Election 2024: campaign overview

A few months ago I was saying that a hung parliament couldn’t be ruled out, leaving Starmer to cobble together an SNP coalition. Without Farage in the frame, that might well have been a possibility. Reform was going nowhere.

All the same, the writing has been on the wall for some time now that the Tories were facing a defeat. I’m not sure, though, that the final tally will credit Mr Farage with the defeat of the Tories. The Tories did this to themselves, and Sunak bears much of the responsibility.

Over the course of the last few months, I’d been expecting a last minute relaunch, perhaps even slating withdrawal from the ECHR to deal with the dinghy problem once and for all. Tory voters only needed a small sign that there was any longer a point in voting Conservative. But that speech never came. Instead we got a fumbled attempt to phase out tobacco. It’s almost as though Sunak had already resigned himself to defeat.

I get a sense, though, that the left of the party would have pulled the rug from under him had he even attempted a move to the right. The party has been in a state of ideological paralysis for some time. The various factions that make up the Tory coalition simply cannot coexist.

In that respect, the Tory wets who argued that part had gone too far to the right are not entirely wrong. They went too far to the right to retain their Lib Dem inclined voters and MPs. The party is being cannibalised from both ends, and the Lib Dems are as likely as Reform to pick up Tory seats.

This perhaps explains the Lib Dem’s rather bizarre election campaign in which Ed Davey has been seen paddle-boarding on Windermere, and bungee jumping. So long as the Lib Dems avoid saying anything remotely political, they can improve their numbers in parliament.

For Mr Sunak, though, the campaign has been more gruelling. His lapse of judgement on D-Day probably marked the end of his campaign, and he has struggled to claw back any credibility. His only campaign highlight was facing down Starmer during a television debate, in which he quite competently dismantled Starmer’s plan to deal with dinghy migrants. But this counted for nothing when Sunak himself will always stop short of what is necessary to bring an end to this plague.

Meanwhile, the campaign has not been a walk in the park for Labour. Thanks to The Muslim Vote, Starmer could find himself without some of his long-time shadow cabinet colleagues. Some big Labour names are in deep trouble and have spent much of the campaign being hectored and abused in the streets by Muslims and Palestine activists. This would probably have been the story of this election were it not for the media’s infatuation with Farage.

As it happens, I have not followed this campaign in any great detail. My concern before the election was announced was how to build a vehicle for conservatism for the election after, and my commentary about Reform in recent weeks is an adjunct of that. That there’s an election going on is almost incidental. The debate continues after the results are in.

In respect of that, I had not expected to endorse any party in this election, but through a process of elimination, I arrived at the view that the SDP are the closest there is to a conservative party.

By my own criteria, as defined in previous posts, the SDP falls short of being the answer but it does, at least, have an intellectual foundation and more developed policies than Reform. Though they are a little too left-leaning for my tastes, I’ve come to appreciate that values are just as important as policy.

On that score, the SDP have signed up to the New Culture Forum’s ten pledges as illustrated at the top, and having met the SDP leader, I’m convinced they are decent people with the right ideas. The vibe I get is right, and they understand the importance of old school shoe-leather politics. That’s something we can work with. This, I think, is why they can succeed on a long enough timeline.

I think, when it comes down to it, I can stomach the more left wing economic ideas of the SDP because they at least understand the folly of Net Zero and favour nuclear. Without a functioning energy sector, you have no economy to speak of.

More hardcore conservatives prefer a Thatcherite small-state approach, but it’s time to put all that dogma to bed. "That which governs best, governs least" remains true, but an under-resourced state cannot govern effectively. The problem we have is a state that does far too much of what it shouldn't at the expense of what it should.

As I've often pointed out, Britain has a dysfunctional state because we make endless laws while gutting our capacity to enforce them. If we want immigration control, and to tackle the symptoms of mass immigration then we're going to need trading standards officers, environmental health officers, tax inspectors, HSE inspectors, housing inspectors and all the key professionals you need to build up an effective local intelligence network so that you can govern effectively.

In recent times we have outsourced, centralised, or abolished these arms of local government, so that illegal immigrants have no fear of being caught even when they operate in broad daylight in full view of everyone.

Brits don't care how big the state is. They care whether it works or not, and they care whether it works in their interests. If it works in their interests, with a responsive democracy able to direct it, they will be glad of it.

Moreover, the SDP are not socialists as such. They just take the view that our water authorities should not be owned by a Singaporean wealth fund. I'm not sure that utilities would be any better run or any cheaper, and it's not high on my list of priorities, but the SDP recognises the need to govern Britain as a homeland, and not as neoliberal Airstrip One.

If I’m honest, though, I would prefer a far more radical immigration policy that what is offered by the SDP. Their approach is more coherent than that of Reform, but eventually I think we’re going to need mass deportation of illegals as a matter of national security. But the only parties offering that are electoral no-hoper ethno-nationalist outfits with links to the BNP. Even if I agreed with them, it’s not a way forward.

I do recall, mind you, that the BNP was at its strongest during a Labour administration. I rather suspect we will see history repeat as Labour abandons any serious effort to stop the boats. It also appears to be the case that Farage is moving Reform closer to the centre on immigration. Refugees from Reform may find their way into an explicitly anti-immigration party.

As regards to polling day tomorrow, I have no SDP candidate to vote for so I will be spoiling my ballot paper, but only if I happen to leave the house for any reason. I’m not going out of my way to do it. This election is less important than how we respond to it. The real work of movement building starts next week.

As to predictions, I’ve made mine. Reform will probably underperform, Labour’s win won’t be as big as the polls were predicting, and the Tories will do far better than the “Zero Seats” bunch would have liked. But as I’ve already outlined, it hardly matters how well Reform do because a Farage led entity has no long term future.

The real sport over the next week or so will be picking apart all the flaws in the MRP polls. Looking at the various polls, the chances of the Conservatives ending up with 167 seats are now just as likely as the party finishing with 17. That tells us they lack a single clue how to call an election as fragmented as this one. They have completely underestimated the significance of the Muslim Vote, and have consistently overstated Labour’s lead and Reform’s surge.

For me, the results will likely prove what I’ve long suspected. Intense campaigning in a social media echo chamber may generate exposure, but it doesn’t translate into seats, and having a good ground game still matters. It could be, with politics as fragmented as it is, that old fashioned pavement pounding matters more than it has for a generation. We shall soon see.