United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[morgieb]

Penny Mordaunt - "The lesson of the past few years is that Labour will do this and that....."

If Mordaunt actually did become PM they would've imploded just as hard as they did now. Gully doesn't call her the Carry On PM for no reason....

[Harlow]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Depending on how online you are, there's Kellie-Jay Keen, unhinged anti-trans activist running in Bristol Central who has been the topic of a few video essays on Youtube (this one has 1.6 million views).

[RBH]

One extra post on the Niko running for 11 seats thing.

If they're able to find out the obvious between today and election day that someone is violating the law by running in 11 seats, can they strike his name from the ballot or disregard votes or him or will someone get to stack a pile of ballots for the 100 votes he gonna get in a bunch of places as if everything is normal? I mean, I guess it's possible for the investigation to not wrap up before election day, but if the question is "is this man running in 11 seats"... it feels like evidence exists to suggest he is doing that and they can figure it out quickly

It does do wonders for ballot access to just trust that candidates aren't trying to pull one over.. but the whole thing here kinda feels like a relic from another time when you could commit misdeeds before background checks existed

[Tintrlvr]

Is it illegal to run in more than one seat? I thought I remembered other candidates having done so in the past as well.

[brucejoel99]

Is it illegal to run in more than one seat? I thought I remembered other candidates having done so in the past as well.

Yes, & also illegal to provide false information like 10+ fake constituency addresses, but I think we'll learn on Election Night or in his inevitable vid that the 10 other Nikos legally changed their name.

[Sestak]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for Blur, is the Labour candidate for Mid Sussex.

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

So if you plug the yougov poll (the one with Reform ahead of the Conservatives by 1) into the financial times model, it gives you the following seat count:

https://ig.ft.com/uk-general-election/2024/projection/

Labour: 440
Lib Dems: 97
SNP 38
Reform 26
Conservatives 26

The great majority of the Lib Dem seats are in the south/southwest - basically a huge swath of the currently Tory seats which are anywhere south-east of the line from Dover, through London, up to Birmingham.

The Reform seats and the Conservative seats are fairly random in the remainder of the Tory shire seats, though with Reform concentrated a bit more near the Brexit coast/east coast.

It's also worth noting that a huge amount of those remaining Tory/Reform seats are 3 way races between Conservatives, Reform, and Labour, where all 3 parties have support in the mid-to-high 20s. So it wouldn't take much more of a swing to Labour to wipe out many of those remaining seats as well, thanks to the Tory-Reform vote splitting.

Some are also basically 4-way races between Labour-Lib-Dem-Reform-Conservatives.



If you give Reform 1 extra point of support and subtract 1 from the Conservatives (i.e. Reform 20% to Conservatives 17%), then the projected seat count becomes:

Labour: 437
Lib Dems: 97
SNP 38
Reform 43
Conservatives 12


Then if you go one step further and swing a single extra percentage point, then the Conservatives collapse to only 2 seats... The sole survivors are South Shropshire and Rutland and Stamford.

Obviously take it with a grain of salt, because it is plugging numbers from one poll into a model from a separate source. But it is interesting nonetheless, and it is an indication that if Reform can keep picking up support as the Tories fall, we are not far from the point where Reform could start overtaking the Conservatives not just in popular vote, but potentially also in seats.

The polling average overall is certainly not there yet, but if other polls start catching up to this Yougov poll, then we are not far removed from an extinction level event.


And IMO, there is a good chance of this happening simply as a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the media coverage will start to be about the possibility of Reform taking over the Conservatives, and there will be Tory voters who see that news coverage and switch to Reform partly as a result of no longer seeing it as a wasted vote.

Then in the next few weeks more polls could start showing further Reform gains, with a serious possibility of that prompting more Tory voters to jump over to Reform, creating a positive feedback loop of momentum.


This is such a crazy election.



--- edit --- my numbers are slightly influenced by the fact that I accidentally didn't hold SNP and Plaid Cmyru support constant, so those had some minor swing. If you hold their support constant, then you come out with slightly different projections, but with the same general patterns

I got Labour above 1997's seat count at 35% of the vote by plugging in 20% each for Reform and the Tories, 9% each for the Lib Dems and the Greens, 31% for the SNP in Scotland, and 17% for Plaid Cymru in Wales. It has the Tories as the Official Opposition, but only just: 80 seats for them, 64 for the Lib Dems, 33 for the SNP, 30 for Reform, one for the Greens (Brighton Pavilion), three for Plaid (the two big Cardigan Bay seats and Caerfyddin). Labour is at 420 seats (dude weed lmao). Crazy to think about, especially since it isn't exactly unbelievable.

[Joe Republic]

https://x.com/RealAlbanianPat/status/1801333337383927933

It's hard to see which colo(u)rs are for Reform and which for Conservatives in those handful of non-labour/Lib-Dem rural seats.

Here's a quick edit to help:




I had to remove Northern Ireland due to budget constraints.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Yeah - this feels like an observation you get a surrogate or former Tory ally to make. No leg to stand on if you were in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.

