That Portillo Moment

[Sly Ronnie 879]

Seems like no-one wants to be the Portillo of '24.

[The Old Crem 3,583]

Guardian article about big name Tory’s getting donations mentions Penny Mourdant, Liam Fox, Simon Clarke and Bim Afolami as those in danger of losing their seats and getting donations. 
 

Donor’s writing Jeremy Hunt off already? 

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

 

[YoungWillz 21,037]

8 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

 

No Reform votes? 

 

I find that hardly credible?

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

5 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

No Reform votes? 

 

I find that hardly credible?

Oops you're right. Hadn't noticed that. Still think she's vunerable mind given the local results in her neck of the woods recently

[Toast 16,137]

26 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Oops you're right. Hadn't noticed that. Still think she's vunerable mind given the local results in her neck of the woods recently

 

Unless they're included under 'Other'.

Any Reform votes will steal from the Tories though.

[YoungWillz 21,037]

2 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

Unless they're included under 'Other'.

Any Reform votes will steal from the Tories though.

I'd find the figure for Reform under Other quite ridiculous, given their national polling numbers.

 

But hey, who knows? We could end up with a Conservative majority and the pollsters would all be out of business on 5th July. 

[The Old Crem 3,583]

2 hours ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

 

That website just uses UNS to calculate. Which is not the best way to calculate because I don’t think they will be the same swing everywhere, 

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

Think it's safe to say Jeremy Cunt will be the Portillo moment should it come to pass unless Rishi loses his (unlikely)

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

26 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Think it's safe to say Jeremy Cunt will be the Portillo moment should it come to pass unless Rishi loses his (unlikely)

 

I don't know exactly what a Portillo moment would be. Hunt losing would be a huge blow, but he is vulnerable. Only an 8,000 majority - Portillo had nearly double that in 1997. What really made it stand out was that Portillo was hotly tipped as a major leadership contender, was the first Cabinet minister to front up on the BBC's election coverage in the studio at 10pm (when it seemed perfectly likely he'd be re-elected) and, as the night went on and the scale of the rout became clear, it became clear he was in trouble. The swing in votes was nearly 17,000 and the swing was 17.4%, way above the national swing of 10-11%. It was a huge shock.

 

Surrey North West has always been Conservative (as had Enfield Southgate until 1997), and Virginia Bottomley even hung on in 1997 with a majority slashed from 15k to 2.5k, so from that point of view it would be a shock, but it came close to unseating Bottomley in 2001 (less than 1,000 votes in it) - it would only need a swing of 7.3%, which is less than Labour need for an overall majority (12.7%).

 

At the start of the coverage in 1997, the BBC identified 10 prominent Tories at risk of defeat in a big Labour victory: Portillo wasn't mentioned, the least at risk (of those at risk) was deemed to be Michael Howard, who survived. A look at the current cabinet and the closest equivalent I can see would be Penny Mordaunt. She has a 15k majority in Portsmouth North and it would notionally take a 17.2% swing to Labour to take it, although it is usually a reliable bellwether of national mood (predicted the winner since 1966). Talked about a leadership contender, but can't do that if she's not in Parliament.

[msc 18,439]

Braverman. 24% swing to Lib Dems needed. That's an example of what an actual Portillo moment would be. A defeat none of us saw coming. The term is overused now, see Ed Balls in 2015. 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

2 minutes ago, msc said:

Braverman. 24% swing to Lib Dems needed. That's an example of what an actual Portillo moment would be. A defeat none of us saw coming. The term is overused now, see Ed Balls in 2015. 

 

Absolutely. Ed Balls started election night thinking he might be Chancellor of the Exchequer. He ended it not even an MP (and lost to an absolute fruit basket too).

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

20 minutes ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

Absolutely. Ed Balls started election night thinking he might be Chancellor of the Exchequer. He ended it not even an MP (and lost to an absolute fruit basket too).

