United Kingdom General Election 2024 : (Date to be confirmed)

[Torrain]

At risk of posting confirmation bias again - this feels a tad noteworthy:
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1777979565241139327

[Oryxslayer]

This is a good thread (there's more than just below) on the left-of-Labour types who might have once been more at home with Corbyn. The TL:DR is at this point Labour lead and the the change desire is so strong that diminishes all other issues. Also, from my perspective,  the Greens are playing a bit too limited to have this seriously matter, even if it could. Their initial four focus seats, as mentioned during their local elections launch last week, are: Bristol Central, Brighton Pavilion,  North Hertfordshire, and Waveney Valley covering most of Mid Suffolk. That's only one seat where activist angst is the primary driver.

https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1778702629788377536?t=hJo9_OtY9WjEhLeIgCpVpQ...

https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1778703799026176237?t=6u8lZFVF2OmSp4niUj4HlA...

https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1778706279147397598?t=Nw_qKpVI77LyY6MZfkHD0A...

[CumbrianLefty]

So Reform UK sacked its candidate for York Central for "inactivity" after not returning calls or emails.

...turns out he had been dead since February.

Reform UK admitted it didn’t realize that Tommy Cawkwell, its election candidate in York Central, had perished when he was sacked for lack of activity.

“We can’t afford to have people doing nothing in an election year,” a party spokesperson had told local news outlet the York Press.

But Cawkwell had actually died two months before.

Reform UK spokesperson Gawain Towler said Wednesday night he was “mortified” at the error.

https://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-party-fired-candidate-inactive-turns-out-dead-uk/

I can't 💀

Though on the plus side, it is one of the more foolproof ways of ensuring no errant social media posts.

[DistingFlyer]

Here are maps of 2019 notional results (the first is shaded by the winners' margin of victory, the second by the winners' share of the vote):





I can't help thinking of Peter Mansbridge's remarks at the start of election night in 1993, when party standings at dissolution came on the screen: "Take a good look at those numbers, because it's unlikely you'll see them ever looking like that again . . . "

Boundaries come from afleitch's new map; my thanks.

[CumbrianLefty]

That headline in the Guardian was almost laughably bad.

And the actual "story" wasn't any better.

[YL]

Get your popcorn ready: Turnip vs Lettuce is on:

https://twitter.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1780161194503876751

(James Bagge to stand as an Independent against Liz Truss in South West Norfolk.)

[WD]

How much danger is Truss actually in?

[YL]

How much danger is Truss actually in?

Hard to say. The seat has a marginal history, but that is really a long time ago and its recent results make it look like a seat the Tories ought to hold even in a real meltdown. However I suspect that Truss is genuinely a liability even in her constituency and Bagge does seem to be getting some traction. So there's a possibility he could split the Tory vote and let Labour through the middle or, if he can attract tactical votes, potentially challenge to win himself, but it's very hard to judge how much traction a candidate like that is getting from outside and there is not much history of similar candidates having an impact. (But there also isn't much history of the Tories polling in the low 20s...)

[Wiswylfen]

We can get her. We will get her if the people running the campaign quit reminiscing about how, actually, campaigning during the 1997 election in seats which in 1992 we had lost by less than a hundred votes was what won it.

[adma]

How much danger is Truss actually in?

Hard to say. The seat has a marginal history, but that is really a long time ago and its recent results make it look like a seat the Tories ought to hold even in a real meltdown. However I suspect that Truss is genuinely a liability even in her constituency and Bagge does seem to be getting some traction. So there's a possibility he could split the Tory vote and let Labour through the middle or, if he can attract tactical votes, potentially challenge to win himself, but it's very hard to judge how much traction a candidate like that is getting from outside and there is not much history of similar candidates having an impact. (But there also isn't much history of the Tories polling in the low 20s...)

If you're thinking of the 60s and before, that *is* really a long time ago--but then, not so long ago, there's '97's 42.0% vs 37.8%, and the Tories are doing even *worse* now...

