An Intermittent Posting

After saying goodbye followed by hello again on several occasions I've decided to use this holding post to indicate that at the moment this blog has gone into hibernation for a while.

I'm taking a break for a while. Maybe not as long as before. Who knows!

If you don't see this post as the front page to the blog then this blog is active. But as you are seeing it right now, (and unless you've already scrolled down to get to it) then I've gone dormant.

So there you go. See this post as the front page - then the blog is dormant. Don't see it - then read on! 

I'll leave the blog up in either case as some folk still read the older posts.

I may be back. But then.... maybe I won't. At least for a while.

Love & kisses

Billo

The Social Democratic Party and a Cunning Plan.

This is only likely to be of interest to members of the SDP. While this post is now somewhat out-of-date it will remain here to show my initial thoughts on this. SDP members who are interested in this idea can review a more coherent version on the SDP discussion forum on the SDP website sdp.org.uk

This is directly the product of this post. But you don't need to read that (or the earlier two posts here and here either) to understand this.

The SDP is a pressure group/think tank as much as a political party. That is  one of its strengths. This strength often equals and possibly exceeds that of larger parties. SDP members (as a group of focused individuals) can comment on (say) public consultations in a way that members of other parties (like Labour) cannot. 

This idea intends to increase the visibility and authority of the SDP and do some good at the same time. The crucial aspect to this plan is that volunteer SDP members need to spend no more than (say) 20 minutes actioning it at any one time. From then on they can do it again. Or not as they like. The commitment is minimal, is well defined, and has closure.

The best way to explain this is with an example.

This is based on a real and highly contentious plan to build a wind-farm in about the worst possible location you could imagine. If passed is likely to cause untold environmental and social damage. I have obfuscated the actual plan as I think this may well be a prime first candidate if we get this going. 

So from the top.

We find contentious planning/infrastructure projects that are open to public consultation. We review these and isolate  those which are the most damaging/unpopular or alternatively need support (I think here of Nuclear Power Plants).We get a group of volunteer SDP members to send in written objections/support for the scheme. But all of the heavy lifting is done. Each member need only devote about 20 minutes to each target application.

For the moment let us deal with this single terrible plan to desecrate a lovely part of the world. It was found by me this morning using Gemini AI with several other equally bad schemes in less than 2 minutes. 

One person (me in this case) uses AI to find the most important areas of objection to this project. Crucially the objections will be (or at least tend to be) focused on impacts to national assets and the environment. That is because it is likely that most or all of the volunteer SDP members will not live locally.

Notice this focuses on national asset impacts

        ◦ National Heritage & Cultural Value: 

        ◦ National Net-Zero / Carbon Policy (NPS EN-1): 

        ◦ Ecology & Migration: 

Each of these items are actually identified, detailed and populated by AI. Now we need to get this into a form for use by volunteer SDP members. The optimum number of members per target is 35 -50. But any number from 1 – 50 is better than nothing. We get AI to generate prototype letters. This is the optimum mix for this particular scheme according to Gemini.

Focus Angle	Target # of Letters	Primary Content Focus
National Heritage & Tourism	5 – 10 letters	Cultural value non-local tourism economy.
Peatland & Carbon Accounting	5 – 10 letters	Blanket bog destruction, failure of carbon payback math under NPS EN-1.
National Biodiversity & Ecology	5 – 10 letters	SPA/SSSI bird corridors, curlew/golden plover habitat loss.
Hydrology & Flood Precaution	5 – 10 letters	Catchment run-off risks to downstream infrastructure.
SDP Policy & Land Use Balance	5 – 10 letters	Strategic national energy policy, protecting finite landscape assets over speculative DCO schemes.

So where does the SDP angle come in? Well this has to be done carefully but then AI comes to the rescue again.

The Planning Inspectorate strictly ignores purely political, party-ideological, or non-land-use objections. Therefore, referencing the SDP must not sound like a party-political broadcast. Instead, we need to phrase it as a policy framework—for example:

 "As a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I am writing to express serious concern over this development.....  Or similar

Or even just sign (aka after name) Like this:

Joe Bloggs (Member of the Social Democratic Party) 

I my humble opinion this second way is the better idea. 

