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

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

Why Vote for a Small Political Party?

There is a General Election in July (2024) in the UK, so I thought I'd put forward a few ideas why you should ditch the main parties and seriously consider voting for a smaller party. In my humble opinion the best of the bunch is (by far) the Social Democratic Party (SDP). I urge you to give them your vote if you get the chance. They won't win. But even so, here's why you should give them your vote.

General Election 2024 - So What's On Offer

It looks like the current broken and dysfunctional UK government run by the Conservative Party will be replaced by an equally broken and dysfunctional (though marginally different) government run by the Labour Party. 

Maybe there’s a chance there’ll be a (equally dysfunctional) Lib/Lab coalition or whatever.

There seems little chance that the Conservatives will win another term. Frankly, after their record, they really do not deserve consideration. They deserve to lose, and badly.

But what about the Labour Party? 

I am sure I don’t have to relate the horror stories about the extremist, anti-Semitic and generally poisonous nature of a large section of the Labour party. 

A party that clearly puts the working class (aka the people who usually elect it) at the very back of the queue. They are (and will be) placed behind every minority, fad, cult and other extremist who demands the attention of the inner Labour Party Clique. The decent people of this country will be lucky to get the table scraps.

We are in for a (very) hard five years. Whatever the outcome of the election. 

But still, why vote for anyone else? Especially a small party. You’ll surely be voting for a loser. 

So why vote at all?

In a democracy you have the privilege of voting. But that privilege entails you making a choice.

But what if there is NO choice? Or maybe a choice like between drinking Hemlock or swallowing Arsenic? 

What do you do? 

You look for an alternative to the poison on offer. If there isn’t one,  you do nothing.

So Boycott Maybe?

I was brought up to treasure democracy. But one option is to do nothing. Not vote. Boycott it. 

Though I don't consider this the best option, it is not as nugatory as some believe. Staying at home and not voting pushes down the turnout. The winner’s legitimacy is compromised. If only ever so slightly. So if there is no-one worth voting for  then boycotting the vote is at least a away of showing your disgust. 

A Better Option

But a better way of showing your disgust is to vote for one of the other candidates. 

They may have no chance of winning but at the end of the day your vote will show. It will show your disillusionment with the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony. 

But won’t a small Party vote be ignored?

Well, if it's for Lord Bucket-Head - maybe. 

But if it's for a political party that has already put the Labour Party's nose seriously out of joint in Leeds like the SDP has  (well done Councillors Dixon, Pogson-Golden  and Chesterfield) it will focus minds wonderfully. Just like in these examples below.

Here’s a few examples.

1. George Galloway.

Hardly a person I support or agree with. But a very, very clever political operator. Look at the influence and control he has over the Labour Party with his pro-Islamic stance. See how in every seat contended by Galloway's party the Labour Party buckle and shift towards Galloway's agenda. The Labour Party (to it’s disgrace) has been falling over itself to “accommodate” people with views concurrent with with those of Galloway. It that is not political influence, what is?

2. Reform.

Reform is unlikely to get any MPs in July. But the Conservative party is bending over backwards to try and placate and accommodate those liable to leave it for Reform. A bit late in the day maybe. But after the election, does anyone believe that the Conservative will not try and win back their supporters lost to Reform? How will they do that? By adopting Reform policies.

3.(The original) UKIP.

Do you think that the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony would have ever approved an EU referendum (by 91% of MP’s by the way) unless the then UKIP hadn’t been breathing down their collective necks? Remember UKIP simply didn’t exist 25 years before the referendum. For most of that time it was regarded as a figure of fun by the Lib/Lab/Con/Grn hegemony. But they weren't laughing in 2016.

Influence

So by voting for small apparently insignificant parties you can at least influence the eventual policy outcome. All parties start as pressure groups. Then they build. Influence turns to power.

Building Visibility and Support

As disillusionment grows (and it will) so will support for decent parties like the SDP. A hundred votes this year gets you noticed. People see your policies and attitude. Word spreads. Next election it’s a thousand, then ten thousand.

