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What’s in store in the 2024 general election?
2024-05-23
By Tor Clark SFHEA, Associate Professor in Journalism
You had to feel a bit of human sympathy for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as his, presumably carefully-planned, election announcement was crashed, first by heavy rain, then by ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, the theme tune to Labour’s 1997 general election landslide over an exhausted, long-serving Conservative government.
Looking at his face I wondered if he just wanted to get it all over with – and not just the speech.
There is an element of political fatigue from voters after any long-serving government, John Major’s Conservatives in 1997 after 18 years, Gordon Brown’s Labour in 2010 after 13 years, even Winston Churchill’s Conservative-led governments after 10 years in 1945. It’s hard to see the current PM leading his tired Tories to another victory after 14 years at the helm.
You have to wonder why he called the election so early, before his tax cuts have really made an impact on voters’ views of their own spending power. Perhaps the announcement of inflation going back to more recognisable 2.3% announced at 7am was the final persuader for Mr Sunak, but he might have been better waiting to see if voters felt better about his party after they noticed more money in their pockets over the summer.
The polls say a Labour Party straining at the leash goes into the election with a more than 20 point opinion poll lead, and so confident they didn’t even put their name on their leader Keir Starmer’s lectern as he responded to the election call.
The Conservative right-wing vote is being snapped at by the Reform Party. Its moderate centrist vote is targeted by the Lib Dems. Its Red Wall northern and Midlands seats look likely to go back to Labour.
But those polls will narrow over the next six weeks.
Some reports have suggested a Conservative meltdown or wipeout. That won’t happen either. Even in their worst performance in 1997, the Tories still won 165 seats.
The Labour Party is likely to increase its number of Scottish MPs from the current one, to potentially as many as 20, but in its good old days, it could count on 40 MPs from north of the border to swell its majority.
At the same time boundary changes will have an impact all over the country. Redrawing the electoral map tends to reduce working class seats and increase suburban and middle class constituencies.
Those changes will perhaps be most apparent in Wales where the increase in the powers of the Welsh assembly have led to a reduction in the principality’s UK parliament seats from 40 to 32, which will impact most on Labour as Wales was the only one of its heartlands to stay loyal in Boris Johnson’s 2019 surprisingly big victory.
And amongst all that, Labour have to match Tony Blair’s 1997 swing and win an extra 120 seats to get the majority they will need to govern alone, coming back from their worst modern election result in 2019, so their victory is not a shoo-in.
If the polls don’t pick up for the Tories, expect them to appeal direct to Brexit voters and ramp up culture wars in a desperate bid for votes from the socially conservative voters who backed them in 2019.
Labour has been criticised for having few well-known policies and as they unveil new policies during the next six weeks Tory strategists will do their best to rip them apart.
In the end of course it’s Labour’s election to lose, but they cannot be complacent and voters have much to experience in UK politics over the next six weeks before we decide who we are going to feel sorry for, who will have the weather with them and who will be in tune with the electorate.
Tor Clark is Associate Professor in Journalism at the University of Leicester. This is the ninth UK general election he has covered for newspapers and broadcasters.