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#ukelection #leadership #ukpolitics How can the Conservatives avoid the catastrophic defeat they seem destined to suffer? Things seemed so different in 2015. 1. Make a proper apology for the debacle we have all had to endure since 2015. For the failure to confront and reverse the UK’s mounting problems. For not asking the right Qs. For wasting time on frivolous policies that will have no lasting impact on the welfare of the UK as a whole. For choosing too many incompetent ministers that were unfit for high office. For governing badly since 2015. And above all, for taking down to the electorate, particularly during Covid when what was preached was not practiced. 2. Publish a short manifesto that contains a few critical deliverables that address the above. That creates a very clear political narrative. That tells us what they stand for. That explains why one should vote for them for reasons other than keeping Labour out. The current manifesto does not and people have stopped listening. If the recent fate of the traditional centre-right in many other countries is anything to go by, the Conservatives face facing an existential threat, largely of their own making. Reform is a protest movement and is not a credible alternative. But this may change if it polls above the Conservative Party and broadens its leadership team and offering after the election. Things could and should have been so different.

Scotland will be an important battleground for Labour in the forthcoming General Election. And the Conservatives will be looking to hold on to every seat they possibly can. Both parties have Scottish party conferences taking place in late February and early March respectively. Clients and lobby groups are already gearing up for what looks to be busy conferences this Spring. With a great deal of uncertainty still surrounds the outcome of the election, many organisations are wanting to make sure they have all political bases covered - and with good reason. Labour still has a mountain to climb and the Conservative vote is likely to follow a national downward trend. Lib Dems are starting from a low base but could still make small gains. Nevertheless, the SNP remain the party to beat. While they are facing difficulties at every turn, their vote is still running pretty high. Even their lowest polling towards the end of last year (Redfield and Wilton) showed the SNP on 32% and up slightly to 34% at the end of November. Ipsos's poll even had them polling at 40%. Labour might yet beat the SNP but it also shows that despite their woes, the SNP could still poll well above 30%. The 2017 election secured the party 35 seats on a poll of 36.9%. That may be starting to look like a high bar but a reminder that the SNP are still very important players in the election to come. Scotland's electoral outcome remains far from set and this year's Spring conferences will be important opportunities for the party leaders to set out their stalls. The question for all of the leaders will be whether they can come up with policies that are fresh, interesting and can reinvigorate their supporters. #Scottishpolitics #partyconferences #generalelection

Week 27 - 5 Things to Know in Investing This Week Point 4) The UK Has its First Labour Government in 14 Years: The UK 2024 general election has delivered a landslide victory for the Labour Party after 14 years of Conservative rule. Despite this convincing result, the election was not so much won by Labour, but lost by the Conservatives. The Reform UK Party under its leader Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit, siphoned off key votes from the Conservative base. Many high-profile Conservatives were ousted, including immediate past Prime Minister Liz Truss; the first former prime minister to have lost a seat in almost ninety years. Nigel Farage, on his eighth attempt, has finally entered the House of Parliament. He plans to fill the gap on the center-right of politics and aims to create a mass national movement to challenge the government in 2029. His party, Reform UK, is responsible for two-thirds of the seats lost by the Conservatives.

UK General Election Results - Labour Victory Labour has achieved a whitewash of a victory in the UK general election, overturning their dismal 2019 results. Dubbed the "Starmer tsunami," this win reflects the electorate's clear determination to remove the Conservatives. Sir Keir Starmer will soon be Prime Minister, with a focus on restoring stability and civility to politics. Despite their significant win, Labour's share of the vote isn't overwhelmingly large, and Starmer is expected to acknowledge this to manage expectations. Prime Minister Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves will tackle ongoing issues like the cost of living crisis, government finances, and global uncertainties. High-profile Conservatives, including Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Jeremy Hunt, faced tough losses. The Conservative Party will now undergo a period of introspection and reorganisation. This election marks the fourth prime minister in under two years, highlighting unprecedented voter volatility in the UK. The new Labour government faces the significant task of meeting high expectations amid these changes. #UKElection #LabourVictory #KeirStarmer #BritishPolitics #ElectionResults #PoliticalShift

Week 27 - 5 Things to Know in Investing This Week Point 4) The UK Has its First Labour Government in 14 Years: The UK 2024 general election has delivered a landslide victory for the Labour Party after 14 years of Conservative rule. Despite this convincing result, the election was not so much won by Labour, but lost by the Conservatives. The Reform UK Party under its leader Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit, siphoned off key votes from the Conservative base. Many high-profile Conservatives were ousted, including immediate past Prime Minister Liz Truss; the first former prime minister to have lost a seat in almost ninety years. Nigel Farage, on his eighth attempt, has finally entered the House of Parliament. He plans to fill the gap on the center-right of politics and aims to create a mass national movement to challenge the government in 2029. His party, Reform UK, is responsible for two-thirds of the seats lost by the Conservatives.

