UK election called for July 4

Rishi Sunak calls an early election his party seemingly has no chance of winning.

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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

106 comments on “UK election called for July 4”

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  2. Ye gods, the only way he could have looked even more pathetic is if he had been tarred and feathered on top of that.

  3. Ye gods, the only way he could have looked even more pathetic is if he had been tarred and feathered on top of that.

    I don’t think the “Larry in the window” photo is current – but it fits nicely.

    I suspect Larry will serve his sixth Prime Minister for a bit, and then retire. A good innings.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_(cat)

  4. Discussions of contemporary British political chaos remind me of the leadership struggle in 1990 involving Michael Heseltine, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which was characterised by one commentator at the time as a battle between the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

  6. I was of course referring to Rishi Sunak. Larry the Chief Mouser is looking relatively majestic meanwhile.

    Nobody calls Larry “pathetic”… Rookie mistake:

    Larry the Downing Street cat beats up Rishi Sunak’s dog, prime minister’s wife reveals
    https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/larry-the-cat-downing-street-sunak-dog-b2417826.html

    Boris Johnson claims Larry the cat is ‘thug’ who beat up his dog Dilyn
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-daily-mail-larry-cat-dilyn-b2468741.html

  7. FUBAR says:
    Thursday, May 23, 2024 at 12:17 pm
    One good thing that will come out of this election will the good kick in the ovaries for the SNP that is coming.
    ————
    Why?

    The Precious Union is by far the safest with the SNP in power.

    They vacuum up a large proportion of the independence votes and make sure they’re ineffective.

    Anyway, a London Labour Government under Lord Starmer should revive the independence vote. 🙂

  8. Tricot

    Penny Mordaunt is anything but a hard-right ideologue! In fact she is regarded as on the centrist (but mildly populist) wing of the party. It’s been known for a while that she is the leader that Labour would fear most, but seems like they can stop worrying now. . .

    Meanwhile, to set the record straight, the Tories’ polling rot set in when they knifed Boris. They were within a few points of Labour up to then, quite good for mid-term 3rd term government in turbulent times.

    Their polling decline started somewhat during the proxy period when the combination of Boris’s own party, the main opposition and most of the media (including the right-wing Daily Telegraph) were all ‘knives out’ for Boris but before he was forced to resign. After all, if the Tories didn’t believe in themselves and decided to fight each other why should the country trust them. . . but Boris was still leader. . . so the freefall started once he’d gone and Liz Truss’s fateful budget came along. . . hard to believe how fickle public opinion is, how quickly the floating voter class can change its perception not simply of something or somebody ‘right now’ but of a whole decade of politics suddenly.

    The whole mantra now in the UK is ’14 years of decline’, quite ridiculously IMHO as that article cited from ‘The Conversation’ earlier on this thread pointed out.

    But however good or not Sunak is at ‘doing things’ he’s a downright awful politician whose government has failed to defend/market itself or push back on Labour’s lines against them, ever since Liz Truss was PM. They honestly couldn’t be worse off now if they’d stuck with Liz Truss, who at least gave the impression of believing in something rather than nothing in particular.
    Sunak is nearly as boring and uncharismatic as Starmer as well as heading up a government now looking stale.

  9. Another crazy part of Sunak’s decision to hold a campaign now is that his party are the ones who need to regain the country’s attention somehow so would benefit from:

    a) a long campaign; and

    b) not clashing with major public events.

    Yet he chose:

    1. A short campaign; and

    2. A period of time when the UK football-mad public will mostly be spending their spare time watching everything to do with Euro 2024 rather than e.g. election campaigning – this massively favours Labour.

  11. “General election 2024 – live: Tories trail Labour by 26 points in poll as Sunak’s party bleeds support”
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-2024-sunak-starmer-labour-4th-july-b2550022.html

    “Jeremy Corbyn is set to stand against Labour as an independent candidate in Islington North at the general election.”
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-general-election-2024-islington-north-independent-b2550031.html

    “Rishi Sunak faces a record number of Tories standing down before July’s general election after five more of his MPs announced that they would not contest their seats.

    Seventy-two Conservative MPs have now declared that they plan not to leave Parliament rather than stand for re-election.

