Category Archives: General elections

Labour to target south of England at general election, campaign chief says

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Pat McFadden says local election results give the party confidence it can win ‘blue wall’ seats that are ‘turning red’

Labour is planning to target the south of England heavily at the general election as the local election results show some “blue wall” seats are turning red, Keir Starmer’s election chief has said.

The shadow cabinet minister Pat McFadden said Labour was advancing in southern Tory heartlands and it was wrong to think the Lib Dems were the only challengers to the Conservatives in the south.

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Tories may drop autumn statement pledging more tax cuts before election

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With public finances in a worse position than expected, chancellor Jeremy Hunt is considering pushing back further pledges

Jeremy Hunt and his team are considering not holding another tax-cutting autumn statement before the next election, amid uncertainty about the public finances.

The chancellor has already hinted that he plans to pledge further tax cuts – including another down payment on Rishi Sunak’s ambition to abolish national insurance – before a general election, which is expected to be held in the autumn. He also remains under pressure from the right of the party to lower taxes.

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Big Tory losses but no Labour landslide. What might happen at Westminster? – a visual analysis

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Tory council representation has imploded, but Labour’s gains have not been seismic. These charts show what this may signal for a general election

Conservative representation has collapsed to its lowest level since 1998 in the areas that voted in Thursday’s local elections, according to a Guardian analysis.

The Tories now control 19% of seats in the 98 council areas that had announced results by 20:40 on 3 May – their lowest level since Labour’s Tony Blair swept to power in the late 1990s.

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Labour’s Claire Ward elected first mayor of East Midlands as Sunak gets boost in Tees Valley after Tory losses – live

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Party source describes region as ‘beating heart of general election battleground’ as prime minister says Labour threw ‘lot of mud’

The results of the London mayoral contest and London assembly elections are due on Saturday. Labour’s Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term and polls have put him comfortably ahead of Tory Susan Hall, despite jitters in Khan’s campaign team.

Following the closure of the polls tonight, Khan said his campaign and Labour activists “sent out a message of fairness, of equality and of hope”.

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UK general election opinion poll tracker: Labour leading as election looms

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Find out who’s up and who’s down in the latest polls – and how many seats each party is likely to win in the next general election

The next UK general election is looming, with most analysts expecting it to be called late this year.

After 13 years of Conservative rule, Keir Starmer’s Labour has been consistently ahead in the polls since the start of 2022.

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Reform UK backs candidates who promoted online conspiracy theories

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Party stands by members set to contest key seats who have claimed climate crisis does not exist and Islamophobia is ‘made up’

Reform UK has chosen to stand by candidates who have promoted conspiracy theories online, called the climate emergency “make-believe” and expressed vaccine-sceptic views.

Those fringe views, and more, were put forward by a group of seven candidates selected to stand for the rightwing populist party at the next general election – including several who will contest seats that some analyses consider to be their top targets.

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Tory rebels plan 100-day ‘policy blitz’ if local elections are disaster for party

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Worried MPs have concocted five-point plan of quick measures aimed at showing that the party cares about public’s priorities

Rishi Sunak is braced for a bruising week as Tory rebels flaunted plans for a 100-day “policy blitz” to secure quick wins if the local election results prove disastrous for the party.

The prime minister said on Sunday that he was not “distracted” by his personal ratings lingering at record lows. He refused to rule out calling a July general election amid mounting rumours that unruly MPs will attempt to oust him if the West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, and the Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, are defeated on Thursday.

An attempt to end the junior doctors pay dispute with a 10-12% offer.

Further cuts to legal migration numbers, with a curb on the number of foreign students staying in the UK.

Vow to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2027.

Introduce measures to jail prolific offenders and build rapid detention cells to increase prison capacity.

Cut the benefits bill, with a target to reduce payments for depression and anxiety.

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Labour are ahead in the polls, but have they won hearts and minds? These charts suggest not

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There are signs the party’s polling lead is a bit soft. But with the Tories trailing in leadership and economy, experts are not sure it will matter

As 2014 came to a close, it seemed Ed Miliband would be the next prime minister, with the Labour party leading David Cameron’s Conservatives as the general election approached.

But when the May 2015 results came in, it was Cameron who headed back to Downing Street.

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Labour shifts poll tactics to target fearful Tory over-65s

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Alarm grows over possible pension cuts as research suggests Jeremy Hunt tax cut announcement was ‘blunder’

Labour is to wage a new campaign to win over Tory-supporting pensioners in an attempt to neutralise one of the government’s last remaining electoral strengths, amid evidence the Conservatives are now performing as badly among the age group as they did under Liz Truss’s leadership.

With less than a fortnight to go until local elections in England, which some Tories fear could trigger an attempt to topple Rishi Sunak, the Observer understands that Keir Starmer’s top officials are reorienting their campaign after detecting alarm among pensioners over the impact a Conservative tax-cutting pledge could have on pensions and the NHS.

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Rishi Sunak insists he did not keep green card to move back to US

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Prime minister says he held on to his US residency until 2021 only because he had not got around to revoking it

Rishi Sunak has insisted he does not want to move to the US and that he kept his green card for years only because returning it was “not something I got round to”.

The prime minister said he had “acted in accordance with all the rules” when in possession of a US green card, which he gave up only in 2021, while he was chancellor.