If this was a competitive election, rather than a six-week punishment beating for the Conservatives, we’d probably have entered a “Starmer can’t be trusted” media cycle. Complete with Johnson waffling about Caesar and Brutus or something.

Especially since campaigning on a second Brexit referendum like the Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union wanted when 406 constituencies voted for Brexit seemed like a rather dumb idea.

[Kalimantan]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for Blur, is the Labour candidate for Mid Sussex.

And the Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion, who will be in a tight battle with the Greens, is Tom Gray, founding member of the Indi band Gomez, who had 3 UK top40 UK albums and won the Mercury Music prize in 1998.

Gray narrowly beat comedian Suzy (Eddie) Izzard to the Labour nomination here (Izzard had previously come second in the nomination for the safe Sheffield Central seat)

[Sorenroy]

It feels like the Economist has just completely given up when it comes to their election forecast/model, which is especially disappointing because it's one of the top links to show up and one of the most reputable news organizations with a forecast available. There seems to be a total failure to account for anything besides a Conservative opposition, which means that their numbers differ substantially from what everything else seems to be indicating at this point:

Labor — 390 (+191)
Conservative — 184 (-187)
SNP — 24 (-24)
Lib Dem — 22 (+12)
Other — 4 (NA)

It doesn't project Reform getting a single seat and gives the Conservatives a 1% chance at being the largest minority party in parliament. Even at their worst confidence interval, which should really be more of a hypothetical given that results outside of that should be occurring only 2.5% of the time, they still have the Conservatives winning 80 seats with the Liberal Democrats and Reforms best intervals maxing out at 58 and 23 seats respectively.

[Steve from Lambeth]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Niko Omilana.

[Blair]

The UKs electoral system really spits out weird results when you have one party with a big lead and then 2-3 other parties all hovering around say 10-20%. This has been played out in history ofc; 1935 & 1983 as the two most obvious examples but even these two were more stable than the current election!

Add in tactical voting & the regional concentration of some parties (e.g the Liberals) and you get very weird results.

It's an imperfect example but a good sign of how it can change things is by comparing say the Scottish Parliamentary results in 2010, 2015, 2017 & then 2019- there is a very broad and vague pattern but when you look at it on a seat by seat basis, and vote shares in each seat you can see how weird FPTP can be when you add in these quirks.

One thing that hasn't been touched on from the local elections is how Labour's vote is returning to being ruthlessly efficient; the infamous example of this was winning 360 odd seats in 2005 with only a 3% lead in the national vote share & actually losing on vote share in England.

Labour is actually seeing its headline vote share in the polls fall down to around 40-42% but it makes absolutely no difference & ironically could actually help if this is because labour voters are voting tactically for the Lib Dems.

I still really really struggle to see how Reform get north of 15% with the lack of infrastructure but I guess the BXP party winning a national election in 2019 (even if it was a joke one!) shows it can be done...

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Niko Omilana.

He's still got a long way to go to get to John 'The Engineer' Turmel levels.

[Blair]

On the campaign it is interesting just how much the Conservatives are having to spend talking about Reform- a lot of Tory MPs are doing messages and posts about 'vote reform get labour' 'if you vote reform Keir will be PM' etc

I am really sceptical that it will work; the Conservative brand & Sunak are so unpopular that many reform voters generally do not care and want to punish the party. It equally means that the party is spending it's entire time talking about this.

Although to be honest with this campaign and the polls it is does feel like trying to do surgery with a spoon on someone who has been hit by a truck- what is the point?

[Blair]

Lol at the Business Secretary arguing with a newspaper.

Wasn't it joked that communists read the FT as it was the only paper that couldn't afford to lie to its readers.

https://twitter.com/KemiBadenoch/status/1801529234919137755?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoog...

[TheTide]

I still really really struggle to see how Reform get north of 15% with the lack of infrastructure but I guess the BXP party winning a national election in 2019 (even if it was a joke one!) shows it can be done...

They have one of the top three most famous politicians in the country leading them, which means that they get a lot of media attention, which is more important than having infrastructure when it comes to parties of this kind.

[Torrain]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

The closest we’ve got to a celebrity journalist running is former BBC correspondent John Sweeney (known for his reporting in Ukraine and death-feud with Scientology) who’s running a fairly idiosyncratic campaign for the Lib Dems in Sutton Coldfield. The Financial Times’s Yuan Yang (Europe-China Correspondent) is also running for Labour in Earley and Woodley.

St Andrews University’s Professional of International Relations is running (and all but certain to win) Broughty Ferry for the SNP. But… he got that job as a result of losing his previous seat after several years as SNP spokesman on Foreign Affairs in the Commons, so I’m not sure that counts.

At least one dynastic/nepo-baby candidate - Aphra Brandreth, daughter of former Tory whip, and quiz-show regular Gyles Brandreth is running in his old patch (Chester South and Eddisbury).

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

The cricketer Monty Panesar briefly was a Workers candidate, but exited very quickly after some embarrassing interviews.

A former realty star (Gogglebox, a format i'm not sure has left the UK) is running for Labour against the deputy PM.

Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell is standing for the tories in Colchester.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for Blur, is the Labour candidate for Mid Sussex.

My understanding is that Britpop has strong "Blair era" associations (although most of the biggest such hits came out under Major) so this feels hilariously appropriate.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Pure curiosity: are there any 'star' (non politician) candidates running who people not in the U.K would be familiar with or a good chance they'd be familiar with (some BBC foreign correspondents have run previously.) Like any musicians, actors, football players, authors/famous academics, Richard Branson, J.K Rowling...

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for Blur, is the Labour candidate for Mid Sussex.

My understanding is that Britpop has strong "Blair era" associations (although most of the biggest such hits came out under Major) so this feels hilariously appropriate.

Tony Blair had been a rock band manager prior to going into politics, but I don't know for what bands. The biggest thing between Labour and Britpop in the 1997 election had to be when Oasis and Blur did, I believe, a newspaper advert for Labour that said something like "for all our differences, one thing we agree on is voting Labour."

[Skye]

The NYT has an article about the struggles Jeremy Hunt faces in his Surrey seat:

Even Britain’s Finance Minister Is Fighting to Stay in Parliament

As chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt also represents a district where his Conservative Party traditionally counts on rock-solid support. Not anymore.

The fact that the second most powerful man in the government now sees himself as the underdog is testament to the scale of the threat facing the Conservatives at next month’s general election.

Jane Austin, who works in Mr. Hunt’s parliamentary team, said that he had always treated the area like a marginal seat but that this time, “There are probably one thousand, two thousand votes in it — that’s where I genuinely think we are.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/world/europe/uk-election-jeremy-hunt.html

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They have one of the top three most famous politicians in the country leading them, which means that they get a lot of media attention, which is more important than having infrastructure when it comes to parties of this kind.

Well to an extent, but the decline of newspaper readership means that the broadcasters are more important than they used to be, and they are subject to specific rules about airtime and (just as critically these days) content proportions. Though it's worth noting that of the many polls published yesterday, just the one had them more than 2pts away (either way) from the 15% mark.

Where infrastructure matters mostly is in turning votes into seats. If you have only a very fuzzy idea of who your voters are and where they live, then getting those ducks in a row becomes quite tricky unless you're polling such a large percentage nationally that by default you're competitive in Default Constituency X (and right now that's only true of one party...). LibDems old enough to remember the days of the Alliance may have a few Thoughts about this.

[afleitch]

They have one of the top three most famous politicians in the country leading them, which means that they get a lot of media attention, which is more important than having infrastructure when it comes to parties of this kind.

Well to an extent, but the decline of newspaper readership means that the broadcasters are more important than they used to be, and they are subject to specific rules about airtime and (just as critically these days) content proportions. Though it's worth noting that of the many polls published yesterday, just the one had them more than 2pts away (either way) from the 15% mark.

Where infrastructure matters mostly is in turning votes into seats. If you have only a very fuzzy idea of who your voters are and where they live, then getting those ducks in a row becomes quite tricky unless you're polling such a large percentage nationally that by default you're competitive in Default Constituency X (and right now that's only true of one party...). LibDems old enough to remember the days of the Alliance may have a few Thoughts about this.

The Alliance of course having both 1983 and 1982 locals to get a sense of there support and even then (speaking mostly about Scotland here) they didn't point to where they would win/compete, just what sorts of voters they appealed to.

Reform don't have that base. And as everyone with gnat like memories in the press seem to forget, Reform were generally over estimated in polls for elections only last month and where they contested, their support was uniform.

I suspect they will be relying on the more bullish MRPs for their targeting.

In recent polls, and certainly with YouGov, Labour have seen sizable shifts against them and to the Lib Dems in 'the South'. There has also been a reduction in 2019 Lib Dem voters opting for Labour in voter recall, which was somewhat too high.

What isn't being properly discussed at the moment is a very real as in genuinely real proposition that the Lib Dems do in fact run a scythe through the South (for real this time) and take second.

And that is the Tories take third, do their MPs start to cleave off, particular if the party makes overtures to Reform.

Not to ramble but this is more of an existential crisis for the establishment through the media and in 'who do we throw money at' business interests which appears to be playing out in column inches and vapid vox pops in real time. And perhaps too prematurely.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the matter of 'star' candidates, there is a general presumption against them in Britain and has been for a long time. The general view is that they would be a nuisance and a liability: they would attract too much attention, they would struggle to adhere to usually expected standards of message discipline, and that they might end up coming across as embarrassingly out of touch. These attitudes are shaped to a great extent by the 1964 election, at which the Conservatives ran two nationally well-known celebrities in constituencies where Labour had only narrowly won in 1959, fielding the cricketer Ted Dexter (who stood down as England test captain to contest the election) against James Callaghan at Cardiff South East, and the radio comedian Jimmy Edwards at Paddington North. Things went poorly for both, and Dexter's campaign especially was noted for gaffes and bad publicity, most famously an incident at which he addressed an audience in South Cardiff (at the time a very working class area still dependent on the old docks and the steelworks) and suggested that aspirational parents should consider sending their sons to Eton.