It’s been speculated on as a possibility for years, but it’s finally happened. Seven MPs have left the Labour Party to form The Independent Group. They are not officially a political party (not yet at least), but they are nonetheless a movement aiming to attract more Labour MPs, as well as voters, to their cause.
Some who have been around longer than I have are drawing parallels to the Labour split in 1981, when four Labour MPs split to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). By the next election two years later, 28 Labour MPs, as well as one Conservative MP, defected to the SDP, which itself formed an alliance with the Liberal Party.
In the subsequent election in 1983, we saw nearly one in four voters swing from the Labour party to the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Sadly for their leaders, though, this skyrocketing of the vote did not translate into seats in Parliament. Instead, we actually saw the Conservatives gain 38 seats and win a Parliamentary landslide, despite a lower vote share since 1979, as the vote on the left was split between two major forces.
Of course, it’s hard to say whether there is a causal relationship between the formation of the SDP and the subsequent Tory landslide, or whether both of these are symptoms of the same issues within the party. But the correlation is definitely there between the two. Which begs the question, given that it’s happened again, what could that mean for today’s Parliamentary arithmetic?
New Poll Alert!
Earlier today, Sky Data conducted the first voter intention poll which included The Independent Group. It shows the group taking a good chunk of the vote from both of the main parties, though slightly more for Labour than the Tories (10% vs 7%, respectively, of their 2017 votes). But both major parties have reason to worry overall, as the Tories lose 7% of their 2017 vote to UKIP, and both parties lose a large share of voters to apathy (6% for the Tories, 12% for Labour). Meanwhile, the IG is attracting many who didn’t vote at all in 2017, giving the major parties more reason to worry.
But of course, in our Parliamentary system, it’s seats that matter. And technically, even though the Tories are down over 9%, there is a net swing from Labour to the Tories, which means they would gain seats from them. The Tories would still finish short of an overall majority, as they lose seats to the Lib Dems, while Labour would be looking at a result slightly better than their 1983 low. I can’t allocate any seats to The Independent Group, though, as I don’t have enough data to say what kinds of constituencies they’ll be strongest in.
What if the IG forms an alliance with the LibDems? Turns out, that doesn’t help them much: only eight seats would change hands, six of which at the expense of the Tories.
Of course, this is only once poll, and it should be taken with the caution it deserves. But if more polls show similar moves to the new grouping, then Labour will have a lot more to worry about than the Tories.