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Reform UK drops two more election candidates over racist comments

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Jonathan Kay and Mick Greenhough made derogatory remarks about Muslims and black people on social media

Reform UK has dropped two more parliamentary candidates after accusations they made racist comments on social media.

Campaign group Hope Not Hate found tweets by candidates Jonathan Kay and Mick Greenhough in which they made derogatory comments about Muslims and black people.

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Rishi Sunak criticised for laughing off question about timing of general election – UK politics live

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Liberal Democrats say PM is ‘laughing in the face of people crying out for change’

At the weekend the Observer splashed on a story by Toby Helm saying government lawyers have told ministers that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law in Gaza.

In an interview today, asked about the legality of what Israel is doing, Rishi Sunak said the government believes Israel has “the intention and the ability” to comply with international law. He said:

Our view is longstanding that Israel has both the intention and the ability to comply with international humanitarian law, I’ve made that very clear to prime minister Netanyahu whenever I’ve spoken to him.

There have been too many civilian deaths in Gaza, of course we want to see an immediate humanitarian pause so that we can get the hostages out and more aid into the region.

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Conservatives set for worst election result yet, research shows

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Survey of 15,000 people suggests even party leader Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire seat is at risk

The Conservatives are on course for their worst election result, winning fewer than 100 seats, according to a new poll.

The seat-by-seat analysis gives the Tories 98 constituencies compared with Labour’s 468, giving Sir Keir Starmer a 286-seat majority, the Sunday Times has reported.

The 15,000-person poll, conducted by agency Survation on behalf of Best for Britain, gives Labour a 45% vote share with a 19-point lead over the Conservatives.

Rishi Sunak’s party is on track to win 98 seats with none in Scotland or Wales, according to the research. It also suggests the prime minister is at risk of losing his own constituency, the new Richmond & Northallerton seat in North Yorkshire, to Labour with his lead less than 2.5 percentage points.

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Labour has 99% chance of forming next government, says elections expert – UK politics live

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Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, said the chances of a Tory revival were small

In the House of Lords peers have just started debating the second reading of the leasehold and freehold reform bill. The bill has already passed through the Commons.

Normally, at this stage of the process, the content of a government bill is all but finalised. But, as No 10 admitted on Monday, the government has still not decided how far it will go in terms of cutting ground rents for existing leaseholders.

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Abbott claims Labour leadership’s ‘real agenda’ is to prevent her getting the whip back – UK politics live

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Hackney MP endorsed a post saying it was unlikely she would be allowed to rejoin Labour despite the support of senior figures

A reader asks:

Is there anything other than convention which says elections must be on a Thursday?

The reason for choosing Thursday, it is said, was as follows. On Fridays the voters were paid their wages and if they went for a drink in a public house they would be subject to pressure from the Conservative brewing interests, while on Sundays they would be subject to influence by Free Church ministers who were generally Liberal in persuasion. Therefore choose the day furthest from influence by either publicans or Free Church clergymen, namely Thursday. Although these influences are much less significant today, the trend towards Thursday becoming a universal polling day has continued, because Urban District Councils and Rural District Councils all polled on a Saturday until they were abolished under the 1972 Local Government Act. Their successor District Councils poll on a Thursday and the Parish Council polling day was changed from Saturday to Thursday at the same time.

If it ends up being an autumn election as Sunak has indicated, how does that impact the conference season - do they still go ahead? - and does the summer recess have any affect on when a government can call an election?

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Theresa May to step down as MP at general election

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Former PM says she wants to focus on causes close to her heart after 27 years in parliament

The former prime minister Theresa May will step down as an MP at the next general election after 27 years in parliament.

In a statement to the Maidenhead Advertiser, the Maidenhead MP said she wanted to focus on causes close to her heart, including her work on the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

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Blur drummer Dave Rowntree selected as Labour candidate for general election

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Labour candidate will stand in Mid Sussex against Conservatives who currently hold seat

Modern Life is Rubbish, Blur once famously pronounced. Well, after the band’s drummer was selected as a Labour candidate at the next general election, they may hope to change the situation.

Dave Rowntree will stand in Mid Sussex, the party announced on Wednesday evening. The constituency includes Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and the Mid Sussex villages.

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UK general election opinion polls tracker: Labour leading as election looms

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Find out who’s up and who’s down in the latest polls – and how many seats each party is likely to win in the next general election

The next UK general election is looming, with most analysts expecting it to be called late this year.

After 13 years of Conservative rule, Keir Starmer’s Labour has been consistently ahead in the polls since the start of 2022.

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Starmer set up own Labour leadership team six months before Corbyn’s 2019 defeat

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A new biography has revealed how the Labour leader and his allies planned his challenge in advance of the election

Keir Starmer had assembled a leadership team about six months before the Ddecember 2019 general election that led to Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation as Labour leader.

The team, codenamed the “Arlington Group”, began planning in earnest how Starmer could capture the leadership from June of that year – including a detailed breakdown of how Labour’s membership could be convinced to support him.

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UK general election: find your new constituency – and see how it would have voted in 2019

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Boundary changes mean the 2024 British general election will be fought in altered seats. Enter your postcode to see a map of your constituency and how these seats would have voted in 2019

The next general election in the UK will be fought across 650 new constituencies after boundary changes were approved by parliament.

While no election has taken place along these boundaries yet, research by psephologists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, academics at the University of Plymouth, has estimated how, based on 2019 results, these new seats would have notionally voted in that election.

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