United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[Cassius]

Worth bearing in mind that the poll was carried out under the auspices of the ‘Conservative Britain Alliance’ (a Lord Frost linked outfit) and is being spun as an warning to the Tories that they need to shift rightwards in order to head off vote splitting with Reform, who apparently would deprive them of ninety-six seats and hand Labour a majority under this model. To put it mildly, I don’t regard this as credible, given the shares the Conservatives (and Labour) are getting in all other published opinion polls and the lack of any hard evidence for a Reform surge in by-elections at the constituency/local government level. To be taken with a gritter’s worth of salt.

[Cassius]

Can’t wait for it to be another pointless “game-changer” reshuffle bringing back Lord Clarke as Secretary of State for Health.

[Cassius]

Can’t wait for it to be another pointless “game-changer” reshuffle bringing back Lord Clarke as Secretary of State for Health.

Who is the Peter Mandleson of the Tories?

Cameron is the controversial (read: overrated slimeball) figure who left under a cloud only to make a shocking comeback to a high profile post as everything was falling apart for his party (and also getting a peerage into the bargain).

[Cassius]

Are the Tories barred from changing leaders after the election is called?

No, but obviously the idea is insane.

[Cassius]

John Swinney huffing on the world’s smallest set of bagpipes about the evil UK government having the temerity to call an election during tHe ScOtTiSh sUmMeR HoLiDAyS.

[Cassius]

One possible reason (amongst others) for going now and for the sudden announcement (let’s not call it snap) is to avoid giving Reform time to get a proper campaign together and candidates in place across the country. Won’t change the end result, but a more hastily organised Reform effort might help save the furniture in some places.

[Cassius]

https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1793628105250402676?ref_src=twsrc%5Et...

This is Sunak heritage.

[Cassius]

Corbyn has just announced that he is standing as an Independent in Islington North

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1793899852624953398

Does he have a shot of winning here?

Definitely. It still sounds like he has a lot of popularity in his electorate and he'll no doubt be able to get lots of volunteers. The big question is who Labour pick as the replacement and whether the transient nature of the seat works against him.

If I had to call I think he'd probably be the favourite but I could easily see him winning in a blowout or losing quite comfortably.

Thanks for the explanation.

How is the district demographically. Does it have many voters of Arab descent since I think that would probably favour his chances quite a bit?

There are (to my knowledge) no constituencies in the UK where there is a concentrated ‘Arab vote’ that would be enough to swing an election (there are a lot of Arabs living in Central and West London, but these tend not to be the type of people who will be voting in British elections) and certainly not in Islington North. It’s difficult to find stats on the Muslim percentage of the population by seat, but in Islington North I think it was about 10% in 2011 (on the old boundaries), which is a lot smaller than the other constituencies where the ‘Muslim vote’ has been a significant factor.

The seat is obviously fairly well suited to him demographically, with a very significant ethnic minority population (although lower than the London average) and generally speaking younger, more graduate-y and with much less home-ownership than the London (let alone national) average. By all accounts he’s a popular local MP, but I don’t think this and the above will be enough for him to retain the seat - I envision he’ll get something akin to a Frank Field in Birkenhead 2019 performance as an independent.

[Cassius]

A very broad history of election campaigns in the UK (which we have a limited dataset!) shows that there have only been what 2 elections since 1945 when an unpopular government in poor form has been be able to run an inspiring and winning campaign; and in both those there was a Liberal/SDP/Lib Dem vote to squeeze & a labour leadership not trusted...

Of course, the only election in which a party has actually been able to overturn a comparable polling deficit to the one the Tories now face was 2017 when Labour did it, but they had the advantage of being an opposition facing an incumbent government who were running a completely cack-handed campaign.

[Cassius]

Definitely. It still sounds like he has a lot of popularity in his electorate and he'll no doubt be able to get lots of volunteers. The big question is who Labour pick as the replacement and whether the transient nature of the seat works against him.

If I had to call I think he'd probably be the favourite but I could easily see him winning in a blowout or losing quite comfortably.

The main thing making me think that Corbyn starts as the underdog is the very poor track record of even popular local MPs running for re-election as independents (or effectively as such if they had a party label which was just a vehicle for their campaign) after falling out with/being deselected/expelled by the party they were originally elected for (as was alluded to by the mention of Frank Field). In fact, the only such MPs I can think of in the post-war era who were actually re-elected were Eddie Milne in Blyth Valley and Dick Taverne in Lincoln (and he'd won a by-election the year before), both in February 1974 (if I'm missing any, please do let me know!).