[EastAnglianLefty]

Profiles of insurgent independent candidates have a chequered track record. Sometimes they do accurately report something that is happening on the ground, sometimes they get wildly carried away by candidates who actually struggle to hold their deposit. From the outside, it's more or less impossible to say.

[CumbrianLefty]

How much danger is Truss actually in?

Hard to say. The seat has a marginal history, but that is really a long time ago and its recent results make it look like a seat the Tories ought to hold even in a real meltdown. However I suspect that Truss is genuinely a liability even in her constituency and Bagge does seem to be getting some traction. So there's a possibility he could split the Tory vote and let Labour through the middle or, if he can attract tactical votes, potentially challenge to win himself, but it's very hard to judge how much traction a candidate like that is getting from outside and there is not much history of similar candidates having an impact. (But there also isn't much history of the Tories polling in the low 20s...)

If you're thinking of the 60s and before, that *is* really a long time ago--but then, not so long ago, there's '97's 42.0% vs 37.8%, and the Tories are doing even *worse* now...

And that 1997 result was with Gillian Shephard, almost certainly more locally regarded than Truss is now. Against that, however, Labour's 1997 Norfolk GE results (together with remarkably strong local election performances in the previous few years) were in hindsight maybe the last gasp of the former rural agricultural vote that had once been enough to elect MPs there until 1970.

So structurally, it is a safer Tory seat now than ever before.

But if anybody can mess that up, maybe Lizzie can.

[Oryxslayer]

The one thing going for Indies like this is that the environment remains more anti-Tory than pro-Labour. So in a similar vein to how one suspects Labour voters will behave differently in Lib-Dem target seats, they probably will vote for independents like Bagge if these candidates can actually demonstrate enough viability.

[Torrain]

New Ipsos numbers - lowest Conservative vote share in their 45 years of tracking.

[Wiswylfen]

How much danger is Truss actually in?

Hard to say. The seat has a marginal history, but that is really a long time ago and its recent results make it look like a seat the Tories ought to hold even in a real meltdown. However I suspect that Truss is genuinely a liability even in her constituency and Bagge does seem to be getting some traction. So there's a possibility he could split the Tory vote and let Labour through the middle or, if he can attract tactical votes, potentially challenge to win himself, but it's very hard to judge how much traction a candidate like that is getting from outside and there is not much history of similar candidates having an impact. (But there also isn't much history of the Tories polling in the low 20s...)

If you're thinking of the 60s and before, that *is* really a long time ago--but then, not so long ago, there's '97's 42.0% vs 37.8%, and the Tories are doing even *worse* now...

And that 1997 result was with Gillian Shephard, almost certainly more locally regarded than Truss is now. Against that, however, Labour's 1997 Norfolk GE results (together with remarkably strong local election performances in the previous few years) were in hindsight maybe the last gasp of the former rural agricultural vote that had once been enough to elect MPs there until 1970.

So structurally, it is a safer Tory seat now than ever before.

But if anybody can mess that up, maybe Lizzie can.

Was there anything of that vote left by 1997? Its death was remarkably swift and, with Beeching, killed off Labour in most of the countryside.

[CumbrianLefty]

Some older voters would still have been around in the 1990s, surely - and many may well have been the types to have gone over to the Tories in the 1970s/80s but returned for one last Labour hurrah.

[Wiswylfen]

Some older voters would still have been around in the 1990s, surely - and many may well have been the types to have gone over to the Tories in the 1970s/80s but returned for one last Labour hurrah.

The thing is, the end was swift and thorough; the agricultural Labour vote ended up either moving away or into the towns, where it's a question of how much of it was down to that heritage and how much of it down to the fact that, well, in a Labour landslide King's Lynn is going to be able to outvote the rest provided the estates turn out (which they didn't in 2001).

