It feels like there are a few interesting paradoxes in public
opinion and to pull out in terms of how voters are feeling about this election
and what they're picking up and what's influencing their vote. I think the first
really interesting point is that this has probably rightly been described as
the brexit election and so when you ask people what's the number one issue at
the moment they will power it back at you without kind of pause for thought
brexit it's been the top of the Ipsos MORI issue index for months and
actually it's quite striking how little the parties are actually talking about
brexit and talking about the detail of what they're going to do and talk about
the detail of what brexit is going to look like. For most it feels like a done
deal so there are a group of members of the public who we call devastated
pessimists who will never get over brexit and will never ever ever ever
ever come to terms with the result but actually we're looking at close to
two-thirds now the public who are either accepting of it and resigned to it and
want politicians to get on with it, all feel very positive about brexit,
but it feels very very complicated. When you ask people what kind of brexit they
want a hard brexit or soft brexit they really struggle to engage with the
detail of that and quite frankly what they're looking for is to sort of defer
responsibility for what kind of brexit is best to Britain to someone they trust
to deliver that brexit and this is why this is the brexit election
but it's actually the leadership election and the issue that matters above all else in
this election is leadership and competence and that of course really
plays to Theresa May's strengths. There seems to be so much at stake and
actually really dramatic movements going on in politics and yet the actual
outcome of the June 8th poll seems A.) entirely predictable and B.) not
necessarily to be able to change the course of these extraordinary dramatic
events that we're living through. The SMP for example even has problems when faced
with Theresa May's Conservative Party partly because of Ruth Davidson is such
a good leader of the Scottish conservatives but also because in this
fear of voter fatigue, and all the rest of it, deciding to focus early on
on promising a second independence referendum turned out to be an appalling
tactical error. Then what happened to the Labour Party in recent
years is the sort of terrible coming to pass of that statement by I think it was
Neil Kinnock when Ed Miliband was elected leader of the Labour Party who
said 'we've got our party back'. Well, boy has the Left got their party back
and with disastrous results and I think although it's very true that the
Labour manifesto had some interesting things in it the leaking however it
happened gave them this strange boost of having it the Eyre ideas discussed for a
longer period than you would have expected given the rest of the of the
election campaign and I think then there's the kind of disaster that is the
Lib Dems and one of the things that clearly happened in 2015 was a lot of
people moved across from being Lib Dem supporters through the coalition which
should have detoxified the Tory party and they're now Tory voters and then
here we are in an election where it looks as if the combined votes over the
two main parties could be up to kind of what it used to be in the 1970s almost
and all other players squeezed out so be really interesting to know whether this
binary choice thing is the aberration because it's a brexit election or
whether the period of kind of nascent pluralism turns out have been the
aberration so I know those are my thoughts about this what really
fascinating election that seems very dull day today. Without wanting to
disregard the vote share the fact remains under first past the post the
largest party coming out of Scotland is likely to be the SNP, I think most
estimates for Tory seats in Scotland are around five or six, I've heard 12 but
that seems a bit excessive. Because of the way that votes are delivered on under
first past the post the SMP will still be a sizeable
presence at Westminster and there is a big debate going on about the idea of a
progressive alliance. Scottish Labour absolutely hate the idea because they
say the SNP are not progressive and they're not our allies and some people
do think that's the only way the Labour Party will be an effective force going
forward. I think we will see a lot more cooperation between opposition
parties on certain issues especially around brexit. That brings me to the
second point which is Labour's view on brexit and they have just about found a
place that they can agree on in 'we accept brexit, but we don't accept the
willingness to turn our backs on the single market and we want rights for EU
citizens'. I think if rights for EU citizens aren't
immediately granted by the new Tory government I think that will be an area
that the opposition can rally around, almost everyone's in agreement with that
including many people who voted leave. I think the single market is a more
difficult one for the left because some people are actually quite excited about
the idea that we're free now of all the EU constraints and nationalization so I
suspect it will be a dry debate but it's one that will continue. All elections, in
a way are historic, I think this one although it seems dull it has a big
bearing on you know the future of Britain. A landmark victory for May would
mean a lot of things for different reasons. One, which I think has
been covered less is what it would mean for conservatism, for many conservatives
Theresa May is quite left and if look at the lead so far
the reason the Tories are so high up is largely down to the collapse of the UKIP vote.
So UKIP voters have gone to the Conservative Party and that's why
UKIP I think some polls only had them on three percent and that means that
Labour voters, for all the talk of how the Tories are going to win Labour voters,
it hasn't happened yet, you might be getting some as well as go for that.
I have a friend he works for the BBC he was vox popping in a Labour heartland
and voter they asked him how he was going to vote and he was like 'well, I'm
not going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he's just a bit weird, I don't like
him on the television. I'm not going to vote for the Tories because they're
Tories so why would I vote for them, so it's got to be Theresa May.' (LAUGHTER)
The problem the have in terms of how big the majority will be is what happens when
voters like this voter get into the polling booth and they don't see Theresa May,
they see Conservative and I think that's the big challenge in terms of how
landmark victory this will be.