There’s a lot to think about in this, and I particularly like your point about distributions rather than raw vote share. The “jam on toast” analogy may be simple, but it actually captures the mechanics of first-past-the-post rather well 🤗.
You’re right that Reform doesn’t necessarile need to dominate the big metropolitan centres if it can win efficiently across the outer towns and secondary areas. That feels like the more interesting battleground.
I’d probably be a touch more cautious on fixing exact percentages as tipping pointsmyself, but the underlying argument about how the vote spreads holds up.
Genuine question, because this is where it gets interesting, how do you see that translating into seats at a General Election? Roughly how many do you think Reform could realistically take on that model?
Mike ( if I may) I tried to keep thoughts as brief as possible but I didn’t do a good job of that. Let me answer YOU question. Labour in 2024 won a landslide with 33.8% of the vote or 11% of the electorate! That is it won with just 1 in ten of those entitled to vote placing their x against a Labour candidate. At the time Labour did very well in England and Wales and reasonably in Scotland. It was then a national party hoovering up seats with small majorities throughout the mainland. Turnout was vital in the landslide because many Tories did not vote. That will not happen next time but many of these non-voters will vote Reform. Added to which many Labour voters will either vote Green or Reform. But there is a profound difference in the effect of a Green and Reform vote, as expressed in Birmingham last week. The Green leaning Labour voter is largely Middle Class or Muslim or both. The seats where that combination exists are limited to the inner Metropolitan areas, where the working class voter who now votes Reform is more uniformly spread out. Thus while the Greens build up hefty majorities in a few areas, Reform spreads its votes widely. This is the way it has overcome large Labour or Tory majorities in places like Sunderland and St Helens or Essex this year and Durham or Northumberland last. The pivotal point is around 34% BUT not 34% nationally. It is more likely to be 29% nationally. Why? Because Labour or the Greens or the Gaza Independents or the Liberals create huge majorities in a few seats but they have little support outside their narrow base. Take for example last week’s election. The SKY poll forecasts put Reform vote on 27% down from 30% in 2025 and the commentary on Sky said on 27% Reform would form a minority government. The Channel also said the Reform vote had gone down. But that is to completely misread the data. It is like comparing apples and oranges. The vote in 2025 was largely in the shire counties. In 2026 it was largely in the metropolitan areas, where the Greens and Labour do well. For Reform to do well, as it did in the West Midlands, in this areas is a bonus. It needs some of these areas to gain a majority but only some. Labour or the Greens need all of these areas plus some of the shires. Simply put the best marmalade is spread evenly on toast. What here in Birmingham Labour, the Tories, and the Greens have done is to spread the jam thickly in parts of the toast while leaving most of the slice empty. In 2024 Labour were able to spread their redcurrant jam thinly and evenly but I don’t expect that to be repeated in 2028 or 2029. Is there a teal berry jam? The truth is, despite mass immigration and despite gentrification, the overwhelming majority of the population are still white working or lower middle class and these people are spread more evenly than the posh leafy suburbs or the ethnic minority ghettos. And these are catalyst of Reform plus a few minority groups who have historically been opposed to Islam, be they Jews, Hindus, or Sikhs… many of whom were once Labour through and through. I have wandered from the point but the tipping point for Reform in a multi-party system will be around 28% of the national vote. 30% is a comfortable majority and 1/3 a landslide. But of course because the opposition will do very well in the large conurbations it does not mean 28% in the seats Reform wins but around 38% to 40%. That is why the results in Walsall, Dudley, Sunderland, Hull, St Helens are important… they show that Reform is capable of taking the majority of seats in the lesser towns of the big conurbations. It does not need the lumps of jam at the centre… it spreads thinly over the rest of the toast. As to university voting will write later. I have said enough for one date. PS I am going through vote share ward by ward in Birmingham, to ascertain interesting psephological patterns.
