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Mordaunt is centre right, campaigned for Leave but fairly sensible. Think she’d rule out any pact with Reform and try to avoid too much culture war stuff. Badenoch is much further to the right, more like an American Conservative than a British one. I think she’d be much more amenable to some kind of alliance with Reform. She’d go big on culture wars and try to attack Labour on LGBT issues, immigration etc. As a Labour supporter I’d be more fearful of Mordaunt from an electoral perspective. But I really don’t like the idea of a culture warrior like Badenoch having even more of a platform to corrode our political discourse.

It would be a major surprise if she loses her seat. Not totally out of the question but only one MRP from the many published in the last few weeks has her losing. If she does lose then we are looking at the Conservatives being sub-60 seats I think.

The future of the Conservative Party could rest on whether Penny Mordaunt retains her Portsmouth North seat. Win it and she's odds on to be the next Tory leader. Lose and Kemi Badenoch is probably favourite. Two very different trajectories and there's probably only going to be a few hundred votes in it.

I'm still at "Claudio Ranieri promises to take Leicester players for pizza if they keep a clean sheet". The jump to Andrea Bocelli singing Nessun Dorma at the King Power is going to be quite something at 4am on Friday.

Spot on. This is the third general election I've canvassed in and 'don't be scary' is the biggest advice I could give for any Labour candidate. England is a conservative (small c) country. We might not like it but that's the reality, and you only win elections by addressing the electorate as it is rather than what you'd like it to be.

I went back to read some of the pre-election coverage from 1997 recently. The consensus was that Blair would get a big majority despite little enthusiasm for him or his policies. He was very popular AFTER the 1997 election, particularly following Princess Diana's death that summer. Starmer isn't particularly popular, but he's also not unpopular. His ratings are about the same as Boris Johnson's were before the 2019 election and a bit lower than Cameron in 2010. "I don't think every Labour voter is behind Starmer or any of the policies" - this is the same in every election. In 2017 and 2019 I voted Labour despite disliking Jeremy Corbyn and lots of the policies he put forward. I did that because I disliked Labour less than the Conservatives. Every vote counts the same.

I live in the North so as many Northern away days as possible. Arsenal Aston Villa Birmingham Blackburn Blackpool Bolton Burnley Chelsea Everton Hull Leeds Leicester Liverpool Man City Man Utd Newcastle Sheffield Wednesday Sunderland Spurs Wigan Edit: Just spotted the big six caveat. Replace those with their nearest non PL club: Man City = Stockport Man Utd = Salford City Chelsea = QPR Spurs = Leyton Orient Arsenal = Barnet Liverpool = Tranmere

I find it quite funny that the Guardian have taken at face value his campaign's claims that resources are being withdrawn because he's "too popular" rather than the more obvious explanation that Clacton is not and has never been a winnable seat for Labour. Resource reallocation is an absolutely standard part of campaign management. You collect data from canvassing returns in the early part of the campaign and that enables you to direct campaigners to seats where they can have the biggest impact.

Thought that question was rude, weird and a waste of time to be honest. What was he referring to when talking about Starmer having his "strings pulled by senior people in the Labour Party"? Sunak is a useless Prime Minister but had a successful private sector career before entering politics. Starmer entered politics in his 50s after about as stellar a career in public service as it's possible to imagine. That's exactly the kind of outside politics experience many people say they want from their politicians.

Any of you guys in Leicester East? Would be interested to hear how it's going on the ground. Surely one of the maddest seats in this election. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/25/labour-silence-on-disgraced-keith-vazs-record-could-see-him-re-elected-mayor-warns

I've not had a single f*** off yet. Quite the contrast to previous elections. Even the guy who told me off about Labour's VAT on private schools policy was very polite about it.

I'm in the North West so only getting a snapshot really. But yes - going to places I never went canvassing in 2015 and 2017 (was out of the country in 2019, which was probably for the best). I've been to three seats in south Manchester and Cheshire that have been mostly or entirely Tory since the dawn of time. These are reasonably well off areas, lots of middle class people doing quite nicely. Traditional Tory voters are abandoning them, I've got no doubt the polls are right about that. I am cautious about that translating to the kind of enormous Labour victory that some of the polls are suggesting, mainly because I am still coming across a lot of undecideds. But whereas in the past you'd assume a lot of those undecideds would ultimately go Tory I really don't think that's the case this time. The electorate wants to give the Tories a kicking. I'm not just not sure whether they'll kick them to death or just rough them up a bit.

