United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[IceAgeComing]

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1798632714427314219

I feel like this is a particularly stark poll that shows why the result will almost certainly be as the polling says it will be.

Yougov polled 22 issues asking people if things were better, worse, or the same than 2010. In 2 of the 22; net positive beat net negative. In 18 of the 22; 'better than 2010' polled less than 10% and in 14 of the 22 it polled less than 5%. This includes things like schools, the NHS, the armed forces, welfare, the economy, housing, local government services, immigration - basically the vast majority of what people actually interact with government most of the time. The things that did better were LGB rights which I don't think anyone actually credits the Tories for, Racial equality which ditto, Trans equality which the Tories are running AGAINST, and Climate Change which is still -9 despite being a key part of what Johnson wanted to make his legacy and broad cross-parliament consensus for most of the time since 2010.

In a world where 78% of the country believes the economy has gotten worse since you've been in power; you are doing to struggle to win re-election.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Is anyone taking bets on how many seats flip to Reform, independent or WPB? It seems like they'd never have a better shot than an election where the Tories can't win and there's no need to argue about strategic voting

[Harlow]

I've not seen such genuine, vocalised oncern for the debt and housing issues of young people in a campaign that I can remember.

Do the Corbyn years just not count?

[Torrain]

I'm imagining Zelensky asking Starmer "Where's Rishi?"

https://i.ibb.co/r3WZQGG/GPabl-Si-XAAA2-YDY.jpg

Honestly, I wonder whether they've moved on - chance Sunak wasn't mentioned at all...

Tbh, that's the one (misguided) reason I could see Sunak skipping the latter part of the event - if his staff were worried that Starmer glad-handing with leaders while the PM sat in the corner by himself would reinforce the image of the world moving on.

****


"See you in four weeks."

[IceAgeComing]

The Workers Party only have a chance in 1 and even then I'd say Galloway is the underdog - just look at his electoral history to show that. There's a chance he wins but I think not a massive one - the Rochdale local election results show that.

'Independents' are a group I don't think you can hold together - obviously massively ideologically diverse, but also tend to be organisationally questionable. Corbyn is likely to win in my eyes but also not guaranteed; I don't think any of the other Independents I'm aware of are likely to get close. In an election where people are clearly motivated to get the government out isn't one where unknown independents will rise.

Reform's vote is hard to fully analyse but it appears to be uniform - which means that unless they make a major breakthrough they'll struggle to get much if anything. There's also strong evidence that they underperform polling in actual results and the only telephone poll in the campaign so far (so more likely a random sample if older leaning vs self-selecting online panels) had Reform only on 9% behind the Lib Dems; so I would be slightly sceptical of that number. Realistically Farage has a good chance in Clacton and I think other wins would be shocking or very low Tory vote across the country; FPTP doesn't like uniform votes as the Alliance learned in 1983.

[Tintrlvr]

The nomination deadline is tomorrow, right? Anyone have updates on how many Tory, LD, Reform and Green candidates are missing? Are the SNP or Plaid missing any candidates? I know Labour has a full slate nominated.

How many candidates do the parties still need?

We don't know, exactly. There's no official list until close of nominations, and some parties are better than others at telling us about selections. However:

- Labour have a full slate (excluding Chorley and NI).
- The English and Welsh Greens have 7 constituencies with a "TBC" on their list. At least some of these previously had a named candidate. I don't think the Scottish Greens normally have a full slate.
- The Conservatives don't have a centralised list that I know of, but have 545 candidates listed on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, so appear to be short by about 86. (The spreadsheet doesn't include NI, and they won't stand in Chorley, so the target is 631.) But it's possible that some candidates have in fact been selected and they just haven't told anyone.
- The Lib Dems have 559 candidates on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, short by 72. I think there are a few selected candidates not on this list.
- Reform UK have 476 candidates on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, so have some way to go. They do have a webpage with candidate information, but it is rather annoying to use.

I just figured there would be updates over the course of today given the timing! But maybe not.

[beaver2.0]

Any chance of Jason Zadrozny finally making it in Ashfield?

[IceAgeComing]

Any chance of Jason Zadrozny finally making it in Ashfield?

I think there's a chance but Labour are the favourites - the whole tax fraud thing I suspect is not likely to help him; and Labour were comparatively not that far behind in 2019. However this is a seat where local polling would help - considering Anderson standing for Reform as well. Although the last time we had mass constituency polling was 2015 and it was mostly wrong I think its unlikely.

[Joe Republic]

The nomination deadline is tomorrow, right? Anyone have updates on how many Tory, LD, Reform and Green candidates are missing? Are the SNP or Plaid missing any candidates? I know Labour has a full slate nominated.

How many candidates do the parties still need?