Labour’s S.O. Davies won re-election as an independent in Merthyr Tydfil in 1970 after getting deselected on the grounds of age and his numerous run-ins with the Wilson government. Also in Wales, Peter Law was able to transition from holding Blaenau Gwent in the Assembly as a Labour AM to winning the same seat at Westminster in 2005 as an independent, whilst John Marek managed to hang on in his Wrexham Assembly seat for one further term in 2003 after getting deselected by Labour.

[Cassius]

https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1794488768277123563
So presumably Onward's Director, Sebastian Early Anthony Payne, holds some credit/blame for this latest masterstroke.

The use of ‘Great British’ as a proper noun needs to be made a capital offence.

[Cassius]

Highlight of the day was a BBC vox pop in Richmond (The Yorkshire one) asking pensioners what they thought about the new quadruple lock- all said they liked it, although with the addition that they wouldn't have been supporting Labour anyway.

I rather think this is the point - the Conservative campaign strategy seems to be shaping up to be:

A) Hold the right flank against Reform.
B) Make sure that unenthusiastic Tory voters who are tempted to abstain show up to vote.

The policies that they’ve released very much seem to be geared towards these two things. I think they’ve pretty much conceded that they’re not going to win back the ‘swing voters’ who voted Conservative in 2019 and 2017, therefore the campaign will have to be about maxing out their share of the 30-odd percent of the electorate who won’t vote Labour under any circumstances (which now seems to skew older than it did historically). Not an election winning strategy (but I think a ‘wet’ campaign that would be applauded by the likes of Andy Street would be far worse), but one that maximises the chances of the Tories ‘only’ losing by a 1997-style margin.

[Cassius]

Paul Waugh selected in Rochdale.

Must say, I’ll shed few tears over Lloyd Russell-Moore going. Turning his 2019 election night speech into an aggressive rant that ended with a call to physically fight the Tories in the streets was a particular low. Not least for the mangled WW2 references.

The resemblance of Russell-Moyle’s voice to that of the Michael Wisher incarnation of Davros is truly uncanny:

[Cassius]

What exactly does a major political party do where there is a better chance of them falling to 3rd than forming government again?

[Cassius]

This verbatim exchange might be the best clip of the night:

Douglas Ross: Are you any different to your predecessors?
John Swinney: I'm John Swinney!

John Swinney comes across as a man who really does not want to be doing this at his time of life in every public engagement.

[Cassius]

Labour gives itself a black eye in its quest to win over the archetypal swing voter (me) by pledging to ban the import of foie gras - let’s see whether Starmer will reveal any feathers in his cap during this evening’s debate.

[Cassius]

I did enjoy hearing about Starmer’s plan to resolve the strikes in the NHS by resolving them.

[Cassius]

The chief problem with the set-up of this debate is that it’s far too short - Etchingham keeps cutting them off before they’ve finished speaking and because of the rushed nature of the slots they have to keep interrupting each other to get the last word in. It should be two hours minimum and there should be more room for back-and-forth between the two.

[Cassius]

Not the joke question please God no.

[Cassius]

Not the joke question please God no.

Wasn't even interesting in the end; I thought it was going to be about who they would pick for the England squad at first.

Well it was a question from Southgate himself so the chances of it being interesting were always going to be low.

[Cassius]

I liked Ed Davey's performance in the post-debate interviews. He has a great sense of humor.

Yeah, I didn’t think much of his comedy roadshow at first, but it seems like an effort to stand out against the two haughty, thin-skinned men who lead the major parties. Farage (who was often quite testy in previous campaigns) seems to be going for a similar approach.

[Cassius]

Mordaunt knifes Sunak in the back in her first answer.

[Cassius]

Can’t believe 15 minutes of the debate have been eaten by f’ing D-Day.

[Cassius]

Rayner let the Tories off the hook by describing their time in power as “fourteen years of abstract failure”.

[Cassius]

Rayner let the Tories off the hook by describing their time in power as “fourteen years of abstract failure”.

I think she meant to say abject, but misspoke (or could it possibly be her northern accent? - I think not, but maybe)

I didn’t actually watch all of the debate and only initially saw it reported on the Torygraph,  so I was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, but if you watch the video below she really does say it with far too much conviction for it to be a slip of the tongue:

https://metro.co.uk/video/mordaunt-rayner-butt-heads-environment-3206607/