For each of the (in this case 5) areas above we get AI to generate  2 – 3 (maybe 5) different prototype letters of objection. We ask members to review the contentious proposed development, then ask them to issue an objection. We let them select one of the 5 areas above. We ensure no more than the stated maximum number of members target that area. 

We provide the member with the prototype AI generated text for the letter. They will be asked to enter one/two sentences and personalise it to their own style.

“I regard this application with horror. It is an affront to both common sense and the area. I would like to particularly point out the following flaws with this application….. etc” 

Or they can if they so wish rewrite it based on the contents of the prototype they have received.

We tell them exactly who to send it to and when. They must be submitted over the time frame (in this case one month) not all together.

The result of this is that at the end of the consultation this terrible planning proposal get 25 - 50 focused, coherent and damning objections launched against it. All from individuals rather than a group. But each objection will also be stamped SDP. No member need spend more than 20 minutes on it. When its submitted it’s done. Then they can do another one or not as they choose.

Of course there will be objections from others. Some will be focused and on target. But most will not. However heart-felt they may be, they will be ignored. 

Also there will be many pro-forma letters sent in but these will be filtered down (as they will in effect all be identical) to possibly only one objection. That’s why we need a variety of objections both across subject and format. The multiple objections from SDP members will have a visible impact on the count of valid objections.

Even so you may well ask, other than some obvious branding how does this increase the visibility of the SDP?

Because it doesn’t stop there. 

We have submitted (say) 25 - 50 objections to this one scheme. Now we tell everyone!

Particularly we tell any action groups opposing the scheme. We write letters to the local papers and Facebook groups as the SDP. We tell the locals that SDP members from across the country have rallied to support them. And our website address is….

This secondary effort will possibly take longer. But will in all likelihood only involve one or two people and is likely to be only a few hours per application.

Finally we can target the local council. Particularly independent councillors. We email them with what we done as a group and invite them to have a look at us. Try and get a dialogue going with them. 

Particularly powerful would be to address any such contentious plans in areas where we have councillors already. Our councillors could promote the fact that their party is acting as one from right across the country to defend and protect their area.

That is just one contentious application. 

You know, I know, everyone knows, there are literally hundreds of similar dodgy planning applications. Like the never ending destruction of the green belt, wind-farms and solar farms destroying farm land, large numbers of illegal immigrants being placed in small villages, ruthless developers destroying neighbourhoods. The list is never ending.

This particular example above is a large contentious planning issue but there is no reason why this could not be used for/against other smaller applications. Things like a badly sited supermarket or even lack of places for kids in a local school. This is a target rich environment. 

All are examples of where people have been ignored/let down. People who are in effect disenfranchised are the most likely to reach out to a party that comes (or at least tries to come) to their rescue. 

We can work up a continuous stream of targets for objection/support right across the country and particularly in areas where the SDP has known support and activists.

The end result is the SDP gets seen across the country more and more. It’s visibility and authority increases. With any luck people will start asking for our support and crucially, joining us. 

So that is the idea. 

Will it work? I don’t know but it feels like it might. Not massive amount of effort either, and it potentially energises and directs the membership to action. 

All thoughts welcome.

The SDP, Visibility and Popularity.

 As Baldwrick used to say: I have a Cunning Plan.

But Let’s start at the beginning. I’ll ramble through my history with the SDP so you can see where I’m coming from. This post is unlikely to be of interest to anyone not in the SDP or not affiliated to their world view. Sorry this is a bit long. You can skim/skip down to the last third if you like. Just make sure to look at the underlined statements on the way – they are crucial though repetitive.

I have now been a member of the SDP three times. 

The first time I joined was in 2018 when the whole of the establishment was hell bent on overturning Brexit. 

I, along with most of the country was outraged. I needed a political vehicle that not only honoured the result of the greatest democratic decision ever made in the UK, but also a party that held dear many of the  beliefs and goals for this country that I held (and hold) dear too.

