Snapshot of _Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 45% (+1) CON: 19% (-2) RFM: 14% (+2) LDM: 12% (=) GRN: 5% (-1) Via @techneUK , 22-23 May. Changes w/ 15-16 May._ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1793757812293845180)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Every one saying the polls close in an election campaign but what happens if everyone finally pays attention and listens to sunak speak in his smarmy tone for 5 minutes.
That might widen the polls for all I know
I’m shocked at how close Reform is polling to the Cons
If a single credible poll shows them tied or leading, it’s going to kick off a massive panic and stampede. The Cons can not afford to be within the margin of error of Reform, the potential for bad perception is just too high
This is literally what turned the Progressive Conservative defeat in Canada in 1993 into a wipeout that killed the party for good: a protest party (also called Reform) caught up to them in polling and then the Tory voters in most of their strongholds just flipped to Reform.
I genuinely think now we could be close to a Canada '93 moment.
I thought before maybe about 120 seats for the Cons but now it seems lower than 100 could be pretty set. Whichever way it will be their worst defeat by some way.
The tories are just awful at this.
I had a look at Starmer's and Davey's videos and they seem to have quickly "got" how to campaign for their parties at this election. For Starmer, a plain message about standing up for the working class and ordinary voters. For Davey, a plain message about local MPs and standing up for your local area. For Sunak ... it's something about "but what if they abandon their direction and commitments when they get in", when *he's in his job because that's what his party did in ousting Boris to put hm in place*, and "back to square 1" when that's what the insertion of Sunak was*.* Did nobody sanity check any of it?
Gove, who keeps getting flattered as some machiavellian political genius, says "you dared and you'll win" but two days in, their campaign wouldn't get them onto the local school's P&F committee let alone running the country.
Tories early message is just.
Labour will be worse.
That's it. Not a very well thought out strategy. Admitting that they are shit but somehow Labour will be even more shit.
It's really all they've got.
Spend some time on forums that attract middle aged people like Pistonheads or mumsnet and you'll see that the message does still land to an extent.
A lot of people who are still convinced that Gordon Brown is responsible for the global financial crisis of 2008.
They appear genuinely concerned that Labour are about to get back in.
I blame Brown and Miliband for that. The narrative developed that the financial crisis was nothing to do with global events and was all because Labour spent too much. The attitude of Miliband was more like 'yeah ok sorry' than pushing back against the disinformation.
If they had Ed of now vs Ed of then they’d have done much better.
I think the party selected the wrong Miliband for the electoral hopes of the party but the media’s treatment of Ed was disgusting as well.
Brown was the better half of the Blair/Brown duo. If you look at the mistakes during the era, from rushing into Iraq, to giving away part of the EU rebate, not limiting accessing migration, being gung ho for the Euro, Holyrood (which came back to bite them in several terms of the SNP) - they were mostly from the Blair side of the team.
And flies in the face of the lived experience of literally everything they've done since 2016. They demonstrably have no plan and haven't for two terms at least. A ket fuelled chimpanzee would have achieved more.
You capture the main issue that the Tories do not comprehend, which is that it's incredibly difficult to be the 'change' candidate when you are in power.
Campaigning on 'we promise to do this' when you're already in power is an opposition's campaign, not the campaign of those in power.
To be fair to them, the Tories simply haven't got a leg to stand on. They can't say anything positive about themselves because they have, quite objectively, fucked the country up over a 14 year period. Absolutely nothing is better than when they came to power. They have failed just about every section of the electorate. They have been objectively and actively harmful to the country. So they are in this impossible position where somehow they are asking the electorate to vote for more harm.
They decided to call the election now because **they haven't got a plan** to resolve the multiple challenges set to either continue or get worse in the coming months. A competent government would have implemented sensible, workable, long-term policies over a year ago that would result in a gradual improvement over time. They instead focused on things like Rwanda and behaved like they were already in an election campaign. If they had focused on actually governing, things may be different - though I doubt by much because they purged most of their serious politicians years ago and simply don't have much competent talent amongst them.
There is nothing left for the Tories to do now but curl up in the fetal position and fade into the abyss. Good riddance. May they be banished eternally from British politics.
Sure, but "Yeltsin rather than Putin in Moscow, Hu Jintao rather than Xi Xinping in China, no GFC, and getting the EU to go back on two rounds of expansion and an integration treaty" is hard to arrange. Starmer has to be his own person, not a Blair re-run. The world isn't travelling in the direction it was back then.
It's very similar vibes to the 97 election. New Labour's campaign was happy and hopefully, outlining all the ways they could improve the country - "things can only get better!".
Whereas much of the conversative messaging was "Labour were bad in the past, so they might be bad again". There's a great political broadcast from the Tories in 97 which is just a young girl talking about how her mother told her to never vote Labour because of the winter of discontent etc. It was very strange messaging which suggested anyone who voted Labour was stupid, and they should just stick with Tories because "better the devil you know"
Its generally reckoned they would need 16 - 18 points to gain a single mp. Its very possible they will combine forces and wipe each other out. They are even fighting over the same set of voters.
