The General Election in the UK, 2024

[Stavros]

The assumption that there will be a General Election in the UK (it is technically possible it could be delayed to January 2025), prompts this post.

I am so far not interested in opinion polls, which predict a collapse of the Conservative Party vote and the seats it gets in the House of Commons, as a lot can, and will happen between now and then.

Rather, first off is more of an introduction with a link to the Boundary Changes that have been made. The House of Commons will continue to have 650 seats, as proposals to reduce it to 600 were abandoned, but some Constituencies will change, and for those interested the link tells you which ones.

For the sake of Comparison, the US House of Representatives has 435 seats representing a district with approx. 761,179 people, not all of whom vote. The House of Commons has 650 seats which on average represent 75,000 people.

Another key difference is that polling stations in most UK constituencies (this may differ in remote areas) are spread out so that no voter should be more than a 10 minute walk away from a ballot box, and I don't believe there have ever been long queues of voters waiting for more than an hour as happens in the US. I wonder how many American voters have now chosen to vote by mail rather than spend such a long time waiting in line, and I don't know if this is common throughout the US or just in some states.

Anyway I hope this is a start

When will the next UK general election be? | Institute for Government

2023 boundary changes | Institute for Government

63 so far but there could be more this year
MPs standing down at the next general election | Institute for Government

[Stavros]

You know you are at the fag end of a Government when the MPs of the ruling party are mired in scandal, like the MP -Mark Menzies-
"According to the Times, Menzies phoned his former campaign manager, now a party volunteer, at 3.15am one night in December saying he had been locked in a flat by “some bad people” and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”."
Tory MP loses whip after claims he used party funds to pay ‘bad people’ | Conservatives | The Guardian

Then there was the Govt Minister - Chris Philp- he other night on TV defending his Govt's policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda
"An audience member from the Democratic Republic of the Congo asked about the government's new law on deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda. Responding, policing minister Mr Philp appeared to ask if Rwanda and Congo were different countries."
Did Chris Philp confuse Rwanda and Congo on Question Time? - BBC News

Below is a time chart that shows the dates in 2024 when Parliament can be dissolved so that a General Election can take place. It means if there is an election in July this year there are two weeks at the end of May and early June when the dissolution should take place.

from

General election timetables 2024 - House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)

When could polling day be?
The table below sets out the dissolution date and the corresponding polling day for each Thursday until the last possible polling day for the next general election. Earlier polling dates not on a Thursday can be found in the Excel worksheet, All possible polling dates.

[rodinuk]

I think this government are Klingons so it will be as late as they can possibly bear

[Stavros]

I think this government are Klingons so it will be as late as they can possibly bear

If you are in need of some light laughter this Monday morning, ponder the backroom efforts of a few -and I think it is a few- 'radicals' who want to replace Sunak with Penny (The Diver) Mordaunt before the election, in order to win it. One Tory rebel who nevertheless thinks it is madness was quoted saying

""The reality is that we are facing an extinction-level event. "It is for colleagues to decide if they want to go down with the sinking ship."".
Tory rebels planning to oust Sunak and make Mordaunt PM as part of 100-day masterplan to... - LBC

If that is how the rebels see it, consider this from Conservative Home -first a few quotes from Penny herself, imagining the 'Nightmare Before Christmas' that could have been a Labour Govt led by Ed Miliband-

"The conservative 2015 intake never was. Oliver Dowden has simply moved from behind the scenes at Number 10 to behind the scenes at CCHQ. Boris Johnson never returned to parliament – instead running for a third term as London mayor; as a result, water cannons are now an integral part of the Metropolitan Police’s arsenal.
Michael Gove, shaken by his shock defeat, has left politics and the media altogether and can be found running ‘Level Up’, not a think tank, but a nightclub in Camberley."
Penny Mordaunt: A Christmas vision of the horrors of Labour past - and what might have been had Miliband won... | Conservative Home

(Has Penny ever been to Camberley? Maybe she has. Hence the Whist Drive).

Any wonder that a review of her book (co-authored with an ally) has the headline

If her book is anything to go by, Mordaunt would be a disaster as leader

And has this nugget of comparative sociology

"“In America, there are 62,000 bars and 384,000 churches. It’s a ratio of more than six to one in favour of churches. In Britain, there are 47,000 pubs and 16,000 churches. It’s a ratio of almost three to one in favour of pubs. If that’s not a source of national pride, nothing is.”".

Lots more where this came from. Oh, and by the way, Penny may well lose her seat at the next election. So she might go for No 10 while she can, and use her tenure as 'former Prime Minister' to follow Boris and Liz on the US Lecture tour....or maybe just hit the bars in lower Manhattan...

If her book is anything to go by, Mordaunt would be a disaster as leader | Conservative Home