UK Politics 2024

[Jubal]

Well, it's the UK's election year, and things look... mostly predictable, oddly enough. There will probably be an election, maybe in early autumn, the Conservatives will probably lose badly, and we'll get a Labour government. But we'll see what events have to say about that.


Polling averages as of now have the Conservatives in the mid twenties, Labour in the mid forties, the Liberal Democrats on about ten percent and the same for hard-right Reform, the Greens a bit below those two. Models vary a lot as to what that means exactly, but all of them agree that's a healthy Labour majority: the least bullish models now for Labour put them on a solid 345 seats, the most bullish have them well over four hundred. It's in the zone where it becomes really difficult to do the swings because where the votes come from becomes harder to model with an extremely big vote shift.

The Lib Dems should pick up 15-20 seats on those sorts of numbers: I think the party not gaining double figures of seats would constitute a significant failure (honestly the fact that the party might poll worse than at the previous general election is pretty bad in these circumstances). The Greens are going to struggle because they have only one seat to defend, almost all of their targets are Labour facing, and their few percent of the vote is far less concentrated than that of the Lib Dems. Reform have similar issues, it's far from clear where they can actually target given their almost total lack of a local base anywhere (though if they do well they'll probably hurt the Conservatives especially and also Labour a bit).

[Jubal]

Looking at recent polls and my assumptions for the election outcome are shifting towards Labour from where they were.

The thing is, that's shifting towards Labour in a situation where I already thought Labour was going to win by quite a large amount. I kinda now think they might win by an absolutely staggering amount. The Conservatives are not really recovering with polling averaging to below 25% and Labour in the low to mid forties - and some polling is even worse. Blair's landslide in 1997 was won on a 12.5 percent lead: Starmer is seriously looking at winning by twenty points, as a sort of average likelihood - that could shrink, but it could get even larger.

What does that mean for everyone else? Well, the Conservatives are very much not on track to get more than about 150 seats, and some predictions have them hitting their worst results ever. What that would need depends on how you count: under 156 (their 1906 total) is the fair number, which drops to 131 if you don't count the Liberal Unionists in their 1906 total and drops to 106 if you count pre-Conservative Tories in the 1754 election, but given parties in the modern sense weren't really a thing then that would be rather silly. In any case, a recent large seat-estimation poll had them on eighty seats, which it's safe to say is worse than any of those.

The Liberal Democrats might do surprisingly well, through no fault of their own. I've generally been sceptical of this case: I think that the lack of a national campaign message will hurt the party, and that Labour will leapfrog them in a lot of seats with this sort of polling lead. That said, the Conservatives are doing so incredibly badly that the Lib Dems can hold still or even drop back a bit in some of their 2019 second places and still pick up a surprising number of seats.

The SNP look like they'll hold on to a good chunk of their current seats, but take a few losses to Labour - things are looking less bad for them than they might have feared last year. Reform are a bit of a wild-card but would have to do better off the back of a major Tory implosion to be seriously threatening picking up seats.

[Jubal]

It now looks like Scotland could have an election sooner than the General Election, after the Scots Green/SNP coalition has exploded. The Greens and the right wing of the SNP were both pretty unhappy with the arrangement, and Humza Yousaf (who's more from the SNP's centre-left wing) decided to nuke the coalition himself rather than let the Greens potentially do it over the government failing to meet environmental targets. He doesn't however have any other options, as Alba (with their one MSP, a defector from the SNP) have produced such outrageous demands for propping him up that he's presumably going to have to refuse them.

[dubsartur]

I can't make sense of the contrast between the UK as chronically depressed (low on energy, fixated on the past, self-destructive, and unable to see actions which might lead to a better future - the way Labour refuses to state clearly which disastrous Tory policies they would reject is symptomatic) and that people on the continent are still risking their lives to get there.

[Jubal]

I think that's a general thing with a lot of countries in Europe, though the UK is an especially stark example: on an individual basis, they're just flat wealthier than most other places and have better functioning economies. You need a certain amount of money before you can really care about the sense of national lethargy, crumbling public services, etc, because a bad NHS and weak pay is better than being in (insert country here) with death squads after you and/or nothing to eat. And the UK has a big advantage for many migrants because it's English-speaking, and there aren't really many better options for people as a result.

I think it may be of not here that of people who do have elsewhere to go, some people actually do think better of the UK as an option: there've been occasional news articles like this one over the last year or so of Ukrainian refugees considering, attempting or deciding to move back, or returning to Ukraine for medical or dental care, for example.

[Glaurung]

An update from Scotland: Humza Yousaf has announced his resignation as leader of the SNP, and hence as First Minister of Scotland; he will remain in office as First Minister until a new SNP leader is elected. More details in this Guardian article.

This forestalls the forthcoming "no confidence" motion in him as First Minister, introduced by the Scottish Conservatives; it's not clear yet what will happen to the "no confidence" motion in the SNP government introduced by Scottish Labour.

[Jubal]

I guess it depends considerably on whether the Scottish Greens think they can repair the fence with the right new FM, and whether they think they can do well out of an election. One thing Tuco pointed out to me earlier about this is that retaining an FM requires 50% but electing a new one requires 50%+1 (because the speaker votes with the status quo). So one thing Yousaf going has done is remove any chance of Alba having leverage or affecting things: Ash Regan's single vote is now irrelevant.