The vast majority of postal votes are posted within 2-3 days of recieving them. Around 20% of votes were postal in 2019 so I'd guess close to that figure have already voted now. I'm a Labour canvasser and we had a big push last week targeting likely postal voters.

I agree that we need to increase taxes but the problem for Labour is that every time it's gone into an election while in opposition with even a hint that it's going to raise taxes, it loses. The party is scarred by 1992 and 2015. The British public want European public services with US-level taxes. I think Labour has one shot at a 'Doctor's Budget' in the autumn where Rachel Reeves says something along the lines of: "We've looked at the figures and the Tories have messed up the public finances even more than we thought - we need to operate. To fix this we're going to need to raise specific taxes for a bit and we'll try to bring them back down once we've fixed stuff." Osborne did the mirror image of this in 2010 when his nonsense 'emergency budget' laid the foundations for a decade of austerity.

Only one view from the ground, but I was chatting with someone at the weekend who's been out canvassing for Labour in Islington North and they think it will be a comfortable but not huge Labour win. Personally I think it will be quite close but I don't know the area at all so I'm going purely off vibes.

Saw that she has a marketing background so that makes sense. Good to know which ‘fans’ matter to the club and which don’t.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already. The club recruited a Head of Fan Engagement three months ago, reportedly on a 70k+ salary. The price of matchday tickets seems like an important thing fans should be engaged on, but according to the main supporter groups this has not happened. What exactly does the Head of Fan Engagement do?

This is the real centre of English politics. Fund the NHS, bring back the death penalty.

This is Labour's exact policy! https://great-british-energy.org.uk/

Only happened to me once, when I was student living in a marginal. Have lived in safe seats the past decade or so and never been canvassed once. Although as a paid up Labour member I’d be worried about the data operation if I got a knock on the door.

Been out door knocking for Labour in two North West marginal seats this weekend. One is a bellwether seat, won by the Tories in 2019 but has been Labour before. The other has been held by the Tories since it was created 30 years ago. A few takeaways: I’ve not spoken to a single person voting Conservative, including quite a few who did in 2019. Of those 2019 Conservative voters I’d say a third are planning to vote Labour. The rest a mix of Reform, Lib Dem and not voting. Even the guy I spoke to who sends his kids to private school and was very annoyed at Labour’s VAT on private schools policy is planning to vote Lib Dem. I wouldn’t say there’s a wave of enthusiasm for Labour but quite a few people have heard more from Starmer over the last few weeks and like him. A lot of “he seems like a safe pair of hands”. Spoke to a few 2017 and 2019 Labour voters and the vast majority are voting Labour this time. Didn’t speak to anyone going Green. It helps that these are marginal seats where it’s essentially a straight choice between Labour and Conservative. Pretty much everyone thought the NHS is in a terrible state and that will influence how they vote. Generally there’s a lot of anti-politics feeling. I didn’t hear a lot of “they’re all the same” but the 2019 Conservative voters I spoke to felt very let down by Brexit (both remainers and leavers) and the chaos of the last few years. The key for Labour over the next couple of weeks is turning those voters from ‘definitely not Tory’ to Labour.

Fantastic city. Was there last autumn and met Ayoze Perez in a pizza restaurant! If you like wine I really recommend a place called Lama La Uva, near the Metropol Parasol. They do lovely tapas and if you tell them what kinds of wine you like they'll bring you various glasses to try out. A great spot for people watching.

Plenty to be critical about with the current leadership of the club, but when it comes to managers the track record over the last decade has been overwhelmingly positive. They also tend to move quickly to appoint once there is a vacancy. I imagine we'll have someone confirmed in the next 7-10 days.

This is exactly my concern with Moyes. That season with Sunderland was awful. Turned on the fans, digging out players in public etc.

He’s going to Bologna.