So I joined. But I didn’t know what to do.

Sure, I shouted into the void on Twitter and published blog posts favourable to the SDP. That sort of thing. But that was it.

Standing as a candidate either locally or nationally was really not an option for me. I think you have to be a special sort of person to put yourself out there like that. That type of person (and I suspect most other members of the SDP) is not me.

Then I watched one of heroes (the sadly departed Patrick O’Flynn) stand and lose  the Peterborough by-election and gain just 135 votes. That’s THE Patrick O’Flynn.

Intellectually, practically and capability-wise Patrick stood head and shoulders over the rest of the candidates. They were political pygmies in the presence of a giant. It should have been a shoe-in.

I was shocked and horrified. If he couldn’t make a difference, what hope was there for me?

There came a point where I lost focus and hope of making any useful change. 

All because I did not know what to do. In despair I left.

I abandoned Twitter for well over a year and and my blogspot (once quite popular locally and occasionally nationally) fell into disuse.

But something rankled. The country staggered on. Nothing was getting better and when looking at the legacy parties it was pretty obvious nothing ever would.

Reform exploded onto the scene and I was sorely tempted to join. But I am not a Thatcherite. I find Farage difficult. Though to be fair I admire and respect what he has achieved, especially with Brexit. But Reform was not for me.

So I rejoined the SDP.

But, I still did not know what to do.

In despair of finding a way of making a difference I left a second time in early 2025 shortly before the death of Patrick O’Flynn.

I gave up most activity. But continued now and then, on X. 

As a country we staggered on. Starmer came and went. And good riddance. 

Burnham arrived with a lot of razzamatazz but nothing else. 

The current Labour Cabinet remains a mix of the incompetent, assorted wide boys (and girls) and convicted fraudsters. 

God Help Us All.

Then William Clouston, the leader of the SDP stood in the Clacton (aka Farage) by-election in August 2026. There were also (besides Farage) 32 other candidates. Yet nobody stood from the Legacy parties. 

They knew they’d lose (and badly) so they refused to put up candidates. 

A shocking insult to the people of Clacton maybe. But worse, these cowards then backed a wrecking candidate – a former comedy script writer from the BBC (surprise, surprise) dressed as bin. 

The MSM made absolutely certain only the sneering metropolitan elitist snob dressed as a bin got any publicity.

Farage won hands down. In fact he increased his vote count. A feat no other sitting MP has ever done before on mainland UK when having to face a by-election.

William got 256 votes.

Again, it was just like with Patrick O’Flynn in Peterborough. The guy who was far, far, above any of the other contenders (Farage excepted) got buried in the noise.

I was no longer a member of the SDP. I had no wish to join any other political party. 

I still didn’t know what to do.

But this time I thought about it for a while.

OK. I did not want to stand for election or campaign in the traditional sense. I am (or at least think I would be) hopeless at that. 

I realised that this would probably be true for 90% of the membership of the SDP. (Or any other political party for that matter)

So if I found a way forward for me, maybe it would be a way ahead not just for me but for many others too. Something that <might> increase the visibility and elect-ability of the SDP. Especially at local council level. 

I’ve poked it about, worked on it, beaten it about, despaired over it, and agonised over it.  Now I think I have possibly found a practical and worthwhile way ahead for me and maybe for the other 90% passive members too. 

It is also something that will fit only with a small dynamic party like the SDP. Larger parties would find this far too difficult to manage.

Is it worthwhile? Will it work? I hope so. But only time will tell.

It initially involves quite heavy use of AI (in a totally legitimate way) but that is just done once. The output is what is used by the members and will suit all those other people like me who feel uncomfortable about standing for election or face to face campaigning. So it (should) have a ready and under-utilised work-force.

I am sure most party members (just like me) would still be happy to spend an hour or two every now and then doing something constructive and helpful for communities across the country. 

Something that can be targeted, done and ended with no continual commitment.

I’ve rejoined the SDP (for a third time). The SDP is at this moment in a state of flux as William has resigned and a new leader is to be elected. 

