This has been an underwhelming start to the 2024 General Election. To sum up the first week it is as if AI has been creating it. The two main parties have set out their stalls on what they believe to be the most important issues. The Tories have gone for the economy and national service and Labour have gone for the economy and energy. A few barbs have been chucked around but sparks have really yet to fly. One week on and we are still awaiting manifestos from every party.
The shock-snap nature of this election is a leading cause. It can be suspected that the real hard work is happening behind the scenes with fundraising, deal-making and candidate-selecting going on at the moment as parties desperately seek to fill each of the 650 constituencies with a candidate ready to contest the election and hoover up potential votes. Beacons will be being lit as the foot soldiers of the various parties clear their diaries and schedules to go out and thump the pavement and doors with the eager energy of party zealots eager to say why their party has/will do a great job. Big businesses are busy shifting round expendable capital to lobby their way to achieve favourable election pledges and soon enough the billboards will come up. We have already started to see a few political video adverts on YouTube but the real advertisement effort is probably being filmed as we speak. For Joe Public the election is quiet. For Joe politician the election is surely very loud.
The media have done all they can to whip up election fever. In an attempt to gather eyeballs to their particular outlet they have done all they can to whip up fear, anger, resentment, opinions and so on about the political state of play. Last week’s media soup of the day has revolved around a few things; most notably Nigel Farage and his comments on TV and in his speech in Dover yesterday. The BBC were in hot water and had to apologise after a news presenter branded Farage’s speech as ‘inflammatory’. The media focus on Farage’s comments about an opinion poll conducted by the Henry Jackson Society a few months ago also received a lot of press though whilst the media establishment like the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 clutched pearls and decried Farage with now-seemingly-meaningless derogatory terms Joe Public seemed far less enraged, with pages and pages of YouTube comments actually in favour of Farage. It seems at the moment in the media the Honourary President of the Reform Party has the airwaves at the moment and he has achieved a shock factor in an otherwise dull first week.
There has not been much in terms of unveiling policy. Labour announced plans for a Great British Energy company in an effort to nationalise energy (cue shudders as people remember the 1970s) the Tories touted the idea of young people engaging in National Service (though further research finds the plans would only involve 30,000 young people a year to engage in 25 hours National Service per year). There has been very little on the usual spending pledges as both parties admit the country is broke. The factor that the 3rd highest public expenditure behind pensions and health is debt service repayment is probably hamstringing the parties in what would otherwise be quite attention-grabbing policy promises. Labour have stated, or rather Deputy Leader Angela Rayner stated to Muslim elders in a bid to head off Galloway’s Workers Party, that very soon after they win the election that they would award Hamas’s efforts with a recognition of Palestine as a state alongside Norway and Ireland.
The Tories are still in-fighting as MP Lucy Allen was suspended from the party for endorsing the Reform UK candidate in her constituency in Telford. Labour hard-left heavy-hitters Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott were thrown out of the party following investigations into their behaviour/views in the anti-Semitism scandal in the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrats don’t seem to be so enamoured with their leader following his part in the Post Office Scandal that is rumbling on with the opening up of criminal investigations into the Horizon Scandal that ruined the lives of thousands of sub-postmasters a couple of decades ago. We have heard very little from the Scottish National Party as of yet. Only Reform UK seems to be hitting the ground running with the veteran campaigner Nigel Farage dominating the personality war of this election so far.
For voters the last week has been an exercise in waking up to the reality that we have 5 weeks to go to make our minds up about who we would like to represent us in Parliament. The politicians, many of whom are often of a quality that reflects the binary and often pre-ordained nature of the electoral system (for example there are a record amount of safe seats in the United Kingdom today, most held by Labour at the moment), are far too busy interacting with their own at the moment. The politicians are in a huddle and the voters are in the stands still waiting for the actual game to take place. Although, it is fair to say that voters up and down the country are far more likely to turn their back on the game unfolding as the two main parties are so collectively unpopular or not popular that there seems to be a palpable apathy. Time will tell if the responsibility of voting and choosing elected officials turns that apathy into indifference and then to a preference. Time will tell if Labour’s winning lead is a chance for non-Labour voters to try something else in this election as a vote for anyone else is not really going to make Labour’s win more likely; it is practically a certainty at this moment in time. The Tories are a split party and there is a far greater chance of a realignment of the right of British politics than a Tory win or coming close to a win.
Perhaps, in reality, the first 7 days is for Labour a preparation for 5 weeks of not losing the election they are expected to win and for the Tories this is a preparation for what comes after. For the other parties it is a battle for who becomes the strongest in opposition as the Tories go inevitably soul-searching after a predicted hammering on the 4th July. For us voters it is an audible sigh as we recognise that the lead-up to summer, to the Euros and the Olympics is a loud whine-fest about why some politicians are less worse than the others.
Maybe another pint of Pimms please…
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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