Conservatives gathering in Manchester for their annual Conference were jubilant. They believed that they have Labour on the run, intellectually, politically and – what seems even more important to them – electorally. Two weeks ago a look at the earliest evidence suggested that they might be right, and that Labour was failing to enjoy any sort of uniform national “bounce” at all from the election of Jeremy Corbyn as their new leader. What new votes they were attracting – mainly from the Greens in urban areas – would do them little good in winning any extra seats; the geographical spread of any uplift, for instance concentrated in Scotland, was similarly pointless in returning more Members of Parliament
Well, now we have a little more evidence – two more weeks of by-elections, three UK-wide opinion polls and a properly-weighted voting intentions poll from Wales. And the picture looks very, very similar – indeed, so suggestive across the board that we can start to draw out some general trends and lessons.
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