That’s how the Labour Party came to power back in the 20th century. That's before it got poisoned by the elitist snobs who run it today.

That’s how the SDP will do it. Bit by bit. Election by election. Council seat by council seat. Then MP by MP.

We have to start somewhere. Turning our country round is going to be monumentally difficult. Things will almost certainly get worse before they get better. 

So lets all start the fight back by putting an X in the box marked SDP on the 4th July.

Yvette Cooper, Immigration and Honesty

I suppose I should have some sympathy for someone married to Ed Balls.

But after what I heard from Yvette Cooper this morning on Radio 4 I don't know which of the two I regard as the more dishonest or duplicitous.

Perhaps I should reserve my sympathy for Ed Milliband. After all, he only knifed his brother in the back. He didn't sell the whole country down the river like these other two.

There are some suppressed reports on immigration which are about to hit the fan. They concern the uncontrolled immigration policy that was quietly engineered by the Labour party during the last decade.

The findings in these reports are damning. see Here and Here.

If you think this was down simply to Labours incompetence rather than a deliberate half-cocked policy then perhaps you should read these too  Here and Here

So what did Yvette have to say about these reports this morning on radio 4?

Well, after many weasel words about the enormous immigration she and her colleagues presided over, she did actually mumble the word "sorry". Although rather disgustingly she first tried to blame it all on the Poles.

Maybe too many Poles did come here all at once. But at least they usually work also generally try and fit in.

Unlike some of the others, copiously reported on in these suppressed government reports and who Yvette Cooper so scrupulously avoided mentioning.

I suppose a mumbled "sorry" is at least a start. Coupled with her better (or worse?) half and his half baked apology for ruining the economy then I suppose the Labour party can congratulate themselves on glossing over two areas of their arrogance and incompetence.

Lets see....that only leaves

Lack of helicopters for Afghanistan
Housing policy
Attempted regional dismemberment of England
Cosying up to the Banks
Destroying UK industry
Reducing state education to a constantly changing shambles
Imposing bogus and ridiculous targets on the NHS
A half baked and very dangerous energy policy
Supporting a vast range of gangsters and dictators world-wide (including Gaddaffi)
More wars than any previous government since WWII
The Barnett Formula
Being George Bush's lapdog
Quangos
Political Correctness
Spin

Oh I'm bored now. Make your own bloody list. There is just too much to choose from.

As for Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, they obviously deserve each other.

Crisis? What Crisis?

I try to be a good boy and read all sorts blogs with different opinions but really, Labour List is going to make me ill.

See this post by Norman Evans about how marvellously our mighty leader and his associates are doing. Its on Labour List here

Norms post is important because it show exactly how little the Labour party has learned from the catastrophes it has inflicted upon this country. They claim credit for things that had little or nothing to do with them while simultaneously denying (or ignoring) calamities they have imposed.

Obviously Norm is a great admirer of Gordon “The Abyss” Brown but really, the rose coloured spectacles must be so tinted that they are virtually opaque.

Read it yourself but here is a brief summary.

Norm has a true socialist style, ranting about how the electorate are “grossly mistaken” or misled by the media. (OK stop laughing this is serious) Essentially the main-track is that the bloody electorate don't know what they are doing.

Lavish praise is heaped on “The Abyss”. Then, by inference, the whole banking calamity is blamed on others, including the previous Tory government (from a distance of 13 years).

Spectacular stuff.

I expect Norms view reflects that of most of the Labour party as the sleep walk their way to political oblivion. They have learned absolutely nothing from the calamities of the last few years.

There is no mention of the massive divisions within the Labour party.
No mention of the desperate coup attempts against Brown.
No mention of Iraq or the lack of kit for our lads in Afghanistan.
No mention of the under the covers immigration policy of the early 2000's.
No mention of the fact that we were first into recession and last out.
No mention of the ultra-massive national debt we have been saddled with.

When it comes down to it, the Labour party is a divided, exhausted body racked by division and discontent. On far too many occasions its MPs have put their own interests in front of the country. It is a morally bankrupt institution that deserves to be removed from office as soon as possible.

