I am not a republican and never have been but I do think that James O’Brien has a point here. This makes me feel very uneasy and I am concerned about the changes in the law on protests that the Tories have brought in. Mike Smithson
The latest polling table sets out what has been the most recent movement in the polls – they are just about all showing leads in the teens for Starmer’s party – a far cry from February when almost all the firms had gaps of 20%+, Running alongside this shift has been the improvement in Sunak’s leader ratings. Although he still trails Starmer in most polls the gap is nothing like what it was. The next step could be single-digit leads…
Firstly there is the question of how a majority is defined. This is from Smarkets: This market will be settled based on which party (if any) wins an overall majority of the seats (50% +1) at the next UK general election. The speaker will not be counted in any party’s seat total but will be counted in the overall number of seats. By my reckoning, this means LAB moving from the 202 seats of GE2019 to 326 which looks daunting…
Perhaps that was the whole point of having the wedding today
The figures are: Labour: 35% Conservatives: 26% Lib Dems: 20% Others: 19% This is slightly lower than the national Westminster polls but still a good indicator of the challenge facing Sunak. Prof Michael Thrasher has said that his analysis suggests that these results show Labour is on course to be the largest party in parliament after the general election, but without an overall majority. Mike Smithson
It is important to note that we have only had a small number of results so far with the vast bulk of councils doing their counts during the day. I have little doubt that things will change in the next few hours. A big figure to look out for will be the scale of Tory losses. One projection overnight has the party losing over 1,100 seats. No doubt there will be speculation over Sunak’s position given that this is his…
The Scots Tories and Greens are on the decline At the 2010 General Election when the Tories returned to power there was no change in the seats in Scotland. Labour had 41 of the 69 seats and ended up with 41 of the 69 seats Everything changed north of the border following the IndyRef in 2014 when there was a huge move to the SNP in the polls although the referendum itself went with the status quo Since then Scottish…