But I’ll pitch my idea here. Show what it entails and show how it works. I would deeply appreciate any/all comments on this or the next posts from those within the SDP. 

If nobody is interested or they laugh at my idea or find a serious flaw with it, well, fair enough. 

I am realistic enough to know that it may be just my over-enthusiasm. 

So what is it this low commitment high political value activity?

Watch this space. (In fact I just published it HERE)

Then maybe, if it’s viable and appreciated, and you are not a member  -join the SDP! and watch it develop (and work on it) there.

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 2)

 Prices Law (see last post) is a nightmare for large political parties.

But it doesn’t necessarily apply as-is to smaller parties. So being a smaller party is not all bad. Also being small can give you some tactical advantages over the well resourced, well financed, larger legacy party opposition.

So what’s the difference? Why doesn’t Price’s Law apply to small political set-ups like it does to large parties?

One of the main reasons is a member of a smaller party like (say) the SDP has more skin in the game than a member of (say) the Labour Party.

Being a member a small party requires far more personal commitment than to a large party. You are “out on a limb”. What you are doing is unusual. Instead of following the crowd you are breaking away from the pack. You have stepped away from the comfort of a crowd. Consequently to do this you are far more likely to have embarked on this course specifically to action some form of change.

Whereas a Labour party member is in a huge cosy club where they don’t have to do anything and nobody bothers them. In fact the bureaucracy and tiered elitism actively discourages it.

They can remain anonymous in their comfort zone yet gain all the personal kudos of “doing something”. Whereas in fact they’re just drinking cheap beer down the Labour club.

For a small party this personal commitment gives the leadership the opportunity of engaging with the membership on a much more dynamic level.

Most people in political parties both large and small, join to try and make a difference. But very few (especially in the large legacy parties) are given any significant opportunity to do so.

But in all parties whatever their size have a problem. While members join and want to affect change they literally have no idea what to do to affect that change. Or help it along it’s way.

In essence they mean well. But they don’t know what to do to affect that change. Consequently most end up being paper members. This is inevitable in a large bureaucratic party like the Labour Party but can be ameliorated in a small party.

A smaller party has much greater opportunity to involve it’s membership in policy making and actioning of party goals and aims. Consequently it obeys what is known as The 90-9-1 Law.

With 90-9-1 Law, in a party of 3500 members, approximately 35 are the real heavy lifters, another 315 contribute to varying degrees and the final 3150 are passive.

BUT this law can be tweaked.

There is far, far less bureaucracy and a “who you know” mentality in a small party. If it structures some activities to accommodate occasional participation, it can allow members to dip in and out without demanding long term commitment to any one target/activity.

Everybody hates open ended commitments. So if a small party avoids these where possible, people will be more willing to contribute. The 90-9-1 spread of participation can become more like 80-16-4 but only if contribution is made easier and more worthwhile.

A large party has many more tiers. The average novice member is far more isolated and remote from those guiding the party. They are anonymous. The structure and hierarchy is complex, bureaucratic, confusing and intimidating. There is far, far less potential to get novice members to engage than in a small party. There is little to no leeway in modifying the depressing stricture of Prices law.

A small party is therefore already at an advantage. But in engaging party members in small clearly defined activities a small party can break out from the 90-9-1 Law and so multiply it’s effectiveness. All by simply involving it’s membership in clearly defined, straight forward tasks that have a clear beginning and end.

It just needs to figure out what these tasks need to be.

As you’ve probably guessed there’ll be more on exactly what these tasks are in another post coming in the next week or so.

Bye for now

Love & Kisses

Billo.

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 1)

Back in the 1960’s Derek J de Solla Price theorised that if you added up all the scientific papers published, you would find that half of the papers published were published by the square root of of the number of authors.

Since then it has been refined and found to be actually (in many cases) even more stark.

Prices law (and it’s derivatives) has been applied to many different fields. Especially in regard to aspects of Human endeavour.

It doesn't apply in scheduled environments. Obvious examples are bus drivers, A&E doctors, train drivers. These are scheduled and constrained and other laws apply here. But for a dynamic organisation say a software company or (dare I say it) a political organisation Prices law and/or it's derivatives described the situation well.