Mad to think that 9 years on the leader of Labour for that election Miliband is likely to be in the Cabinet. Surely a rare enough occurance for a party leader to lose a general election and then become a cabinet member over a decade later

 

[msc 18,439]

1 minute ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Mad to think that 9 years on the leader of Labour for that election Miliband is likely to be in the Cabinet. Surely a rare enough occurance for a party leader to lose a general election and then become a cabinet member over a decade later

 

The Ed Miliband of the Tories 1997-2010 period, William Hague, served in cabinet under David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.

 

Even rarer, Alec Douglas-Home served in the cabinet of Ted Heath after being prime minister!

[Sly Ronnie 879]

Yes, there seems to be a thing regarding what constitutes a "Portillo Moment", rather like the differing definitions of "jumping the shark".

As Rover pointed out (and as I recall) there was no inkling on election night that Portillo was going to lose. Nary a mention of a possible upset was put to him by Jeremy Paxman earlier on in the evening. So one marker of a so-called "Portillo Moment" is it's unexpectedness. Cross-referencing the discussion in the General Election thread, I remember poring over the nightly polls in the run-up to '97 (I was a university student then) to try to detect any late movement towards the Tories, haunted as I was by 1992 (and historically 1970) before I was satisfied that Labour was at least going to win.

The media were same - very cautious about the likely outcome (late-swing, shy Tories etc). It was only on the Sunday before Polling Day, when the Observer did their famous list of possible Tory high-profile defeats through a measure of tactical voting (inc. Portillo's "safe" seat of Enfield Southgate) that the media were starting to stick their neck out and propose a proper beating for the Tories was in store.

Now some have gone though the "it must be an ultra-high profile Tory" route for it to qualify as a "PM". However, although Portillo did have a higher profile than a lot of Tory ministers at the time, he was at the end of the day the Defence Secretary - not Chancellor, not Home Secretary, not Foreign Secretary. But he was seen as the future hope for the Tories (no guarantee he was going to win the ensuing leadership election even if he had hung on to his seat). It was what he represented - that preening Uber-Thatcherism, "Who Dares Wins" and all that and for him to be taken out of Parliament altogether was what was so satisfying. I watched the results with some mates and we were all drunk at 3 in the morning and when he lost we had a group hug!

It was the symbolism of it. In that sense you could apply the Portillo moment retrospectively (Benn losing in 1983, Shirley Williams in 1979), indeed George Brown at Belper in 1970 was perhaps the prototype Portillo Moment, as he was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, former Foreign Secretary and one of the most high-profile figures in 1960s British politics - the face of Labour's catastrophic defeat at the hands of Ted Heath's Conservatives.

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

Just now, msc said:

The Ed Miliband of the Tories 1997-2010 period, William Hague, served in cabinet under David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.

 

Even rarer, Alec Douglas-Home served in the cabinet of Ted Heath after being prime minister!

Fuck yeah forgot about Hague and Douglas-Hume. 

 

First for Labour though. In the post war era at least. 

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

Hague probably became leader 10 years too early.

[Sly Ronnie 879]

1 minute ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Hague probably became leader 10 years too early.

 

You could say the same for Miliband.

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

7 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Fuck yeah forgot about Hague and Douglas-Hume. 

 

First for Labour though. In the post war era at least. 

 

IDS at the DWP too (albeit didn't make it to an election). And did Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary pass you the too? 

[msc 18,439]

9 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Hague probably became leader 10 years too early.

Ken Clarke said that. Admittedly Hague beat Ken Clarke for the job!

 

8 minutes ago, Sly Ronnie said:

 

You could say the same for Miliband.

Genuinely not ruled out future PM Ed Miliband yet. Liz Truss has shown anyone from the Cabinet can be the right person at the right time.

 

Stretching the definition of "right person" but you know what I mean!

[DCI Frank Burnside 3,887]

3 minutes ago, RoverAndOut said:

 

IDS at the DWP too (albeit didn't make it to an election). And did Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary pass you the too? 

