The 2024 UK General Election - news, speculation and updates

[Artaxerxes]

I wonder who plans Sunak's visits? He went to see some sheep today and was shocked to find out that sheep are fickle fuckers. Anyone who has spent any time with sheep could have told him that.

Ooh, got videos?

 

[brogdale]

"if"

 

[steveo87]

Ooh, got videos?

 

[Artaxerxes]

The metaphors here

 

[Bingoman]

"if"

View attachment 429559

Indeed the "if" he holds on to seat of course

 

[Puddy_Tat]

at least there were no involved...

 

[Voley]

Ed Davey would've parachuted in and rode one off into the sunset, firing a six-shooter.

 

[pbsmooth]

I wonder how Call Me Dave is feeling about his decision to return to the flock…

 

[Elpenor]

Ed Davey would've parachuted in and rode one off into the sunset, firing a six-shooter.

Then impersonated a border collie to round them up

 

[oryx]

The sheep getting vocal in their opinions of the Conservatives.

'Meh'
'Bleagh'
'Me-e-e-e-eh'!

 

[Nine Bob Note]

I wonder how Call Me Dave is feeling about his decision to return to the flock…

I heard Gammon Radio a couple of days ago reporting (i.e. implying without evidence, but very much in the spirit of journalistic integrity, political neutrality and 'common sense') that he's planning to renounce his peerage and move back to the commons to lead the party. Chances of this being complete bollocks?

 

[GarveyLives]

The BBC will allow Reform UK Party Limited to take part in an extra Question Time leaders’ special after its majority (53%) shareholder, Nigel Farage complained about being excluded from the programme.

Farage had demanded a place on the BBC’s main four-way leaders’ debate panel with the Conservative, Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrats on 20 June 2024, Question Time leaders’ special featuring representatives from Reform UK Party Limited and the Green Party, to be broadcast on the evening of 28 June 2024.

The following is an indication of what to expect from Reform UK Party Limited's majority shareholder:

​

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I heard Gammon Radio a couple of days ago reporting (i.e. implying without evidence, but very much in the spirit of journalistic integrity, political neutrality and 'common sense') that he's planning to renounce his peerage and move back to the commons to lead the party. Chances of this being complete bollocks?

would be possible, but how many of the remaining MPs after the election / party membership would support a potential leader who was pro-remain and (by tory standards) relatively centrist?

and of course they'd have to find an MP with a safe seat who was willing to step down (or up to the lords)

would be mildly amusing if he renounced his peerage then lost at the by-election and / or didn't get voted in as party leader

although i don't know the vermin party rules - it might be possible for him to become party leader while still in the lords and then go through the other bits - think that's what happened with alec douglas-home in the 60s (and that's when they were in government so he became PM as well) but they might have changed the rules since then.

 

[Wilf]

The founder of phones4you, who donated 500k to the Tories at the last election, has come out in support for Labour this time.

View attachment 429549

What all of that says about Labour, yuk.

 

[redsquirrel]

Christ, I go away for a couple of days and come back to find the 'social democrats' arguing for more technocratic stitch ups and for political parties becoming less democratic than your average hobby group.

Still the more things change the more they stay the same - following in the footsteps of the first Labour PM.

As both Clark and Torrance recount, despite the misgivings of some of his colleagues, the allocation of jobs was left almost entirely to MacDonald; there was no input from the wider party. MacDonald, meanwhile, confided to Snowden that he was ‘appalled’ by the quality of the Labour MPs, who were mostly ‘new and undisciplined’ and would demand that the government ‘do all sorts of impossible things’. The prominence of former Liberals and Conservatives in the cabinet was at least in part intended to signal the unthreatening party Labour might become. There was also a desire to demonstrate that the new government would not represent an abrupt departure, that Labour could govern in a similar manner to its predecessors. This necessitated the marginalisation of the party’s left, represented in cabinet only by Jowett as first commissioner of works and Wheatley as health secretary. Important radical voices, such as George Lansbury, the former mayor of Poplar, who had been imprisoned in 1921 for leading a rates rebellion there, were left out. Torrance suggests that Lansbury’s exclusion was in deference to the king, who had been upset by his criticisms of the monarchy during the election campaign. MacDonald’s restoration as Labour leader in 1922 had relied on support from left-wing MPs, but he clearly did not feel indebted to them.

This optimism was combined with a distrust of the electorate, who, MacDonald believed, were yet to show they were worthy of socialism. Always present, this suspicion of the masses had been deepened by MacDonald’s wartime experiences, when his reputation as a pacifist saw him attacked in the press and his illegitimacy publicised, resulting in his defeat in Leicester West at the 1918 general election. The public were, he concluded, ‘credulous’, too often moved by ‘passion’; socialism would come only when voters showed they were ‘intelligent enough’ to want it. This passive, even fatalistic, view of political change was matched by a Whiggish reverence for Britain’s political institutions. Parliament, in MacDonald’s view, was a neutral site, a tool for governing that Labour could command as soon as the electorate allowed. Rejecting the idea that British socialists could learn anything from the Russian Revolution, MacDonald maintained in 1919 that, by winning ‘a parliamentary election’, Labour could accrue ‘all the power that Lenin had to get by a revolution’.