Yes politicians will be more astute after leaving power… but but those responsible for the mess need not just to be more astute but to apologise for it. You can blame the officers of the council as you have but it is for councillors to lead. And leadership has been dire for as long as I have lived in the City, over 20 years. Increasingly the City looks like a 3rd world city and I know as few. By that I mean a centre of posh new office blocks, often empty, surrounded by little strewn ghettoes. Whether any party can pull it back from disaster I doubt. Here are a few stats from 2026 election and a few thoughts of my own… Votes cast for each party… 1. GREEN 90,513… 2. LABOUR 87,195 … 3. REFORM 85,543 … 4. CONSERVATIVE 68,921… 5. LIBERAL DEMOCRATS 49,048… I have not added the Independents votes as they were not a cohesive group but the total vote was around 20,000 in total, despite the number of votes they received. What is interesting about these votes is that only Reform received votes in numbers from all over the city, except in a small number of inner city areas dominated by immigrant communities. But even in these areas t
It received a hundred votes or so… the other parties heaped up big majorities in their prime areas but failed elsewhere. The student vote gave the GREENS huge majorities in places where the students live in large numbers but elsewhere they often got less than a hundred. This raises a fundamental issue, which did not exist when I was a student many many years ago. At that time you had to be 21 to vote BUT importantly you were not allowed to vote in the university city where you were a student, since we were temporary residents. The power of the student vote gives them unacceptable influence, which damages the will of permanent residents. The question is important… should students determine the government of any place, when they are here today and gone tomorrow? The vast majority of students do not live in Birmingham once they have left university. This is something that needs to be addressed. Clearly the influence of student vote is not as great as eg Canterbury but it is important
Sorry for gap in the text which is not as it appeared when I wrote. To explain the regulations on university voting. Originally there were in my childhood university seats, solely for students and those who taught in the universities. The university seats were abolished in the 1950s. After which students voted at their permanent address ie where their parents lived. In the late 1970s you were allowed to pick where you vote. Gradually that has created a problem if 70% of the local population becomes transitory students. It was not a problem when only 5%, as in my time, 10% of an age cohort went to Uni but with 50% today it creates a problem… views appreciated.
Fundamentally what the figures show is that we have in the city a Balkanisation of voting… the greens rely on students and ethnic minorities… the Labour Party of public service employees… the Liberals on trendy bohemian middle class voters in their 20s and 30s… the Tories on older Middle Class suburban voters… it is only Reform that seems to get votes uniformly from largely white and non Muslim ethnic minority voters of all classes. Thus Reform picked up seats from the main parties and that is why it came top of the poll but only 3rd in votes cast. Nationally this suggests that a Reform government may not need 31% of the national vote to obtain power.
Richard you can't leave that comment where you do - what do you feel Reform does need to obtain power and what poling figure average do they need to be confident of power ? Interesting stuff and may I ask was there not with some universities a Uni Vote that you carried for life. So for educated certain businessmen (maybe the odd woman) they had a vote in their home area, another where the business was and the Uni Vote..!!
It was a pleasure to be among two political grandees! Both immensely talented, the city is better for having Khalid Mahmood and Ewan Mackey involved in its development. No holds barred though - honest, plain speaking sets the tone of what needs to happen next if Birmingham is to recover from its current position to become a thriving and successful city worthy of UK second city status. To get the city back on course may involve getting our bins emptied but that is just the start…
There’s a lot to think about in this, and I particularly like your point about distributions rather than raw vote share. The “jam on toast” analogy may be simple, but it actually captures the mechanics of first-past-the-post rather well 🤗.
You’re right that Reform doesn’t necessarile need to dominate the big metropolitan centres if it can win efficiently across the outer towns and secondary areas. That feels like the more interesting battleground.
I’d probably be a touch more cautious on fixing exact percentages as tipping pointsmyself, but the underlying argument about how the vote spreads holds up.
Genuine question, because this is where it gets interesting, how do you see that translating into seats at a General Election? Roughly how many do you think Reform could realistically take on that model?
Mike ( if I may) I tried to keep thoughts as brief as possible but I didn’t do a good job of that. Let me answer YOU question. Labour in 2024 won a landslide with 33.8% of the vote or 11% of the electorate! That is it won with just 1 in ten of those entitled to vote placing their x against a Labour candidate. At the time Labour did very well in England and Wales and reasonably in Scotland. It was then a national party hoovering up seats with small majorities throughout the mainland. Turnout was vital in the landslide because many Tories did not vote. That will not happen next time but many of these non-voters will vote Reform. Added to which many Labour voters will either vote Green or Reform. But there is a profound difference in the effect of a Green and Reform vote, as expressed in Birmingham last week. The Green leaning Labour voter is largely Middle Class or Muslim or both. The seats where that combination exists are limited to the inner Metropolitan areas, where the working class voter who now votes Reform is more uniformly spread out. Thus while the Greens build up hefty majorities in a few areas, Reform spreads its votes widely. This is the way it has overcome large Labour or Tory majorities in places like Sunderland and St Helens or Essex this year and Durham or Northumberland last. The pivotal point is around 34% BUT not 34% nationally. It is more likely to be 29% nationally. Why? Because Labour or the Greens or the Gaza Independents or the Liberals create huge majorities in a few seats but they have little support outside their narrow base. Take for example last week’s election. The SKY poll forecasts put Reform vote on 27% down from 30% in 2025 and the commentary on Sky said on 27% Reform would form a minority government. The Channel also said the Reform vote had gone down. But that is to completely misread the data. It is like comparing apples and oranges. The vote in 2025 was largely in the shire counties. In 2026 it was largely in the metropolitan areas, where the Greens and Labour do well. For Reform to do well, as it did in the West Midlands, in this areas is a bonus. It needs some of these areas to gain a majority but only some. Labour or the Greens need all of these areas plus some of the shires. Simply put the best marmalade is spread evenly on toast. What here in Birmingham Labour, the Tories, and the Greens have done is to spread the jam thickly in parts of the toast while leaving most of the slice empty. In 2024 Labour were able to spread their redcurrant jam thinly and evenly but I don’t expect that to be repeated in 2028 or 2029. Is there a teal berry jam? The truth is, despite mass immigration and despite gentrification, the overwhelming majority of the population are still white working or lower middle class and these people are spread more evenly than the posh leafy suburbs or the ethnic minority ghettos. And these are catalyst of Reform plus a few minority groups who have historically been opposed to Islam, be they Jews, Hindus, or Sikhs… many of whom were once Labour through and through. I have wandered from the point but the tipping point for Reform in a multi-party system will be around 28% of the national vote. 30% is a comfortable majority and 1/3 a landslide. But of course because the opposition will do very well in the large conurbations it does not mean 28% in the seats Reform wins but around 38% to 40%. That is why the results in Walsall, Dudley, Sunderland, Hull, St Helens are important… they show that Reform is capable of taking the majority of seats in the lesser towns of the big conurbations. It does not need the lumps of jam at the centre… it spreads thinly over the rest of the toast. As to university voting will write later. I have said enough for one date. PS I am going through vote share ward by ward in Birmingham, to ascertain interesting psephological patterns.