[EastAnglianLefty]

If you look at local election results, there's a fair amount of crossover between the non-urban wards we won in Norfolk in 1973 and in 1995. So a certain amount of continuity was probably there, even if by that time a lot of it will be the kids of agricultural workers rather than agricultural workers themselves.

That said, even in 1973 the Labour vote was already much stronger in small towns and villages which acted as service centres than in the truly rural areas.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, but not all of them went to the towns - others found alternative employment locally for example. This will often have been a lot less intensively unionised, if at all - which will have helped the swing against Labour that was happening anyway. Some will have bought their homes under RTB as well.

I don't think the extremely strong Labour performances in East Anglia at the 1995 local elections in particular (the swings were often massive even by the standards of that year) is explicable other than by a significant part of that "traditional" vote still remaining.

(now it really *is* literally dead apart from a handful of extremely old people)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There will have been a certain number of retired farm workers (and their wives) who just stuck around in what had been their tied cottages until they died. These would mostly have been in their seventies by 1997 and, the actuarial statistics for that generation being what they were, it would very frequently have been their final election.

[Harry Hayfield]

Differing opinions on election date in the media today

Times: Sunak tempted to go for broke with summer election
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunak-tempted-to-go-for-broke-with-a-summer-election-fzkdnx5j3

FT: Hunt to cut 2p of NI in Autumn Statement (suggesting October 17)
https://www.ft.com/content/4972e747-1297-4f81-8162-0b4d0d68c9af

[AtorBoltox]

Is it better or worse for the Tories if people are distracted from their own country's election by events in the States? I can see it going both ways - with attention focused elsewhere people in their base might forget their most blatant cock-ups and drift back to their political home. On the other hand, if the election is low-key people will just default to the choice they made two years to vote out the tories and Labour will avoid any serious scrutiny

[Joe Republic]

Differing opinions on election date in the media today

Times: Sunak tempted to go for broke with summer election
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunak-tempted-to-go-for-broke-with-a-summer-election-fzkdnx5j3

FT: Hunt to cut 2p of NI in Autumn Statement (suggesting October 17)
https://www.ft.com/content/4972e747-1297-4f81-8162-0b4d0d68c9af

Metro: With nothing left to lose either way, Sunak might call it as early as June.
https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/20/rishi-sunak-has-nothing-left-lose-may-hold-election-early-june-20685077/

[CityofSinners]

Is it better or worse for the Tories if people are distracted from their own country's election by events in the States? I can see it going both ways - with attention focused elsewhere people in their base might forget their most blatant cock-ups and drift back to their political home. On the other hand, if the election is low-key people will just default to the choice they made two years to vote out the tories and Labour will avoid any serious scrutiny

Labor would love a low profile election. They are winning a referendum type election in a landslide. Some conservaties drifting back to the tories is fine with a 20 points lead.

About the only way for Labor to screw it up would be a high profile campaign focused on Labor mistakes and unpopular policies.

[CumbrianLefty]

Differing opinions on election date in the media today

Times: Sunak tempted to go for broke with summer election
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunak-tempted-to-go-for-broke-with-a-summer-election-fzkdnx5j3

FT: Hunt to cut 2p of NI in Autumn Statement (suggesting October 17)
https://www.ft.com/content/4972e747-1297-4f81-8162-0b4d0d68c9af

Metro: With nothing left to lose either way, Sunak might call it as early as June.
https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/20/rishi-sunak-has-nothing-left-lose-may-hold-election-early-june-20685077/

Simply a rehash of previous rather substance free rumours.

People at the Treasury - including Hunt himself - are still telling people what might be an an autumn financial statement, so either they are totally out of the loop or (perhaps more likely) this is just more gossip from bored and easily distracted hacks.

Why should he call an election six months early if he KNOWS (with as much certainty as one can have about these things) that his party is going to be not just beaten but annihilated? Yes, things *might* get even worse (somehow) if he delays, but on the other hand the "horse might talk". If you really do have "nothing to lose" it still makes more sense to hang on hoping for some miracle.