The actor Steve Coogan has started his traditional round of election broadcasts, supposedly in an attempt to whip up support for Labour. Unfortunately for Steve, he had a bit of an Alan Partridge moment earlier today when he told Sky News that Labour is ‘encouraging prejudice’. Mr S would sadly have to agree. You can watch the clip here:
In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the children’s writer Piers Torday, author of the Last Wild trilogy and, most recently, The Frozen Sea. Why is winter such a powerful thing in children’s writing? How come children’s books are such a booming publishing sector when so many people thought that screens would all but kill them off? Why do so many children’s writers have catastrophic personal lives? And how do the stories of today repurpose and live in the stories of the past?
It’s easy to imagine prime ministers on election night, either nervously grinning or groaning in despair when the results for Dartford are announced. In every election since 1964, the London constituency has voted for the party which went on to win nationwide. It, along with nine other constituencies (such as Watford, Reading West and Worcester) are the true bellwether seats, which have predicted the national mood since the 1980s. This election though, it’s harder to know if these seats will accurately reflect the final election result. Boris Johnson’s Tories are hoping to flip the electoral map, abandoning their old heartlands and affluent Remainers in favour of Northern and Midland Labour
To choose is to endorse. But this is an election in which, for myriad reasons, all the options are deplorable. To choose one of them, even on a least-bad basis, feels like a kind of capitulation. So I will vote tomorrow but I shall, for the first time, spoil my ballot. None of the Above has my vote. I want no part of this election and desire no share, however tiny, of the responsibility that comes with endorsing any of the candidates representing the major parties. To choose is to sanction and, in this election, that’s intolerable and impossible. So last night’s YouGov MRP number-crunching was oddly cheering. For it
It is still too close to call. And the odds are still on a Tory victory. Even so, with the polls narrowing, with lots of constituencies likely to change hands and with plenty of voters still to make up their minds, there is still a real chance that by Friday morning Jeremy Corbyn could be moving into Number 10. For anyone with money and worst of all anyone who owns a company, a reign of terror will be about to begin. The Labour party has come up with so many different ways to harass and intimidate business it is hard for even the nerviest plutocrat to keep track of them
In the end it probably comes down to four things, most of them momentous, about the power of the people, and the very structure of the country. First, this is your only chance to decide whether the UK leaves the EU at the end of January or whether you want a referendum next year that could reverse the result of the previous Brexit referendum. Second, if you are north of the border, this is an opportunity to signal whether you want another referendum on whether Scotland remains part of the UK. Third, if you believe that the power of the private sector has increased excessively since the 1980s, this is your chance
Sometime around the start of this decade, before anti-Semitism was as cool as it has become, I was standing on a stage in London with a couple of rabbis and a Muslim. And if that sounds like the start of a joke then what followed wasn’t. We were there at the request of a new Jewish group to speak out against the anti-Semitism that we already saw on the rise in the UK. I’m not much given to protests myself as long-time readers will know. But the day showed some solidarity with British Jews and we all went home at least partly feeling like some good had been done. But
Wales has been dominated by the Labour party for, quite literally, longer than anyone can remember. But the key message from the final Welsh poll of the campaign is that we could be on the verge of a genuinely historic general election outcome. The Welsh Political Barometer poll was conducted over the final weekend of the campaign and asked respondents how they would vote in the general election – with the question adjusted to take into account of the fact that not all parties are standing in all seats. The poll produced the following voting intention figures (with changes from the previous Barometer poll, conducted in late November, in brackets):
Despite its well-drilled Momentum supporters and union backing, Labour’s fabled election machine seems to be misfiring this election. On Friday, I personally conducted two informal focus groups of millennial swing voters in London and was surprised, in what should be Labour’s strongest redoubt, that not one participant could recall a single Labour advertisement, or even what Labour’s core message was. In Blair’s day, the Labour party enlisted the famed creative skills of advertising executive Trevor Beattie (of fcuk fame) to help get their message out. Today, judging by these focus groups, the party seems to have prioritised social media over the quality and creativity of its messaging. Whilst the Conservatives ‘Get Brexit
When the first YouGov MRP poll of the election campaign was published last month, it was a cause of anxiety in Conservative Campaign Headquarters. The projection of a Tory majority of 68 was seen as overly optimistic – and there were concerns that it could lead to complacency in the polling booth. The second – and final – YouGov MRP poll of the election campaign does not carry the same baggage. With two days to go until polling day, it now suggests the Tories are on course for a small majority of 28. Were the election held tomorrow, YouGov forecasts that the Conservatives would win 339 seats with Labour on
Nicola Sturgeon has had a change of heart. Gone are the ultimatums, the stridency and the self-righteous rhetoric. In an interview with today’s Daily Record, we see Sturgeon the Introspective: ‘Brexit gave me an insight, maybe that I didn’t have before, of how No voters would have felt had the referendum on independence gone the other way.’ We see Sturgeon the Pluralist: ‘Scotland belongs to those who oppose independence just as much as it belongs to those who support independence.’ There is even Sturgeon the Collegial. On a Labour proposal to include a ‘remain, but with more powers’ option in any future Scottish independence referendum, she says: ‘If they bring
