Just got home, it's not looking good, I agree populism and duplicity has hoodwinked many people and won the Tory's another five years. It looks like this was the goal and Brexit the means. The blue collar workers who gave him victory are going to wake up to an almighty head ache in a few months, or certainly in about a year. Blojo's premiership will finish the Tory's for good, along with the change in the demographic.

Yes, that's how they do it. They just reel off phrases, designed to roll off the tongue as slogans. These phrases encapsulate everything that ticks the boxes of the target audience. It doesn't matter if it's nonsense, or if the representative of the opposite party points out that it's disengenuous etc. Their audience doesn't have the time to check it. "Just get it done", " the will of the people"

In my polling station it's busy so far, should be one of the highest turnouts for a long time.It turns out we are about 400m outside a quarantine zone around a highly contagious bird flu epidemic. I hope we don't get quarantined.

I'm not going to try and explain the BBC bias now as I will be running a polling station in the morning and have to get up early. What I will point out though is the way the BBC reports the bluster as fact, without question. Because it is a public institution assumed to be impartial people will believe what is reported as truth if it is not qualified or challenged. Also they don't expose the double speak, where Tory's say one thing and then the opposite so that they can appeal to two opposing constituencies at the same time. I know that Channel 4 does this from time to time Sky doesn't and nearly always challenges such tactics.

Interestingly Laura Kuensberg was reported to the electoral commission today following her appearance on Politics live, I missed it unfortunately. Basically she was dissing Labour by claiming that postal votes which have already been opened to be counted were showing a poor turnout for Labour. A clear infringement of electoral law, she has been criticised the most for pro Tory comment.

Anyway it's very exciting, I can't wait to see the results coming in tomorrow night.

Brilliant.

Yes, I like to get involved on social media as I am interested in current developments in politics.
The problem with the BBC (With whom I have made a complaint about this), is that they try to give equal weight to what is said by each side in the debate, with very little in the way of challenge and they are very slow in adapting that approach to its exploitation by the Tory's. So what is happening is the Tory's bluster and use double speak, along with crowding out the opposition by talking over others, or refusing to stop talking in a short limited time slot. The problem with this is that their news broadcasts are dominated by lines and slogans from the Tory's which are opportunist, disingenuous, hollow promises, duplicituos etc.. as though it is the accepted truth. There is a lack of equivalence in what messages are shown, or to what degree they are true representations of policy. So basically they are being played by the bully in the room. Secondly they are slightly endemically anti socialist and anti Corbyn, in comparison to their slight endemic pro Tory stance. This distinction is subtle and can be seen in their whole approach to the issues. An example the other day, of which there are many was in reference to the spending announcements of the party's they referred to Labours plans as "give always", while describing the Tory's plans as "spending plans".

Whereas Channel 4 has far higher standards of reporting and addressing issues. They repeatedly win awards for reporting. Sky also has high standards and I can't see any evidence of bias, indeed it's quite refreshing after the BBC. I always watch Channel 4 news and All out Politics on Sky for the most objective presentation of politics.

I strayed onto the Facebook page of a racist brexiter this morning. Here are a few examples of what we, as moderates are up against. The last post is in reference to the recent London Bridge terrorist who was shot by the police.

The degree of social media deception, has reached new heights now. In reference to the story of the boy being treated for pneumonia on the floor of A&E. First, a senior Tory source told senior BBC and ITV political editors that a Labour activist outside the hospital had punched Matt Hancock. Top media journalists rushed outside to discover that nothing had happened. Meanwhile it had been tweeted nationally on major media platforms. Shortly afterwards this photograph of a tweet was widely distributed on Facebook and was all over twitter.


This illustrates the degree to which the Tory's are terrified of a major gaff. Also it has blown their cover, exposing their manipulation of the media and social media.

Here is one I received about a month ago, suggesting that to buy back parts of the NHS which Blair(apparently) sold off, would take 1 trillion pounds.

I keep my Facebook details and links to other sites to a minimum, so get very few adverts and
forwarded posts.

There is a social media battle going on, I came across one yesterday claiming that the stunt with the boy being treated on the floor for pneumonia yesterday was a momentum plot to discredit Johnson. There is a sophisticated propaganda machine producing this material, it is particularly widespread throughout the Red wall. Once you are tuned into it you can spot the people who are infected straight away. The give away is that they are rabidly anti Corbyn, as though he is some kind of bogeyman. You see lots of them on BBC coverage, because they like to go to leave seats and interview them (part of the endemic BBC bias). It's obvious that they have been corrupted because no innocent bystander would be so vehemently anti one candidate simply from observing the campaign as presented on the TV media. If you want impartial TV coverage you have to watch Channel 4, or Sky News.

