United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[RBH]

does the phrase "shy Tory" apply to their candidate selection process more than their voters and we'll find out that they had 130 candidates who they haven't mentioned before Friday

[RBH]

I think he admits it in a sense but reading some of the TomorrowsMPs tweets is like reading about 19th round draft picks in baseball where it's like, sure, this person could be in the majors one day, but now they're in the 207th targeted seat and they won't win this time

[RBH]

In yet a further sign that I need professional help, I had a dream last night about the UK election. The Workers Party won 5 seats and something called the "Crime Party" (which was, confusingly, anti-crime) won 2 seats south of London.

if elected, the Crime Party will take action to prevent gas leaks from causing weird dreams

so, which minor candidates are very obviously angling to be seen on screen during the announcement of results? Binface vs Sunak, Bobby Elmo Smith vs Starmer, probably some of the Loony candidates (although some of them actually run in their home constituencies at general elections)

[RBH]

the Workers Party has the approved description "Workers Party – For Britain, For Gaza" which i've seen on a few SOPNs so far (Manchester Central, Rotherham)... gonna suspect that description is for the seats where they're very obviously targeting a specific group of voters

there's also a description "Workers Party of Britain – For Gaza" which was approved in the last few days

[RBH]

feels like you can't necessarily compare FPTP and Proportional Representation elections quite so easily

So what would be the British equivalents to the PCs holding 2 seats in Quebec/New Brunswick after 1993? half the Tory caucus being made up of Scottish MPs?

[RBH]

okay, I found a 3rd constituency where the Workers Party candidate has "For Britain, For Gaza" on their description. Cities of London and Westminster. (To go along with Manchester Central and Rotherham)

also spotted the occasional "Local Conservatives" description, including on their withdrawn Rotherham candidate, which has to be the ultimate in "hey, we know our national brand is weak here, but what our our local brand?"

edit: Nottingham South is also using "For Britain For Gaza" for the Worker's Party description. I guess it's for the best that we don't get precinct results for these elections or else it would really improve parties abilities to target seats in the future.

edit2: add two Sheffield candidates to that list of WPGB candidates using the Gaza description (Sheffield Brightside/Hillsborough and Central) while the other 3 WPGB candidates in Sheffield constituencies just used the "Workers Party" description. Guess we'll never quite know how many Muslim voters voted for Caitlin Hardy over Abtisam Mohamed due to the I/P war hurting Labour performances.

[RBH]

Some constituencies might behave oddly for various reasons. Some of the by-election seats could come under this heading, as could the Green targets, but here are some others (not intended as a full list!):

 (..)

Rotherham (Lab in 2019) The lack of a Tory candidate will certainly cause some oddities, likely meaning unusually high shares for Reform UK, who would have some potential here anyway, and the Yorkshire Party. Labour really ought to be safe, though.

i'm gonna make up a projection that doesn't account for boundary changes or actual demographics

2019 in Rotherham was Lab 41, Con 33, Brexit 17, LD 5, York 3

so 2024 has about 50% of the vote already up in the air.. the candidates are Lab, LD, Ref, Green, Workers, York, and Independent Muslim

14 of that 50 goes to Labour, 28 goes to Reform, LD gets 1 somehow, 4 to Workers, 2 to Green, 1 to York

Then Labour loses about 5% back, 3 to Green, 2 to Workers

So... Lab 50, Ref 28, LD 6, WPGB 6, Green 5, York 4, Ahmad 1. As far as made up projections go, that's one of them. UKIP was finishing 2nd in Rotherham in 12/15 and BNP was over 5% in 05/10/12

Now the constituency I noticed last night because of how many candidates are running is Ealing Southall.

Sharma isn't running. Labour nominated Deirdre Costigan. There's 11 other candidates including 5 independents with multiple Punjabi names (Sangeet Kaur Bhali, Jaginger Singh). Would it be accurate to suspect there was a controversy with the Labour pick and that there'll be a certain amount of localized swing as a result.

[RBH]

Looking at the minor left parties

TUSC has 40 candidates after not standing in 2017/2019. The Communist Party has 14 candidates in their first appearance since 2015. It's also the first time they've had a double digit candidate total since the CPGB if you count the CPB as a continuation of the CPGB. Socialist Labour has 12 candidates, the most since 2010. The Socialist Party continued their tradition of running 2 candidates.

10 of the 12 Socialist Labour candidates are in seats not contested by the Workers Party. Which is a small victory for the concept of two parties with some overlap not running against each other.

My count is that 14 of the 40 TUSC candidates are standing against Workers Party candidates, including a Workers Party candidate in the seat that Nellist is running for (Coventry East).