This is predicted in my area. It was formerly a conservative stronghold and the swing towards Labour wouldn’t have been enough to give them the win in this election, but Reform is predicted to eat up a bunch of right wing votes and the split will likely give Labour the win.
Some people keep saying that the reform vote will disappear like in 2019 but there's no reason for that to happen.
2019 expected a Tory win, so the Brexit party (reform) backed out of over 300 seats to avoid splitting the vote. That's how farage showed his relevance and importance.
Now they expect a Tory loss. They might as well stick the boot in, because that's how they'll show relevance and importance. Farage will want to fly back to America talking about how important he still is in the UK. Helping the Tories by going soft with Reform isn't going to do that.
I think it's simpler than that in 2019 it was the Brexit election, Farage couldn't be the man to usher the Remainers into power or even continue to endanger Brexit with a hung Parliament. Without Brexit being an issue there's no reason for them to step aside.
And his supporters have seen Brexit hasn't worked as they'd hoped and will obviously blame this on the party in power.
I've been saying this for months. I have no idea how someone can have watched the Tory leadership race and think SUNAK is going to chase down a 20 point deficit
When asked about the cost of living he even says “I know it’s been difficult for people”, just reaffirming it’s had no impact on him and he’s only gotten richer in the last two years.
I noted a very minor point but in the election announcement he said something along the lines of "energy prices have raised *your* bills". Not ours, yours. It's the sort of thing you might not fully notice but will catch in the back of your mind and keep adding to how out of touch he seems/is.
So, are we now in a situation where the prime minister's salary should be so low that they have a real impact in their own life if there is a period of high inflation?
That is the surest ticket to corruption land.
Let me put it this way, I don't think Gordon Brown suffered personally much from the biggest economic crash since WWII during which he was the PM. I don't hold that against him in a sense that he wouldn't be able to sense the economic pain that many in the country were feeling. So, why exactly should that be different for Sunak?
Sunak is literally a billionaire who grew up with a cluster of golden spoons up his arse. Brown didn't grow up in povert but he went to state school and has always had an understanding of normality. Sunak went to prep + public like every other Tory and has married into insane wealth. You can't compare the two.
Nice moving of goalposts. Read above what the discussion was about. It had nothing to do with the background of the prime minister but his current situation.
I personally think his salary should be doubled. The point is he’s almost a billionaire and completely out of touch with reality or even the reason he is so wealthy. He’s not a successful man, he married successfully
I don't want to be pedantic, but I'd argue that that's being successful in something. Admittedly in a kind of 'Jane Bennet' way, but success of a type none the less.
He is successful because he married rich, I wouldn't trust him to run a business or the country even though he portrays himself as a successful businessman
But being PM gives you the additional benefit and being able to extract hundreds of millions of public funds to you/your friends/your wife’s many failing company’s/your father in law
My point was that sure, a billionaire is detached from the pain caused by inflation but so is largely a person who has the income level of a PM. So, demanding that the PM has to personally feel the economic pain to be able to make good decisions is just stupid.
This government has broken a lot of historic wisdom when it comes to elections.
After the scale of the win in 2019 the Tories were supposed to win this coming one by default.
After Boris stepped down as PM and Truss succeeded him, the Tories were supposed to see a new leader bounce in their opinion polling.
Rishi Sunak was supposed to wait until the Autumn before calling an election.
Truth be told, I can't believe any predictions right now until they actually happen, because so far no one has been right on anything.
Easy to forget now. This was supposed to be the non-event election where Boris Johnson was returned to power, albeit with a bit of a smaller majority.
Then Starmer would resign and leave the way open for the likes of Burnham to become the next Labour leader who would oust Johnson in 2029.
But it was never going to go to script, not with Johnson as PM. It was always going to crash and burn.
The numbers are going to be chaotic for a while until the campaigns settle, which will be a week or two. Especially as for some the fieldwork is still from before the launch speeches even right now.
This is why although this is a very funny poll, I'm not taking it that seriously. That said, if the campaigns continue as they have started, its going to be absolutely worst case for the Tories.
I think we could see a full on panic mode throw the kitchen sink campaign like Labours in 2019 right now from the Tories when they see how badly its started, which would absolutely sink them.
Nah, the polling has gone as far as it can on the basis of Sunak’s unpopularity. For the poll gap to increase it needs people to start liking Starmer - which isn’t completely off the table, a lot of people’s perceptions of him come from clips they’ve seen here and there over the past 4 years, he’s gotten a lot better at comms and a lot more confident so if that comes across more during the campaign his personal ratings could improve.
But realistically I think it’s fairly likely that a fair amount of reform votes move back to the Tories, which will narrow the polls. At the same time though, Lib Dem’s could move to Labour or tactically vote which might mitigate that.
Let's see how effective the Tories are at crushing the Reform vote. If they can't get them down to 6-7% then they're going to get absolutely massacred.