    The current record is 75 – the number of Tories who stood down ahead of the Labour landslide at the 1997 general election.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/23/politics-latest-news-general-election-polls-sunak-starmer/

  12. The Tories did not “knife” Alexander de Pfeffel, he lost confidence of the Tories because he knowingly appointed a sexual predator to deputy whip and then lied about knowing about it when he did so. It took a while, but even the Tories found a Boris lie they couldn’t stomach.

  13. Oliver (on previous page): Yes, I did think of adding “And this revolution _will_ be televised” to my earlier post.

  14. BTSays

    “ 2. A period of time when the UK football-mad public will mostly be spending their spare time watching everything to do with Euro 2024 rather than e.g. election campaigning – this massively favours Labour.”

    That struck me about Sunak’s timing decision too. He could have easily delayed a month to avoid the problem. Why now?

    There has been talk of a leadership challenge before parliament is closed. Was Sunak trying to head off such a challenge by going early?

  15. Rishi Sunak is a wealthy man. I wonder if his is nothing more than, lets save the furniture as best we can and move on. The alternative is 6 more months of misery.

  16. BTSays
    Interesting insights….
    Admittedly I get most of my news of the UK these days from the BBC (mainly Radio 4) and from family in the UK. As a result the ‘news’ is a bit of a mixed bag.
    My general view – and seems to be one distilled as the conventional wisdom – is that Sunak has gone earlier than he said he would – thus making him look a bit wonky in his promise. He was aware the Rwanda exercise would continue to be messy (leaving the intention literally in the air rather than in the act) and hoping the recent fall in inflation would give him a good news story to fight on.
    This morning the talk is all about how ‘personal’ the campaign is likely to get as a battle between himself and the Labour leader in relation to personal qualities.
    My own view, for what is it worth, is that the Conservatives are riven by disagreement on the direction the party should take and with some large numbers of MP calling it quits, is clearly showing that the Conservative government is dying of old age.
    The mantra of “Time for a Change” is all Labour has to bang on about one senses to win this election.
    Labour’s approach has two enemies – one is their own possible arrogance and two, a malaise among voters to give a toss.

  17. I know people argue about too old leaders these days. But at 16, Larry the Cat is still sharper of mind and claw than any of his rivals for power (in UK or USA). Its time to put your paw up Larry, Britain needs a real leader.

  18. Tricot 9.31 am

    Thanks, that’s fair.

    Bob 8.38 am

    Re Boris’s departure, that’s your opinion, which is wholly different to mine and many others. Either way, politically it’s clear that it was a disastrous thing for the Tories to do / have done. The polls don’t lie.

  20. No worries BTsays…
    It took my family 5 weeks in a very old P&O liner to get here many years ago….literally a lot of water under the bridge since then.
    For me UK is all about “kith and kin”……Been there when things were great in the UK and not so good, so always have half an eye/ear on what goes on.

  24. Sunak spent the first day of the campaign in Belfast where he announced the government would provide unspecified funds to rebuild Casement Stadium.
    Why bother? None of the mainstream UK parties seriously contest the NI seats and the small number of seats in play will make no difference

  25. The logic of Sunak going to Northern Ireland is a little questionable. It is probably a little bit of “See we are not leaving anyone behind” type stuff whilst they leave the majority of the UK behind.
    Maybe a wink and nudge to the Nationalists that “We won’t forget that NI is British” in the forlorn hope that the DUP and UUP end up holding the balance of power, although the polls suggest it is not going to be likely that the Labor doesn’t win a majority.

  26. NI polling has the DUP at 21% – they are in deep strife after the arrest of their leader and a split over re-entering Stormont. Good luck if Rishi thinks he’s a born again Theresa May

  27. Rishi Sunak taking a day off from campaigning, to reportedly sit down with his PR team and relaunch his election campaign, because the first 3 days have been a trainwreck so far, which he can’t afford when he’s already 20 points or more behind Labour.
    Michael Gove announced he’s leaving politics, probably because the Lib Dems are breathing down his neck in his seat of Surrey Heath. The number of Tory MPs not recontesting their seats in the next election has risen to 76

  29. Herald Sun 25/05. Credlin
    Are some senior people inside the Labor movement finally starting to wake up to the insanity of thinking that a modern economy can run on intermittent renewable power?

