Why Labour can win

There is some wishful thinking going on from the "we love Liberals more than we love our own party" wing of Labour, such as Compass/the Guardian's John Harris who in the article I've linked to charmingly calls people like me "knuckle-head tribalists".

Personally I'd rather be a loyal "knuckle-head tribalist" than be someone undermining their own party and delusional about the politics of their wished-for coalition partner.

Labour's internal fifth column of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" half want us to lose our majority because they are stuck in a 2005 paradigm where the Lib Dems under Charlie Kennedy were cuddly anti-war, anti-tuition fees lefties who would never have propped up a Tory government and who the fifth columnists believe would drag a Lab/Lib government to the left.

They need to wake up and smell the coffee. Not once has a senior Lib Dem talked up partnership with Labour. All of Clegg's recent comments have been heavy hints about a deal with Cameron, which makes more sense on every basis for him - policy (he's an Orange Book rightwinger), personality (he hates Gordon and gets on OK with Cameron), and political calculation (what gain would the LDs get from helping a defeated government stay in office?). The idea of a “progressive anti-Tory alliance” is a Guardian-writer/reader fantasy that died with Ming Campbell's social-democratic leadership of the Lib Dems.

We shouldn’t talk about hung parliaments until we know the election result. It’s defeatist and demoralises our voters and activists. Once we know the result I’m open to working with the Lib Dems in a hung parliament – anything would be better than a Tory-led government. But this is more in hope than expectation. The bottom line is nothing suggests they are open to working with us.

In any case the current polls only put a 6% gap between us and the Tories so we could still win a majority. Last night's You Gov result was Con 34%, Lab 28%, LD 30%. A tiny 3% movement from this position would put us and the Tories both on 31%, which would leave Labour just 17 seats short of a majority. A further 2% clawed back from the LDs (Con 31%, Lab 33%, LD 28%), which is a highly plausible final result, would produce a Labour majority government.

Do Harris et al really believe Labour can't get from 28% to 33%? I believe we can.

YouGov's Peter Kellner explains here another factor that could yet win this for Labour: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7107265.ece:

"The Lib Dem surge is hurting Tory prospects in Labour-Conservative marginals. Individual nationwide polls cannot detect this; but because YouGov is questioning different samples of about 1,500 people daily, we can combine a week’s polls into a total sample of more than 10,000 and see what is happening in different kinds of seat.

YouGov has compared the results from BC (before Clegg) and AD (after debate) in the 115 Labour-Conservative marginals that would fall to the Tories on a swing of 8%. In 2005 Labour’s overall lead in these seats was 9%.

In this election, during the BC days, the Tory lead in these seats was 4%. Compared with 2005, that represented a swing to the Tories of 6.5% in these target seats, compared with a swing of 5% nationally.

In other words, the Tories were doing better where they needed to win than in the rest of Britain, and stood to capture 94 Labour seats. Add in, say, 10 gains from the Lib Dems and the Tories would be just 12 short of an overall majority.

The AD pattern is different. Our sample of 2,220 in these target seats now puts Labour one point ahead. The swing since 2005 is down to 4% in the Labour marginals — the same as the national swing. Not only is the prospect of big Conservative gains from the Lib Dems slipping away; the bonus swing the Tories had been enjoying in the Labour marginals has also disappeared.

The Lib Dem surge has hurt the Tories with special force in Labour-Conservative marginals. The 10-point gain in Lib Dem support in these seats has been overwhelmingly at the Tories’ expense."

It is all still to play for and the defeatists in our own ranks need to shut up before they create a self-fulfilling prophesy.