Tuesday 2 November 2010

The electoral Premiership league table

There were some interesting comments in response to my Next Left blog responding to Fraser Nelson's observation that David Cameron's cloak of electoral invincibility looked a little threadbare in historical context.

I have taken a mixed metaphor to its logical conclusion, by producing an electoral Premiership league table for Left Foot Forward in order to gauge the evidence as to whether David Cameron's 2010 election does place him bottom of the Tory Premiership or simply reflect mid-table mediocrity.

The Left Foot Forward post has been updated to include a Labour league of Prime Ministers and party leaders too, with Harold Wilson scoring a scrappy late winner in the 1974 replay to emerge top of the Premiership league overall, with Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair tied in second.

1 comment:

13eastie said...

Sunder, I replied to the original thread before I saw the league table (so my apologies for the apparent spamming), but I'm not sure it makes the happy reading for Labour supporters that you'd like to believe.

Look at the following sequence (in order of vote share)

Callaghan 1979, 36.9%, 269 seats, lost premiership, Labour in the wilderness for 18 years.
Cameron 2010, 36.1, 306 seats, gained premiership
Blair 2005, 35.2%, 355 seats, retained premiership

Despite the obvious appearance of the system being progressively rigged in Labour's favour between 1979 and 2010 (and while LIberal support almost doubled), Cameron still got into No. 10.

Now, either Labour has a huge amount to fear from forthcoming boundary changes (and much-needed reform of the corrupt postal voting system), or Cameron is an electoral genius.

Or both.

In any case, it doesn't look good for Red Ed... Where to go from 29%?

I'm assuming the consolation point (equal to Cameron's) you awarded to Brown whose own party was not immune to his reverse Midas touch - he lost Labour seats and in a shorter time than anyone in history - was some sort of ironic joke?

If not, it makes the ongoing deficit denial much easier to understand!