We don't know, exactly. There's no official list until close of nominations, and some parties are better than others at telling us about selections. However:

- Labour have a full slate (excluding Chorley and NI).
- The English and Welsh Greens have 7 constituencies with a "TBC" on their list. At least some of these previously had a named candidate. I don't think the Scottish Greens normally have a full slate.
- The Conservatives don't have a centralised list that I know of, but have 545 candidates listed on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, so appear to be short by about 86. (The spreadsheet doesn't include NI, and they won't stand in Chorley, so the target is 631.) But it's possible that some candidates have in fact been selected and they just haven't told anyone.
- The Lib Dems have 559 candidates on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, short by 72. I think there are a few selected candidates not on this list.
- Reform UK have 476 candidates on Owain Sutton's spreadsheet, so have some way to go. They do have a webpage with candidate information, but it is rather annoying to use.

I just figured there would be updates over the course of today given the timing! But maybe not.

According to that spreadsheet, the Tories are now missing "only" 79 candidates.

Or: 79 opportunities for Seb Payne.

[JimJamUK]

Is anyone taking bets on how many seats flip to Reform, independent or WPB? It seems like they'd never have a better shot than an election where the Tories can't win and there's no need to argue about strategic voting

Reform will obviously have their best hope in Clacton with Farage, and after that ‘Boston and Skegness’ looks the next likeliest. Their targets seats are realistically places where Labour won’t breach 30% of the vote and reliant on Reform getting 15-20% nationally as the core Tory vote looks too similar to the Reform vote for the latter to win anywhere without coming close to beating the Tories nationally.

The Worker’s Party are realistically hoping to win Rochdale. I am sceptical Galloway can do in a general election against a non-disendorsed Labour candidate. After that they have some theoretical targets like Blackburn, but their appeal is too sectarian to win anywhere without the by election effect.

Muslim independents could possibly win a couple of seats (their appeal will be just as sectarian as Galloway’s, but with the potential for even more lopsided margins within the Muslim community). Birmingham Ladywood and ‘Dewsbury and Batley’ stand out as the 2 likeliest to switch. North Down has an ex-DUP independent endorsed by the DUP and TUV trying to unseat Alliance. Although technically a political party, the Ashfield Independents could win Ashfield (I’d favour Labour). Corbyn is obviously in with a good chance as well.

[JimJamUK]

I think there's a chance but Labour are the favourites - the whole tax fraud thing I suspect is not likely to help him; and Labour were comparatively not that far behind in 2019. However this is a seat where local polling would help - considering Anderson standing for Reform as well. Although the last time we had mass constituency polling was 2015 and it was mostly wrong I think its unlikely.

I suspect Reform and the Ashfield Independent’s will draw credible scores from much the same pool of voters, which given the Conservatives won’t win leaves Labour favourites.

[YL]

The Workers Party only have a chance in 1 and even then I'd say Galloway is the underdog - just look at his electoral history to show that. There's a chance he wins but I think not a massive one - the Rochdale local election results show that.

I think it's unlikely; a proper Labour campaign and a General Election turnout ought to get enough to beat him.

'Independents' are a group I don't think you can hold together - obviously massively ideologically diverse, but also tend to be organisationally questionable. Corbyn is likely to win in my eyes but also not guaranteed; I don't think any of the other Independents I'm aware of are likely to get close. In an election where people are clearly motivated to get the government out isn't one where unknown independents will rise.

Other Independents for whom wins don't look out of the question include Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury & Batley and James Bagge in South West Norfolk. Bradford and Birmingham might be worth watching too, and who knows what is actually going to happen in Leicester East? (Though Vaz is technically the candidate of One Leicester, not an Independent.)

Reform's vote is hard to fully analyse but it appears to be uniform - which means that unless they make a major breakthrough they'll struggle to get much if anything. There's also strong evidence that they underperform polling in actual results and the only telephone poll in the campaign so far (so more likely a random sample if older leaning vs self-selecting online panels) had Reform only on 9% behind the Lib Dems; so I would be slightly sceptical of that number. Realistically Farage has a good chance in Clacton and I think other wins would be shocking or very low Tory vote across the country; FPTP doesn't like uniform votes as the Alliance learned in 1983.

I think Farage is favourite in Clacton, but their lack of local campaigning strength makes it hard for them to win elsewhere unless their vote gets a little higher, in which case the likes of Castle Point or Boston & Skegness might come into play for them.

[Torrain]

England and Wales Greens reviewing a dossier accusing 20 candidates of propagating antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories, per the Times.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/drjennings/status/1798813448090100150

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279

Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

[Chaos with Keir Starmer]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279

Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

Yeah, like at this point, I think he wants to lose and bring the rest of the party down with him.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Ed Daley seems to be running a strong campaign, it would be great to see him as opposition leader.

[Estrella]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279

Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

He's just being consistent. Stop Channel crossings means stop Channel crossings, in either direction.

[Steve from Lambeth]

Just to follow up on beesley's point, it looks to me like the Lib Dem strategy is to grab attention, and then pivot to Davey's biography and their big push for social care reform.

Davey's had the most comprehensive experience with social care of any politician of my lifetime (father dying when he was five, being a young carer for his mother until her death from cancer when he was 15, and now involved in round the clock care for his own disabled son, and wife with MS), and it's hard to think of a better messenger for that campaign.