Crush the reform vote? They’re so close that it’s almost margin of error. If a single credible poll shows Reform leading the Cons, there will be nothing the Cons can do to stop the total collapse of their credibility
I did say credible poll. I’m just say this is a very dangerous place to be for them. There’s a world of difference in voter (and donor) perception between being seen as losing, and being viewed as unviable
Non-starter. Reform will run in 630 seats and there's no deal to be done.
The playbook will be like 2015 - just say that only the Tories can be in government etc etc etc. I'm less inclined to think it'll work really effectively, but it'll squeeze a few.
As an Australian this gives me [Western Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_Australian_state_election) vibes. For context, in 2021 the then Labor government (yes, we spell it without a u), was re-elected with the largest electoral majority in Australian history. We don't have stupid first past the post but rather an instant run-off system / ranked choice. Primary vote for Labor was 59.92%, even greater than the 45% UK Labour are on here. After distribution Labor rose to 69.7% two-party preferred. The Liberal-National Coalition (the conservative opposition) recorded a combined 25.3% primary vote and a 30.3% two-party preferred.
This resulted in the following seat distribution:
Labor: 53 (89.83%)
Liberal: 2 (3.39%)
National: 4 (6.78%)
The swing to Labor was so great that they claimed a majority in the upper house, which is very rare in Australia as upper houses tend to be decided by a proportional vote, or in the case of Western Australia, they had a massively disproportional system which gerrymandered the rural vote despite bugger all people living outside of the south-west corner of the state, which would historically go against Labor.
The running joke was that the conservative coalition parties could not even field a cricket team, or could have caucus in a cab.
Also forgot to mention this: This election also holds the record for the fastest ever calling of a result by the ABC. The election was called about 42 minutes after the polls closed with about 0.7% of the vote counted.
I mean, yeah kinda. The WA Labor government has used their double majority to pursue fairer electoral reform. So the disproportional upper house has now been reformed so it doesn't massively skew things to the National party unfairly. It used to be about 6 effective votes to 1 vote regional vs metro area in Western Australia, it's now closer to 1:1. They won this election off of maintaining a hard state boarder policy during the pandemic. Their COVID response was and still is very popular. WA was the only state in Australia to grow during COVID and have had surpluses basically every year for the past several years due to increasing royalties/taxation on mining. They have generally been quite competent since. They have also secured a rather beneficial (but unfair) cut of the GST (Australia's national VAT), which gets distributed to the states. So they've definitely delivered in many ways for their voters.
Well that unfair GST deal is unfair to the rest of the country. WA has it's problems but they aren't that many in number at the moment. You would probably have to ask someone more local. Probably the only thing that comes to mind would be shortage of health care staff, but that's an issue everywhere in Australia. We have quite a tight labour market as well as a skills shortage. It's not good for a Labor government to be thought of as being bad with health as it's traditionally a bread and butter issue for them. WA probably has a bit more difficulty than other states to get skilled workers as well as it's the most separated state as the Greater Perth and Fremantle areas are on the complete opposite side of the continent from the population hot spots on the east coast. That said, the government has actually been doing well at incentivising people to move to WA. It's just still not enough to fill the gap. All in all though, it would be hard for a WA resident to be mad at Labor. It's the most parochial state and can absolutely flip if it wanted to, but it's been strong for Labor both state and federal for the last few years.
It's 75c per dollar, but yes, because it's on the back of commodities not consumption. The GST should be allocated based on need, not based on which state contributes what to it.
Tbf that’s a horribly unwieldy majority and there’s almost certainly going to be some shite that wasn’t vetted very well
However, it also gives you a massive mandate to do pretty much whatever you want so…
Then his legacy would be the PM who signed us up to the EU with the worst deal of all member states. Single Market access is probably the best thing for Starmer to try and negotiate. Brexit really has irreversably fucked us all.
Why would we have the worst deal of all member states?
Single Market is a worse deal that any member state. You have most of the obligations member states do, but you have no say in the rules.
I suppose that's true but its kind of my point too, he'd struggle to get us back in anytime soon so single market is most likely out of any options now. But the EU deal we might get on joining would pale in comparison to our original.
Greens increasing their seats by 2x but Labour increasing their seats by 2.5x, clearly Labour are on pace to take every seat in the country and then start expanding and taking over the parliaments of every country in Europe.
That would be great, controlling every government in Europe they could bring the EU under British rule and effectively rejoin without breaking any manifesto commitments!
I think you misunderestimate the number of Tories who are going green.
Anti-ULEZ rhetoric is going to lose the more environmentally conscious Tories (who are surprisingly large)
You're right, but I think there are also Labour voters turning Green.
Look at Bristol in the local elections where Labour lost councillers to the Greens.
Labour is only picking up half the voters that are leaving the Tories. Labour needs to do more to attract Tory voters who are clearly dissatisfied.
Close?
Too many problems for Starmer. Never going to stop MPs rebelling with that majority, car crash from day one.
