Friday 9th June

The Swingometer has proved meaningless in this election.  Both Labour and the Conservatives increased their share of the vote.  I suspect that very few Tory voters switched to Labour, or vice versa.

It was simply that in England and Wales the UKIP vote absolutely collapsed.  Their leader, just like his name, appeared to want to nut all around him, becoming more and more ludicrous as the campaign went on.  And the election was decided by two things.  Where did the UKIP vote go?   And, Jeremy got young people on board and the more people saw of him the more they liked him.  Theresa assumed that all the UKIP voters, who had left Labour because they appeared to neglect ordinary voters, would go straight to the Tories.  Well, many did, especially in the North of England.  But in London and the South more and more ex-Ukippers voted Labour.  But it wasn’t at all uniform; there were many rogue results where the Tories increased their majority, and the ‘swing’ was anything but uniform.

In Scotland it was a totally different story.  It was an anti SNP vote.  Nicola Sturgeon’s wish and request for a second referendum was a fatal error.  And she paid for it, losing 21 seats, mostly to the Tories, but some to Labour and a few to the LibDems.  In fact if it hadn’t been for Scotland and Ruth Davidson, Mrs May might have well and truly lost.

What now?  The leadership of the Tory party is now a poisoned chalice, whoever takes over, or indeed if Mrs. May stays on, they will surely struggle.  Brexit is now even more an unknown project.  I think that Jeremy will now go on to a constant attack, holding rallies up and down the country.  Eventually there will be a new election…

But the swingometer was all over the place, there was absolutely no consensus.  Maybe it will now be consigned to the rubbish bin…