Why so few successes? It was not the fault of Deltapoll’s data. Almost everywhere, they identified the correct challenger. Most dramatically, they showed rightly that the Liberal Democrats were snapping at Dominic Raab’s heels, despite the foreign secretary’s apparently impregnable 23,000 majority. [...]
Deltapoll’s data showed what tactical voting was up against. Lib Dem supporters were reluctant to help Corbyn become prime minister. Likewise, Tory Remainers feared voting for a badly led Lib Dem party that might support Corbyn. These Tories preferred a Brexit Britain governed by Johnson to a stop-Brexit government led by Corbyn.
The big lesson is that tactical voting needs not just a common enemy, but a broadly common vision, shared by the Labour and Lib Dem leaders. This was the case with Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown in 1997; it was not with Corbyn and Swinson last week.
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