Yes that is why my handle is Punshhh, that is my cartoonist signature.

I will post some of the propaganda later.

Yes, the decision by Swinson and the SNP to gun for an election was a very risky strategy (although it might have been harder to secure the extension without it). The Labour strategy of keeping Johnson hostage in No10 was working, it was only a matter of time before Johnson would slip up big time. Now we have a dangerous election which is playing into Cumming's hands. I'm watching Swinson viscously attacking Labour again now on TV.

I think that she is desperate to distance herself from Labour, because it would alienate the Tory swing vote. I think she is right to do this and she can smooze with Labour after the election if it's a hung parliament.

Yes, the election messages are out there now, it's only slip ups that we're looking out for. Johnson nearly got caught using the word "coloured" the other day(in reference to immigrants) but it turned out he actually said "talented", but the recording was ambiguous. Interestingly, his petulant behaviour in the leaders debate on Friday didn't fall into this category. He could still fall flat on his face though. I think there are a large number of undecided voters who will still be making up their minds. There is an army of momentum canvassers going around in marginal seats. A friend of mine is out every day in Norwich North and North Norfolk. Whether it's working is difficult to know.

Do you get lots of adds and targeted posts on Facebook, or other social media? I get about 30 a day, targeted for Labour, or tactical voting sites. I suspect that other people are getting entirely different messages.

You make good points, but as I said, we are opening up a big debate/can of worms here and could spend a while playing ping pong. I will reply to your two main points and then I think we should go back to the subject. On housing, it is a liability because it is a bubble (as you say, it is only on paper) and due to issues like housing essential workers in cities etc, it becomes an unnecessary impediment. Also the amount of money made by banks such as Santander on unnecessary high mortgages, is like a tax on a shortage of housing.

The debt you mention does not factor in the growth of the real economy intended by Labour, which as I have pointed out is quite disfunctional at the moment. Also it may be appropriate to raise taxes for the good of the country.

I don't think you are considering the problems in the housing market. There are many as I mentioned in my last post. For example, a whole generation coming of age for whom home ownership is an unobtainable dream (unless they are fortunate enough to inherit while still young, or their parents help them out), while they are having to spend a large proportion of their income on rent. I'm not going to get into this here, but bring it back to my initial point. The wealth sitting in the inflated house values is a form of congestion, like our roads, or like being obese. It ceases to be a dynamic aspect of a healthy real economy, but starts to become one of the problems holding it back. And while we continue to fail to address the lack of house building which has caused it, it is only going to get worse. This is just one of the economic issues presided over by the Tory's, as I mentioned before, resulting in real poverty and deprived neighbourhoods and an increase in the social divide between the rich and the poor.

To address the issue of privatisation, I had already pointed out that the privatisation of essential services undertaken by the Tory's, is not a pretty picture and does not insulate the provision from capitalist profiteering, exploitation and cherry picking. I agree that nationalised provision can become inefficient, but that is only really a management issue and is free of those capitalist issues. I agree it does require a capital investment to bring them back into public ownership. But this along with the other capital investment proposed by the Labour Party, is not funded from tax provision, but rather by issuing government bonds, a one off capital investment. The 86 billion day to day running costs of the economy which would be paid for by tax receipts has been fully costed." Large inefficient public monopolies" would not be there to generate wealth, they are there to provide essential services, like water, power and travel infrastructure.

In reality the economics of this is a large complex subject, we could easily stray into deep water.

Bringing it back to Brexit, it turns out there is going to be a border down the Irish Sea, according to Johnson there is nothing to see here, just get it done.

I suggest you talk to your friends and ask them what'd they'd do if their salaries suddenly doubled. I think they'd be talking about new cars, houses, buy-to-let investment, long-haul holidays, maybe even private schools; before they got around to offshoring any of their extra money.

I was talking about people further up the wealth scale, there are 850,000 millionaires in the UK, (if you include property assets 3.6 million). I don't dispute your point here, also I think that most of the creaming off of wealth is done by corporations*.

Who do you think keeps luxury brands afloat. Yes the ultra-rich may go that way, but I think only a small proportion of their income would go to tax havens, most of their wealth will be in property and shares. Not that I've any evidence - but then who has, either way?

