There was a very excitable young man on Sky News last week, talking about the Sky/YouGov MRP poll which suggested that the vast majority of Conservative MPs would lose their seats on 4 July and that those who didn’t would be stung to death by invasive killer Asian hornets which, reputedly, can eat up to 50 Tories in a single day. This would leave the Labour party and the unimaginably ghastly Ed Davey with the sort of majority reminiscent of those regularly recorded in the USSR or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
They are looking for their pound of flesh from a party they believe has gone awry and reneged on principle
‘This is a poll of such staggering consequences that all of us will remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when its results were made public exclusively on Sky News. In a sense it is much more important than the general election itself, because it tells us what might have happened if people voted the way we have suggested they will vote,’ he didn’t quite say, but came close to on a couple of occasions. If I had been producing the programme I would have put an arm around his shoulders, handed him a magazine procured from the top shelf of one of our less scrupulous newsagents and suggested he take himself to a cubicle to exorcise that priapic fervour before resuming his psephological elucidations.
I’m sorry, but the journos are beginning to get right on my wick in this campaign even if I am one myself, of course. The humourless sanctimony of Mishal Husain and the endless smuggery of Nick Robinson, for example. The elevation of the ephemeral and meaningless into talking points. The sheer glee with which the broadcast section of the fourth estate reports the projected Conservative debacle – it almost makes me sympathise with the Tories.
But not quite. They are beyond rescue. They cough up last-minute, owl-pellet policies on immigration and transgender stuff, forgetting that they have had 14 years to address these issues and yet did close to naff all, instead allowing the country to record hugely damaging levels of inward migration and watched, unmoved, as all that shocking Tavistock Clinic business continued unhampered. It’s a bit late in the day to suddenly find yourself with a conscience, a bit like a Buddhist drug dealer and people-trafficker with a terminal illness splashing out millions on charitable projects in order to bolster his karma before he kicks the bucket. I have grave doubts about that poll, incidentally: the polls in general are all over the place and I suspect that the shy Tory phenomenon is still having an effect, regardless of whether or not those opinion polls have the letters MRP affixed.
What does change the tilt of the election, however, is the entry of Nigel Farage from stage right. What had been, until Monday, a decidedly downbeat Reform campaign, with the party probably on course to record 5 or 6 per cent at best on polling day, its powder having been doused by the surprise decision of a July election, has been utterly transformed. Now the party can – and I suspect will – cause the Conservatives real problems, especially up the eastern seaboard of our island and also in the so-called Red Wall seats where the Tory wipeout will be close to totality.
What is happening is politically fascinating. Both the Conservatives and Labour had tacked to the centre in order to convince that crucial tranche of floating voters that they were not extreme and could be trusted to be congenial, consensual and boring. As a consequence of this we have two parties – one on the right, one on the left – determined to snaffle the votes of those who believe that this drift to the middle has been a betrayal.
Please do not for a moment underestimate the political nous, intelligence and charisma of George Galloway and his Workers Party of Britain. He is about the only politician in the country who can come through an encounter with Andrew Neil and emerge at the very worst level and perhaps with three points in the bag. Left-wing he may well be, but he also understands – unlike Labour, the Lib Dems and the likes of Penny Mordaunt and Caroline Nokes – that the overwhelming majority of the country is not socially as liberal as our establishment might wish it to be.
Pursuing a radical McDonnellish economic policy along with a conservative social policy will win Galloway’s party votes over and above those from the Muslim community who have been drawn to him because of his support for Palestine. Likewise, while the polls looked as though they might be narrowing as previous Reform voters migrated back to the Tories, the triumphant emergence of Farage from the sidelines will convince a good million or so voters that they were right all along and that the Tories have betrayed every bit of goodwill they ever possessed with the electorate. The question then becomes which of these two parties will have the greatest effect. My suspicion is that Reform will do a little more damage to the Tories than George and co. will do to Labour.
The remarkable thing about these two supposed fringe parties is their reasons for standing. Galloway, during that interview with Neil, could not disguise his utter loathing for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party. Meanwhile, I have had plenty of meetings with the Reform activists, hither and thither, and the thing which unites them is a wish to destroy, totally and irrevocably, the Conservative party. Their hatred for the Tories is unquenchable. Therefore the sensible argument – that a vote for either of these parties leaves a greater evil, in the mind of the voter, more likely, does not really matter. Both are looking for their pound of flesh from parties which they believe have gone awry and reneged on principle. I am still not convinced that Labour’s majority will be quite so big as the priapic man on Sky News suggested, but the arrival of Farage into the room makes that a lot more likely.
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