Line line 11 for where the working class should read while NOT where…
Yes politicians will be more astute after leaving power… but but those responsible for the mess need not just to be more astute but to apologise for it. You can blame the officers of the council as you have but it is for councillors to lead. And leadership has been dire for as long as I have lived in the City, over 20 years. Increasingly the City looks like a 3rd world city and I know as few. By that I mean a centre of posh new office blocks, often empty, surrounded by little strewn ghettoes. Whether any party can pull it back from disaster I doubt. Here are a few stats from 2026 election and a few thoughts of my own… Votes cast for each party… 1. GREEN 90,513… 2. LABOUR 87,195 … 3. REFORM 85,543 … 4. CONSERVATIVE 68,921… 5. LIBERAL DEMOCRATS 49,048… I have not added the Independents votes as they were not a cohesive group but the total vote was around 20,000 in total, despite the number of votes they received. What is interesting about these votes is that only Reform received votes in numbers from all over the city, except in a small number of inner city areas dominated by immigrant communities. But even in these areas t
It received a hundred votes or so… the other parties heaped up big majorities in their prime areas but failed elsewhere. The student vote gave the GREENS huge majorities in places where the students live in large numbers but elsewhere they often got less than a hundred. This raises a fundamental issue, which did not exist when I was a student many many years ago. At that time you had to be 21 to vote BUT importantly you were not allowed to vote in the university city where you were a student, since we were temporary residents. The power of the student vote gives them unacceptable influence, which damages the will of permanent residents. The question is important… should students determine the government of any place, when they are here today and gone tomorrow? The vast majority of students do not live in Birmingham once they have left university. This is something that needs to be addressed. Clearly the influence of student vote is not as great as eg Canterbury but it is important
Sorry for gap in the text which is not as it appeared when I wrote. To explain the regulations on university voting. Originally there were in my childhood university seats, solely for students and those who taught in the universities. The university seats were abolished in the 1950s. After which students voted at their permanent address ie where their parents lived. In the late 1970s you were allowed to pick where you vote. Gradually that has created a problem if 70% of the local population becomes transitory students. It was not a problem when only 5%, as in my time, 10% of an age cohort went to Uni but with 50% today it creates a problem… views appreciated.
Fundamentally what the figures show is that we have in the city a Balkanisation of voting… the greens rely on students and ethnic minorities… the Labour Party of public service employees… the Liberals on trendy bohemian middle class voters in their 20s and 30s… the Tories on older Middle Class suburban voters… it is only Reform that seems to get votes uniformly from largely white and non Muslim ethnic minority voters of all classes. Thus Reform picked up seats from the main parties and that is why it came top of the poll but only 3rd in votes cast. Nationally this suggests that a Reform government may not need 31% of the national vote to obtain power.
Richard you can't leave that comment where you do - what do you feel Reform does need to obtain power and what poling figure average do they need to be confident of power ? Interesting stuff and may I ask was there not with some universities a Uni Vote that you carried for life. So for educated certain businessmen (maybe the odd woman) they had a vote in their home area, another where the business was and the Uni Vote..!!
It was a pleasure to be among two political grandees! Both immensely talented, the city is better for having Khalid Mahmood and Ewan Mackey involved in its development. No holds barred though - honest, plain speaking sets the tone of what needs to happen next if Birmingham is to recover from its current position to become a thriving and successful city worthy of UK second city status. To get the city back on course may involve getting our bins emptied but that is just the start…