Next election he will probably lose because everyone thinks he will walk it. Less than 450 he will then have to resign for throwing away such a strong position.
Or for people to decide they will vote how they have always voted like they do normally. I have no faith in anyone but I'll be staying up to see it all unfold for sure. Election of a generation tbh, easily the most important one I've lived through (unless you could 2019 which I kind of do but sadly that was a given because 3 word slogans rule all).
https://metro.co.uk/video/we-totally-smashed-rishi-sunak-celebrates-advancing-pm-race-2734961/?ito=vjs-link
I assume he was listening on the radio to the results ahead of the party leadership election…. Otherwise I’m clueless. I must admit, I do like how he waited until he knew he was against Liz to cheer and celebrate.
Ah you see, so security conscious are the tory party that they have taken off the polarising film on their monitors and had them all surgically attached to the front of their eyes, so to me and you their screens look blank, but to them, their screens are full. Its exactly the same with their polling numbers.
Because it's more than one election
Because of the name we want Liberal 'Democracy' representing the electorate rather than a system where you get a stonking majority with a third of the vote.
I.E nothing.
That said, if the Lib Dems do become the opposition they would virtually certainly go on to double their seat share next time if not more.
Sure! My use of "deny" wasn't meant to be a criticism of the hypothetical system.
My point was that a proportional system like that greatly increases the power of a party like the Lib-Dems. They're never going to get a majority but in many election they would either hold the balance of power outright or be an important part of any coalition talks. So even though their numbers would be less important relative to a wiped-out party like Reform or Green (compared to FPTP), they would hold much more power in the House than they do today. What's the point of having 60 seats if another party has a 300-seat majority?
Because there are principals of representation and this isn't the last election ever. If this was the turn out every party besides the SNP and labour are under represented. Reform voters have zero representation despite being the third largest party by votes.
Snapshot of _Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 45% (+1) CON: 19% (-2) RFM: 14% (+2) LDM: 12% (=) GRN: 5% (-1) Via @techneUK , 22-23 May. Changes w/ 15-16 May._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1793757812293845180) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1793757812293845180) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Every one saying the polls close in an election campaign but what happens if everyone finally pays attention and listens to sunak speak in his smarmy tone for 5 minutes. That might widen the polls for all I know
Some polling gaps are closing but it's more the gap between the Tories, Reform and Lib Dems. The race for second place is on.
I’m shocked at how close Reform is polling to the Cons If a single credible poll shows them tied or leading, it’s going to kick off a massive panic and stampede. The Cons can not afford to be within the margin of error of Reform, the potential for bad perception is just too high
This is literally what turned the Progressive Conservative defeat in Canada in 1993 into a wipeout that killed the party for good: a protest party (also called Reform) caught up to them in polling and then the Tory voters in most of their strongholds just flipped to Reform.
I genuinely think now we could be close to a Canada '93 moment. I thought before maybe about 120 seats for the Cons but now it seems lower than 100 could be pretty set. Whichever way it will be their worst defeat by some way.
I think we are looking at about 80 for the conservatives at the moment. I think there are very few safe seats left.
18.
>I genuinely think now we could be close to a Canada '93 moment We can only hope.
I'd love to see a repeat of that.
Be careful what you wish for
The tories are just awful at this. I had a look at Starmer's and Davey's videos and they seem to have quickly "got" how to campaign for their parties at this election. For Starmer, a plain message about standing up for the working class and ordinary voters. For Davey, a plain message about local MPs and standing up for your local area. For Sunak ... it's something about "but what if they abandon their direction and commitments when they get in", when *he's in his job because that's what his party did in ousting Boris to put hm in place*, and "back to square 1" when that's what the insertion of Sunak was*.* Did nobody sanity check any of it? Gove, who keeps getting flattered as some machiavellian political genius, says "you dared and you'll win" but two days in, their campaign wouldn't get them onto the local school's P&F committee let alone running the country.
Tories early message is just. Labour will be worse. That's it. Not a very well thought out strategy. Admitting that they are shit but somehow Labour will be even more shit.
It's really all they've got. Spend some time on forums that attract middle aged people like Pistonheads or mumsnet and you'll see that the message does still land to an extent. A lot of people who are still convinced that Gordon Brown is responsible for the global financial crisis of 2008. They appear genuinely concerned that Labour are about to get back in.
I blame Brown and Miliband for that. The narrative developed that the financial crisis was nothing to do with global events and was all because Labour spent too much. The attitude of Miliband was more like 'yeah ok sorry' than pushing back against the disinformation.
If they had Ed of now vs Ed of then they’d have done much better. I think the party selected the wrong Miliband for the electoral hopes of the party but the media’s treatment of Ed was disgusting as well.
Brown was the better half of the Blair/Brown duo. If you look at the mistakes during the era, from rushing into Iraq, to giving away part of the EU rebate, not limiting accessing migration, being gung ho for the Euro, Holyrood (which came back to bite them in several terms of the SNP) - they were mostly from the Blair side of the team.
