Closer than people think, but not really that close at all.
I have changed my mind, and I think Reform and Green might win a seat. The Greens possibly more than one; Bristol Central is 50/50 but Waveney Valley and North Herts look like they might be closer to a Green victory than people suspect, the Green Tory vote is massively underestimated.
Elsewhere if anyone but Nigel Farage wins a seat for Reform there will be an immediate schism. Corbyn is probably 50:50 in Islington, but will have to sit on the opposition benches with the Conservatives which will be too funny. North Durham might go Lib Dem in a blizzard of disinformation, and protest about a pro-Israel Labour candidate.
Galloway I expect to lose his seat, and most of the candidates he is backing are misogynist, and homophobic. The only exception is Leanne Mohamed, not formally part of the Workers Party but strongly endorsed by George Galloway. She is standing against Labour Shadow Health secretary in Ilford North, hoping that Gaza will prove a rally point for Muslim voters. She has managed to avoid using Streetings sexuality to win votes, which is a refreshing change for Galloway backed candidate. Leicester East is weird, with 2 former Labour MPs both standing against the official Labour candidate; Keith Vaz (drugs and prostitution) is standing as an independent, Claudia Webbe (stalking conviction) is standing for Jeremy Corbyn’s Collective.
An awful lot of time and money has gone into attacking Labour over Gaza, and most of it looks to have achieved nothing but help the Tories, who are even less sympathetic. In Chingford Ian Duncan Smith might cling on with the help of a disgruntled former Labour candidate running as a pro-Gaza independent.
Oh, and the LibDems might have a bumper night, with a bunch of candidates no-one has heard of.
Post your own predictions below
| Labour | 400 |
| Conservative | 175 |
| Lib Dem | 34 |
| Scot Nat | 18 |
| Green | 1 |
| Reform | 1 |
| NI | 18 |
| Plaid C | 3 |
| Total | 650 |
View from E4 – Shaheen’s statement that Gaza is the number one issue people mantilla on the doorstep means she’s knocking on the wrong people’s door.
Her campaigners are boasting about how few Labour posters are around – but I think they will be surprised on the day by ‘shy Labour’. We got doorstepped the other day and left it at ‘were thinking about it’. We aren’t thinking about it, it’s just like getting rid of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The more they campaign, the more I move from seeing her as wronged by the Labour Party to seeing exactly why they wanted her out.
(A friend of mine said she only lost in 2019 because she drove every Tory in Chingford into the polling station – she may have increased the Labour vote, but IDS achieved a personal best).
I feel the Gaza obsessed underestimate how for the majority of voters, foreign policy is never an issue. New Labour’s slow leakage of ‘red wall’ votes had nothing to do with Iraq, and it was the banking crash, not Iraq, that caused them to lose the centre/swing voters – but the far left will continue to believe it was Blair’s lies.
And this is one of the many ways in which Galloway is a tool. He doesn’t recognise that what he’s doing is generating Islamophobia, by encouraging Muslim Britons to demonstrate they have different priorities – that their number one priority is the Umma.
(Which is exactly the issue anti-semites had / have with Jews, Protestants with Catholics, nationalists with globalists – the suspicion that people are more loyal to a different country)
Like most people I support Palestinian statehood and a 2 state solution. But Galloway and those who follow him are right wing populists, not left wing mavericks.