'People are sick of the Tories, but what if they don't want to vote Labour?'

24 February 2024 , 23:02

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'Nothing politicians do surprises us any more'

There’s a cliche in politics about rainy election days being good for the Tories. It holds that if it throws it down, Conservative turnout is higher because Tory voters tend to live nearer polling stations and are more likely to have cars.

All well and good but there’s also a counter-cliche that rain is actually better for Labour, as most Tories live in the south and, as a consequence of being southern, don’t like going out when it rains. Anyways, as you would expect, both theories are utter nonsense. Experts say deprivation and geography are the factors, rather than anything to do with climate.

There’s a little bit of worry about Westminster around turnout for the next election. One Labour staffer – who has been to quite a few recent by-elections – said: “You knock on doors and it’s pretty clear pretty quickly that people have had enough of the Tories. But when you say to them, ‘Great, are you going to vote Labour then?’ They’re not sure.”

A rainy election good for the Tories?

Still, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Even the most hardcore of hardcore Tories will stay at home this time. What doesn’t help with turnout is what happened in Parliament last Wednesday. At a point when the full majesty of the house, the weight of centuries of democracy, all those statesmen (I guess should be statespeople but it doesn’t look right) should be brought to bear on the horrific conflict in Gaza, they go and make a mess of it.

Embarrassing wasn’t the word. Everyone involved in game-playing and point-scoring brought the whole thing into disrepute. The really scary thing is that no-one was really surprised. That’s the lack of faith people have in politics, the lack of interest. Nothing they do surprises us any more.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

And that is not good, by any stretch of the imagination. At a time when it’s more vital than ever for people to be engaged in politics, scrutinising them, listening to the argument, they are turned off.

Incidentally, the petition calling for the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to go is just madness. He made a mistake, he realised it and he apologised. Which is how it should work, really. If more of our elected officials behaved like him, politics would be a better place.

In the UK, anyway. According to Rainy Day Politics: An Instrumental Variables Approach to the Effect of Parties on Political Outcomes, which used a study of Norwegian municipal elections from 1971 to 2007, left-wing backing falls on average one percentage point on rainy election days. Look, I did a lot of reading for this column and I wanted to show it off a bit. Apologies.

Keir Mudie