Image source, PA and Reuters
The general election campaign is almost over.
Recent precedent suggests that one in five voters have already cast their ballot by mail in the past few weeks.
Tomorrow is the big moment for everyone else.
It’s exactly six weeks since Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s big stunt at Downing Street launched this persuasion roadshow.
So what has changed, what hasn’t, and what does this tell us about where we are now?
The striking fact at the heart of this election campaign is that, despite all the fuss and turmoil over the past month and a half, the enormous gap between Labour and the Conservatives in the opinion polls has barely changed.
Conservatives from top to bottom are bracing for defeat, and that defeat could be devastating.
Opinion poll after poll shows Labour with a large lead.
Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour team have been quietly preparing to form a government, plagued by delusions of complacency.
None of the things the Prime Minister has tried during his term in office or during this election campaign seem to have brought about any significant change in his political fortunes.
The Conservative party is adept at change, like a chameleon – after all, we have seen a succession of Conservative prime ministers define themselves by the record of their predecessors.
But the strategy began to run into its own contradictions.
Was Rishi Sunak trying to acknowledge the long-standing status of the Conservative government or distance himself from it?
Of the myriad challenges facing the UK, how many can realistically be blamed on other political parties?
The past 14 years of Conservative-led government have been shaped by two referendums – Scottish independence and Brexit – and international shocks such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine.
This referendum has transformed our domestic politics and our relations with our neighbours.
One has catapulted the Scottish National Party to unprecedented heights from which it is expected to fall tomorrow.
The other was Brexit, a vote that shook the continent, the country and especially the Conservative Party, emboldening, weakening and reshaping it in ways that are still visible today.
The Conservative MPs elected in 2019 were an unlikely coalition government sent to Westminster by voters desperate to end the Brexit impasse and get Britain out of the EU.
When it was over, the Jenga-like combination of Conservatives in the north of England, who wanted more government intervention in the economy, and traditional small-state Conservatives, mainly in the south, proved to be very unstable under the chaotic leadership of Boris Johnson.
And while most people don’t normally pay attention to politics, even those who don’t pay much attention to politics, at home or abroad, were aware that the UK, long a bastion of political predictability, had replaced three prime ministers in the space of just a few weeks in the fall of 2022.
In this context, I suspect the history books, stripped away from the noise of the daily news, may be fairly generous to Rishi Sunak, a man who braved political headwinds that, given precedent, would have seemed almost impossible to withstand, and brought political and economic stability to a Britain that lacked both.
But after nearly two decades of painfully weak economic growth dating back to the 2007 and 2008 economic crash, stopping other countries from laughing at us and managing an economy that is sluggish at best was never going to be a formula for winning a general election.
And another thing: no political party in modern times has ever won five consecutive general elections.
From Rishi Sunak’s perspective, that is the brutal truth of history marching towards tomorrow.
But even from Keir Starmer’s perspective, there is another brutal truth: Labour has lost many more elections than it has won, including those that people expected it to win.
The Labour Party has lost four consecutive general elections.
While some might have expected Labour to waver or panic at some point in this campaign, especially if the Conservatives appeared to be catching up, Labour has remained cautious but disciplined, doggedly defending a consistent lead that will hopefully lead to not just a victory but a comfortable one.
They often talk about planned “missions” within the government.
Their mission in Opposition was to reassure recent Conservative voters that they could be trusted on the economy and national security.
They have tried to strike a balance between sounding like an incoming administration without sounding complacent — setting out what they want to do without suggesting it’s guaranteed to happen.
They also know that if they win, they will inherit a tough budget and a restless electorate where no matter how big a vote they get, a wave of optimism and goodwill seems unlikely.
And even a majority vote doesn’t make things easier.
In addition to Labour’s continued lead in the opinion polls, the other big revelation of this long campaign was the emergence, after the usual teasing, of Nigel Farage as candidate and new leader of Reform UK.
The Conservative nightmare became reality, and his party’s rise in the opinion polls coincided with a rise in the blood pressure of many Conservatives.
And now we turn our attention to a new face in politics who seems worthy of attention: Zia Yousuf.
Yousuf is a highly successful tech entrepreneur in his 30s who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform UK.
This, and the fact that he is Muslim, is interesting in itself, although his support for reform may be counterintuitive to some.
But listening to him speak at a huge rally in Birmingham over the weekend was a testament to reformist politics on a clearly different level to that of Nigel Farage.
His passion and beliefs remain the same, including his view that immigration is out of control, but his tone is different.
I thought that if he continued to have political ambitions, he would be a future political leader.
Next up are the Liberal Democrats. If service to the absurd is the path to electoral victory, they would be heading for a landslide victory.
Leader Sir Ed Davey’s midlife crisis happened to coincide with the general election campaign, and a series of strange events followed.
Amid the clamour for our attention, the Liberal Democrats have always struggled, pushed out of the limelight by the Westminster giants the Conservatives and Labour, and for much of the past decade having been usurped as third in the House of Commons by the Scottish National Party.
Sir Ed’s stunts have certainly attracted attention and he can point to his own difficult life, which includes losing both parents to cancer when he was a child and being the father of a disabled son, and argue that goofing around is not inconsistent with having a serious heart and knowing the struggles that many people face.
The Liberal Democrats are thriving, convinced that there is widespread contempt for the Conservatives in areas not favoured by Labour and confident that they can exploit it.
Given the Liberal Democrats’ informal predictions, and the Scottish National Party’s informal fears about their own outcome, it seems likely that the Liberal Democrats will overtake the SNP to become the third largest party in Westminster.
If this were to happen, it would weaken the political argument for another Scottish independence referendum and strengthen the Liberal Democrats’ voice – for example, they are guaranteed a say every week at Prime Minister’s Questions.
And then there’s the Green Party of England and Wales.
Firstly, what will the results be in parts of Brighton, Bristol and Suffolk where they are putting a lot of effort?
In other words, politics may be realigned beyond and among the largest parties.
We are on the brink of a landmark general election.
But time is running out for people like me to talk about these things.
Soon it will be up to you to decide how things go on Friday morning.