In such large human organisations, Prices law dictates that the square root of the number of members (or employees) do half the activity/work. Think on that.

So an organisation with 9 members, 3 do half the work and the other 6 do the other half.

If it’s a hundred employees then 10 do half the work and the other half is done by the other 90.

If it’s a 1000 then 32 do half the work and the other half gets done by the other 968.

So lets apply Prices Law to a small political party like the SDP* and compare it to (say) the Labour Party.

*[this is actually too pessimistic for the SDP. I’ll explain why in part 2]

The SDP has, I believe, about 3500 members.

So applying Prices Law to the SDP, 60 do half the work and the other 3440 do the other half.

Shocked? Don’t be. Because it is far, far worse for the legacy parties.

Let us look at (say) the Labour Party. Labour has a membership of around 250,000.*

*[In this case Prices Law applies, and I’d suggest is pretty damn accurate]

Barely more than 500 members of the Labour Party do half the work. Remember though, by having 250,000 members there is one hell of a lot of extra administration, overheads and policy discussion.

The “work” of running the party will be considerably higher than that of the SDP, even if Prices Law applied directly (it doesn’t) to the SDP. Many of those 500 active Labour Party members will be soaked up doing admin.

The Labour Party and the other legacy parties as well as organisations like the Civil Service and the NHS have reached a size where arguably any increase in size will lead to less efficiency and less productive output. (Note: Prices Law will only apply to certain aspects of the NHS)

Getting anything done in the Labour Party, like new policies, projects, reviews or even simple governance must be like walking through a quagmire with little knowledge of where you are heading or why. Trying to change course on a failing policy must be a nightmare.

It does actually explain a lot about the lack-lustre nature of the top echelon of the Labour Party. To get to where they are, the top echelon have had to be party careerists and committee people.

Few (if any?) have actually done anything outside politics. Their skills (as they are) revolve around agenda’s, points of order and resolutions. Whatever spark they once had to get things other than party procedure done died long ago.

They are dull procedure driven people who only expertise is spouting word-salad speeches about things they often have literally no direct knowledge. Meanwhile they ambush and back-stab their way to the top through interminable committees and focus groups.

When anyone does come up with a spark they face an agonising quagmire of careerists and bureaucracy to get it pushed forward.

But it’s not just the Labour Party. Prices Law applies to all large parties.

The Greens and Reform are currently somewhat lucky in that they have an enthusiastic (though inexperienced) new membership. But that will settle. People will lose their enthusiasm and will be less willing to do “something for nothing” or be put upon to aid the tediously ambitious. They’ll start sitting back and Prices Law will assert itself.

The Conservatives are in a slightly strange position. How many of their movers & shakers left to join Reform? Their membership has shrunk. But has the pool of talent shrunk even more?

Who knows.

Finally there’s the Liberal Democrats. Personally I regard the Lib Dems as a possible challenge to Prices Law. They seem to be completely devoid of talent at the highest level. Though they do have quite a few enthusiastic and committed members. Maybe at ~60,000 paid up members they are broaching into Prices Law from 90-9-1 Law.

So what the Hell is the 90-9-1 Law you may say.

Rather than Prices Law, the 90-9-1 law I believe governs membership activity in small dynamic parties like the SDP (and other dynamic small paid-up parties for that matter too)

And the next post?

You guessed it

The Advantages of being a small Political Party. (Part 2)

Bye for now.

Love & Kisses

Billo

Why Blogger Beats SubStack

Old Blogspots Beat New SubStacks Every Time

Blogger may be unfashionable. But for many people who have years of posts on Blogger, continuing on it should be regarded as a no-brainer. It beats setting up a new SubStack blog hands down.

Setting up a SubStack blog means that you will in effect be starting from scratch with SEO. Google (et al) will slowly index your posts. Even then you will have zero domain authority, zero back links and consequently will get zero search traffic. It is likely to be months before you even get noticed by major search engines. 

