Boris Johnson outside Number 10 Downing Street (PA)
The chances of the Conservative Party forming a majority government have greatly increased after Brexit Party leader Nige Farage promised to not contest the 317 seats the Tories won in the last election, and to concentrate Brexit Party resources on Labour seats.
Giving Boris Johnson half a chance would prevent a second referendum happening, said Nigel Farage explaining his motives in case anyone thought it was linked to the peerage he was offered. The move is despite previous comments from Brexit Party figures detailing how Johnson’s Brexit deal is the worst of all worlds.
Ian Lavery, Labour Party Chair, warned: “This is a Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson alliance with Donald Trump to sell out our country and send £500 million per week from our NHS to US drugs companies. We urge voters to reject this Thatcherite 1980s tribute act, which would lead to more savage Tory attacks on working class communities. Our NHS is not for sale.“
With polls giving the Conservative Party a healthy lead, the Brexit Party’s withdrawal is good news for Boris Johnson. Professor Ben Ansell of Nuffield College, Oxford, warned today that if the Brexit Party withdrew all their candidates from Labour-held seats, not just the ones in Tory seats, the probability of a Conservative Party majority rises from 78% to 84%.
But the Tory Party face a harder time in urban seats and in the South with opposition parties determined to claim some big scalps like Iain Duncan Smith or even the PM Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
However a major factor that will make all the difference – see below – in whether the Tories claim a large majority in December is that the vote against them is split. That is why tactical voting sites like tactical.vote – where you can also compare different tactical voting sites’ predictions – could make a real difference in taking enough seats from the Conservative Party to stop a majority.
The Conservative strategy to ensure a majority relies on the Liberal Democrats taking a chunk out of Labour’s vote. They are hoping that Labour fails to rally the Remain and confirmatory second referendum vote in the way that it did in 2017 as that would mean a hung parliament territory and a situation where the Tories cannot govern because they have no potential partners.
Yet the Tories still have to hold off a challenge from Jo Swinson’s party in a host of constituencies. There are 20-odd seats that the Tories hold which the Liberal Democrats would take with a swing of 15% or less.
The threat of Tory majority led this week to two Liberal Democrat and two Green Party candidates standing down to give the Labour Party a fighting chance of winning against Conservative candidates. For instance in Chingford and Woodford Green the Green Party stood down to give Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen the best possible chance against Conservative bogeyman Iain Duncan Smith. In the 2017 election, the Green Party secured 1,204 votes in the North East London constituency, with the Conservative majority drastically reduced from 8,386 to 2,438 votes.
However Jo Swinson insisted that the Liberal Democrats replace the candidates who stood down. Green Party MEP Magid Magid urged the Greens to “do the right thing” and stand down in 44 Labour/Tory marginal seats and attacked the Liberal Democrats for splitting the opposition so “aggressively”, adding “It’s almost like they are more concerned with stopping Corbyn than stopping Brexit.“
“Our TOP priority should be to stop the Tories by any means necessary,” he added. “We simply cannot afford five more years of Tory rule with a Trumpian Brexit. We know what Boris Johnson’s deal means – a victory for oil and gas magnates, greedy pharmaceutical conglomerates and the hedgefund-elite, with job security, environmental protections and workers’ rights at great risk.”
Political professor Ben Ansell this week modelled the outcome if all parties advocating Remain or a confirmatory referendum formed an alliance. In that case the electoral outcome is almost reversed, with the probability of a Conservative majority just 18%. An alliance of just Labour and Lib Dems would make it 35%.
However due to the ambitions of those involved and with candidates filed for each constituency this week, this is not going to happen… But what of the easier option – what if voters vote tactically?
They don’t always agree with each other -though they do in the vast majority of constituencies – but if enough voters use one of the tactical voting sites or compare the ones linked to below, the country’s future is likely to look as different as Magid Magid suggests.
Polling analysis by Best For Britain has revealed the importance of tactical voting against the Tory Party in the upcoming election . It could mean the difference in as many as 80 seats. – The difference between a Tory majority with 364 seats and an alliance of opposition parties able to form a majority.
The methodology of tactical.vote is the most straightforward of all the tactical voting sites. Tactical.vote takes the result from the last election. If the Conservatives came first or second, it recommends the other party. If not, it doesn’t make a prediction. Tactical.vote also allows you to compare predictions of the best tactical vote of other tactical voting sites in a tactical vote site comparison so you can see how they all stack up.
Remain United has used up-to-date polling data, working with Electoral Calculus and ComRes, and says it has identified the most tactical votes to stop a Tory landslide victory.
Utilising MRP polling techniques and specifically commissioned research, Remain United’s Tactical Voting site says their research found that with the stakes high, seven out of ten remain voters said they were more likely to vote tactically this election. Remain United say that if Remain voters follow their recommendations, the outcome of the election could change from a Tory majority to a coalition against them.
According to Remain United’s latest analysis, there are 65 seats vulnerable to swinging with tactical voting, or to have a majority of less than three per cent.
Best for Britain have also launched a tactical voting tool, GetVoting.org which is worth checking out too. Their polling predicts that if just 30% of pro-Remain or second referendum voters use their vote tactically it would prevent the Conservative Party from winning a majority at the upcoming election.
GetVoting.org is based on a seat-by-seat analysis of a huge sample size of 46,000 British people carried out by Best for Britain over September and October.
The analysis, which predicts the number of seats that will be won by each party under different tactical voting scenarios, revealed that it would take just 30% of pro-Remain voters to use their vote tactically for parties in favour of the public having a final say or stopping Brexit to win a majority in Parliament.
Under this scenario, a coalition of Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Green and Plaid Cymru would hold a parliamentary majority of 4 seats. If 40% of pro-Remain voters use their vote tactically, the coalition would return a majority of 36 seats.
The importance of tactical voting at the upcoming election is demonstrated by the same modelling showing that these opposition parties could hold as few as 268 seats if voters are ineffectually split between them. This scenario would see the Conservative Party win 364 seats and a massive majority in Parliament.
READ MORE: Farage says Brexit Party won’t contest any seats won by Tories in last election
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Dirty tricks: Tories accused of bribing Brexit Party candidates not to stand
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Greens stand aside to help Labour unseat Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford and Woodford Green
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