke, can I just question, why is there this growth of anti-reform sentiment? Is there any sort of clear incident or element where there's this big bump or has it just been a worsening, slow, drip, drip effect over the past 12, 15 months or so? Yeah, so you've kind of had this dual effect over the past 12 months. One, which is that the number of people who sort of actively say they would support reform has dropped. So this time last year, sort of mid to low 30s in some polls, now mid to low 20s. It's a big drop. And that has been a variety of things here. Trump, some of the Farage stuff, some of the feeling more establishment stuff.

3:23On the other side, I think what you're seeing more from voters on the left, this sense that, and obviously you see this already in the US, but this sense that a reform victory will be existential, right? That people are really now motivated to do anything they can to stop reform and to go out and vote against them. And I think that that has become more pronounced over the past year. So they've got this double whammy that they need to solve if Farage still wants to get into Downing Street.

3:55Tim Shipman: And Tim, obviously, you've been in politics 25 years or so. The growth of tactical voting seems to be one of the big trends over that time.

4:01James Heale: Yeah, no, I think that's right. But as this poll sort of identifies and bully for Luke, who asks a lot of the questions that other pollsters don't get round to, frankly, I think this is absolutely fascinating. people on the left are much more used to tactically voting than people on the right and you know the overall numbers bear that out but the fact that they're prepared in the Lib Dems and in Labour to vote Conservative to stop reform I think is interesting and as Luke said you know in that sort of outer donut that Boris Johnson did well in in his mayoral election wins the Tory vote held up much better than I think a lot of us had expected and I think that discrepancy between 60 % of reformers might vote for Tories and only 45 % of Tories might vote for reform.

4:44James Heale: I think that whole sort of tonal argument that's been going on about, you know, do reform look ready for government? Are they just too strident for a lot of those kind of middle-class reform-curious ex-Tory voters? It feels to me like that gap is sort of indicative. I think the other thing that's interesting is that the more you get people thinking like this, the less we need electoral reform. It's a great sort of thing on, you know, people on the left or, you know, loosely progressive parties. They love the idea of this sort of progressive coalition. If only we could have single transferable vote or whatever it is, you know, all would be well in the world.

5:23James Heale: But the point is the voters are already doing this. They're putting their second preference vote on the ballot paper because they know that that's what they need to do. So I think actually the outcomes would not actually be that different, I suspect, than the ones we see next time around. But I think, you know, I think this is worrying for Farage and will embolden some of the people in reform who think that it's time to sort of tone it down a little bit and focus on trying to expand that coalition of voters rather than just sort of cheerleading for the base. There are some fascinating little niches here.

5:57James Heale: I mean, you know, there are 16 % of Lib Dem voters who'd consider voting reform. Where are they living, Luke? Are these all in the West Country? These are sort of Brexity, kind of Labour-hating kind of folk who are rural and sort of that stuff ahead of them. Exactly. I think they're part of what was, I think, actually a much bigger tradition. It's that sort of right-leaning Liberal Democrats don't back the Labour Party, backed the Liberal Democrats, probably moved to the Tories under Boris Johnson, now might have moved back to them. And, you know, people forget that that flank of the Lib Dems, some of whom just like having quite what they see as a good local Liberal Democrat MP.

6:39You know, actually, they're not just Labour proxies. I mean, lots of Liberal Democrat votes are now on the left, but you can see that as a chunk willing to vote on the right. The other thing that I think is interesting is that this week, along with this, there was some polling from Lord Ashcroft, which I thought was very interesting, which looked at a Tory reform pact. and what really struck me again I think it backs up these numbers is the number of Tories who say they wouldn't vote for that pact they wouldn't vote for the party in those circumstances and again I think it comes to what you were saying that for some what you might call more institutionalist Tories some of the reform stuff is just a bit much you know their policies we tested for instance last week you know the policies they announced around you know getting rid of civil servants who don't deliver for them, maybe stacking the Lords, maybe getting rid of judges.

7:31For the reform base, that is red meat. It's very popular. What's interesting is how much that splits Tories. And I think that's the challenge. If reform ever do want to unite the right, how do you reassure a group of Tories who, like our institutions, don't see the need for them to change, may even be uncomfortable with the degree that Kemi Baden-Ock wants to change them? What do you do for that group?

7:54James Heale: And I would urge listeners to go in. There's a very interesting thread on what Luke's just been talking about by Kevin Hollingway, the Tory chairman, who effectively says, look, the Tories alone and reform alone have a much higher base than does putting the two of them together. And his argument is the Tories alone have an even higher ceiling than does reform. So it's right for us not to do a deal. It's right for us to stay separate. And I think, you know, strategists in most parties would probably agree with that. I see the parallels between the next general election and what happened in the referendum in 2016, where you had kind of vote leave appealing to the Tory vote and Nigel Farage going off and appealing to the sort of the northern working class, you know, former Labour vote.

8:36James Heale: And I can see a world in which Tories kind of win seats in the south and reform wins them in the north. But the point they're saying is, you know, it's an argument I've always made. There won't be a deal before the election. If there needs to be one afterwards, there probably will be. But there's a certainly, if anything, despite the sort of noise that some people in reform like Zia Yusuf make about loathing Tories and not wanting to do a deal with them. The resistance to this seems now to be as big, if not bigger, in the Conservative

9:01Tim Shipman: Party. I mean, Luke, the argument I constantly hear from reform is it's all like 2019. Basically, as soon as we get a snap election, you're going to suddenly see the kind of centre-right, Brexit-type voters going to the bigger party on the right, and the smaller party will get crushed, a bit like what happened with the Conservatives and the Brexit Party, where the Brexit Party had its vote squeezed. I mean, if there is such a high percentage of voters who are anti-reform, does that seem likely? Could that strategy work? Well, look, so there's no doubt that there are, and you see that in the 40 odd percent of Tories who said they would vote tactically for reform and Sinley on the reform side.

9:36We've identified there's a big chunk. So there are those voters on either side who wouldn't vote for them. There's a chunk in the middle who are very transactional. And what do I mean by that? They will vote for whoever can beat Labour. So that group definitely exists. And it's why I think you're going to see, obviously, you always see this battle, but there's a particular importance on who is ahead of the Conservatives and reform. Because if the Conservatives start to look much more viable, a chunk of voters will move over. If they don't, they'll stick with reform. So I think there's that big chunk of that.

10:08How big is that chunk, Luke? I think it's about 40 % of both votes. It might be slightly higher for reform. So I struggle to see any situation right now, who knows, in the future where reform would drop below what they got at the last general election. But a lot of the voters they've gained are people who just want to beat Labour. Ditto, the Tories have a big chunk, similarly, who just want to beat Labour. But you've then got the core of each party, over half, I think, who basically, you know, they want that version. Conservatives want that version of conservatism. Reform want that version of reform.

10:43And that's why I think Tim's point is probably right, that the optimal situation would be one where reform wins lots of Red Wall adjacent seats, the Tories win the southern seats. That is the optimal situation for the right and the nightmare for the left. The optimal situation for the left is that they're unable to do that. And actually, you end up with lots of seats where left-leaning candidates come down the middle.

11:07Tim Shipman: Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Luke. And thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

11:14Thank you.

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