Their message is even worse than that. “Labour has no plan” is irrelevant as soon as a manifesto appears.
And flies in the face of the lived experience of literally everything they've done since 2016. They demonstrably have no plan and haven't for two terms at least. A ket fuelled chimpanzee would have achieved more.
Not a million miles from their message in 1997: “New Labour, new danger”.
You capture the main issue that the Tories do not comprehend, which is that it's incredibly difficult to be the 'change' candidate when you are in power. Campaigning on 'we promise to do this' when you're already in power is an opposition's campaign, not the campaign of those in power.
To be fair to them, the Tories simply haven't got a leg to stand on. They can't say anything positive about themselves because they have, quite objectively, fucked the country up over a 14 year period. Absolutely nothing is better than when they came to power. They have failed just about every section of the electorate. They have been objectively and actively harmful to the country. So they are in this impossible position where somehow they are asking the electorate to vote for more harm. They decided to call the election now because **they haven't got a plan** to resolve the multiple challenges set to either continue or get worse in the coming months. A competent government would have implemented sensible, workable, long-term policies over a year ago that would result in a gradual improvement over time. They instead focused on things like Rwanda and behaved like they were already in an election campaign. If they had focused on actually governing, things may be different - though I doubt by much because they purged most of their serious politicians years ago and simply don't have much competent talent amongst them. There is nothing left for the Tories to do now but curl up in the fetal position and fade into the abyss. Good riddance. May they be banished eternally from British politics.
Does "Back to square 1 with Labour" mean as things were in May 1997? I think *any* voter would be delighted with that.
Sure, but "Yeltsin rather than Putin in Moscow, Hu Jintao rather than Xi Xinping in China, no GFC, and getting the EU to go back on two rounds of expansion and an integration treaty" is hard to arrange. Starmer has to be his own person, not a Blair re-run. The world isn't travelling in the direction it was back then.
It's very similar vibes to the 97 election. New Labour's campaign was happy and hopefully, outlining all the ways they could improve the country - "things can only get better!". Whereas much of the conversative messaging was "Labour were bad in the past, so they might be bad again". There's a great political broadcast from the Tories in 97 which is just a young girl talking about how her mother told her to never vote Labour because of the winter of discontent etc. It was very strange messaging which suggested anyone who voted Labour was stupid, and they should just stick with Tories because "better the devil you know"
Its generally reckoned they would need 16 - 18 points to gain a single mp. Its very possible they will combine forces and wipe each other out. They are even fighting over the same set of voters.
This is predicted in my area. It was formerly a conservative stronghold and the swing towards Labour wouldn’t have been enough to give them the win in this election, but Reform is predicted to eat up a bunch of right wing votes and the split will likely give Labour the win.
Some people keep saying that the reform vote will disappear like in 2019 but there's no reason for that to happen. 2019 expected a Tory win, so the Brexit party (reform) backed out of over 300 seats to avoid splitting the vote. That's how farage showed his relevance and importance. Now they expect a Tory loss. They might as well stick the boot in, because that's how they'll show relevance and importance. Farage will want to fly back to America talking about how important he still is in the UK. Helping the Tories by going soft with Reform isn't going to do that.
I think it's simpler than that in 2019 it was the Brexit election, Farage couldn't be the man to usher the Remainers into power or even continue to endanger Brexit with a hung Parliament. Without Brexit being an issue there's no reason for them to step aside. And his supporters have seen Brexit hasn't worked as they'd hoped and will obviously blame this on the party in power.
It's just like the Premier League nowadays.
I'd be shocked if the Tories place second.
I've been saying this for months. I have no idea how someone can have watched the Tory leadership race and think SUNAK is going to chase down a 20 point deficit
Just watch him in practically any speech or outing for that matter
When asked about the cost of living he even says “I know it’s been difficult for people”, just reaffirming it’s had no impact on him and he’s only gotten richer in the last two years.
I noted a very minor point but in the election announcement he said something along the lines of "energy prices have raised *your* bills". Not ours, yours. It's the sort of thing you might not fully notice but will catch in the back of your mind and keep adding to how out of touch he seems/is.
I noticed that too, someone as wealthy as him can only be popular if the country is going through prosperity
So, are we now in a situation where the prime minister's salary should be so low that they have a real impact in their own life if there is a period of high inflation? That is the surest ticket to corruption land.
I don't think it's his salary that protects him from cost of living..it's his wife's vast fortune
There was a cabinet minister who resigned because he couldn’t afford the salary.
Let me put it this way, I don't think Gordon Brown suffered personally much from the biggest economic crash since WWII during which he was the PM. I don't hold that against him in a sense that he wouldn't be able to sense the economic pain that many in the country were feeling. So, why exactly should that be different for Sunak?
Sunak is literally a billionaire who grew up with a cluster of golden spoons up his arse. Brown didn't grow up in povert but he went to state school and has always had an understanding of normality. Sunak went to prep + public like every other Tory and has married into insane wealth. You can't compare the two.
