British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced a general election for July 4, which seems under the circumstances to amount to a decision to hand the keys to 10 Downing Street to Labour leader Keir Starmer six months earlier than necessary. BBC chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman duly reports “confusion in at least some parts of the Conservative Party about why Rishi Sunak decided to call the general election sooner than was widely expected”.
The extent of the government’s woes is illustrated by The Economist’s polling aggregate, which has Labour leading the Conservatives by 45% to 22%. A prediction model at UK Polling Report credits Labour with 372 out of the House of Commons’ 650 seats, enough for a handsome majority without approaching the scale of Tony Blair’s three victories. However, it also has the Scottish National Party almost matching its 2019 performance with 46 seats, when polling from Scotland would appear to point to extensive Labour gains at their expense.
They could do worse than go back to the 70s. British performance relative to its peers started dropping in the 80s and has never really recovered – although the bout of austerity under Cameron and May did nothing to help.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-184-nostalgia-for-decline
Addendum to my previous post: I somehow missed the ‘dangerous’ part of that headline and was purely addressing the ‘left-wing’ part. I am not agreeing with the idea of Starmer being dangerous or that being on the left necessarily makes one dangerous, in any reasonable sense of the word.
@ag0044
Re counting of votes.
All ballot boxes are brought to the central location for the constituency and counted there.
We don’t count at individual polling stations.
Nor do we count postal votes separately – ballot papers are mixed with on the day votes.
ChrisC
Thanks for that information.
I thought those were the cases but, as I wasn’t certain, kept quiet.
I’m still waiting for the local council to respond to my queries from April about proxy postal voting. [Conspiracy theory: they are trying to minimise the Australian anti-Tory vote.]
Don’t be deceived by Starmer’s mad dash to the centre, and his flip-flopping on everything he said and supported prior to being leader including whilst campaigning to become leader. He was also a key shadow minister in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
He is, and has reaffirmed this week in his own words, a socialist.
At the moment he is taking the advice of Campbell, Mandelson and Blair; meaning he is razor focused on saying whatever he needs not to scare business and the centre-right, but he will very quickly be trying to pass his more socialist policies under the radar when PM.
With a likely majority of around 200, it’s unlikely anything can stop him passing whatever laws he wants in his first term.
@agoo44
There is no such thing as “proxy postal voting”
You can have a postal vote or a proxy.