UK politics

[RandBlade]

Just over 200 constituencies in England were either won by the Tories or had margins below 10k? Are you sure about that?

If that were the case then the Tories would be in opposition. By a very long margin. You're operating under false assumptions. The Tories alone won 296 out of 533 and that's without counting any won by the opposition with margins below 10k.

I was referring to the set of 100 constituencies with margins under 10k and 5k, respectively, which you might have been able to infer from the first part of the sentence of which you emphasized the second part. Only ~10 London constituencies had majorities under 10k, so that doesn't really help your case all that much.

So 10% in London alone. Plus Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Sunderland and every other city in the country?

[Aimless]

Just over 200 constituencies in England were either won by the Tories or had margins below 10k? Are you sure about that?

If that were the case then the Tories would be in opposition. By a very long margin. You're operating under false assumptions. The Tories alone won 296 out of 533 and that's without counting any won by the opposition with margins below 10k.

Right you are, that figure and description slipped through my editing and was in reference to the seats with margins below 10k—just over 200, just under half of which were won by parties other than Con.

So 10% in London alone. Plus Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, Sunderland and every other city in the country?

A number of areas falling within Liverpool, Greater Manchester and Sunderland were eligible under this scheme. All told, high-priority candidates—which were selected using objective, pre-defined criteria—represented almost 30 Labour constituencies—over half of the constituencies represented in that high-priority group. That is simply not consistent with the suggestion that there were practically no towns in Labour constituencies after the 2017 election. The discrepancies wrt marginality are even more striking—a little less than half of all constituencies represented in the high priority group had margins over 10k, with a little over half of those being below 5k. Even if you only look at Tory seats across England, only a third had margins below 10k—and only 1 in 5 had margins below 5k; in contrast, 3/4 constituencies containing towns selected at MPs' discretion had margins below 5k.

You might be able to charitably explain some of the discrepancy wrt party by arguing that, perhaps the only eligible candidates that were in Labour constituencies were all in the high-priority pool, leaving only towns in Con constituencies in the intermediate- and low-priority pools, but that doesn't explain the discrepancy wrt degree of marginality. You might be able to explain some of that by arguing that those constituencies are simply smaller, but they aren't really much smaller than constituencies with higher margins. The most charitable interpretation is that MPs selected towns that they knew a little about—either personally, or through friends, contacts or lobbying—which might be more likely to be in more Tory-leaning or Tory-held constituencies. It might have been different if MPs had listened to officials' recommendation to meet with mayors of the various towns, but they chose not to.