But an old Blogger blog (like this one) will have all the indexing and back links already done. A blogspot like this one (dating back some 15 years with many posts) will carry a great deal of domain authority. It will be already indexed and will (even though it has been unused for years) still be regularly trawled by the search engines. A new post here has many visibility advantages over SubStack.

If I had done this post on a new Substack blog it would carry zero domain authority and so would be unlikely appear in any search results. Or more importantly, get used by an AI search precis. For this well established Blogspot the reverse is true.

I only just realised that myself! (with the help of Gemini AI). I had set up a SubStack Blog with the intention of restarting blogging. Then I found the painful truth. A blog with zero authority and zero back-links gets zero traffic.

I really do not want to go for months putting stuff out there just to garner one or two views and slowly build authority. I'd rather leverage what I have - even if it is a bit clunky and unfashionable. So I am going to migrate the  few posts I have done on a new SubStack blog to here. In essence I am abandoning SubStack to continue with Blogger.

Gemini informs me that in the unlikely event that Google does "sunset" (aka close) Blogger then the contents can be imported into a Wordpress blog and still maintain the post and domain authority. So there is a way ahead.

While you can also import posts into SubStack from Blogger you will lose comments and more importantly you will also lose domain authority. You lose. Big time.

So here we are again! Back after (at least) two years.

Love & Kisses

Billo

(p.s. as this blog hasn't been touched in 2 years and barely used in 6, some of the external links may not currently work anymore - that's a TBD in the next week or so)

We Need to Talk About Trains

 

UK Rail is a money pit destroying prosperity and enforcing London's dominance to the detriment of the rest of the country. 

This I suspect is going to be a very unpopular post because everyone loves trains. But…

Here’s a chart from wheredoesitallgo.org. It’s a detailed breakdown of the UK Transport Budget for 2025/6.

According to the chart 63% of the entire budget gets spent on rail. Most of it as a continual annual liability to support the current rail infrastructure and attempt to make tickets somewhat less than prohibitively expensive.

Actually the amount spent on rail is £3 Billion more than shown here. The missing £3 billion is hidden in budgets to “Local Councils” and “Devolved Governments”

A significant amount of the budget is being spent on the development of HS2. That is the building and commissioning of a new rail line from London to Birmingham.

In fact the annual amount being spent on HS2 alone is just short of the entire budget used to maintain and upgrade Britain’s Motorways and major roads (The Strategic Road Network or SRN)

The total amount spent on Rail is just less than four times that spent on the Strategic Road Network (see National Highways ALB in the chart). So it would be reasonable for you to expect that the number of passengers travelling by rail would far exceed the number travelling on the Strategic Road Network.

But if you did think that was the case or even if you thought they would be somewhat similar, you would be wrong. And by wrong, I mean wrong in Spades.

Just 8% of passengers travel by rail. Meanwhile 34% travel on the Strategic Road Network. About 50% of all passengers travel on roads maintained by local councils

In total ten times as many passengers travel by road (of all types) than by rail.

Four times as many passengers travel on the SRN than travel by rail. Yet the SRN gets just one quarter of the money from the transport budget to that lavished on Rail.

The net result of this is that each passenger on the railway on average gets around 16 times the amount spent on them from the Transport Budget than does a passenger on (say) a motorway travelling in either a car or an National Express coach..

So Where it all Get Spent?

Even though each railway passenger gets about 16 times the spend than a road passenger gets, surely with all the talk of levelling up, it means that a great deal of that money is spent up North?

Sadly: No.

Most of that money is spent in and around London. 70% of all rail journeys are focused on London. Of that 70%, almost all (88%) is commuter traffic. The net result is that 60% of all rail journeys in the UK are accounted for by London commuters. Just 10% of all UK rail journeys are inter-city.

At the end of the day, non London rail passenger traffic accounts for barely 3% of the total passenger traffic on road and rail in the UK.

That’s how things stand. Nothing is getting better.

Governments of all colours have been obsessed with rail. While the Strategic Road network languishes we have shovelled money into one gold plated scheme after another. The latest debacle is HS2.

