In a few months, the UK will be in a general election.
Nobody know how this could turn out because some parties have fallen off and others had made sizable gains.
As senior partner in the coalition, the Tories are not high in the polls, however they are able to remain popular with their leader and economical competence. David Cameron is the most popular of leaders in a group of unpopular leaders, and this could be a gamechanger. However, no doubt that their low support is an handicap.
Conventional wisdom could lead us to think that Labour will be the one benefiting of the slump, however Labour poll figures had been frankly terrible. The party is even losing some constituencies that they have won in 2012 (such as Scotland). Their leader is a liability and the party in opposition has problems.
The other thing is that Labour support seems to be eaten on multiple fronts. With UKIP among working class voters, with the Greens among social liberals and with the SNP in Scotland.
UKIP are an interesting case. They have won the European election and two recent by-elections and they seem to have eaten support from all sides of the political spectrum. Not unlike the rise of populist parties all over Europe, UKIP voters are sick and tired of old parties.
A new trend is that Labour is starting to panic with UKIP rise in their home turf, mainly because that Labour starts to realize that working classes are hardly social liberal. They are attracted to UKIP because Labour is seen in their communities as the »old rotten » party. In a place like Rotherham, Labour is seen as toxic, and with the rise of alternatives other than the Conservatives, traditional Labour voters are looking elsewhere.
The Liberal Democrats will probably have an awfully low popular vote next election if polls are right. The good thing for them is that they seems to be doing well in the constituencies where they have an MP especially if their main opposition is the Conservatives or UKIP.
The Greens had also gone up fast in the last year having even more support today then the Liberal Democrats.
In Scotland, the SNP could perhaps have a record number of MP in Westminster. Their recipe is quite similar to the Lib Dems or UKIP, as their policies seems to differ based on where they are running in Scotland. They play Labour card in red constituencies and in other constituencies, they want to look like Tartan Tories.
But the most interesting thing about the 2015 election could be with the difficulty of Labour of trying to please the Red UKIP vote, the Green vote and the SNP vote all at the same time. Nobody know how they could do this without having big contradictions.
With a political situation like that, could this be 1974 all over again?
Agora 