United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[WD]

Sunak apologizes:

https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1798969474466623902

[soundchaser]

“The last thing I want is for the commemorations to be overshadowed by politics.” Buddy, you’re the one who left early to go do a TV interview.

At this point, I really wouldn’t be surprised if the Cons come third in seat count.

[Pericles]

Nigel Farage spent his speech complaining about people who don't understand the importance of D-Day, but even he didn't imagine the PM was one of them. Shocking!

[WD]

So, it appears that he was never going to go in the first place and the French had to beg him to stay for a little bit, as a “compromise”.

https://reaction.life/d-day-tory-fury-sunak-leaves-early-french-told-he-would-not-attend/

[TheTide]

This is the kind of thing that tends to achieve the fabled 'cut through', more than any actual policy. In the same category as the Ed Miliband bacon sandwich, the Cummings eye test and certainly Partygate are prominent examples in the past ~10 years. And it's in a general election campaign, when people are generally more tuned in anyway. 

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

What they've done (and they were convinced that this was very clever) has been to combine the strongest anti-immigration rhetoric of any government for a rather long time with a deliberate policy of recruiting huge numbers of guest workers to be employed in public services as that is seen as cheaper than training people here.

There is also a section of the Conservative Party/press which genuinely seemed to convince themselves that all the public wanted was ‘control’, and numbers didn’t matter. We would end freedom of movement but more than replace it with Africans and Indians and people would be fine with that.

There was a strain of anti-European globalist sentiment within the elites backing Brexit. Alongside CANZUK and the empire rhetoric, one of the arguments we sometimes heard was that immigration was unpopular only because the policy was discriminatory in favour of Europeans and those who supported it were the Real Racists^(TM). There were some ethnic minority Brexiteers who sincerely believed this.

Farage said in 2015 that he “preferred Indians to Poles”. You will not hear that from any politician today - net migration flows from the UK to the EU now despite our record-breaking numbers, anti-immigration sentiment is higher than ever and Poland is on course to become richer than the UK. It was an easier message for the Tories to listen to than the anti-globalisation impetus behind most of the Brexit movement.

[TheTide]

Where is Catterick Garrison again?

[Torrain]

Am I correct in assuming that Alba is not a factor at all in this election? Aside from potentially causing the SNP grief in a few close seats by siphoning votes?

Alba are running 19 candidates this cycle - none will win, but their Glasgow, Highland and Fife candidates are making things a little easier for Labour and the Lib Dems. They’re not the real vote-splitting threat for the SNP though.

Spoiler alert: more context, thoughts

Show

Their candidates in Airdrie, Kirkcaldy, Lothian East may grease the wheels for Labour, but those seats should be flipping regardless.

Seats in Aberdeen, Grangemouth, Dundee are fairly safe for the SNP – Alba shouldn’t lose this for the SNP unless there’s a perfect storm where a rising Labour tide is pushed over the line to a victory by Alba’s traditional 1-3% of the vote.

If we’re talking SNP vote-siphoning, the Scottish Greens are a comparatively bigger threat. They’ve got candidates in 44/57 Scottish seats, and are running across almost all of the Central Belt, including full slates in Edinburgh and Glasgow for the first time. They also have candidates in SNP targets like NE Fife (where they typically get around 3% - more than the majority in the past two cycles).

As the SNP pivots to the North East - rejecting Labour’s windfall taxation and hinting they may drop Nicola Sturgeon’s presumption against new exploration for oil and gas, they begin to open a vulnerability on their left flank. The Greens will be present in the next Scottish leaders debate, and running a line aimed squarely at those voters.

High likelihood the Greens underperform polling (their votes have played the Holyrood game long enough to know an SNP constituency, Green list vote is more efficient most of the time) - but the odds of them spoiling *somewhere* feels high.

There are four Glasgow seats where both Alba and the Greens are running – that’s were vote splitting is most likely to make an impact.

[MillennialModerate]

https://twitter.com/edwardjdavey/status/1798971643907408206?s=46

OUCH.

[Hnv1]

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

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I think regardless of the result the Tories should replace the 1922 Committee as part of a complete replacement of its internal structure and procedures. (Rather fitting that about hundred years separates then from now, and before then 90 years from the Tamworth Manifesto that reinvented the Tory Party).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I think regardless of the result the Tories should replace the 1922 Committee as part of a complete replacement of its internal structure and procedures. (Rather fitting that about hundred years separates then from now, and before then 90 years from the Tamworth Manifesto that reinvented the Tory Party).

