We stand on the brink of a landmark election

The general election campaign is over.

In recent weeks, new precedents have shown that up to one in five voters have voted, by post.

Tomorrow, it’s a big moment for someone else.

It has now been six weeks since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak flooded Downing Street and this roadshow of persuasion began.

So what has changed, what hasn’t changed and what does that tell us about where we find it?

The truth at the heart of this campaign is that for all the noise and hullaballoo over the past month and a half, the colossal gap in the polls between Labor and the Conservatives has barely budged.

Conservatives, from the top down, are going to lose — and it could be disastrous.

Labour, poll after poll, poll, further ahead.

Sir Keir Starmer and his Labor team are gearing up for government, while fed up with paranoia about complacency.

Nothing the prime minister has done, during his conventional time in office and in this campaign, seems to have made much of a difference to his political fortunes.

The Conservative Party is as adept at reinvention as a chameleon – after all, we’ve seen a succession of Tory prime ministers define themselves against the record of their predecessors.

But that strategy began to collide with its own contradictions.

Is Rishi Sunak seeking to have a long Conservative tenure in office, or far from it?

How many of the challenges facing the UK can realistically be blamed on other parties?

14 years ago the Conservative-led government increased the number of posts in the office shaped by two referendums – Scottish independence and Brexit – and the international shock of Covid and the war in Ukraine.

The referendum reflects our domestic politics and our relationship with our closest neighbours.

One propelled the Scottish National Party to unprecedented heights, heights from which it hopes to crumble tomorrow.

The other – leaving the European Union – rocked the continent, the country and, especially, the Conservative Party, shaking, chewing and remaking the Tories in ways that are still visible today.

The Conservative MPs elected in 2019 are an unlikely coalition, sent to Westminster by voters collectively desperate to see the Brexit impasse and Britain’s departure from the EU delivered.

When it did, the combination of the Jenga-like northern British Tories – many of whom wanted other countries to intervene in the economy – and the traditional small country Tories, often in the south, quickly proved too wobbly under the chaotic leadership of Boris Johnson.

And while most people ignore politics, even the most disengaged – here and around the world – notice Britain, a long-time political bastion of predictability, has thrown out three prime ministers in a matter of weeks. in Autumn 2022.

In this context, I suspect the history books, shorn like the daily news, might be good enough for Rishi Sunak: the man who brought elements of political and economic stability to Britain after its absence, face it. The political headwinds that precedent suggests will be nearly impossible to contain.

But stop other countries laughing at us and managing a sluggish economy at best – after nearly two decades of very poor economic growth, traced back to the economic crisis of 2007 and 2008 – has never been a general-winning formula.

And there’s more: no party has ever won five consecutive general elections in modern times.

It is a cruel historical truth, from Rishi Sunak’s point of view, that he is walking towards tomorrow.

But there is another cruel truth, from Keir Starmer’s point of view too: Labor has lost more elections than it has won, including those that people might have expected them to win.

Labor has lost four general elections in a row.

While some might expect them to falter or panic at some point in this campaign, especially if it looks like the Tories are holding them back, Labor has been as disciplined as it has been cautious, carefully protecting what it wants. led quite consistently to the point not only for victory, but comfortable.

He talked a lot about the “mission” he planned in government.

The mission in opposition is to ensure; to show the new Conservative voters they can be trusted at least with the economy and national security.

They have tried to pull off the balancing act sounds like the government is waiting without sounding satisfied; determine what you want to do without having to do it, guaranteed.

They also know that if they win, they will inherit bleak public finances and an unsettled electorate – a wave of optimism and goodwill seems unlikely, even with a majority.

And even a large majority doesn’t make it any easier for some.

Sir Keir Starmer recognized me this week in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, that Labor will let inmates out early because the jail is fullas the Conservatives do.

Along with opinion polls that are stubbornly sticky leading to Labor, another big fact of this long campaign comes, after the teasing characteristics, Nigel Farage – as both the candidate and the new leader of UK Reform.

Nightmare nightmare of the Conservative Party personified, the party’s uptick in the opinion polls corresponding to the uptick in blood pressure so many Tories.

And I note a new name in politics, which I think may be worth keeping an eye on: Zia Yusuf.

Mr. Yusuf is a very successful thirtysomething technology entrepreneur who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform UK.

This and that he is a Muslim is interesting in its own right, counterintuitive as it may be for some who would support the Reformation.

But to hear him at a giant rally in Birmingham at the weekend was to hear the political case for Reform on a very different register to Nigel Farage.

Not less passionate or full of conviction – at least in his view that immigration is out of control – but a different tone.

The political leader of the future I think, if he keeps his appetite for politics.

Next the Liberal Democrats, where if the service to absurdity is the route to electoral success, they will stop.

Sir Ed Davey’s midlife crisis coincided with the general election campaign, and no end of capers followed.

In the clamor for our attention, the Liberal Democrats are always struggling, elbowed out of the limelight by the giants of Westminster, the Conservatives and Labour, and for much of the last decade dislodged from the third party in the Commons by the Scottish National Party.

Sir Ed’s stunts are always interesting, and he can point to his difficult life, losing both parents to cancer at a young age and being the father of a disabled son, to claim that bad behavior is not consistent with his serious and serious mind. understand the struggle of many people.

The Lib Dems are chipper: they are confident they can capitalize on what they know is disdain for the Conservatives in parts of the country that are not enamored by Labour.

It appears that, given how they estimate it privately and how the Scottish National Party fears it might, the Liberal Democrats could overtake the SNP as Westminster’s third largest party.

If this happens, it will boost the political case for another Scottish independence referendum and strengthen the platform on which the Lib Dems will speak – guaranteed, for example, to contribute to Prime Minister’s Questions each. week.

Then there is the Green Party of England and Wales.

How can they fare in parts of Brighton, Bristol and Suffolk, for starters, where they spend considerable effort?

Let’s see.

In other words, politics can be reshaped beyond the largest parties, as well as between them.

We stand on the brink of what looks like a general election.

But time is running out for people like me to talk about all this.

It won’t take long for you to decide how things will turn out on Friday morning.