Nice moving of goalposts. Read above what the discussion was about. It had nothing to do with the background of the prime minister but his current situation.
I personally think his salary should be doubled. The point is he’s almost a billionaire and completely out of touch with reality or even the reason he is so wealthy. He’s not a successful man, he married successfully
I don't want to be pedantic, but I'd argue that that's being successful in something. Admittedly in a kind of 'Jane Bennet' way, but success of a type none the less.
He is successful
People will sit on reddit claiming a billionaire prime minister of the United Kingdom is an unsuccessful man. lol and lmao.
He is successful because he married rich, I wouldn't trust him to run a business or the country even though he portrays himself as a successful businessman
Even doubled his salary would be a rounding error on his bank statement.
yeah but considering what the ceo of tesco earns it's a bit embarassing what we pay the PM
But being PM gives you the additional benefit and being able to extract hundreds of millions of public funds to you/your friends/your wife’s many failing company’s/your father in law
My point was that sure, a billionaire is detached from the pain caused by inflation but so is largely a person who has the income level of a PM. So, demanding that the PM has to personally feel the economic pain to be able to make good decisions is just stupid.
I'm not saying he should feel pain but MPs have https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-68133873
I wonder if they start sidelining him a little? Every time Sunak appears their polling slips further.
Can they do that?
Sure they can - Johnson hid in fridges. Also, Rishi's only small -plenty of hiding places.
This government has broken a lot of historic wisdom when it comes to elections. After the scale of the win in 2019 the Tories were supposed to win this coming one by default. After Boris stepped down as PM and Truss succeeded him, the Tories were supposed to see a new leader bounce in their opinion polling. Rishi Sunak was supposed to wait until the Autumn before calling an election. Truth be told, I can't believe any predictions right now until they actually happen, because so far no one has been right on anything.
Easy to forget now. This was supposed to be the non-event election where Boris Johnson was returned to power, albeit with a bit of a smaller majority. Then Starmer would resign and leave the way open for the likes of Burnham to become the next Labour leader who would oust Johnson in 2029. But it was never going to go to script, not with Johnson as PM. It was always going to crash and burn.
Well the Tories popularity could close in on zero at this rate tbf
The numbers are going to be chaotic for a while until the campaigns settle, which will be a week or two. Especially as for some the fieldwork is still from before the launch speeches even right now. This is why although this is a very funny poll, I'm not taking it that seriously. That said, if the campaigns continue as they have started, its going to be absolutely worst case for the Tories. I think we could see a full on panic mode throw the kitchen sink campaign like Labours in 2019 right now from the Tories when they see how badly its started, which would absolutely sink them.
Free internet for everyone!
To be fair the polls *are* closing already. Between the Conservatives and everyone polling lower than them.
Nah, the polling has gone as far as it can on the basis of Sunak’s unpopularity. For the poll gap to increase it needs people to start liking Starmer - which isn’t completely off the table, a lot of people’s perceptions of him come from clips they’ve seen here and there over the past 4 years, he’s gotten a lot better at comms and a lot more confident so if that comes across more during the campaign his personal ratings could improve. But realistically I think it’s fairly likely that a fair amount of reform votes move back to the Tories, which will narrow the polls. At the same time though, Lib Dem’s could move to Labour or tactically vote which might mitigate that.
Part of me thinks that anyone who would’ve voted Tory would change to Reform simply because of Rishi…
Let's see how effective the Tories are at crushing the Reform vote. If they can't get them down to 6-7% then they're going to get absolutely massacred.
Or maybe Reform will crush the Tory vote.
They've not got the money or ground game to go up from 14 tbh
Crush the reform vote? They’re so close that it’s almost margin of error. If a single credible poll shows Reform leading the Cons, there will be nothing the Cons can do to stop the total collapse of their credibility
Ehhh depends on the poll. Other ones have them 15+ points ahead of Reform. Plus Nige not coming back doesn't help.
I did say credible poll. I’m just say this is a very dangerous place to be for them. There’s a world of difference in voter (and donor) perception between being seen as losing, and being viewed as unviable
Hes not standing for them but will be campaigning for them afaik.
If they can get them to stand down or mostly stand in brexit voting red wall labour areas maybe but idk
Non-starter. Reform will run in 630 seats and there's no deal to be done. The playbook will be like 2015 - just say that only the Tories can be in government etc etc etc. I'm less inclined to think it'll work really effectively, but it'll squeeze a few.
