Labour set for big win

Voting is imminent in the UK general election on Thursday (4 July) and the polls indicate this election is already over as a contest and has been pretty much since the vote was called six weeks ago.

Last Wednesday night was the final head-to-head debate of the campaign and it was also realistically Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s last chance to make a dent on Labour leader’s Keir Starmer huge lead in the polls. But, like previous debates, it was pretty much an insignificant affair.

Sunak went on the offensive for the Conservatives, repeatedly interrupting Sir Keir and accusing him of lying to voters about not putting up taxes if elected to government. Nevertheless, a snap poll immediately after found that Sunak made little or no difference to people’s perception of Labour, who are clearly heading for a huge majority win. It has been a faltering campaign from the Tories, clearly poorly choreographed from the outset.

It all started outside 10 Downing Street, Sunak getting drenched in the pouring rain, while Labour’s iconic 1997 campaign tune ‘Things can only get better’ blared from speakers nearby. And the Conservatives have never gained any momentum since then.

There was the D-Day outrage, when Sunak drew widespread criticism for leaving World War II commemorations in France early to return to the UK for a TV interview.

In recent weeks the Conservatives have been dealing with at least five party members privy to the date of the election betting on that information before it was called by Sunak. Labour is also under the spotlight, but to a much lesser extent; a Labour candidate bizarrely bet on himself to lose.

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party became the latest party to generate controversy, last week. Some of its campaigners were filmed by an undercover TV team reportedly making anti-immigrant, homophobic and racist comments.

Polling for the election indicates the Conservatives are losing support mainly to Labour on the left, but also to Farage and Reform on the right.

And the potential irony of people voting for Reform is that they will split the vote on the right of the spectrum and hand a lot of easy seats to Labour, thereby making Starmer’s path to lead the country much easier. 

Analysts no longer question whether Labour wins a majority, but just how big that majority will be.

Latest polling from YouGov - one of the prominent election research companies in the UK - has Labour on 37%, 17 percentage points clear of the Tories. But that gap was 21 points earlier in the campaign. Nevertheless, a big Labour win is clearly guaranteed.