Labour should not be too pessimistic about their chances of taking power in 2020
The Conservative Party will be fighting the next general election without their strongest asset, David Cameron.
There’s some pessimism from Labour supporters about their chances at the next election.
For example, Jon Cruddas in today’s Observer says “this could be the greatest crisis the Labour party has ever faced” whilst some are suggesting, that Sir Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, and someone who has been an MP for a little over week, is the man to save Labour, though it was Tears for Keir’s fans as he ruled out running this morning.
Stephen Bush at the New Statesman pointed out Labour need a  near 13% lead in the popular vote to obtain a majority.
As the run up to the last election showed, Labour doesn’t need to win neither the popular vote nor the most seats (or anywhere near the most seats) to form the next Government, so long as the Lab/SNP/PC/SDLP/Green/Lib Dem bloc is greater than the Con/DUP/UUP bloc then Labour forms the government in May 2020, as I expect a Farron led Lib Dem party will not be keen to prop a Tory led government.
It is widely accepted that the Tories won in large part, though not exclusivity due to their advantages over Labour on the leadership and economic front, it is entirely possible those advantages will be negated in 2020.
On the first point, David Cameron will not be contesting the 2020 election, so that advantage might be gone, the next Tory leader, needs to have the potential to have a similar performance in the leader ratings, so someone who has authority, and is seen as credible, so this is probably bad news for Boris Johnson and good news for George Osborne.
All those Lib Dems seated the Tories gained on May the 7th, could be at risk, apart from Ken Clarke, I can’t see any Tory politician appealing to those Lib Dem defectors the way Cameron does.
It may well be that the Tory economic advantage will also have evaporated then, especially if the economy is performing sub optimally, and Labour have repudiated their economic past as some leadership contenders have begun to do so.
The excellent spreadsheet by AndyJS shows that Labour only needs a 0.44% swing from the Tories at the next election to deprive the Tories of their majority and a 4% swing to get around 30 gains from the Tories, a position that makes a Con/UUP/DUP alliance infeasible against a Rainbow Coalition.
They say a week is a long time in politics, heavens knows what 258 weeks or so until the next election is.