Most of the Transport Budget in in reality little more a hidden subsidy scheme for London firms and their employees. They get the Lions share of the budget. While the rest of the country gets the table scrapings.

This can’t (or rather shouldn’t) go on.

In another post (or two - TBD aka in the "future") I’ll deal with HS2 (and rail freight traffic) and how it will make little difference to the North but will in essence act as yet another London transport subsidy for London businesses and their commuters. I’ll also detail how much the subsidy comes to per commuter and how this destroys prosperity, development and job opportunities in the North and regions.

This post was originally published on SubStack but has been moved here. Heres why

Who are the Labour Voters in May 2026?

An occasional series on main political Parties & their demographic support.

First of all I suppose I should possibly title this “Who were the Labour Voters in 2026” because with the rise of the Green Party all bets are off at the moment. As well as that we have the local elections coming up which by the sound of things are going to go badly for Labour. But Local Elections are not like General Elections. They have a much lower turnout and can often be seen as a safe place to make a protest vote.

Consequently I’m using the last two General Elections as the database. I’ve built a table of the demographics for every constituency in the country. This is so I can examine the demographics for every winning Labour seat and potentially see which are vulnerable and which are not.

Labour’s National Vote Base

But first of all lets look at what could be called Labours national core vote. Here’s the total number of people who have voted in every general elect back to 1987:

So the Labour vote in 2024 that gave them a landslide victory was actually the third lowest vote they have had in the last forty years. Notably it was considerably lower than that achieved by Jeremy Corbyn when he lost in 2017.

Only in the 1997 General Election was the overall National voter turn-out high for a Labour victory. In 2001, 2005 and now in 2024 the national turn-out was low and in two cases actually below 60%.

But it looks like there is (or maybe was) an irreducible core Labour vote of around 9.5 million.

Labour Support by Age Group

So what age group(s) support Labour? Of course all age groups support and vote Labour. But there is a heavy bias towards younger voters.

Even though Labour has a very large lead in young supporters this does not necessarily lead to more votes. Turn-out (aka those who actually vote) for the 18 -24 age group is dismal.

Turn-out by Age Group 2024 General Election

Here’s the estimated turn-out by age group for 2024:

The reason the Ipsos figure is lower is that it includes ALL people within that age group. Many people are not even registered to vote and they do not even show up as non-voters in statistics based on registered voters.

Proportion of Party Vote by Age Group 2024

If you take an average of all the winning seats per party in 2024 you get this:

NOTE: The above figures relate to the electorate size for that age group NOT the number of that age group who voted for the respective party.

Notice how (Nationally) Labour winning seats have a lower overall turn-out and a higher percentage of young voters. Meanwhile the demographics of winning seats for the Conservative, Reform and Lib-Dems are very similar to each other. They have more support from older voters and less from the young than Labour or the Greens.

You may think that a few percent on these averages will make few differences. If they average were the same across all seats that possibly would be true. But the average hides massive differences within parties and particularly within the Labour party.

So Why the 2024 Landslide?

It also helps explain the last Labour victory. The fall in turn-out between 2019 and 2024 of 7.4% meant 3 million voters stayed at home. Older people are the predominant voting group. Statistically their vote per capita is worth twice that of young electorate members. Predominantly the 65+ age group voted for the Conservatives. But in 2024, disillusioned, many stayed at home. More voted Reform.

While Labour lost votes from 2019 to 2024, they lost far fewer votes than the Conservatives. Consequentially they actually won some seats from the Conservatives when they achieved a lower vote count in that particular seat than they did in 2019!

Labour and the Next General Election

This was written before Labour’s calamitous local election results in early May 2026 which were significantly worse than even I was expecting. So I’ll let the dust settle a bit before making any predictions. But I’ll leave what I wrote as a reminder I need to still do this!

But it is not rosy for Labour. They have many seats that depend on both a loyal Labour young vote and a low turnout. If either of those items change (and both may well do) they are likely to get hammered.

In a future post I’ll list the seats I think will either fall to the Greens or get them a close run. At the other end I’ll look for Labour seats that could fall to Reform though I think these are far fewer.