Also, 6 of the Communist candidates are going against Workers candidates and 8 aren't.

And for a joke that might only amuse me.. if TUSC ran in NI, would they accidentally pick up votes for having "Unionist" in their name

[RBH]

The Workers Revolutionary Party is running 5 candidates, the same number as 2017/2019. Their candidates are in Hackney South, Hammersmith, Liverpool Garston, Oxford East, and Peckham.

The Socialist Equality Party is running 2 candidates, one against Starmer and one in Scotland (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) for some reason. Hey gotta start Socialist Equality somewhere.

Oxford East has a collection of candidates. The 4 of the 5 parties standing pretty much everywhere (no Reform UK), Workers Party, Social Democratic instead of Reform UK, Workers Revolutionary, Independent Oxford Alliance, the trans-exclusionary Party of Women, Rejoin EU, and two independents.

[RBH]

Why was Sunak in Caithness?

trying to prevent Ed Davey from launching a land invasion of Scotland from Orkney

[RBH]

Adding another seat to the "Workers Party candidate with a description that mentions Gaza" list: Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North.

Where the Workers Party candidate is named James Giles and the Labour MP is Liam Byrne. LD is named Qasim Esak, Green is named Imran Khan, Tory is from Hertsmere, RefUK is from Rugby.

Out of the 9 Birmingham constituencies, WPGB has candidates in 3 (BHH & SN, Yardley, and Sutton Coldfield). Guess among yourselves about if they're a step behind in Birmingham compared to other areas where they could win some votes, or if viable candidates already exist to win votes on Gaza outside of the Galloway fold.

Also, I'd guess the whole I/P thing is still gonna be a bit of an issue for some voters even if the power of optimism wins out and there's a ceasefire before July 4th.

[RBH]

Farage endorses DUP, ditches Reform-TUV alliance:

"“As far as the Northern Ireland thing is concerned, I want to make it clear that whilst there have been negotiations going on in previous times, I will personally be endorsing Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson,” Farage told PA’s Claudia Savage, who reminded him of the Reform-TUV alliance.

“Well, new leadership brings change. I wish the TUV well, but I’m gonna stand up to support Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley as people I fought with all through the Brexit years,” Farage said."

well, Reform is gonna need the DUP for their RUK-DUP coalition government if Reform can't win an outright majority

Unrelated to the quote.. adding another constituency to the "WPGB going in on getting Gaza votes" list as their Stockport candidate is also using "For Britain, For Gaza" on the description. Stockport has a 7 candidate field of the 5 most prominent parties, Workers, and "Stockport Fights Austerity No To Cuts". It's a bit of a sign of the rapid expansion of the party since the WPGB didn't run in the Stockport local elections (then again, the LibDems have a near majority on the Stockport borough council, which is probably a lot narrower if you just count the parts of the borough in the parliament constituency)

[RBH]

Unrelated to the quote.. adding another constituency to the "WPGB going in on getting Gaza votes" list as their Stockport candidate is also using "For Britain, For Gaza" on the description. Stockport has a 7 candidate field of the 5 most prominent parties, Workers, and "Stockport Fights Austerity No To Cuts". It's a bit of a sign of the rapid expansion of the party since the WPGB didn't run in the Stockport local elections (then again, the LibDems have a near majority on the Stockport borough council, which is probably a lot narrower if you just count the parts of the borough in the parliament constituency)

Not just a lot narrower: with the exception of the Cheadle East & Cheadle Hulme North ward, which is only partly within the constituency, the Lib Dems have no councillors in the wards making up the Stockport constituency. Their strength in the borough is all in Cheadle and Hazel Grove, both of which are obvious target seats.

so is there a list of "potentially confusing government entity names" that might be useful for this election?

although also possible that the name Metropolitan Borough of Stockport was picked at a time when the population of various areas was different

I am amused that they're kinda moving towards the Canadian riding name standard of longer names if putting the Isle of Axholme in the constituency name of one place (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme)

[RBH]

I was thinking "which party is gonna finish last in the most seats" (probably the party finishing 5th the most in the seats with only 5 candidates) and I decided to figure out the composition of a Bizarro-Parliament made up of the candidates who finished last in 2019..

then I found out that the Greens were way ahead in that..

the party standings are

Green Party 231
Independent 129
Brexit 53, Lib Dems 33, UKIP 30
Christian Peoples Alliance 18, Labour 16, Official Monster Raving Loony 16, Social Democratic 16, Liberal 14, Yorkshire 12

5 seats for Advance Together, Animal Welfare Party, Aontu, Libertarian

4 seats for Workers Revolutionary Party

3 seats for Alliance for Green Socialism, English Democrats, Renew, Socialist Equality, Justice and Anti-Corruption, Women's Equality

2 seats for Communist League, Communities United, Gwlad Gwlad, Plaid Cymru, Scottish Family Party, SDLP, North East, Peace, Socialist Party of GB, Ulster Unionist, Yeshua

1 seat for Alliance (NI), BNP, Christian Party, Church of the Militant Elvis, Conservative (one of their doomed Northern Ireland candidates), Cumbria First, Motherworld, Patria, Psychadelic Movement, Rebooting Democracy, Shropshire Party, Socialist Labour, Best for Luton, Citizens Movement, Common People, Constitution and Reform, Universal Good, Veterans and People

All the credit to Excel for having a way for me to just figure out which candidate finished last in the UK spreadsheet of results by candidate (sort results by %, and then ask true/false for 'does this candidate have more votes than the candidate above them, which means all the last place finishers are false).. so I somehow didn't spend way way too much time on that.. just too much time. And somebody probably figured out this out in December 2019

Anyways... Green's probably retain their minority government in the bizarro-parliament

[RBH]

adding two more constituencies to my list of places where the WPGB is using "For Britain, For Gaza" on the ballot: Cheadle and Hornsey & Friern Barnet.

At least the Gallowayites respected the right of the Speaker to be left alone (more likely, they don't have anybody in Chorley).

My favorite "smaller party running vs the Speaker" race is the time the Socialist Labour candidate got an unusually high percentage from people who maybe saw the word "Labour" and thought "yeah, that's the pick"

[RBH]

Media noticing that Niko Omilana is running in 11 seats https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm55x95xj54o

BBC hedging by saying "at least 11" as if they can't just go to a website (like DemocracyClub) and do a text search for how many times his name is listed as a candidate or just in case Niko is also running under other names.

You'd think the natural extension of this plan... if the legal consequences aren't a hindrance... is to just form a party for YouTube celebrities and their followers like it's a party seeking a seat in the Australian Senate.

Unfortunately Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality didn't run after 2010 so most of the joke parties are only unintentional

[RBH]

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...

well, Yvonne Ridley's wikipedia page says she was voted "most recognisable woman in the Islamic world" in 2008 but it's possible she lost that title sometime in the last 16 years

[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

[RBH]

Putting the YouGov numbers into principalfish last night highlighted that one problem with trying to do constituency by constituency predictions is the lack of a baseline for RefUK in the places where they didn't run in 2019

PrincipalFish's projections for the YouGov totals are 367-170 Labour with LibDems at 58, SNP 26. It has ReformUK at 3 seats, but in places where the Brexit Party did well in 2019. I have doubts that the 3 seats won by RUK will be Hartlepool and Barnsley North/South.

[RBH]

meanwhile in a candidate sacking from a few days ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2jjzln887lo

This being former Rugby League player Keith Mason, Workers Party candidate for Wakefield and Rothwell, who was sacked for anti-Islamic tweets.

Are there any former athletes turned Workers Party candidates left after this? Presumably the defense of "I can't be Islamophobic, I'm running with the Workers Party" wouldn't have worked much better.

[RBH]

Hilarious briefing in the Times that Sunak needs to go more negative and attack Keir over his support for Corbyn- ironic as the Tories have been flogging that horse for the last 3 years.

Those voters who care about this have already made up their mind and I suspect Labour have a good response- ‘Keir kicked him out- why didn’t Rishi do the same with Truss’?

They also wanted more attacks over Keirs record as a lawyer- we were promised for years that CCHQ had a big file on this but tbh they have already tried this attack before and Sunak even mentioned it in the TV debate.

the way the Tory campaign is going, they should just phrase it "Starmer is worse than Corbyn" in an effort to get Corbyn ultras to vote Tory because it's not like their appeals to the people who usually agree with them are actually doing much good.

[RBH]

what's technically more likely at this time, Conservatives retaining a majority, or a Reform UK/Workers Party coalition government? /s

so how long until this Conservative betting scandal spreads to party officials betting $100 to win $1 on the Conservatives losing?

[RBH]

I don't know if this has been posted before, but this is a really good interactive quiz to see who you support as it actually puts the party manifestos up against one another in a one on one manner.  It might remind some people of a dentist visit though.


https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1804160343708442815

maybe I shouldn't have picked so much off of large numbers because I ended up with Green on 3 of 4 issues and SNP on Defence.

[RBH]

Have we done “JK Rowling endorses the Communist Party because they’re the only ones with a gender policy she agrees with” yet?

Cut to JK Rowling deciding between the Communists and George Galloway for which would be the more respectable pick

[RBH]

We know that witch will vote Reform UK anyway.

she's unhappy that Party Of Women didn't run in her constituency