This last week has seen the campaign get more spicy for Reform, Labour seeing their vote share dip by around 5% and the Tory party continue to implode in a manner that now seems just too much to bear for supporters of that party. We’ve seen a couple more debates though their usefulness and effect is negligible. We’ve seen gender ideology scrutiny on the Labour Party and we have seen polling steadily show the Tories in third place.
The first thing to look at in the last week is the Farage furore over his comments on Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Reform leader has continued to defend what he has said and in our Russia article a couple of days ago we explained how he was factually correct and his Realist views on world politics were correct and going against the Liberal world view that has effectively let these kinds of wars and these kinds of awful leaders rise to power in states also against the liberal world view. The issue for Nigel is that the media are clinging to this in a bid to make Nigel run on a foreign policy agenda that is not so popular with British people rather than on cutting immigration which is most popular with Farage’s supporters and potential supporters. It looks as if this line of attack against Farage is looking like a rather personal attack which he is naturally reacting to. The dishonesty and unfairness Nigel is facing with regards to criticism by those who had pretty much agreed with his view in years gone by is really taking to the Reform leader. Nigel will hope to turn this against his accusers, and is trying to do so, saying this shows the level of dishonesty of the political elite.
The problem Nigel has is that this would take a bit more than a few days to achieve and to create the narrative for. With just over a week to go, the tactic must surely be to go with what works, to put the boot down on the neck of the Tories and to bring non-voters into the tent, with perhaps a nod to old Labour voters. With a week to go it is hard to see if Reform has reached its peak or not. According to lots of small polls from different sources and individuals Reform seems to reach levels of around 24% support, some even higher. What seems to be the case is that Reform pretty much taking over the right-of-centre of politics for most voters and the Tories are propped up with tactical voting and pensioners. If the Reform party want to go any further they will need to solidify the new base of support which at this point is now well over a third of all 2019 Tory voters. If they mix that with the patriotic old Labour vote they will win seats. If not their victories will be very local, but still a big success for them.
Labour have actually seen a little sliding in their support over the last week or so. It is growing clearer that as it becomes obvious that Keir Starmer is going to be the next Prime Minister it is dawning rather late on people that he is going to be a terrible Prime Minister. This is not a political statement, it’s just a statement of a reflection on a really low level of personal support for the leadership of the party, and the party in general. Their lead is tactical, it is a protest vote against the Tories, it is inflated by the Radical Left in the media and the country (around 18% of the population) and it has managed to fight off George Galloway’s Workers Party pretty successfully, as far as we know. Keir Starmer is regularly coming second in terms of personal support to Nigel Farage and the more Labour policies are scrutinised the more they are watered down or shown to be quite unpopular. The VAT on private schools will now not come in until at least September 2025 for example, and they are struggling to maintain support when they double down on their support for children gender re-assignment liberalisation. Their inability to talk about immigration is making them very much a party of the metropolitan elite and their support across the rest of the country will be a toss-up between voting against the Tories and voting for Reform. Labour will still win and win by a country mile but predictions for how long the Labour administration will be in power seem to be becoming more pessimistic with each passing week. Labour will be preparing for government, but one will be allowed to think they will not be preparing for a long stay, but that is idle speculation.
The Tories , well, they are just a laughing stock now. Sunak made a good fist of it in the TV debate but he did well criticising Keir Starmer but not injecting any kind of momentum into the Tory campaign. Well, there is no Tory campaign any more aside from mud-slinging from Tory grandees against Reform and Labour. Their campaign is “if we’re going down we’re taking you with us” as their politics becomes more toxic, more abusive and as illustrated above more dishonest. The media give them air time because there seems to be media-joy when breaking parties down under the guise of scrutiny. But the Tory betting scandal, small though it is in terms of money, simply contributes to a bigger picture of a party with no moral compass, that’s been in power too long and has become drunk on the entitlement of a party that has been calling the shots in the country for an inflated amount of time. They have been painted as the party of liars after countless broken promises and now are painted as a party of liars who want to make a quick buck. They have raised less money during this campaign (in the 2-week data) than Reform and the Liberal Democrats as well as Labour and frankly it looks as if they have nothing left to say. If people vote Tory they are genuinely voting just to keep Labour out; though in many constituencies that would genuinely be counterproductive.