    First, the South Australian premier said that he would be open to a nuclear industry in his state; second, the NSW Premier has agreed to pay up to $225 million a year to keep open the Eraring coal-fired power station that generates a quarter of the state’s electricity; and third, the West Australian premier has just said that his state’s emissions should rise so that world’s might fall.

    (Spare a thought for poor old Victoria where they’re now worried they will run out of gas in two years after finally admitting they need it to power the state).
    _____________________
    What a fucking mess.
    Does anyone in Labor actually know what they are doing.
    Bowen and King are all over the shop.

  30. How bad does your campaigning effort need to be if you need to take a day off 2 days in the campaign which you called? I could understand if the election had been sprung on a leader who was wrong footed to need a day to discuss tactics, but Sunak had the advantage of calling the election!

    The Tories might be better off with Sunak being bed ridden with a cold or something.

  31. Sunak trying to kill his youth vote by promising to bring back national service. I’m sure the Brexit boomers will love it though.

  32. The National service policy is 12 months full time in the military (for which there will be only 30,000 spots) or one weekend a month “volunteering” in some form of community service (I love how “Volunteering” is used to mean not paid work instead what it actually means).

    Given there is generally about 3/4 million people turning 18 each year in the UK, I think most people would be force into the “Volunteering” plan – which for those don’t have jobs or need to work on weekends is fine but a lot young people, weekends are for employment. Additionally to check and certify that 3/4 million “volunteers” are doing their duty is going to cost many hundred of millions of pounds – Plus who is going to insure them against injuries that occur whilst undertaking the work.

    Clearly it has not been worked through properly as it has probably just a brain fart of Sunak’s inner circle yesterday. Given the Tories have an almost zero chance of winning, it is not happening any time soon.

    What it might do is put idea of national service to rest for a few decades.

    Also the Tories have now said they won’t be able to jail people for not doing their service either (probably because their prisons are already full).

  33. The National Service idea probably is the nail in the coffin for the Tories. Those in the younger age bracket will not want a bar of it, the country can’t afford it and the older generation who may have been part of it years ago, will see through this as just a stunt…..

  34. There’s not much of a Conservative youth vote to kill – every poll I can recall for years has their under-25 vote in single digits – but what this does do is make it more likely that they will turn up to the polls to vote for someone else.

  35. Re Adrian’s opening comment about the Scotland part of the UKPR seat model .. had a look at the site today

    ‘Just in time for the election we have overhauled our algorithm to fix the main complaint of followers. The algorithm hitherto applied national polling results to Scotland, this dramatically underestimated changes in support for parties in Scotland. We now apply much greater weight to Scotland specific polling versus national polling. As a result our forecast for SNP seats has dropped from in the forty seat area to in the high teens. This big change in the seats calculation pushes up the Labour seat count at the expense of the SNP’

    Current figures are

    Lab 396
    Con 189
    LD 29
    SNP 16
    Green 1
    Other 19

    Lab majority 142
    __________________________________________________________
    This is what they call the ‘Default Model’ .. I notice that their ‘UNS’ model has a Labour majority of 188

    If the cricket bats are out and tactical voting spikes I cannot see Labour underperforming UNS in the round

  36. Just another note on the UKPR prediction model

    The figures above are on the new boundaries .. on the old boundaries the changes are Lab +4, Con -6 and Others +2

  39. In 1986 the BBC broadcast an episode of “Yes, Prime Minister” where hapless PM Jim Hacker wanted to reintroduce national service (The Grand Design)

    Almost 40 years later the hapless Rishi Sunak is making it a manifesto proposal.

    I’ll cost £ 2.5 billion (that we don’t have or if we did could be spent on better things)

    I’m expecting soon that they’ll want to bring back hanging and corporal punishment back to schools.

    You really can’t make this stuff up.

  40. I recall it was also a thing in The Final Cut (Part 3 of the UK version of House of Cards) where Francis Urquhart suddenly reinstates conscription in order to distract everyone from another scandal.

    It ultimately backfires on him when conscripts present in a conflict in Cyprus end up shooting civilians, including children in a situation brought about by his direct orders.