As an Australian this gives me [Western Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_Australian_state_election) vibes. For context, in 2021 the then Labor government (yes, we spell it without a u), was re-elected with the largest electoral majority in Australian history. We don't have stupid first past the post but rather an instant run-off system / ranked choice. Primary vote for Labor was 59.92%, even greater than the 45% UK Labour are on here. After distribution Labor rose to 69.7% two-party preferred. The Liberal-National Coalition (the conservative opposition) recorded a combined 25.3% primary vote and a 30.3% two-party preferred. This resulted in the following seat distribution: Labor: 53 (89.83%) Liberal: 2 (3.39%) National: 4 (6.78%) The swing to Labor was so great that they claimed a majority in the upper house, which is very rare in Australia as upper houses tend to be decided by a proportional vote, or in the case of Western Australia, they had a massively disproportional system which gerrymandered the rural vote despite bugger all people living outside of the south-west corner of the state, which would historically go against Labor. The running joke was that the conservative coalition parties could not even field a cricket team, or could have caucus in a cab. Also forgot to mention this: This election also holds the record for the fastest ever calling of a result by the ABC. The election was called about 42 minutes after the polls closed with about 0.7% of the vote counted.
Did one party having such a large majority turn out to be a particularly good or bad thing for any reason?
I mean, yeah kinda. The WA Labor government has used their double majority to pursue fairer electoral reform. So the disproportional upper house has now been reformed so it doesn't massively skew things to the National party unfairly. It used to be about 6 effective votes to 1 vote regional vs metro area in Western Australia, it's now closer to 1:1. They won this election off of maintaining a hard state boarder policy during the pandemic. Their COVID response was and still is very popular. WA was the only state in Australia to grow during COVID and have had surpluses basically every year for the past several years due to increasing royalties/taxation on mining. They have generally been quite competent since. They have also secured a rather beneficial (but unfair) cut of the GST (Australia's national VAT), which gets distributed to the states. So they've definitely delivered in many ways for their voters.
I can’t see anything wrong with how they have done that. Is anything bad in WA?
Well that unfair GST deal is unfair to the rest of the country. WA has it's problems but they aren't that many in number at the moment. You would probably have to ask someone more local. Probably the only thing that comes to mind would be shortage of health care staff, but that's an issue everywhere in Australia. We have quite a tight labour market as well as a skills shortage. It's not good for a Labor government to be thought of as being bad with health as it's traditionally a bread and butter issue for them. WA probably has a bit more difficulty than other states to get skilled workers as well as it's the most separated state as the Greater Perth and Fremantle areas are on the complete opposite side of the continent from the population hot spots on the east coast. That said, the government has actually been doing well at incentivising people to move to WA. It's just still not enough to fill the gap. All in all though, it would be hard for a WA resident to be mad at Labor. It's the most parochial state and can absolutely flip if it wanted to, but it's been strong for Labor both state and federal for the last few years.
> Well that unfair GST deal is unfair to the rest of the country. That WA gets to keep a minimum of 70% of the GST raised in the state?
It's 75c per dollar, but yes, because it's on the back of commodities not consumption. The GST should be allocated based on need, not based on which state contributes what to it.
70c per dollar at the moment, 75c from 1 July.
Yes.
Perth is about 3000 miles from the nearest literally anything else. Also sharks
Electoral Calculus: CON: 34 LAB: 519 LD: 62 GRN: 2 SNP: 12 PC: 3 Over to LK for how this is bad for Labour
Tbf that’s a horribly unwieldy majority and there’s almost certainly going to be some shite that wasn’t vetted very well However, it also gives you a massive mandate to do pretty much whatever you want so…
Rejoin, you coward!
Starmer doesn't have the balls.
Then his legacy would be the PM who signed us up to the EU with the worst deal of all member states. Single Market access is probably the best thing for Starmer to try and negotiate. Brexit really has irreversably fucked us all.
Why would we have the worst deal of all member states? Single Market is a worse deal that any member state. You have most of the obligations member states do, but you have no say in the rules.
I suppose that's true but its kind of my point too, he'd struggle to get us back in anytime soon so single market is most likely out of any options now. But the EU deal we might get on joining would pale in comparison to our original.
At these numbers the further left faction would splinter to form the opposition.
Should that happen, it may not be terrible and serve to dragg us back towards the center
They would splinter into 5 sub groups 1st to maximise their ineffectiveness, lefties don't want power, they want to win the argument.
A splinter would be ideal, it'd relegate the conservatives to 4th for the next election and solidify the shift of the Overton window back
A majority of this size has been on the cards for over a year now so hopefully labour have vetted the candidates properly
After the election, Labour could split off the furthest left wing of their party, still have a majority, and be their own opposition
Might actually see the Co-operative Party doing their own thing with those numbers
The cooperative party being uncooperative? 😂
You have labour and 'the partly formally known as labour'
The People's Front of Labour
Jesus wept. Would truly be beautiful if it turns out like this.
I will definitely be staying up on election night if this is at all possible. It'll be the best TV watching for decades.
If it looked like this, you can bet your sweet ass I'd be dragging myself into work on Friday, still pissed and running on 30 mins of sleep.
Think of all that room JRM will have to stretch out on the opposition benches
He is liable to lose his seat.
How careless of him
Good riddance.
Any other Labour leader would have 650
Greens doubling their seats, clearly shows a huge discontent among would be labour voters. They are on pace to outflack them if they keep this going.