Again I don't dispute this, but what I want to focus on is where money is taken out of the real economy for a period of time. For example, a lot of money goes into property, which then sits there for a long time, rather than being spent on products and services provided by small businesses, or in the local economy. The high house prices are due to other issues, where insufficient houses have been built for decades. The selling off of council houses without replacing the stock. Such failings in the market and state provision has caused a property price bubble, which brings a whole host of problems with it. Or in my example in my previous post, the wealthy person doesn't spend the money, it sits in a bank account, again it is not being used in the real economy.
Another problem in the real economy is the way in which the government bailed out the banks in 2008 and then spent the next 10years making the poor and disadvantaged in the country pay for it with crippling austerity. Whether austerity was required or not, it starved the real economy of money.

How do you think they got rich? So Labour's attempted wealth-redistribution is not as easy as it seems. The only way to avoid this trickle-up effect is communism..

No, that is not what is being proposed. What is being proposed is a larger Social Democratic State like the Northern European countries.

What I think is important is what I call, the money go round, circulating around the real economy alongside a sensible public provision of essential services.

On a more Brexitey note I see the Brexit Party MEPs are deserting Farage's sinking ship - polling now 2-3%. He explains: " well, they're ex-Tories so it's not surprising." How many of his crew aren't ex-Tories? As I guessed, the Tories are mopping up the Leave vote..

Yes, you were correct, I don't think Farage will withdraw though**, which was my fear. Interestingly the squeeze on the Brexit party seems to have gone as far as it can now. While the Labour squeeze on the Lib Dems does seem to be continuing, or at least, there is some more slack to take up. Not to mention the effect of tactical voting, which is difficult to gauge.

*an interesting development in the NATO summit, was the row between France and the US over clawing taxes off the large internet corporations. France is going to impose 3% and in return the US is threatening 100% tariffs on key French exports. The UK will get mired in this row from a far weaker position when begging for a US trade deal.

** due to the amount of money the Brexit party has spent on electioneering, if they were to reduce their number of candidates beyond a certain point they would fall foul of the rules on the maximum amount that can be spent per constituency. Meaning they could go to jail. Farage would not relish ending up in court again like he did following the 2017 election.

I don't have figures in ref' to John MacDonnell, I was describing economic ideology, rather than figures. Let me illustrate with a thought experiment.

Let's say there is an average group of people, one of which is wealthy (earns enough probably from investments, that they can save a significant proportion of their income). Now let's say the government gave each of them £20,000 and then came back a few months later to see what happened to the money. The people who are not wealthy would probably spend the money in short order in their local economy, probably on a broad range of products and services. The wealthy person would probably put it in a savings account, or if they are clued up, some kind of investment designed to avoid capital gains tax and then forget about it. This person wouldn't spend any more than they were going to before they received the money, as they already have all the money they need for day to day living costs. Like any of our 150 billionaires for example.
I expect I don't need to describe the ways in which corporations move wealth offshore, as this is well documented.

I apologise for my strong language in regard of the vox-pop people. I do talk about this a lot and my language has become more direct. What I mean by them being mistaken, is that many of them think that voting in that way their circumstances will somehow improve. This is where I suggest they are mistaken, simply because a Tory Brexit will evidently not improve their circumstances. Also, I am saying that the right wing media and populists convinced them to vote to leave the EU, not to vote Tory. They are now voting Tory to get Brexit done, because this same media has told them that democracy would be broken if it does not happen.

I'm not ignoring the middle ground, I just don't see it as relevant in this campaign. Personally I would be happy with a LibDem government, although I have moved to a more socialist position as a result of the damage done by the years of Tory cuts. It has become so extreme that I think Labour's policies are the only ones sufficient to redress the balance. My priority is to throw the Tory's out, Brexit or not, although I would prefer revoke, I would be happy with a sensible soft Brexit.

You mention 2008-2010, well for a start New Labour was Tory light, they certainly weren't socialist. Gordon Brown was spectacularly disfunctional, but he inherited such a poisoned chalice from the credit crunch, I don't think anyone would have survived long in that position. You should not understate the severity of the fallout from the credit crunch, it was the genuine cause of the circumstances which made the Tory's choose austerity. Also the debt has increased over the last decade.

