United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[TheTide]

At least one major howler from him on each day of the campaign so far. Granted it's only the second day.

[Sir Mohamed]

We need an encounter like this every day. We need to have him trying to interact with the public as often as possible. It will add to the gaiety of the nation.

[Torrain]

Sunak timing this so he can lose and move his family back to California before the school year starts is very funny.

If he hops on a private jet five minutes after the exit poll drops at 22.00 BST, he should be back home in California just in time for the Independence Day fireworks

[Oryxslayer]

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.

For the Tories it's a situation caused by all the chicken-running and retirements. Whenever a elderly backbencher retires from IDK, rural shire seat #26, some prominent frontliners have tried their luck at hopping constituencies. Which is a double-whammy. It means the selection in the frontliner's present seats remains unclear until the safe seat is decided, and if the candidate does end up hopping over, it means a selection cascade since the frontline seat needs someone new. If they don't succeed then constituency is put on alert that they still may need to find someone in the future. Throw in a bunch of MPs deciding to hold retirement until the very end - now, and it's not hard to see how they got here.

[TheTide]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

So far today, I make it that Sunak has visited the Vale of Glamorgan (2.7% swing needed for Labour) and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency). Starmer has been to Gillingham and Rainham (16.5% swing needed for Labour).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

It is, although that's a more complex game in the age of television. And even more so in the age of too-clever-by-half political consultants.

...and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency)...

He was in the Erewash constituency.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Sunak timing this so he can lose and move his family back to California before the school year starts is very funny.

If he hops on a private jet five minutes after the exit poll drops at 22.00 BST, he should be back home in California just in time for the Independence Day fireworks

I fully expect at least one other candidate in his constituency to pledge that if they're elected, they will still be the MP come August.

[Philly D.]

There will be no flights to Rwanda for Rishi to point to... or maybe the plan is to hold the Reform vote hostage?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-69052507

[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.

[Torrain]

He's going to try and tank it so hard he loses Richmond so he doesn't even need to bother calling a by-election.

Most plausible explanation for yesterday’s shambles.

[TheTide]

Huw Merriman (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle) and Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham) have announced their retirements. Has Jo Churchill (Conservative, Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) been mentioned yet? Getting a wee bit hard to keep up with as I suspected it would when the election call was made.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

People are forgetting how high of a climb this would be for Labour.  <snip>

Damn, you know it's going to be a brutal election for the Tories when even Millennial Moderate thinks Labour is going to have a decisive win.

[Compuzled_One]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

So far today, I make it that Sunak has visited the Vale of Glamorgan (2.7% swing needed for Labour) and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency). Starmer has been to Gillingham and Rainham (16.5% swing needed for Labour).

Seems Sunak is weirdly confident.

[WD]

Well, time to get this thing going.




I'm starting my expectations at the benchmark of approximately (so number are neater): 420 Labour, 140 Conservative, 50 Lib-Dem, 16 SNP, 3 Plaid, 3 Others including the Speaker, and 18 obviously from Northern Ireland. I have a rough list, but I would prefer not to go into seat-by-seat detail at this moment.  

People are forgetting how high of a climb this would be for Labour.  In the famous Blair Landslide they gained 146 seats. This prediction would be around that much. Plus for whatever reason right wing parties tend to fall in line and come around more than left wing parties who are overly concerned with “purity” … I happen to like Kier Starmer a lot. But the British public don’t - Labour should win this by default and it’ll be a good showing but polls tighten during a campaign we all know that and the inflation numbers are just enough to put the “but maybe” in the mind of disenchanted Tory voters - so  for sure a likely good night for Labour but the 400’s is unlikely and the poll of polls showing greater than the first Blair Landslide is taking it a little too far IMO.

So a rough idea of where I think this is going…

Labour                     360  (+155)

Conservative           210   (-134)
Liberal Democrat      35   (+20)
SNP                           25   (-18)

This isn’t really true.

[Oryxslayer]

Huw Merriman (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle) and Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham) have announced their retirements. Has Jo Churchill (Conservative, Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) been mentioned yet? Getting a wee bit hard to keep up with as I suspected it would when the election call was made.

Some were already. Things go quick.


Hodge in Barking is also standing down for Labour.

[TheTide]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

So far today, I make it that Sunak has visited the Vale of Glamorgan (2.7% swing needed for Labour) and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency). Starmer has been to Gillingham and Rainham (16.5% swing needed for Labour).

Seems Sunak is weirdly confident.

He has to visit Wales at some point and very few of the current Tory seats have huge majorities.

[Compuzled_One]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

So far today, I make it that Sunak has visited the Vale of Glamorgan (2.7% swing needed for Labour) and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency). Starmer has been to Gillingham and Rainham (16.5% swing needed for Labour).

Seems Sunak is weirdly confident.

He has to visit Wales at some point and very few of the current Tory seats have huge majorities.

Ah, gotcha.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Worth keeping an eye, perhaps, on the constituencies being visited by the leaders.

So far today, I make it that Sunak has visited the Vale of Glamorgan (2.7% swing needed for Labour) and somewhere in Derbyshire (didn't catch where, if it was only a single constituency). Starmer has been to Gillingham and Rainham (16.5% swing needed for Labour).

Seems Sunak is weirdly confident.

He kind of has to, otherwise he may as well say: "I'm going to lose". We will see him in all the "marginals" from last election because the tory party needs to at least pretend to be running a campaign for government.

If Joe Biden was down 15 points he would probably still do the standard trips to Michigan and pennsylvania, even if in practice he might lose washington and massachusetts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Also, as alluded to above, it is considered beneficial to get on the regional news programmes. Although in this case he might perhaps in retrospect wish that he hadn't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As we get later in the campaign, though, don't just watch party leaders, watch other senior figures, especially from the party on the up. A very obvious 'uh oh' moment at the last GE was Michael Gove turning up in Chesterfield one day. That one they missed out on, but it was indicative.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

As we get later in the campaign, though, don't just watch party leaders, watch other senior figures, especially from the party on the up. A very obvious 'uh oh' moment at the last GE was Michael Gove turning up in Chesterfield one day. That one they missed out on, but it was indicative.

It might be interesting to see if people like Shapps, Mordaunt and Hunt visit home once or twice.

[MABA 2020]

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

This is Sunak heritage.

Sunak determined to make Theresa May look good in retrospect

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It might be interesting to see if people like Shapps, Mordaunt and Hunt visit home once or twice.

Mordaunt being Leader of the House and so tied up for the first few days of the campaign sorting out the Washup Period in the Commons is probably not very convenient in what is clearly going to be a hard-fought seat this time around.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We should also note that there is, of course, also an election on in Northern Ireland and that an unusually high proportion of seats seem likely to be competitive this time around.

[TheTide]

Talking of cringeworthy moments (from Sunak and whoever else), what's it going to be like once the Euros actually get going? There isn't much precedent for this. The 1970 World Cup was of course before the 24/7 news cycle, let alone social media. There's already been plenty of stupid photos and posts on Twitter etc from politicians during Euros and World Cups but they weren't during general election campaigns.