IDS never led Tories into an election

 

 

Piggy doesn't count for the purposes of losing an election

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

30 minutes ago, DCI Frank Burnside said:

Hague probably became leader 10 years too early.

 

As the results came in in 1997, and the massacre became clear, there were genuine questions who might be left to contest the leadership. Portillo lost, Rifkind, Lang, Forsyth, others too. Redwood is seen as too divisive, Clarke is too liberal and pro-European, Howard was damaged by Ann Widdecombe's "something of the night about him" comment, Heseltine was recovering from a heart attack and was advised against contesting it again. Hague starts getting spoken about when the scale of Labour's victory is clear. Firstly, he's right wing, but more centrist than Redwood and the other arch-Eurosceptics.

 

Second, and this is interesting, Anthony King and Robin Oakley, their analysts on the night, mused that Hague, at 36, would be the perfect candidate as the scale of defeat would mean it would probably take 2 elections to get back into power, and Hague was young enough to see that process through for the next decade and beyond. Obviously, he quit after 2001 anyway (not looked, but assume it was because he barely made a dent in Blair's majority?). Hague was an incredibly capable Foreign Secretary in the coalition government, one of the few from the past 14 years that emerges with some credibility in my eyes.

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

26 minutes ago, msc said:

Ken Clarke said that. Admittedly Hague beat Ken Clarke for the job!

 

Genuinely not ruled out future PM Ed Miliband yet. Liz Truss has shown anyone from the Cabinet can be the right person at the right time.

 

Stretching the definition of "right person" but you know what I mean!

 

I think (and I know this has been said before) that the next Labour leader really needs to be a woman. Rachel Reeves may give too much of a Blair/Brown dynamic. Yvette Cooper could be getting on if Keir has two terms (65 by then). Rayner will be popular with the left of the party, but I'm not sure she'll convince enough to get on the membership ballot. I'll throw out a dark horse: Bridget Phillipson. Seems a very capable politician, speaks well on camera. We'll bookmark this for a decade and see how wrong it is. 

 

I was a big fan of Ed, but I can't see them putting him up again given he's already lost once with the public. Unless he becomes a huge breakout figure in the next Labour government, in which case all bets are off, clearly!

[msc 18,439]

@RoverAndOut I didn't imply it was likely!

 

Btw, William Hague was rubbish as leader. Here's former Pan Breed pick, the legendary journalist and professional drinker Chris Moncrieff shortly after the 2001 election:

 

"William Hague was talked into doing a lot of stupid things which he wouldn't have done on his own, going around with a baseball cap with "Hague" on the front. He looked a chump. People see through all this. A lot of the things he boasted about came back to hit him in the face. He used to claim he drank 14 pints a day when he worked as a drayman's assistant, and that he once drank 32 rums in a session. Well, that would kill most people, and in fact, one of the local publicans in South Yorkshire where he's supposed to have drunk these 14 pints a day said: "Oh that's all a lie, we used to call him Fizzy Willie, because he'd get drunk on half a pint."

[YoungWillz 21,037]

Right I have seen some chatter on here about what constitutes a Portillo moment.

 

For me, it's the look of astonishment on a challenger's face at winning (Stephen Twigg), and the brave petted lip of a sitting MP who has just had their balls cut off and handed to them as second prize (Portillo).

 

There will be Portillo moments of different shades - remember Anna Soubry just hanging on and in absolute tears at the slashing of her majority? Feel free to enjoy those at your leisure.

 

But that's not the point of this game. It is to pick a name (no uniques - spoils can be shared) of a sitting MP who will lose their seat by the largest margin on election night. Wooden spoon is traditionally awarded to the person who names the MP who retains their seat with the largest majority.

 

Entries will open say 8th June - we should know all the candidates by then. You can have 2 or 3 picks, the danger being you might end up with a dishonourable mention or even the spoon the more you pick. Entries will close at 01:00 hours BST on election day - July 4th.

 

You can still enjoy general chit chat about it, otherwise.