If you listen to John MacDonnell, he is claiming that by putting money into the pockets of ordinary people in the economy, it generates prosperity and growth in the real economy, resulting in a benefit to all. It is the opposite of the Tory capitalist ideology of capitalism generating wealth with a trickle down effect, which has been shown to be an illusion. In reality people of wealth and corporations siphon the wealth offshore and make those at the bottom more deprived, with greater inequality.

Regarding the hope voters and protest voters. I know their hearts are in the right place, but they are mistaken, which is understandable due to the "vile" poison spread by the gutter press and nationalist populists, who have taken advantage of them.

There is a row between the US and the French over measures to claw back some tax from offshore corporations. The French are putting a 3% tax on revenues and the US is threatening 100% tariffs on key French exports. This is going to become a big row when the UK goes begging for a US trade deal.

Yes, it is difficult to understand why millions of poor and deprived people are going to vote for Johnson. The poor voting to keep the rich in power and keep them poor. I watched a vox-pops documentary on Chanel 4 news yesterday, where they invited 10 people from a working class area of Birmingham who voted leave. They were all people who had voted Labour their whole lives (they were all around retirement age). They were saying they couldn't trust Corbyn, they don't believe his pledges to rebuild the public services etc, because they have swallowed the narrative that we all have to struggle to get by and there isn't any money available to put things right. The Tory austerity mindset. Johnson was a lovable rogue who couldn't put a foot wrong, he was going to give them leadership. All of them said getting out of the EU was more important than any other consideration. And yet as soon as Johnson implements his hard Brexit, they will be hit hard with baked in austerity and exploitative capitalism, deregulation and stripping of what few workers rights they have left.

Another Chanel 4 report today is about the use of social media by Arron Banks. Apparently he was sold the contact details of all the UKIP supporters prior to the referendum. About 140,000 of the most Euroscepticsl people in the country. Banks set up Vote Leave, a political organisation which he used to groom all these people and gain access to all their extended contacts. Creating a countrywide social media campaign influencing millions of susceptible people. Once the referendum had happened he started a campaign of entryism infiltrating the Conservative party. Trying to deselect MPs who were pro-EU.

Johnson said that the idea that the NHS would be on the table in a US trade deal, is Loch Ness monster, Bermuda Triangle nonsense, conspiracy theories believed by crackpots. Yet more contemptuous divide and rule narrative.

The "working class", deprived neighbourhoods ( traditional Labour heartlands) who have fallen for the lies and snake oil salesmen, will shrug this off. Continuing to believe that Johnson is a lovable rogue, who is giving us some leadership. It's not certain that they will shrug off Trumps duplicity though, because the right wing gutter press they read, has been anti-Trump up until now.

"We're not interested in the NHS, you could hand it to us on a silver platter and we wouldn't be interested".

Trump.

Yes, I should point out that the vile propaganda is being spread by the gutter press, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Sun and now we can probably include The Daily Telegraph.

Regarding candidates withdrawing, I'm not sure, but I would think, that if they won and refused to take office, it would trigger a by-election and it would not be included in the number of seats for the party which they represented. Or if someone else wins in their seat, it would make no difference. I have been worried for some time that the Brexit party would pull all their candidates the day before the election. But It's looking now as though this won't happen. Although if the Tory's do really badly over the next week, they still might do that.

Johnson is showing his true colour's in the scrabble to politicise the terrorist attack last Thursday. Blaming it on legislation brought in by the last Labour government ten years ago. No shame, no apologies, just promises to bang people up and throw away the key. Oh and more tax cuts of course.

I'm looking forward to a photo of Trump with his arm round Johnson's back. The puppet master.

Yes, most of my friends and family are in safe Tory seats, but will vote for other party's, so their votes are meaningless/wasted when it comes to the result of the election.

Labour, but it is irrelevant because I'm in a safe Conservative seat.

The dossier was handed to him by a whistleblower yesterday and all he's saying is that it is evidence of what will be on the table in the post Brexit trade deal. With the follow up that Johnson is being dishonest about it.

The important thing is that the voters who don't spend much time looking into such things are aware of Johnson's duplicity and the reality of how tough the trade talks with the US might be.

For people like us who do give it a bit more thought, we should be under no illusions about what a hard ball game the US negotiators will play and how they will push for wide open access to our markets while we are in a position of weakness. That Johnson is unreliable and weak in the face of hard nosed business interests. That he will sell out our business interests, even if we get a reasonable trade deal with the US.