What would replace the 1922 Committee?

[afleitch]

I think regardless of the result the Tories should replace the 1922 Committee as part of a complete replacement of its internal structure and procedures. (Rather fitting that about hundred years separates then from now, and before then 90 years from the Tamworth Manifesto that reinvented the Tory Party).

What would replace the 1922 Committee?

At this rate, the 2024 single taxi.

[Blair]

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)

[TheTide]

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.

[EastAnglianLefty]

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)

Dowden is deputy PM, so would be the natural one to step in under those circumstances. In practice the only duty of the leader is going to be PMQs and a bit of press, those can either be given to a placeholder or divided up amongst whoever's willing.

In practice the Conservative Party isn't particularly bound by formal procedures.

[adma]

This is the kind of thing that tends to achieve the fabled 'cut through', more than any actual policy. In the same category as the Ed Miliband bacon sandwich, the Cummings eye test and certainly Partygate are prominent examples in the past ~10 years. And it's in a general election campaign, when people are generally more tuned in anyway. 

Or in terms of Canada 1993: "is this the face of a Prime Minister?"

[beesley]

This is the kind of thing that tends to achieve the fabled 'cut through', more than any actual policy. In the same category as the Ed Miliband bacon sandwich, the Cummings eye test and certainly Partygate are prominent examples in the past ~10 years. And it's in a general election campaign, when people are generally more tuned in anyway. 

I think you are right. The thing that upsets me the most is that there isn't another future Prime Minister to do it or to rectify things - with the age of veterans this was seen as one of the most important commemorations that could be held. And I am not someone who has any close family military background, but there surely must be plenty who do feeling the same way.

It hasn't bought him any time at all as he now deservedly has to spend today explaining himself.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'll admit that on a purely personal level I'm actually quite offended. I don't think any family members were in Normandy, but as I child I did know some people who were and, fundamentally, it's all my grandparents generation, what they were all involved in in one sense or another.

Politically, well, what does one even say? This is yet another self-inflicted catastrophe. I don't know whether it will necessarily move the polls much (though it definitely increases the chances of one the polling firms with a Reform-friendly methodology showing a tie or a crossover), but that misses the point: this is a campaign that has to move the polls in order to avoid obliteration. Things like this will firm up voters minds and make that increasingly less likely.

[beesley]

Things like this will firm up voters minds and make that increasingly less likely.

I have cropped your post but I agreed with all of it. I'm loath to make comments about 'kinds of voters' in a psephological manner on an issue like this, not least because I think all voters can see why it is bad. However after talking about national service, immigration control and protecting pensions in the opening of his campaign, if he hadn't already convinced the voters those policies were aimed at, one feels this must surely give him little hope of doing so.

[afleitch]

I'll admit that on a purely personal level I'm actually quite offended. I don't think any family members were in Normandy, but as I child I did know some people who were and, fundamentally, it's all my grandparents generation, what they were all involved in in one sense or another.

I feel the same. I think politicians actually come under too much 'scrutiny' over matters nothing to do with their job and to little even it's about their job.

It was one f-cking day. The last day. And centenarians crossed a sea or the ocean to attend.

It's a genuine, completely non-partisan disgrace.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Would echo that. Remembrance Sunday commemorations have changed after the last two decades, because the veterans of the Second World War who were at every memorial in the mid 1990s are almost entirely absent and instead of people remembering friends who never returned, it's people remembering their parents and grandparents and how they felt at those ceremonies.

This is effectively the last gasp of the way things were, and even aside from what a shabby way to behave it is, it means we are focusing on Sunak being a thoughtless clown rather than the world passing before our eyes.

[MillennialModerate]

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

[wbrocks67]

I'll say it again - what I find so interesting about the UK elections this year is that Conservatives are rightfully being punished for things. Like, this is how things are supposed to work in politics - conservatives keep messing up, and voters are reacting to that rationally.

It's such a complete difference from the U.S.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I'll say it again - what I find so interesting about the UK elections this year is that Conservatives are rightfully being punished for things. Like, this is how things are supposed to work in politics - conservatives keep messing up, and voters are reacting to that rationally.

It's such a complete difference from the U.S.

Would it be fair to say that in the UK, political parties are more like contractors who the voters hire and fire to do a job, while in the US they're more of a tribal affiliation (especially on the Republican side)?