United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[CumbrianLefty]

IMO another December 12th election is underpriced.

[CumbrianLefty]

Elphicke's defection means the Tory majority is now officially under half what they got in the last GE.

[CumbrianLefty]

As with Dan Poulter, she announced her retirement at the coming GE a while ago - Labour selected their candidate for Dover last year and he seems to be fighting it pretty hard.

[CumbrianLefty]

Worth noting that Labour's lead is down or no change with every other pollsters in post locals polls.

Though at least some of those polls weren't conducted totally "post locals" - or not after the results actually being fully announced anyway.

[CumbrianLefty]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

Levido apparently told Tory HQ just this week that "it is going to be a hung parliament at least".

[CumbrianLefty]

And today Sunak has a re-election pitch that seems to amount to "things are so dangerous and scary that you can't risk voting for anyone else, but give us another five years - totally ignoring our record for the previous 14 - and everything will suddenly become wonderful. Honest!"

Seriously, who is advising him on this stuff?

[CumbrianLefty]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

[CumbrianLefty]

Wasn't there a general downturn in election turnouts in the 1990s, in developed democracies anyway - partly down to the collapse of the Eastern bloc and attendant "end of history"?

It was far from unique to the UK, that's for sure.

In the country most directly affected by that, Germany, turnout rose from 1990 to 1998 after having declined in the 80s.

Interesting exception to the more general trend.

Was that at least partly "Ossis" heavily turning out to exercise their new found democratic rights?

[CumbrianLefty]

Earlier this week, Sunak said the GE *would* be this year (ie not 2025) For whatever that is worth.

(and it could still be seven months away on that metric)

[CumbrianLefty]

Back in 2021, many saw the failure of Scottish Labour to advance in the Holyrood elections as proof of their permanent irrelevance. Only a relative few noted that maybe the real significance of that result was its marking the final bottoming out after a decade of almost relentless decline.

It meant they were still around to take advantage of any SNP misfortunes, and so it has proved.

[CumbrianLefty]

I wonder what the Tories learnt from their local election data

They quite possibly actually swallowed the "hung parliament" kool-aid.

[CumbrianLefty]

Given that everyone knew the election was coming in the next few months no matter what, how come there is still a mad scramble among the major parties to find candidates for numerous seats?  Was five years not enough notice?

Depends on the party. For Labour the only seats left to select are a certain number deemed unwinnable, a smaller number where it was decided to delay selections for reasons, and those where an incumbent has announced their retirement after the election was called. Everything else is all sorted and candidates in what were designated as key target seats have usually been in place for a couple of years now. For the LibDems, well, they're only competitive in a relatively small number of constituencies, so it's usually a matter of sorting out the former as early as possible and then just putting up paper candidates elsewhere: their members are generally very game for this. For the Conservative Party... yes, I'm afraid they have managed to catch themselves out somewhat, and I can offer no reasonable explanation for this.

Well just a fortnight ago the word from Number 10 was that an election before the autumn had been totally ruled out, so party HQ thought they would have a bit more time to sort things out. Its a major reason why many Tories are so hacked off at Sunak abruptly changing his mind.

[CumbrianLefty]

Claudia Webbe is running again!?!

Can she get less votes than Chris Williamson in 2019?

My initial instinct is that having the opportunity to vote *against Webbe* will make voters less likely to vote *against Labour*, but I’d be interested to hear from those with a better sense of the area - given how unpredictable Leicester East feels right now.

Though it turns out that the Tories have (pretty incredibly) not yet selected there, which surely can't help their chances unless they have some pretty spectacular "star" candidate to reveal.

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

And even then, they didn't quite manage to overturn it to the extent of actually winning. Though had the campaign gone on another week, who knows?

[CumbrianLefty]

The obsession with Brand Rishi and the excitement a lot of centre-right commentators have over him (he can do an excel sheet!) has really ignored the fact he is a lousy campaigner; he was pretty terrible in the 2022 Leadership race; forgotten now but he made a big pious point of saying 'we can't afford tax cuts' and then pivoted to tax cuts when he realised he was losing. He also kept doing a weird thing about 'protecting our women'... and well we all see how he was during the locals.

The thing that would worry me if I was a Tory MP is that this was planned; they have know for a month or so they were going for July and they decided one of there last big announcements as a Government would be around gender guidance to schools!

Is that so? It was widely reported the week after the local elections that Number 10 actually made a point of telling the party any summer election was OFF and they could make plans accordingly.

[CumbrianLefty]

Lisa Cameron is not standing now under her new colours, presumably.

[CumbrianLefty]

A certain "pollster" (*not* the world's worst PolProf this time) is screaming at anybody who will listen "you have all got this completely wrong - this is a masterstroke and an incredibly popular policy!"

[CumbrianLefty]

I have noticed, and it's been reiterated a bit on the Sunday's, that Labour are tentatively 'vibing' a bit more centre-left than pre-campaign. No substance yet, but I think it demonstrates confidence going into the campaign.

Not a massive surprise really, it was always likely that the pre-election period would be largely about closing off Tory attack lines as much as possible in preparation for the main event.

And as some of us have long said, wait for the manifesto.....

[CumbrianLefty]

The fundamental danger of the Tories going all out for Reform voters (even assuming, as per the above posts, that their current polling figures are broadly correct) is that the remaining more liberalish "Blue Wall" base of the Tories recoils in horror, whilst their targets remain scornfully unconvinced. If it goes *really* wrong in that respect, than an extinction level electoral event actually becomes possible.

[CumbrianLefty]

we are going to see some Tories run more as individuals rather than Tories, and statistically there probably will be some success stories where this works.

Lots tried it in 1997 as well, only a few succeeded at all (and they were generally MPs who had some prior reputation for "independence" - those with an 11th hour reinvention almost universally failed)

[CumbrianLefty]

It’s fair to say at least a couple of them are hyper factional/a bit thick and won’t have much to contribute in government.

I can't possibly imagine who you might be thinking of here, no sirree

Though if They Who Must Not Be Named *does* have to be given a seat, there are worse options.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yet another proof of the incompetence of the left of the party. They should have had their bogus complain against Reeves ready in case it happened.

It is widely believed that the complaint against LRM is not from somebody on the Labour right. Which of course means it might be personal, rather than primarily factionally motivated.

[CumbrianLefty]

Its almost certainly not as many as 200 in reality, and few if any GB seats (the Speaker's excepted) won't have a Tory standing when nominations close a week from now.

[CumbrianLefty]

I think that Labour has 100% coverage now (barring any almost literally last minute withdrawals)

[CumbrianLefty]

More In Common actually did much of their MRP poll in April??

If so, that at least surely means that their frankly implausible Scottish figures can be disregarded.