#ScrimshawSix, UK Election Edition

What The Hell?

There clearly is a God.

I despise Rishi Sunak, a fact that should not surprise anyone aware of my general politics. He’s everything wrong with politics in general and British politics in specific, and his departure from the world stage will be a good day. (How good depends on your thoughts on Keir Starmer, who I spent much of 2021 bashing in these pages and maintain is crap. That said, still better than Sunak.) But fortunately for me, he’s called the election for July 4^th and not, as he had intended, November, which is amazing. I won’t now die of liver failure covering a British election and an American one in the same month, so that’s fun.

In terms of the Brits, it’s been a while since I’ve chronicled them in these pages, but not for a lack of interest. It’s just that, since Liz Truss, the polls have never gotten close enough to really bother. But, the campaign’s here, it’s not like I’ve stopped paying attention, and there’s a lot going on – even if in the broadest of strokes, we know the result already.

The decision to go now will be much columnized about, but the honest truth is that the Tories are gonna lose and lose badly. There’s a lot of scope for what “badly” could mean, but the factors that could create a Tory recovery to 27% or whatever won’t come from another few months of Commons jousting and lame announcements. If the Tories are to survive in something like how they did in 1997, they need the Lib Dems to fuck up the campaign and the Greens to capitalize on discontent to let the Tories hold on in a bunch of places with 25% drops in their vote share. Whether there will be gravity on the Lib Dem and Green numbers is unknowable until the campaign, and it’s probably much more useful for the Tories to go now when Gaza is a live issue if they want the Greens to get what Ipsos had this week, aka a 11% Green vote.

This site will get into many of these questions in time, but for now, on launch day, let’s re-use an old bit, and break out the #ScrimshawSix – six burning questions as the British go to the polls.

Does Labour Make A Substantive Offer To Its Left Flank?

While it is cherrypicking to quote that 11% Ipsos had this week, the Greens are on the march in the UK. They picked up on leftwing discontent across the country in the local elections, there was a concerted effort amongst progressives to pressure Starmer through a Green vote, and now the party’s polling in the high single digits routinely. The thing about good polling? It often begets more good polling, because the act of being seen as electable makes more people consider you worth voting for. In the same way First Past The Post can kill stagnant minor party chances, it can be rocket fuel on a movement seen to have momentum. (For what it’s worth, I’d vote Green in a heartbeat if I were a UK citizen.)

Starmer has spent the last two years systemically rowing back on most everything he promised the left of the party to get the leadership. He has driven previously devoted Labour activists out of the party, and while I find Owen Jones pious and self-righteous he is a useful barometer for a decent proportion of the Labour party’s voters. His exit in and of itself means nothing, but there is clearly a segment of the party’s vote for whom Starmer is a bridge too close to the middle.

Starmer’s strategy, love or loathe it, has been simple – encroach on Tory terrain to lock in a landslide. If that calculus changes – more bluntly, if the Green vote gets to a point where it’s starting to allow Tory MPs to win through a vote split – does he reverse himself? Does his Green capital spending fund come back, or does he get more aggressive on Israel? It’s unclear. It’s unclear whether it’ll matter – if the Tories at 19% like Ipsos says (against 23% on average), then a double digit Green vote isn’t worth stressing about. If you get a poll showing 38-26 with the Greens on 11%? Then we’ll see what Starmer’s willing to do.

Can The Tories Recover?

Let’s get to the embarrassing part of all of this – I may or may not (read: definitely did) say that I thought Liz Truss had a decent chance of winning a 2024 General Election. Now, I bailed on that opinion within a week of the MiniBudget From Hell, but still. I have been waiting for a Tory recovery – not a full comeback, but some form of recovery – since August of 2022. My bias, such as it exists, is to assume that incumbents will recover from their midterm blues. We saw Thatcher and Major do it, Blair did it twice, Call Me Dave managed it, and Boris of course did the same. Not all those circumstances were equal, and I didn’t think Sunak was going to win this election. But I didn’t expect him to be 21% down on average on the day he went to the Palace.

That said, the Labour lead does feel soft. I’m not saying it’ll be particularly close, and I’m absolutely not pretending that I think we’ll be on sneaky Hung Parliament watch by Canada Day, but a 21% lead could be 14% by the midway point. Starmer’s going to have to put actual policies in the window, he’s going to have to get off the fence he’s straddling on Israel, he’ll have to piss or get off the pot on migration and crossings, and he’ll have to make decisions. When you’re polling 44%, your coalition gets unwieldly. Firm answers can only serve to annoy one part or another, which is why Starmer’s spent so long avoiding any.

I think the Tories end up breaking 25%. I don’t know how much above 25% they get, but I think they do. That’s probably enough to break 100 seats, though I must confess I haven’t built a model this cycle. By the standards of some of the most aggressively bad polls, this might qualify as a success. Against 365 seats and seeming hegemony in December 2019, this is the most pathetic failure.

Will The Lib Dems Actually Pay Off The Hype?

No. They’re Lib Dems. They will always get your hopes up and then crush you. It will all end in tears.

The serious answer is that the Lib Dems have learned their lesson from last time. In 2019, offering a staunchly pro-Remain platform – even promising a Majority Lib Dem government (what a concept) would revoke Article 50 without a referendum! – and they got 12 seats and lost their leader. Now, they’re … well, they don’t really know. They’re not offering a Rejoin position, they bounce from issue to issue without any thread, they’re vaguely (or not so vaguely) NIMBY in the south, and generally incoherent.

If the Tory vote is really 20% they’ll romp home. If it’s 25%+ they’ll make some gains but not that many. Their lack of central identity will make it harder for them to be an amorphous vehicle for protest votes, especially considering Reform, the Greens, and whatever Galloway manages to stand up in time will all take anti-system votes that pooled with the Lib Dems in 2005 or 2010.

The Lib Dems both need to raise expectations (to make them seem like a party that actually can win) and lower them (so that 30 seats isn’t seen as a failure). It’s a bitch and a half of a needle to thread, but it’s the job. Let’s see if they can do it. (Spoiler: they can’t.)

Will Reform Actually Cement Itself As A Force?

They’re probably the big losers today – they have less time to get their shit together, and now have mere days to figure out whether to do the oft-mooted but never formalized Farage substitution. A snap election likely limits their chances at a seat, and that’s a good thing for Sunak.

I should note that I am utter dogshit at projecting new parties, so it’s entirely possible they get four seats. I doubt it, but this is not my specialty. I think it’s much more likely Reform are the Quebec Conservatives of 2022 – big vote share, diffuse vote, no seats – but I’m not gonna be shocked if they find a random seat or 3 they can win.

Will Scotland Revert Back To 2010?

The other big losers of all of this is the SNP, who are currently running around like a series of headless chickens. A recent Scottish poll had the Scottish Labour lead nearing double digits, and the second new Scottish First Minister doesn’t exactly help the prospects of the SNP at Westminster. If the pitch at this election is Labour stability versus chaos, that’s a message that works in England and Wales against the Tories and one that works for them in Scotland too.

Why Did Sunak Not Use A Fucking Umbrella?

Announcing the election in the pouring rain, while D:Ream plays in the background, and as Tory rebels see if they can depose you? God I love the English.