I imagine we'll see a lot more like this from them: (Davey ad)

You call it big. I call it woefully unambitious. Free personal care is the law in Scotland, was proposed by Corbyn's Labour for England, and will probably be passed into English law within a couple of decades on the current trajectory no matter what Davey says.

I'm surprised that the Lib Dems are costing their promises to introduce free personal care and increase the carers' minimum wage by £2 - from £11.44 to an indicative £13.44 for over-21s - at a mere £2.7bn, funded by reversing Hunt's cuts to the bank levy.

Labour costed free personal care at £11bn in 2019. The New Economics Foundation and Women's Budget Group estimated that making all adult social care free would cost £19bn in 2022 money, and indexing carer wages to the Living Wage Foundation's Real Living Wage an extra £14bn; keep in mind that, in 2024, the National Living Wage is £11.44, the RLW is £12 outside London and £13.15 inside it, so a £2 increase would take the Carer's NLW above any RLW.

I do think that massively expanding the scope of all adult social care would be a net positive for the country, despite how much it would cost (the equivalent of four International Delivery Serviceses). As I've said, just promising free personal care strikes me as unambitious when it wouldn't be implausible to go even further on that front; a couple of left-leaning think tanks did, post-Corbyn at that.

I don't think there would be much of a point in designating a minimum wage just for carers: we don't have a minimum wage for supermarket workers despite the oodles of abuse they've faced since circa June 2020, for bus drivers despite buses being absolutely vital to the lives of certain rural communities, nor for healthcare workers for obvious reasons (and also because they are often salaried!). The principle today is that we're moving towards everyone facing the same minimum wage and the same pensionable age; there's no good reason to reverse that.

Apparently (I read this on r/ukpol as a disclaimer) the visas afforded to social care  and NHS workers is something like 200.000 in the last few years, yet the backlog is only reduced by 30.000. that means 170.000 people arrived to bolster the NHS and social care but ended up where exactly?

The UK has historically not imposed caps on visas (like the US has done with its Green Card per-country caps). The Conservative Party, and the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, have called for a "migration budget" that would introduce such caps but it's unlikely to pass for obvious reasons.

There’s an old clip of Starmer saying it’s “odd” he’s been made a QC, because he “used to campaign against the monarchy”, from the deleted scenes of the McLibel documentary.

Had a hunch it might resurface eventually, and per Politico, it’s become part of a Conservative online targeted-ad campaign, costed at over £15k, and aimed at scaring older votes into believing Starmer is a radical republican...

Had assumed we’d get a media round of “Starmer is a socialist, atheist republican” to scare the pensioners, but looks like it might be restricted to Facebook, who are basically the key audience for that message.

The Treason Felony Act remains valid English law and, about ten years ago, the Home Office had to remind people that the government had no plans to strike it down. I'm surprised he hasn't been strung up and taken to court for this.

On the subject of Politico, they're saying that the Labour manifesto will drop on Wednesday. No link because it's part of their Politico Pro subscription, which is available to you for the low, low price of... erm, they don't say. I'm assuming it's for enterprises only. Why you'd make an article about the Labour manifesto available to enterprises only, I don't know. I certainly haven't seen anything about it in The Guardian.

On the subject of The Guardian, however, they're saying that the Conservatives just want to double the High-Income Child Benefit Charge thresholds across the board. I honestly think that just scrapping the HICBC would be a better idea than this - it's a legacy of austerity and we moved past that circa 2018 when everybody was focusing on Salisbury and Chequers and Harry and Meghan instead.

[NyIndy]

Am I correct in assuming that Alba is not a factor at all in this election? Aside from potentially causing the SNP grief in a few close seats by siphoning votes?

[Chaos with Keir Starmer]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279

Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

He's just being consistent. Stop Channel crossings means stop Channel crossings, in either direction.

Was there any commemoration for the Dunkirk evacuation that Sunak missed?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279
Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

Maybe the Australian advisors just didn’t realise that D-Day is the British Anzac Day lmao.

[The Mikado]

Bizarre seeing hitpieces against a Conservative Party PM in publications like The Daily Mail:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13504037/Disbelief-military-figures-Rishi-Sunak-returned-Normandy-D-Day-events-finished-General-Election-interview-recording-ITV-News.html

And even The Telegraph:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/06/farage-hits-out-sunak-leaving-d-day-commemorations-early/

Does Sunak have ANY friendly press left?

[adma]

Maybe the Australian advisors just didn’t realise that D-Day is the British Anzac Day lmao.

Hey, maybe one can cheaply blame Australian advisors on "upside down flag" controversies ;-)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So, he didn't leave the commemoration early to campaign. He... um...

https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/1798827679158067279

Is Max Bialystock running his campaign?

He's just being consistent. Stop Channel crossings means stop Channel crossings, in either direction.

Was there any commemoration for the Dunkirk evacuation that Sunak missed?

The eightieth anniversary of Dunkirk would have been in late May and early June of 2020, when then-Chancellor Sunak was busy racking up popularity for announcing COVID stimulus policies that he opposed.