 

[Cerv]

Labour continue to find rakes to keep stepping on (it's the same rake)

General election 2024: Labour suspends candidate over 'pro-Russian' post

Andy Brown, standing in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, is suspended by the party pending an investigation.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Dogsauce]

"if"

View attachment 429559

The game here is to improve his chances in his own seat by suggesting he could be leader which would give status to his local area and make voting for him more worthwhile. But the wider picture is one of climbing over the corpses of colleagues to get out of the pit, and if they all start doing this it’ll look undignified and harm them nationally. You’re supposed to wait until the doctor calls it.

 

[brogdale]

Two contrasting (polling) takes on the potential of tactical voting to kill off the Tory party:


Only 18% of Deltapoll's (Oct 2023) respondents knew the information required to vote tactically. They could, of course, look it up.

 

[PR1Berske]

Leaflets from TUSC and Communist League

Real-time #ElectionLeaflet monitoring | ElectionLeaflets.org

Real-time election leaflet monitoring

electionleaflets.org

Real-time #ElectionLeaflet monitoring | ElectionLeaflets.org

Real-time election leaflet monitoring

electionleaflets.org

 

[PR1Berske]

General Election 2024

Week One: The Farce of Rishi Sunak
Week Two: Labour vs Labour
Week Three: The Rise (... again) of Nigel Farage
Week Four: D-Day Crash Landings
Week Five: Supermajorities, tax and spend black holes, Contracts with Nigel Farage, We're All Seat Projection Websites Now, and Ed Davey Having A Lovely Time.

Two weeks to go.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Two contrasting (polling) takes on the potential of tactical voting to kill off the Tory party:


Only 18% of Deltapoll's (Oct 2023) respondents knew the information required to vote tactically. They could, of course, look it up.

18% is shocking, but even worst, only 52% could say who won their seat in 2019, WTF?

 

[andysays]

18% is shocking, but even worst, only 52% could say who won their seat in 2019, WTF?

Some (not all, obvs) of that may perhaps be the result of boundary changes and people not being sure of which constituency they're in now.

Is there a figure available for what % of voters are in a different constituency now to 2019?

 

[moochedit]

18% is shocking, but even worst, only 52% could say who won their seat in 2019, WTF?

Doesn't surprise me at all. I know in my seat labour came first and tories second and i'm sure many people on here know who won and came second in their area but a lot of people are not election nerds like us

It will probably save some tory seats unfortunately as people "guess wrongly". Still at least the right is also split for a change

 

[brogdale]

Some (not all, obvs) of that may perhaps be the result of boundary changes and people not being sure of which constituency they're in now.

Is there a figure available for what % of voters are in a different constituency now to 2019?

I don't know of such a figure but, then again, i haven't looked, tbf.

Anyone who's done door-knocking will be unsurprised by these figures. Back when I did such stuff for the LP, I remember the significant numbers of fellow constituents who were unaware of impending elections, what constituency they lived in, what party differences existed or even, in 1 or 2 extreme cases, did not have any grasp on what it meant to vote.

 

[The39thStep]

The founder of phones4you, who donated 500k to the Tories at the last election, has come out in support for Labour this time.

View attachment 429549

In a nutshell

 

[moochedit]

Also i suspect a lot of people don't really understand the problems with FPTP and why tactical voting would be needed in the first place.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

what party differences existed

That one can be tricky tbf.

 

[brogdale]

That one can be tricky tbf.

Agreed, but back then (1979 - 1987) it seemed more straight-forward.

 

[Dogsauce]

Also i suspect a lot of people don't really understand the problems with FPTP and why tactical voting would be needed in the first place.

There’s also a problem of different parties/interests pushing different messages as to who the contender is, and depending which data they select. Some might point to recent local election results, but it tends to be more politically engaged people voting in those which likely results in a proportionally higher vote for smaller parties like the Greens and Lib Dems. Alternatively use the last GE (when smaller parties squeezed by Corbyn vs Johnson), or choose whatever recent polling supports your party (local/national). I don’t know if there’s an honest authority anywhere pointing out the best chances.

The Lib Dems are notorious for their dishonest bar graphs etc, and cost Labour several seats last time round, including Kensington which they dishonestly portrayed themselves as having a chance. There ought to be pacts on this sort of stuff, even if not public. It would be beneficial to both parties, with chance of LDs becoming official opposition if they work together on this.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I don't know of such a figure but, then again, i haven't looked, tbf.

Anyone who's done door-knocking will be unsurprised by these figures. Back when I did such stuff for the LP, I remember the significant numbers of fellow constituents who were unaware of impending elections, what constituency they lived in, what party differences existed or even, in 1 or 2 extreme cases, did not have any grasp on what it meant to vote.

Yeah it’s depressing how little awareness people can have of just the most basic politics

It’s not even unengaged it’s just apathy or total blindness outside of what the man on the telly says to vote for