Looking at it the other way round I think it fair to say that the list of seats Labour could win off other parties would be more-or-less empty.

This post was originally published on SubStack but has been moved here. Heres why

You Get More Right Wing As You Get Older. Really?

 

Why this right wing drift is (perhaps) an illusion

It is a common mantra that as you get older you politically move to the right. There is even a graph which shows a cross over age where those below it are more likely to be left wing while those above it are more likely to be right wing. Here’s a version of it from YouGov. (it’s a bit old - 2017 but shows this perfectly).

Of course, it’s no longer just mainly Labour versus the Conservatives. But basically if you were to draw this today making it Left wing vs Right wing instead, it would look much the same.

This graph is from a reputable polling company using reliable data. So it is perfectly reasonable to assume the graph is correct. And (in its way) it is!

BUT (and it is a big but) it doesn’t tell the full story. It can lead to a belief that a typical radical 20 year old will, by the time they reach (say) 40 be voting Conservative or even Reform.

Of course that can happen and probably sometimes does. But it is very far from a given and I would suspect very few young, ardent Left Wing voters will actually make that journey.

So where does this graph fall down? Again I repeat - the graph (in as far as it goes) is without a doubt - correct!

Lets illustrate this with the likely political journey of a young left wing voter. Lets call her Jayne.
Jayne is 20 years old and once avidly supported Jeremy Corbyn. She now bats for the Greens or maybe just the wilder realms of the extreme left of the Labour party. She is passionate and committed to her political beliefs.

Is Jayne (in 20 years time) going to start eulogising Margaret Thatcher?

Hardly likely is it? But that does not matter. Why? Try this as an explanation.

Sure. Jayne and her fellow young voters overwhelmingly support left wing parties. But they are unusual within their age band.

They are unusual because they actually vote. But even more so they are unusual because they are interested enough in politics to ensure they are properly registered to vote. Somewhere around 20% of 18-24 years olds are simply not even registered. They are not on the electoral register and so cannot vote. (Some estimates put this as high as 30%)

In 2024 the turnout for the General Election was the lowest since 2001 and the second lowest since 1918. It stood at a dismal 59.7%. But that is across the board. Turnout for the 65+ age group nationally was estimated to be the high 70’s to 80%. For the 18-24 group it was estimated to be 46%. But that is 46% of registered voters. If you include the missing 20% who are not even registered that reduces to 34% (Ipsos put it at 37% so I’ll use that from now on).

So while Jayne and her friends drive a 70% left wing vote in their age group, at the end of the day, of people in the 18-24 age group only 25% voted for the left wing candidates.

Sure: Even less voted for right wing parties. But however you cut it, a significant majority of the 18-24 group simply did not vote. Over 3 million of the 18-24 group stayed at home on election day 2024.

But as people get older they tend to drift towards voting. Turnout by age band increases. More and more people in an age group vote and fewer and fewer go unregistered.

So while Jayne may still stay true to her left wing values as she gets older, the new voters that join her at the ballot box may well hold entirely different views.

This makes it appear that the original younger voters are moving rapidly to the right but in fact the dilution of the left wing bias is due to an increasing number of individuals engaging with the electoral process as they get older.

Here’s an estimate of the turnout for each age group at the 2024 General Election:

And here’s how each age group voted. Remember this was the General Election where the Conservative vote collapsed. Even so, with a 73% turnout those elderly 75+ Conservative voters produced more than double the votes that the 18-24 group did for Labour.

Also notice that the 75+ group produced as many votes for Labour as did the 18-24 group! In other words when comparing these two similarly sized groups both had roughly the same number of Labour supporters. The young Labour vote in 1980 was now the old Labour vote in 2026. Maybe?

So I’d suggest that while a drift to the right is quite possible as a person ages, the amount of drift that will happen (for these young voters in particular) is generally overstated. Those who vote young may well keep their fundamental political affiliations as they get older. What changes is that those initially less engaged with politics come along and start voting too.

And they are far less likely to vote for Left wing candidates.

Originally published on SubStack before being moved here. Read more in this post.