POLLING STATIONS ACROSS the UK have opened for today’s general election that is widely expected to unseat the Conservative Party in favour of Labour.
Polls opened at 7am and millions of people will cast their vote between now and 10pm.
Opinion polls ahead of the election showed that the UK’s electorate is moving away from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party and towards Keir Starmer’s Labour this time around.
Nothing is ever guaranteed in politics, but at this point, Labour beating the Tories is essentially as safe a bet as you could find. The question now is not so much whether they’ll win, but by how much.
Recent polling conducted just days ahead of voting put Labour at around a 15 point lead.
NEW: @RestisPolitics / JLP poll, June 28th - July 1st 2024
— JLP (@JLPartnersPolls) July 1, 2024
*Labour lead at 15 points*
Change on last week in brackets
LAB: 39% (-2)
CON: 24% (-1)
REF: 16% (+1)
LDEM: 10% (-1)
GRN: 5% (-)
Tables: https://t.co/BozWy47mBb pic.twitter.com/yvJsC4pbpZ
An average of all polls completed during the week up to 2 July has Labour on 40%, 19 points ahead of the Conservatives on 21%. They are followed by Reform on 16%, the Liberal Democrats on 11% and the Greens on 6%.
Exit polling published tonight will give an indication of whether or not Labour can indeed pull off that wide of a lead.
Labour’s path to victory will be paved by trying to rebuild its ‘Red Wall’.
Constituencies in the midlands and north of England that would have traditionally backed Labour delivered a weak result for the party in the last election in 2019.
To take the House of Commons, Labour will be hoping to get back on solid ground in those key areas – constituencies such as Bassetlaw, Scunthorpe or Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.
It faced a loss in a 2021 by-election in Hartlepool but managed to keep its seat in a by-election in Batley and Spen in the same year, and then went on to regain a seat in Wakefield in 2022.
Eurosceptic rightwinger Nigel Farage was a Tory many years ago but left the party in 1992, becoming a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and later going on to lead the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021.
In February, Farage indicated he was “open-minded” about rejoining the Conservatives after the next general election.
But in June, shortly after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the election, Farage announced he had returned as leader of the Brexit Party, now rebranded as Reform, and would stand as a candidate for it in the Clacton constituency.
The anti-immigration party has been polling less than 10 points behind the Conservatives.
Farage has said he “genuinely” believes that Reform can gain more seats in the election than the Conservative Party – but that is seriously unlikely.
Much as Labour is pulling away Tory voters who are closer to the centre, Reform may well further dilute the Conservatives’ hold by attracting voters on the right.
Reform isn’t expected to win a massive number of seats itself but splitting right-wing votes in Britain’s first-past-the-post system will make it easier for Labour to make gains.
While Ireland uses the proportional representation with a single transferable (PR-STV) for our general elections, under the UK system, voters select a single candidate and the candidate with the most votes in a constituency wins.
In the week before the election, Reform was hit with allegations of racism within the party.
It came after Channel 4 went undercover inside a Reform UK campaign in Clacton and found evidence of anti-migrant rhetoric, homophobia and one canvasser making racist and offensive remarks about Rishi Sunak.
EXCLUSIVE: We’ve gone undercover inside Nigel Farage’s Reform UK campaign in Clacton and found evidence of anti-migrant rhetoric, homophobia and one canvasser making racist and offensive remarks. As @DarshnaSoni reports. pic.twitter.com/VkhVLczjcw
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 27, 2024
Farage has suggested that the Channel 4 footage was a “set-up” – a claim the broadcaster strenuously denies.
Two Reform candidates defected to the Conservative party as a result.
Slip N Slide, Zumba dancing, bungee jumping, paddle boarding, sandcastle building, Frisbee, hula hooping, water aerobics, archery, surfing….
The above isn’t a fun-filled list for your next holiday, but a snapshot of some of the campaign stunts Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has been partaking in.
When bungee jumping this week, Davey encouraged people to “take a leap of faith” and was filmed shouting “vote Liberal Democrat” while dangling in the air.
A lot of people are on the cusp of doing something they’ve never done before - taking a leap of faith and voting Liberal Democrat... so I decided to do something I’ve never done before too. pic.twitter.com/qW8Q8k1dCg
— Ed Davey (@EdwardJDavey) July 1, 2024
He said the aim has been to grab the public’s attention so that the party can get its message out.
For example, his time spent paddle boarding was an attempt to highlight the party’s campaign on sewage.
“We’ve been talking about sewage for a while and our stunts – falling off a paddle in Lake Windermere – that was deliberate because of what United Utilities [responsible for water and wastewater services in North West England] has done, pumping their sewage into it. It’s quite appalling.”
Davey became party leader in 2020 after former leader Jo Swinson lost her seat in the 2019 General Election.
In 2019, the Lib Dems had been hoping for up to 80 seats and campaigned to reverse Brexit but ended up with a lowly 11 seats.
This time round, they are hoping to overtake the Scottish National Party (SNP) and become the third largest party in the UK.
The Scottish National Party won 48 seats in 2019, becoming the third largest party in Westminster and taking 48 out of 59 available seats in Scotland.
However, it has experienced a period of upheaval since.
Nicola Sturgeon led the party into the 2019 General Election, but she resigned last year after her husband was charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds from the SNP.
Humza Yousaf took over the party leadership, but he too stepped down in April of this year.
John Swinney then stepped in to take the reins and a day before the election, he warned SNP voters that some seats will be decided “by only a handful of votes”.
It will likely be a much changed picture in Scotland come Friday morning, with Scottish Labour tipped to gain around 20 seats while the SNP could lose half of their seats.
A poll for The Scotsman newspaper suggests 31% of Scots could vote Labour on Thursday, while support for the SNP is unchanged at 34%.
According to analysis by Professor John Curtice, this would mean Scottish Labour, which won just one seat in Scotland in the 2019 election, would be on course to have 22 Scottish MPs while the SNP will hold 24 seats, a halving of their 2019 results.
-With additional reporting from Diarmuid Pepper
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say