Not to mention the elephant in the room, that the US won't negotiate until all the future arrangements with the EU have been sorted out. Which will require the brexiter government to make up its mind again, which it repeatedly fails to do. That the US will demand a hard Brexit during the decade of negotiations with the EU to try and thrash this out( this is the optimistic view, what's more likely is that the Johnson government will descend into chaos and the economy and welfare state will pay the price).

Breaking news about 450 pages of unredacted documents, of the notes, or minutes of meetings about a possible trade deal with the US, with the government, from the middle of 2017-18, released by the Labour Party, obtained through freedom of information laws.

Detailing amongst other things "full access" to markets, including the NHS. Noting the insistence that drug pricing will be at the front of the pile. NICE being the first target.

Looks like a smoking gun.

Check out Sky News.

Blair is a staunch remainer, he has no choice but to support Labour. Presumably he would tactically vote depending on the circumstances in his constituency.

Here is Corbyn 40 years ago, on the right is a photo of the members of the Bullingdon club, at the same time. In the photo are Johnson, Cameron, Osbourne( he's not in the photo, but is a member)

I’ve read these sort of comments before. Why do you think that’s what’s happening? Why do you think it’s true?

It is widely understood here that there is this generational divide. Personally, nearly every old person I know is a leaving Conservative supporter. While all the young people I know are the opposite.

There are two reasons for what the younger people think. One, they are disillusioned with a Thatcherite model due to the results of the credit crunch. Secondly, they have not experienced any issues which would foster an anti EU sentiment. For the older folk, firstly, they are steeped in the affluence they accrued during the Thatcherite period, particularly through the housing market. Secondly, they have been infected with anti EU sentiment over a long period.

Yes there is an unprecedented level of silliness. Due to our political system the result is going to be decided by a small group of voters in a few seats. A large portion of these voters are susceptible to dog whistle politics.

Regarding the overton window, in this country anti-discrimination and anti-racism is scrupulously held, there is a Protestant ethic on this and the broadcast media would not be able to veer away from this.

"the Enemy of Humanity"

Yes agreed, this conflation is widespread in this country. My point is what is it the anxious Jews making this intervention think is going to happen? That they will be persecuted by the government, or the home office. Because their intervention is a direct move to sway the election and therefore who forms the next government.
I agree that it is probably mud slinging, but in our society it is a taboo to criticise claims of racist bias like this. So it's mud which sticks.

I agree entirely with your observations on the populism sweeping the world and it's use in this country.
I would point out that the anti-Corbyn sentiment is endemic in our establishment, it is not specific to Corbyn, but he is a classic example of what they fear. It is the same bias that occurred when Michael Foot ran for government in the early 80's. The establishment, the wealthy and the privelidged are rabidly anti any form of socialism. By contrast the critisism of Johnson is little more than depicting him as a bumbling jester, a lovable rogue, who would naturally due to his privelidge and grooming by the establishment schools and colleges, secure our best interests.

I suggest that such prejudice is difficult for people who have not grown up here to appreciate the subtlety of this distinction.

The chief rabbi and the interviewee on the Today program, are explicitly telling the population to vote for the Conservative party today. It's true that there is an anti-Semitic problem amongst members of the Labour Party, but what are they suggesting is going to happen if Corbyn forms a government in a hung parliament?
It is implicit in the remarks that people who are not Jews should secure a conservative government to assuage a feeling of unease amongst the Jewish population.
So Johnson's racism and policies is going to improve the degree of unease?

The problem is this is dog whistle populism which can't be challenged, because of its sensitivity. It may tip the balance between a sensible resolution to the Brexit issue, which would begin to heal the division and start to bring the country back together. In favour of an intensification of the division and chaos, plunging the country into a populist nose dive into Trump, or Putins hands.

It is grossly irresponsible for a religious leader to intervene in this way.

The Conservative party released their manifesto yesterday, it was incredibly underwhelming and launched on a Sunday afternoon. It looks as though they don't want to make a gaff and will just rely on the leave vote to push them over the line. Commentators say this is because in 2017 they made a manifesto gaff which lost them their majority, the dementia tax.

To me this looks weak and cowardly, while displaying indifference to the important pressing public service crisis we are enduring now following 9 years of unpopular austerity. The problem is people might think austerity is not over, which the conservatives are claiming and they would be right.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/nov/22/target-seats-2019-general-election-interactive

This website shows targeted marginals for the main party's. It's difficult to work out where Labour and Lib Dems overlap, because it doesn't show the third party's position in a marginal, only the two main contenders. It looks as though there is not much overlap though.

On the Andrew Marr show on Sunday Jo Swinson said, she thought the Tory's were likely to win at the moment and almost, but not quite hinted that she may do a pact of some sort with Labour. I don't know if, or how candidates can be pulled now that they have been submitted. My worry has always been that the Brexit Party would pull all their Candidates the day before the poll, but I don't know if, or how this would happen.

Unless it reflects a change of opinion related to age. One way to tell is whether there are older graphs like this and if younger support for conservatives was higher there or not.

I have had a look for older graphs, I haven't found anything easy to read before 2015 so far, but it looks like this trend has been building for about a decade. Before that the split was more even between the age groups.

I see it as inevitable due to the fall in living standards and the growing mistrust in the Thatcherite model, which has had some negative effects over the last 20 years. The older age group is still living in the Thatcherite era and have retained the wealth thereof. But the younger generations are increasinly feeling disenfranchised, poorer, with poorer prospects. There is a clamour for a redistribution of wealth which is unfairly balanced in favour of the older generation.

Interestingly the older generation is also a lot more in favour of Brexit, than the younger generation. That graph and this one about the referendum demonstrate how there is a deep generational divide, in which the older generation wants to give the younger generation what they don't want and then go and die of old age and leave them with the mess to clear up.

Graph of age demographic.
This is why the Conservatives are worried, it's only a matter of time before they become a party with no chance of winning an election. As I see it, they began to nose dive following the Credit Crunch, especially when austerity began to bite.

I assume that you Punshhh aren't a conservative, so I guess you are the people helping Johnson getting the conservatives to support him with those kind of remarks... if you would be a reporter.

Yes, I support the Greens, but my vote like many many others won't count, as I live in a safe Conservative seat. I doubt my remarks would sway any voters on this forum (which is the only one I write on). I doubt there are any subscribers on this forum who support Johnson, or could be swayed to do so by the remarks I make. Also the division between leave and remain is so deep, that to a large extent it doesn't matter anymore what anyone says, or does. This is why Johnson can get away with his behaviour, which is very uncharacteristic of the behaviour of a PM in this country.

In reference to the media, it is almost entirely anti Corbyn and is only slightly critical of Johnson. It's more a case of the media not knowing how to deal with the unprecedented way the government is behaving, allowing it to get away with far more than would usually be the case. There is a very good commentator on this issue called Peter Obourne, I will post a link to his blog/articles tomorrow.

but if Labour/Lib Dems vote for eachother to beat the Tories it could make a large difference.

Yes, I don't think it will happen though. Although as I mentioned a few pages back, there aren't all that many seats where Labour and Lib Dems overlap( marginal). Whereas there are a lot where Tory's and Lib Dems overlap. Also Any seat which goes to a party other than the Tory's is a seat going towards preventing a Tory majority( apart from any Brexit party seats, although they have never won any as yet, I doubt they will win more than two or three).

Oh also about the poll tracker, the BBC has the polltracker on their website, along with a list of all the constituencies with the share of the votes from the 2017 election. They frequently tell their viewers to go to the website and have a look. It's part of their drive to get their viewers to be more interactive.

Yes, I found that interesting. I think these pole trackers aren't giving us a true picture, for two reasons. It doesn't reflect the vote share destributed among constituencies and it doesn't show the effect of tactical voting. If one looks into constituencies and marginals, it gets quite complicated.

I was looking at the constituencies around the area where I live. My constituency is a safe Tory seat. In 2017 Tory's had approx 35,000 votes and Labour had17,000 votes, Lib Dems about 1,000.
So if you look at it in terms of wasted votes, the conservatives only needed 17,001 votes to win, so 17,999 were wasted on this constituency. Labour wasted 17,000 and the Lib Dems only 1,000. But it took a total of 35,000 of the the national Tory vote to secure the constituency. There are a lot of constituencies like this around here, basically all the rural constituencies in East Anglia, except North Norfolk. So roughly, it takes a lot of the national Tory share of the vote to secure these constituencies, whereas Labour has lost approximately half as much of their national share in these areas and Lib Dems, much less.

I know these demographics may work the other way in different areas, but it illustrates how unpredictable it is if one is not analysing the constituencies in more detail. Also, there is evidence of a lot more floating voters on this occasion than usual, making it more unpredictable. And a large number of younger voters introduced to the system, due to record numbers registering to vote.