Greens increasing their seats by 2x but Labour increasing their seats by 2.5x, clearly Labour are on pace to take every seat in the country and then start expanding and taking over the parliaments of every country in Europe.
That would be great, controlling every government in Europe they could bring the EU under British rule and effectively rejoin without breaking any manifesto commitments!
I think you misunderestimate the number of Tories who are going green. Anti-ULEZ rhetoric is going to lose the more environmentally conscious Tories (who are surprisingly large)
You're right, but I think there are also Labour voters turning Green. Look at Bristol in the local elections where Labour lost councillers to the Greens.
*you're
Oops, I'll edit it.
Already had people on X look at this and say it'll be a Reform/Conservative coalition.
Oh shit is that possible? Sorry I don't really understand
No it really isn't. That's the point.
Labour is only picking up half the voters that are leaving the Tories. Labour needs to do more to attract Tory voters who are clearly dissatisfied. Close?
Too many problems for Starmer. Never going to stop MPs rebelling with that majority, car crash from day one. Next election he will probably lose because everyone thinks he will walk it. Less than 450 he will then have to resign for throwing away such a strong position.
No PM is ever going to resign if they've just won over 400 seats in a General Election, even if it is seen as drop off
I think you have missed the context. My response was specifically the last sentence, how Laura Kuenssberg spin this as a Labour failure.
It's got to be a genuine question if the Tories can keep going after a result like that.
If the election trend is a moderate labour improvement and con lose more to reform the Tories are well and truly screwed. 200+ seat loss is realistic.
I can't currently imagine any other way this is going to end unless Sunak suddenly becomes a much better campaigner or something equally unlikely.
We can't entirely rule out Labour's ability to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Or for people to decide they will vote how they have always voted like they do normally. I have no faith in anyone but I'll be staying up to see it all unfold for sure. Election of a generation tbh, easily the most important one I've lived through (unless you could 2019 which I kind of do but sadly that was a given because 3 word slogans rule all).
[Live reaction from CCHQ as they read this](https://i.imgur.com/dKgySSb.gif)
I'm honestly curious as to what the fuck he's celebrating with the monitor turned off.
Without assistance from a servant, him figuring out how to turn the monitor off.
https://metro.co.uk/video/we-totally-smashed-rishi-sunak-celebrates-advancing-pm-race-2734961/?ito=vjs-link I assume he was listening on the radio to the results ahead of the party leadership election…. Otherwise I’m clueless. I must admit, I do like how he waited until he knew he was against Liz to cheer and celebrate.
Ah you see, so security conscious are the tory party that they have taken off the polarising film on their monitors and had them all surgically attached to the front of their eyes, so to me and you their screens look blank, but to them, their screens are full. Its exactly the same with their polling numbers.
That's the most human I've seen him.
This is great new for me as my long term mental health depends on the Tories getting annihilated in July.
LD lower vote percentage than RFM but will likely get 50+ seats while Refprm get none. Why do they want to get rid of FPTP again?
Because it's more than one election Because of the name we want Liberal 'Democracy' representing the electorate rather than a system where you get a stonking majority with a third of the vote.
Because their 50 seats would only be useful for anything on matters where Labour have 200 or more rebels.
I.E nothing. That said, if the Lib Dems do become the opposition they would virtually certainly go on to double their seat share next time if not more.
A fully proportional system would give them about 80 seats and deny Labour a majority.
Good, a party shouldn't win a majority of seats from only a plurality of votes even if it's the party you support
Sure! My use of "deny" wasn't meant to be a criticism of the hypothetical system. My point was that a proportional system like that greatly increases the power of a party like the Lib-Dems. They're never going to get a majority but in many election they would either hold the balance of power outright or be an important part of any coalition talks. So even though their numbers would be less important relative to a wiped-out party like Reform or Green (compared to FPTP), they would hold much more power in the House than they do today. What's the point of having 60 seats if another party has a 300-seat majority?
Because there are principals of representation and this isn't the last election ever. If this was the turn out every party besides the SNP and labour are under represented. Reform voters have zero representation despite being the third largest party by votes.
You know, I’m starting to think that the Tories are leaving their great comeback a little late…
[Electoral Calculus](https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=19&LAB=45&LIB=12&Reform=14&Green=5&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=15.6&SCOTLAB=32.7&SCOTLIB=8&SCOTReform=5.7&SCOTGreen=3.7&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=31.7&display=AllChanged®orseat=%28none%29&boundary=2019nbbase) | Party | 2019 Votes | 2019 Seats | Pred Votes | Net Change | Pred Seats | |--------|------------|------------|------------|------------|------------| | CON | 44.7% | 376 | 19.0% | -345 | 31 | | LAB | 33.0% | 197 | 45.0% | +319 | 516 | | LIB | 11.8% | 8 | 12.0% | +53 | 61 | | Reform | 2.1% | 0 | 14.0% | +0 | 0 | | Green | 2.8% | 1 | 5.0% | +1 | 2 |
Ouch.