Labour goes into #election2024 with 205 seats in the Commons, facing the Conservatives with 345. With 650 seats total up for grabs, 326 are required for a majority. Even with a huge lead in the polls, it’s clear that Sir Keir Starmer has a mountain to climb to overturn the government’s majority and get Labour a decent one of its own. Yet here’s a remarkable fact. Since World War II, only ONCE has a clear majority for one party turned into a clear majority for another at a UK general election. Perhaps equally surprising: who was the political colossus who pulled this off? None other than Ted Heath – not a Prime Minister much-remembered for political skill. But his 1970 election win was a real achievement. The truth is that hung parliaments, narrow majorities and formal or informal deals to support governments are more common in the UK than is often realised – or remembered. So Keir Starmer has a big task ahead of him to get even as far as Ted Heath did. Nobody ever said this politics stuff was easy… #uk #ukpolitics

🗳️ UK General Election 2024 - Results are In! RPP is now offering 1:1 sessions to help you understand and analyse the impact of a new government for your business and how to make the most of the new figures in politics.    Labour, with a commanding majority, can go ahead with their plan to bring significant change to the UK, especially in reforms to the health care system. Read our full report, published later this morning, further unpacking Labour's policy plan and what the results mean for the country.  Here are details of what happened so far:   ➡️ Keir Starmer will be the new Prime Minister after a significant Labour landslide victory at the cost of the Conservatives, who are reduced to just 119 seats, their lowest ever total. ➡️ Huge gains for the Liberal Democrats making them the third-largest party, with Reform UK entering Parliament for the first time with 4 seats, despite receiving an estimated 14.3% of the popular vote. ➡️ Nationalism is rejected in Scotland with a huge loss in SNP seats at the expense of the Lib Dems and Labour. Elsewhere is the Union national sentiment rises as Sinn Fein becomes the largest Party in Northern Ireland for the first time after DUP losses and Wales' Plaid Cymru secured an additional 2 seats.   Please contact Benjamin Smith ([email protected]) to arrange a session. #UKHealthcare #GeneralElection2024 #HealthPolicy #PublicAffairs

The Conservatives used far-right politics in a desperate bid to avoid disaster. They failed. But the British far-right has never been so strong. I don't just mean that Nigel Farage is in parliament for the first time, and he has three colleagues from Reform UK with him. I mean that this election was dominated by far-right dog whistles, including by the victorious Keir Starmer. So how did we end up here? In my latest newsletter, I propose the concept of "Faragenstein". Farage is a monster that the Conservatives created with a populist right-wing shift 20 years ago. When they shifted back to the centre, this created a space for far-right politics that the British National Party and then Nigel Farage filled. During this campaign, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak repeated exactly the same mistakes that the Conservatives made 20 years ago: by parroting far-right rhetoric on migrants and trans people, you might defeat them in the short term. But in the long-term, you only make them stronger. Faragenstein helped to inflict the worst defeat in Conservative Party history. He ate them up, and now he's coming for the rest of us. What do you think? https://lnkd.in/e3riEYzD

David Cameron and George Osborne tried and failed to modernise the Conservative and Unionist Party to broaden its appeal to younger generations, avoiding the demographic time bomb that has come home to roost in what is looking like the lowest ever Tory vote and the biggest loss of seats in British parliamentary history. Who could ever forget Cameron’s impassioned plea on the eve of the Brexit Referendum that older voters should think of their children and grandchildrens future and vote Remain, clearly deeply concerned that the Leave campaign was going to win. Despite the sleaze, the rollercoaster ride of leaders, and the failure to “level up”, some will still no doubt say that Brexit has delivered its promised “dividend”. They are right. It has delivered the destruction of the Tory party. Keir Starmer might lack the charisma of former landslide election winners, but he is at least competent, not a left wing nutter, “runaway shopping trolley”, or a “decaying lettuce”. Hopefully, Labour will find some solutions to some of the UK’s problems. But with more than a third of British children living in poverty, the most dysfunctional health care system in the developed world, and little in the way of “above ground” or “below ground” resources, to borrow Andrew Hauser words in his first speech as Deputy Governor of the RBA, one can only wish them luck. The British people deserve better than they have had to endure in recent decades. As for the Tories, the British people also deserve a new party of the right, not some populist rabble appealing to a sizeable but slowly disappearing demographic group.

Starmer’s Labour was on course to achieve a remarkable turnaround from a disastrous result for his party in 2019, with a landslide victory forecast to be roughly on a par with Tony Blair’s first election win in 1997. Predictions were that Labour would win 408 seats out of 650, well ahead of the 326 required for a majority, with some seats falling to the party on swings of over 20 percentage points from the Conservatives, including both Tamworth and Lichfield in the Midlands. Its first gain, South Swindon, in the south-west of England, saw a swing of 16.4 percentage points from Sunak’s losing Conservatives to Labour. That was well ahead of the 12.7 points needed to win an overall majority in Britain’s parliament and would be the biggest swing to any winning party in the UK since the Second World War. Five years ago, few politicians or commentators expected Labour could recover so quickly, but the winning party was aided by a divided opposition in which insurgent right-wing party Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took votes from the Conservatives weakened and tarnished by the unpopular premierships of Sunak predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. #UK #UKElections #Labour #Conservatives #LiberalDemocrates #UKImmigration #UKVI https://lnkd.in/duBt7BB7