Looking at the polls on a local level the Tories are genuinely splitting the anti-Labour vote. In Great Yarmouth for instance, Reform are polling at around 5% ahead of Labour in first place, though any poll lead of 5% is precarious. The Tories are well off in third around 10% behind Reform. A vote for the Tories is a vote for Labour there. So any general all from the Tories for tactical voting is dishonest and continues the entitled nature of the party that “all non-Labour votes are or should be owned by us” as the likes of Kemi Badenoch and David Davis have said disappointingly. When predicting what the actual poll is going to be there are rumours that the Tory vote will inflate back up as people secretly vote tactically in the old ways of the two-party state, there are rumours that the Tories will be genuinely wiped out. The answer is that probably both are right. The Tory vote will most likely collapse to something close to 8% in the ‘Red Wall’ of the North of England, and rise in the South-West shires to something like 25%. They will become a much more local party. The Labour-Lib Dem pact will still win through but 0 seats will not be a thing for the Tories. We are still predicting 80 seats for them. Labour will achieve something close to 450 seats, the Lib Dem’s on 40 or so. Reform is a much harder one to predict, simply because a figure one or two up or down could make a giant difference in their overall game of the 2029 or earlier General Election. Nigel will win in Clacton. As for other places, we are predicting 7 seats for Reform, but that figure could well be 10, but the next week could see that number fluctuate up or down. The Greens? Ehh. 1?
The last bit of this article is reserved for the media. They have been really disappointing. In a desperate attempt to remain relevant, the media have Americanised this election. The scrutiny on the radio and TV has been appalling, relying on ‘gotcha’ moments for all of the politicians. There has been some good analysis in parts, but the media has been unable to galvanise interest in this general election because they have been far more interested in stoking the fires of public discontent at the whole political system. The media have probably made just as many non-voters as the Tories have. And the sickening twist where they have given Keir Starmer and the Labour Party a sort of chorus of eulogies seems to be disturbing. It’s as if the media is sucking up to the Labour Party because when they are in power the media don’t want to be touched with regulation or sanctions. We know many media anchors or interviewers ran for the Labour Party once or joined them in their younger years but you can separate your personal and professional lives as many do. The mask is somewhat slipping here.
On social media, engagement has been extroadinary. Reform have been outpacing all parties by a significant margin in terms of social media traffic. Reform trend more than any other in X and Nigel’s popularity on platforms like Tik Tok are garnering views on a massive scale. As Labour pump millions into advertising it seems that Reform is getting more bang for their buck with data showing a times 187 difference when compared to spending of Reform and Labour compared to engagement. We will leave this for another article, but it seems as if the European phenomenon of young people turning right has reached Gen Z (16-21 year olds) in this country. Whether its enough to make a difference in this election is grounds for skepticism, but there’s something interesting happening which social media is showing; Reform are popular with young people. Right-wing populism has never been popular in Britain before. Could this be the roots of genuine political change in this country as it is in countries on the continent? Though naturally skeptical, this publication probably agrees that there is something happening.
The last week of this election will see the parties double down on their already-used tactics. The Labour Party will carry on holding their Ming vase on their tightrope to power. The Tories will continue slinging mud all over the place in a desperate attempt to sink Reform and make people genuinely afraid of Labour. Reform will probably return to the immigration message and the Lib Dems will carry on riding the coat-tails of the Labour Party. Postal votes have already been sent in and people will be thinking about who to vote for on either personal grounds or national grounds, voting with their conscience or tactically. All of these could change minds and though the result looks forgone perhaps more and more voters are looking to the next election, rather than just this one. You can be allowed to do that this time. Who knows where it will lead.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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