What’s the point of political leaflets, anyway? Many voters in target seats will be asking that very question on an almost daily basis, as they shovel the latest snowdrifts of election literature into their recycling bin. We have social media, party election broadcasts and phone banks to reach voters. Who needs leaflets? There is a (I believe only half-serious) ‘test’ that some Liberal Democrat campaigners apply to the amount of information they think it is possible for a voter to absorb from a leaflet they’re carrying from the letterbox to the bin. Given the parties keep sending them, particularly in those marginal seats where it’s just not clear where the
Vote Corbyn, says Corbyn. That is the unsurprising message from the Labour leader’s brother Piers in a video filmed at Speakers’ Corner in London. But while Piers backed his sibling over accusations of anti-Semitism and Labour’s position on Brexit, it wasn’t an entirely ringing endorsement. Piers Corbyn, who has previously said ‘man-made climate change does not exist’, was asked about Corbyn’s green manifesto pledges. It’s safe to say he is not a fan: ‘He wants to end carbon dioxide emissions.’ Piers Corbyn: ‘Yeah, well, that’s nonsense. That’s impossible.’ ‘Well, that’s what your brother says, why are you supporting him then?’ Oh dear. Mr S expects it could be a bit
Jonathan Ashworth has been caught out this morning after a leaked tape emerged of the shadow health secretary talking about his fears for Britain’s national security if Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM. Ashworth said the civil service would need to ‘pretty quickly move to safeguard security’ if Labour wins on Thursday. Ashworth also gave his verdict on… …Labour’s election campaign: ‘It’s dire’ …What voters make of Jeremy Corbyn: ‘…they can’t stand Corbyn and they think Labour’s blocked Brexit’ …and where the Labour party went wrong: ‘…we fucked it up in 2016 when we went too early. People like me were internally saying ‘this isn’t the right moment’ but I got kind
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon bagged the 8:10am slot on this morning’s Today programme but it didn’t go quite as she might have planned. Scotland’s first minister was asked whether it was appropriate for her to be attacking the Conservatives on the NHS when her party’s own record was so woeful. Responsibility for the health service was devolved to the Scottish Parliament back in 1999 and has been under the control of the SNP since 2007. Sturgeon was challenged on figures released by the government watchdog Audit Scotland, which said the SNP had missed six out of eight waiting time targets. The Scottish leader told the programme: ‘Health services in every part
Ed Miliband may have held his seat in Doncaster North for over 14 years, but the Conservatives seem to think the former Labour leader might be vulnerable this election campaign. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 72 per cent of Doncaster North’s residents voted Leave, which stands in stark contrast to Miliband’s own pro-Remain Brexit stance, and his party’s position of backing a second referendum. The Labour candidate clearly feels that his constituents might be annoyed, and even claimed in a leaflet this election campaign that he’d voted ‘nine times in parliament’ for a Brexit deal – when he actually voted against both Theresa May and Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals. Now
Whatever the results on Thursday, there have been aspects of this election campaign not revealed by polling. My experience of speaking and campaigning in my MEP patch in the North West has been revelatory. I am in awe of a layer of new activists who have been inspired to want more fundamental change than that offered by the establishment parties. Many are new to politics, have found their voice and have discovered the power of being actively engaged. It reminds me of a far earlier experience of the miners’ strike, when miners’ wives groups sprang up nationally and formidable women started to take control. It’s exhilarating to be with people for
The Brexit party and Conservatives have more in common than they might like to admit. Yet their similarities haven’t stopped the bickering, as Claire Fox argues on Coffee House this morning. On the one hand, we have a party which believes it more important to have some form of exit deal from the European Union. On the other, we have those who believe the UK should pursue total secession. The internecine warfare between soft and hard Brexiteers has been rehearsed many times, as immortalised in Monty Python’s Life of Brian with the feuding between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. And the current clamour over which kind of
John McDonnell was insisting this morning that Labour was going to win a majority, but just in case, insiders are suggesting that the Shadow Chancellor is planning to take over as interim leader if Jeremy Corbyn resigns after a general election defeat. McDonnell has long championed Rebecca Long-Bailey as a future leader, and there is speculation that he could install her as his shadow chancellor in order to boost her credentials. This explains why those around Corbyn were so keen to try to abolish Tom Watson as deputy leader in September. They tried to force a rule change at the party’s ruling National Executive Committee meeting which would scrap the
An interview earlier today with my colleague Joe Pike captures the contradiction at the heart of Boris Johnson’s campaign. He wants to be seen as campaigning to lead a ‘new’ government, but the Tories have been in power since 2010. So he finds it impossible to take responsibility for four-year-old Jack Williment-Barr, left to lie on coats for hours in a Leeds hospital. As the video shows, he refuses to look at the picture of Jack – which comes across as him saying ‘I don’t want to own this’. This is certainly the political moment of the day and could be the moment of the campaign: