United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

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I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed what will happen between July-September; the Conservatives will want a long leadership race if they are wanting to make rule changes, or to stop someone from winning.

Even with the summer recess they are still going to need a leader of the opposition; would Sunak really be happy to do that for two months, as Major & Callaghan did as caretakers. They don't formally have a deputy either and I'm not sure they can actually appoint a temporary leader (as Labour did with Harman in 2010 & 2015)

If he loses his seat he won't have to bother with all of that.

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As this abysmal campaign goes forward it becomes increasingly likely the Tories net less than 75 MPs. How will they function? who of that batch could be the next potential leader?

I am putting aside the question of how will they cope in doomsday scenario of less than 20 MPs as I think the 1922 committee will stop functioning

There are some people out there who will vote Conservative no matter what and still see Labour as the militant left … So I feel like they have a base of support where there is no chance - none at all, that they have less than 75 seats. Only way I could even concieve of that is reform essentially became the conservative vote in total

Unfortunately for them, the electoral system is FPTP rather than PR. Many millions could vote for them and their seat total could be derisory. The Lib Dems and their preceding equivalents know this.

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Did Reform manage to get candidates in all or almost all constituencies?

https://twitter.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1799099753634128305

I do assume most of those are so anti-RUK that they can't have even played spoiler, but yeah, this ain't good for them.

I'm not sure it really matters anymore than it did for the Liberal Party in February 1974. The above number suggests to me that it's virtually a full slate everywhere in which they wouldn't be throwing away £500.

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Did Reform manage to get candidates in all or almost all constituencies?

https://twitter.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1799099753634128305

I do assume most of those are so anti-RUK that they can't have even played spoiler, but yeah, this ain't good for them.

So Liberal Democrats as official opposition probably won’t happen?

Doubt it has much effect on that at all.

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Rayner gets the first (I think) applause, on the NHS question.

Flynn has gone after Rayner/Labour, unsurprisingly. Mordaunt is miles ahead of Sunak as a communicator. Farage is a bit low key.

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Deyner isn't exactly oozing charisma.

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Mordaunt sidestepping the immigration question. Pretty hilarious. Farage making his presence known more.

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Didn't the 'nice' Theresa May send out Amber Rudd to the 2017 edition of this debate just after the latter's father had died?

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Good news for Tory Wipeout enjoyers. Reform are standing in 611/631 (96.8%) of GB constituencies.

source?

that's higher than what was initially reported.

Presumably every local authority SOPN list.

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https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1799432789080830173

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The second worst thing about the attempted reboot (behind it all being a bit crap) was that they used it as an excuse to scrub all evidence of the original show from YouTube. Matt Forde is a menace.

Which if anything hurt the show’s attempts to introduce their humour to a new generation as you couldn’t find any bloody clips of the original! You still have to go to Facebook to find old clips.

The 1987 election special opened with Alastair Burnet's (the ITV election presenter) puppet reading out the exit poll predictions:

"The predicted result - Conservatives 359 seats, Labour 243 seats and Alliance 24 seats. The polls have now closed...shortly to be followed by the rest of the hospitals, the schools and the BBC. Hahaha hahaha hahaha."     

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There could also be a post devoted to the various joke parties and candidates, although what constitutes a 'joke' party or candidate is perhaps rather subjective.

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I genuinely think after the D-Day sh**tshow the King might want to do Sunak slowly.

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Note that the audience for this will not be notable for being very large.

I was right. The overnights were about 3.2 million which would be a lot for many kinds of programme but not for this kind of thing. I doubt many people have been particularly motivated to watch it later via the iPlayer, so we don't need to worry about the linear/non-linear issue significantly distorting matters.

 

I wonder what the viewing figures for debates (with this kind of format) would have been back in the days when 20 million regularly tuned in to watch some idiot murder some other idiot in some soap opera. I suppose it would have depended to a significant extent on the personalities.           

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Would love to meet some Labour 2019/Tory 2024 voters. Who even are they? Accelerationists? Mark Latham imitators? Idiots? Leicester East?

In no particular order:
People rushing through the poll clicking anything
People who genuinely changed their political views eg; culture wars, radicalised by COVID etc
Ethnic minorities (mainly Hindus) who liked Corbyn and/or like Sunak
Random people with extremely weird/niche/non-existent political views eg; I somehow know a 2019 Corbyn voter who literally voted for Trump for fear Biden would be a Trojan horse for Venezuelan socialism.

Yeah, the political right has sold itself as protecting "freedom" in a Covid context.

I doubt there are too many who strongly opposed restrictions voting for the party that put them in place. Reform would be the obvious choice.

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Chance of a polling error of some sort in Scotland does seem high, given the divergence between different firms (Lab anywhere from 35-40%, SNP 29-36%, Tory 12-18%).

Worth noting on Ipsos - they tend to be more bullish on the SNP than other pollsters and the tie they record is the first time the SNP haven’t lead with them this parliament:
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1800861223841583202
A tie isn’t *great* for Labour - closing a seven point gap, on the other hand…

The Tory vote is down by more than the SNP vote compared to 2019. On such figures it would be almost certain to fall more in the seats they hold or were close in in 2019, given that there's a lot of seats in which there isn't enough 'room' for it to fall as much as 12%. It wouldn't rule out some holds or even gains on low vote shares and several way splits.

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What is odd about this picture?



That's right: absolutely nothing is odd. It is a perfectly ordinary photograph of the Shadow Cabinet after the launch of the Labour manifesto. What is odd is that there is no equivalent photograph of the Cabinet with the PM at its head from the incumbents.

Looks like a promo of some kind, but I suppose it is a promo of some kind.

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https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1801329280858591268

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https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1801329280858591268

It's over.

What also won't be of any comfort to the Tories is that the actual voting has already started. The first postal votes went out a couple of days ago.

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I *think* this is the first poll conducted during a general election campaign to show the Tories in third. Headline-grabbing indeed.

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Absolute car crash from Penny Mordaunt.

Farage asked her something to the effect of "immigration has risen by millions over the past few years, why should anyone trust you?".

Mordaunt - "Because of the record of this Prime Minister..."

Cue laughter.

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

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Absolute car crash from Penny Mordaunt.

Farage asked her something to the effect of "immigration has risen by millions over the past few years, why should anyone trust you?".

Mordaunt - "Because of the record of this Prime Minister..."

Cue laughter.

It's so over. This debate was the last chance to save the Conservatives from being Canada '93'd or 2011'd, and THIS sounds like the worst case scenario, especially with this poll.

And It's too late to ditch Sunak, postal voting begins this Wednesday.

It began a couple of days ago, or at least they started being sent out.

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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.

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Canvassing has not been great for the past couple of days. The Tories are losing massive amounts of ground overall, but Sunak has access to voters who BoJo lost. He is less offensive (to some?) and doesn’t talk so much about Brexit.

Starmer will still get his landslide, but I would still expect triple figures for the Conservatives as of now. I’ll have a better picture by the end of next week.

Where have you been canvassing? I would think that it's balanced out to some extent by Sunak not appealing to a lot of voters who liked Johnson.