[Jubal]

The UK has had some local elections! The Conservatives did very badly, small independent factions (especially those opposing Labour over Gaza) did rather well, Reform UK on the far right also did very badly despite a boost in vote share, the Greens and Liberals did fine but missed out on some big prizes and breakthroughs, and Labour also did fine but were polling more like they were nine points ahead than the 18-20 national polls would suggest.

I actually don't think this is good evidence that the polls are wrong and the election will be merely a big Labour win, which seems to be how it's being read by pundits who cannot contemplate what a 20 point victory would look like. I've written some notes on why that might be the case here:
https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2024/05/05/uk-local-elections-some-points-to-remember/

The long and short of it is that I am still expecting the Conservatives to get very hammered and for Labour to end up with, at minimum, about 400 seats, and they're still polling like a party that could win 500.

[dubsartur]

How do the British parties line up around Israeli-Palestinian relations? In Canada the Tories are strongly for the Israeli government, the Liberals moderately so in practice but occasionally speak against their land grabbing and repression, the NDP and Greens have some representatives who are more pro-Palestinian.  I am not sure about the Quebec parties which are often ethno-nationalist.

[Jubal]

I'd say in the UK the Tories are likewise strongly pro-Israel's government, Labour varies depending on its leadership but the current centrist leadership is also quite strongly pro-Israeli govt. The Liberals, SNP and Greens are all much more "ceasefire now" parties and more supportive of recognition for a Palestinian state.

The Lib Dems and SNP both have prominent representatives with links to Palestine (Layla Moran of the Lib Dems is half Palestinian, Humza Yousaf who just resigned as Scots first minister has family there on, IIRC, his wife's side of the family). There's also a stark tonal difference between the pro-Palestinianism of the SNP or Lib Dems, which tends to be focused around ceasefires and recognition, and that of the very left of Labour or of George Galloway and his followers, which is framed in much more anti-Israeli ways.

[Glaurung]

Yesterday afternoon, Rishi Sunak announced the date of the general election: 4 July. This appears to have taken a lot of people by surprise, including a large fraction of his own party - e.g. there are about 150 constituencies that have not selected a Conservative candidate yet.

[Jubal]

I was surprised too - I was certainly expecting later in the year. I wonder if this is a doctrine on Sunak's part of of "good politicians make surprise moves that outwit their enemies. This is a surprise move, therefore it will outwit my enemies, because I am a good politician." Or possibly he's got a job offer in California and they want him to start in August.

Honestly it feels like the most vapid campaign start I can remember from all sides. I'm by any reasonable standards an enormous politics nerd and I really don't know what the opposition is offering except "change" or what the incumbents are claiming they've achieved. I don't even know what my own party is promising that's meaningful and distinct. The whole thing feels like a weird vacuum where everyone is going "eh, it's the other lot's turn now I guess".

Is that just a me thing watching from abroad and people back in the UK are more fired up for this/have I just become disconnected from what's going on at home? Genuinely interested for thoughts from those back on the ground.

[Othko97]

Is that just a me thing watching from abroad and people back in the UK are more fired up for this/have I just become disconnected from what's going on at home? Genuinely interested for thoughts from those back on the ground.

I no longer keep up with the news particularly strongly but this matches my impression.  Starmer's Labour seem to be hoping to gain power by being bland enough to fly under the radar while people are fed up of the Conservatives.  This is probably not a bad strategy, given the state of the press in the UK, but it isn't exactly anything to be excited for.  From the policies which aren't vague gesturing about Change, it seems like the main change we're going to get is the colour of tie the prime minister wears.

[Jubal]

Yeah. If I wanted to be fair to Labour (I usually don't, but if I did), I'd say there also feels like a competence difference. I do genuinely think that on basic keeping the wheels turning stuff Starmer is likely to be functional in a way that Sunak has failed to be and Sunak's predecessors very definitely haven't been since at least 2016. Tons of Tory MPs seem to be stepping down to leave the sinking ship, so I think it's fair to say they do know they've lost already.

The assumptions that different models are making do make a huge amount of difference to the outcome. Not in terms of who will win, but in terms of whether Labour will fall just shy of 400 seats or break the 500 (!) mark. Blair's big majority in 1997 was 418, the Conservatives in 1931 got 470 but that's rather unique circumstances. A lot depends on tactical voting: you'd expect very high tactical voting in this election, given that a) kicking the Conservatives out is a priority for a lot of people and b) to be frank if you're willing to vote for one boring man in a suit you're probably willing to vote for another, the gap between the opposition parties is much lower than in 2019. I think some models which look better for the Conservatives, like the UK Polling Report model, underestimate tactical voting in that their seat-by-seat results show too many seats with Labour a hair's breadth from winning and a 16 or 20 percent Lib Dem vote which would be pretty odd IMV. OTOH a friend pointed out to me that some models that are exceptionally bad for the Conservatives will assume too efficient a vote distribution for the Lib Dems, on the grounds that there's fewer places to tactically vote Lib Dem and, if you're assuming people vote tactically and balance out the topline numbers, that means you give the Lib Dems a huge amount of squeeze efficiency to make the numbers balance.

I think at the moment if the polls don't change we're looking at a solid 450-470 Labour MPs, 100-120 Tories, maybe 25 each SNP and Lib Dem, and then the NI/PC/Grn/Miscellany. That said, the polls might well change, The Conservative election campaign has had an awkward start in particular and if Sunak falls further then the Tory numbers might drop off even more of a cliff which would lead to an even more eyewatering result.