Lord Ashcroft: Can Starmer negotiate the left’s coalition of chaos?
Trust is earned, not demanded.
Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit
Last month I analysed what my polling revealed about whether and how the Conservatives can “unite the right” in a fragmented political landscape.
Now we look at the other side of the fence.
With debate raging over Britain’s role in the Middle East conflict, Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms and the implications of the Gorton & Denton by-election, what is the state of the left-of-centre voting coalition under the biggest Labour majority for nearly 30 years? With Reform ahead in the polls, can the left mobilise to keep the right out of office?
In my latest poll we asked people whether they would, in the event of a hung parliament, prefer a coalition between the Conservatives and Reform or a coalition between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Those who preferred the latter (43 per cent of all voters) were asked whether they would be willing to vote tactically to prevent a Conservative or Reform candidate winning. Nearly nine in ten of them said they would, with no significant difference by current voting intention.
At face value, this augurs well for uniting the left. Assuming that left-leaning voters can always identify the tactical anti-right candidate their own seat (quite a big assumption), 87 per cent would back this candidate. With the combined vote share for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens on 47 per cent, this implies that over 40 per cent of voters would vote tactically for a “left bloc” candidate. By contrast, as we also found, the combined vote share for a Conservative-Reform alliance is in the mid-30s.
But can we take it this face value?
To find out, we asked one further question: whether there were any parties that people would be unwilling to support, even as a tactical vote. Here we begin to see the dents in left-of-centre solidarity. Just over half of Green and Lib Dem supporters, and just under two thirds of Labour supporters, say they would be prepared to vote for any of the others. But a quarter of Lib Dems and three in ten Greens say they wouldn’t vote Labour; a fifth of Greens wouldn’t vote Lib Dem; and almost as many Labour supporters say they wouldn’t vote Green.
The chart below breaks down current Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters into three categories:
Flexibles, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition and who are willing to vote tactically for any of these parties
Selectives, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition but are unwilling to vote for at least one of these parties
Splitters, who say they would vote for one of these three parties but do not prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition (they either prefer a …
Trust is earned, not demanded.
Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit
Last month I analysed what my polling revealed about whether and how the Conservatives can “unite the right” in a fragmented political landscape.
Now we look at the other side of the fence.
With debate raging over Britain’s role in the Middle East conflict, Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms and the implications of the Gorton & Denton by-election, what is the state of the left-of-centre voting coalition under the biggest Labour majority for nearly 30 years? With Reform ahead in the polls, can the left mobilise to keep the right out of office?
In my latest poll we asked people whether they would, in the event of a hung parliament, prefer a coalition between the Conservatives and Reform or a coalition between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Those who preferred the latter (43 per cent of all voters) were asked whether they would be willing to vote tactically to prevent a Conservative or Reform candidate winning. Nearly nine in ten of them said they would, with no significant difference by current voting intention.
At face value, this augurs well for uniting the left. Assuming that left-leaning voters can always identify the tactical anti-right candidate their own seat (quite a big assumption), 87 per cent would back this candidate. With the combined vote share for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens on 47 per cent, this implies that over 40 per cent of voters would vote tactically for a “left bloc” candidate. By contrast, as we also found, the combined vote share for a Conservative-Reform alliance is in the mid-30s.
But can we take it this face value?
To find out, we asked one further question: whether there were any parties that people would be unwilling to support, even as a tactical vote. Here we begin to see the dents in left-of-centre solidarity. Just over half of Green and Lib Dem supporters, and just under two thirds of Labour supporters, say they would be prepared to vote for any of the others. But a quarter of Lib Dems and three in ten Greens say they wouldn’t vote Labour; a fifth of Greens wouldn’t vote Lib Dem; and almost as many Labour supporters say they wouldn’t vote Green.
The chart below breaks down current Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters into three categories:
Flexibles, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition and who are willing to vote tactically for any of these parties
Selectives, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition but are unwilling to vote for at least one of these parties
Splitters, who say they would vote for one of these three parties but do not prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition (they either prefer a …
Lord Ashcroft: Can Starmer negotiate the left’s coalition of chaos?
Trust is earned, not demanded.
Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit
Last month I analysed what my polling revealed about whether and how the Conservatives can “unite the right” in a fragmented political landscape.
Now we look at the other side of the fence.
With debate raging over Britain’s role in the Middle East conflict, Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms and the implications of the Gorton & Denton by-election, what is the state of the left-of-centre voting coalition under the biggest Labour majority for nearly 30 years? With Reform ahead in the polls, can the left mobilise to keep the right out of office?
In my latest poll we asked people whether they would, in the event of a hung parliament, prefer a coalition between the Conservatives and Reform or a coalition between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Those who preferred the latter (43 per cent of all voters) were asked whether they would be willing to vote tactically to prevent a Conservative or Reform candidate winning. Nearly nine in ten of them said they would, with no significant difference by current voting intention.
At face value, this augurs well for uniting the left. Assuming that left-leaning voters can always identify the tactical anti-right candidate their own seat (quite a big assumption), 87 per cent would back this candidate. With the combined vote share for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens on 47 per cent, this implies that over 40 per cent of voters would vote tactically for a “left bloc” candidate. By contrast, as we also found, the combined vote share for a Conservative-Reform alliance is in the mid-30s.
But can we take it this face value?
To find out, we asked one further question: whether there were any parties that people would be unwilling to support, even as a tactical vote. Here we begin to see the dents in left-of-centre solidarity. Just over half of Green and Lib Dem supporters, and just under two thirds of Labour supporters, say they would be prepared to vote for any of the others. But a quarter of Lib Dems and three in ten Greens say they wouldn’t vote Labour; a fifth of Greens wouldn’t vote Lib Dem; and almost as many Labour supporters say they wouldn’t vote Green.
The chart below breaks down current Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters into three categories:
Flexibles, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition and who are willing to vote tactically for any of these parties
Selectives, who prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition but are unwilling to vote for at least one of these parties
Splitters, who say they would vote for one of these three parties but do not prefer a Labour-Lib Dem-Green coalition (they either prefer a …
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