I would recommend that the authors at Labour List read “The Wisdom of Crowds” (by James Surowiecki) before they disparage the electorate again. I would also suggest that they address the concerns of these same people who they have so studiously ignored.

But whatever spin Labour List puts on Brown & Co, for the next election, fella's you're screwed.

Cartoons rather than Hospices

Naomi House Hospice in Winchester Hampshire, provides terminally ill children and their families with care and support not available from the NHS. It is an honest, ethical and immensly worthwhile charity.

They had some funds ready to invest in an extention and to provide additional services. Because Naomi House is run by conscientous people they took sensible precautions and invested the 5.7 million in a cash account in a triple A registered bank. It also offered a good rate of interest. At the time nobody envisaged the sub-prime catastophe or that the chosen Icelandic bank would default.

So, in the grand catastrophe brought about by ravenously greedy men and supine, “bought and paid for” governments, led by our own, a small massively worthwhile charity in Winchester loses all its money.

Now let this simple Neanderthal ask you this. If you could help out Naomi House Hospice or spend the money on say, a trite global warming cartoon which should it be?

Now guess which one Gordon Brown and his pals chose.


This cartoon with a little girl being read a story by her dad and animated with drowning dogs and cats cost slightly more than the total of Naomi house money lost by the triple A rated Icelandic bank. Six million pounds in fact. See Here

The last news story I picked up on the Naomi House tradegy was published in Novemeber Here. It looks like they may get half the money back in about 4 years.

Are you happy about that?
Do you think that it is fair?
Is this cartoon a worthwhile use of taxpayers money?
Fundimentaly: Is this cartoon more important than the work done by Naomi House Hospice?

If you feel like me that this is actually an outrage, and a travesty of natural justice then perhaps you should sign Steve Greens petition to No 10 Here. I have.

It is disgraceful that a wonderful institution like Naomi house has to survive on charitable donations anyway. The fact that they were not immediately re-imbursed by the governemnt borders on criminal neglect. The fact that money can then be found for this pathetic propagandising piece of trash simply make me howl with rage.

All I can finally say is that if you feel that this is fair and reasonable behaviour by our bunch of ruling incompetents, then perhaps you should go forth and read a different blog.

Prescott: Declared Inedible

Neanderthals, being unashamedly carnivorous, sometimes look on their Homo Sapien friends as lunch.

Be assured though, Billothewisp does try to eat as few of his neighbours as possible.

Still, he firmly believes that the inhabitants of the House of Commons, and their associates should, if necessary, be regarded as a potential emergency food store.

But there are limits to everything.

It has been known for a long time that John Prescott (Prezza to his mates, of which he has none) has always been a marginal food store as he is so full of shit.

But his toadi-ing up to the Chinese over emissions control finally removes him from the menu. See Guido Fawkes Post Here

You may know that Prescott once planned to dismember England into a number of rival regional assemblies. He got as far as appointing regional dictatorships with powers that trumped those of the elected councils within the regions.

His intention was to roll out some form of fixed/spun regional democracy into the dismembered England and cement the murder of nation. His little plan came a cropper when in the first regional referendum, the people of the North East, told him to bugger off.

Since then the whole plan to dismember England has been somewhat muted. Some steps have been made but today, for example, The South West Regional Assembly is essentially run by delegates from local councils rather than by the original imposed flunkies. Soon the whole sad abortion will be abandoned.

Perhaps when this travesty is finally buried in its own cess pit we can get back to looking for an English assembly or even an English Parliament, just like the one in Scotland.

Meanwhile Prescott, in backbench retirement continues with his bitter tirades against anyone he designates as non-working class. (which must included most of the labour party these days)

He appears to simply regard his own background as the sole point of reference for a continuing class struggle. Anyone living south of Watford is, by definition, an oppressing toff. While his narrowness is unappealing, I do have a level of sympathy. As he is undoubtedly from a working class background he must feel very lonely in the upper echelons of the Labour Party.

But that does not get us past the unsavory fact that he is without doubt inedible. Luckily as he has now retiring, his removal from the House of Commons will not affect the the number of specimens available in the food store.

It may also improve its quality.