    It’s like Sunak is actively trying to lose the election as badly as possible.

  41. I’m just back from a deferred (from 2020) visit to the UK. Talking to groups of friends and family, who would mainly call themselves upper-middle-class Conservative voters (we are all aged in the mid-50s to mid-70s), they all said that Labor will win this election easily. No surprise there.

    There was a general, but not unanimous, feeling was that Johnson was/is a complete effing twat. Gove too, and most were glad to see that he is going. Mordant is not seen as a leader … yet … maybe.

    Some members of the family/friends groups are still in business. I found it interesting that while they agreed that the UK economy was a (bit of a) mess, it was not Brexit that caused this. It was COVID, and the government’s actions, or lack of them.

    As for the “cost of living crisis”, I didn’t see any signs of it in the areas I visited (London, south-east England, and Scottish Highlands). Eateries were full, supermarkets busy, streets busy, effing tourists everywhere. Maybe I just wasn’t in the “right” areas.

    As a side-note. The government in its wisdom has recently extended the vote in British general elections to any British citizens living overseas. I’ve lived in Australia for 50 years and will be voting in this upcoming election. Crazy.

  42. Hi ag0044, That is interesting, a few questions for you, if you do not mind…

    Do you get enrolled in whatever electorate you last lived in (50 years ago!), or something else?

    Do you get a postal vote or have to roll up to an embassy / consulate? And where and when are the votes counted?

    Any idea how many extra eligible voters, that there would be?

    Do your children / grandchildren also get to vote (assuming they would have British citizenship by descent, if not actually born there).

    Thankyou.

  44. I reckon Sunak thinks stuff will be even worse if he waits, and maybe trying to bank on a general lift in national mood over summer (especially if England do well in the football).

    Frankly, the Tories ought to have gone to a general election after rolling Boris and definitely after rolling Truss as well. The idea of either Truss or Sunak having a popular mandate for their governments has been laughable. But legally they got to stick in power a bit longer for all the good it has done them.

  45. Ray- that’s a hilarious headline considering that some of the Bludgers who follow UK politics have been having apoplexy for years at every mention of Starmer’s name because he’s not left enough for them. He’s never struck me as very left either. Very Tony Blair without the religious crusader streak.

  46. @Fargo61

    You get registered for the constituency based on your last address.

    You vote via postal vote – and the risks of that not getting to you in time to gat it back by polling day.

    Or you can also appoint a proxy to vote on your behalf but there are rules on who can do that. It’s possible to ask the party you intend to vote for to find someone as the proxy needs to also be a voter at the same polling station.

    My local council has already told me my postal vote will be sent to me around 19th June. I’ll get it the day or two after that and I live in the constituency. It would take several days to get to Australia and then back again.

    We don’t have out of district / country voting.

    Ballot packs must be received by the Returning Officer by 10 pm on election night if they are to be counted. Any received after that aren’t.

  48. The Telegraph:
    “Leaked Tory memo names and shames MPs shirking campaign duties”
    “Tory bosses have accused their own MPs of failing to pull their weight on the campaign trail…”

    Things can only get better…

  49. Fargo61,

    ChrisC has answered your questions fairly well.

    I am enrolled in the electorate that I lived in, 50 years ago.

    I could turn up at the appointed voting place, or could do a postal.

    My experience is that letters are taking 3 weeks to get from the UK to Australia and vice versa. So a postal vote sent out to me 3 weeks before the election isn’t going to work. I’m getting a proxy (my sister) to vote for me.

    I presume the votes are counted at the local counting centre.

    No idea about numbers, either in “my” electorate nor nationally.

    No, I don’t believe my daughter gets to vote. Even if she had UK citizenship.

    I started the process as a bit of a giggle when I heard about it. Not that my vote will make a difference – it’s a solid Conservative area (East Surrey).

  50. Ray (UK) @ #88 Monday, May 27th, 2024 – 7:29 am

    I mean, considering there’s only been two Labour PMs since the 1970s and one of them was Blair, that could technically be correct. Brown was a bit more to the left than Blair and I don’t know how he’ll compare to Starmer but my point is you don’t exactly have to be a communist to be the most left wing Labour PM since the 1970s…

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