Comment is Freed: Election Coverage

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So it’s happening. A little earlier than expected. I can only assume Rishi read my post on why he’d failed on Wednesday morning and was so compelled that he immediately gave up and called an election.

The timing isn’t likely to make much difference to the outcome. It’s going to be bad for the Tories now. It would have bad in the Autumn. Polls have been static all year and it didn’t seem anything was going to shift them. Even if economic optimism had continued to increase there have been no signs that the government were going to get any credit. As I’ve said before voters don’t tend to thank you for helping them back up after knocking them over.

It's certainly better for the country to get a move on. Recent months have been utterly dispiriting for anyone working in policy, as we’ve watched problems mount up while nobody does anything, due to a mixture of exhaustion, incompetence, and a desire not to spook the electorate. At least Labour will get a summer to work on their policy agenda with civil servants, while planning their spending review and autumn statement.

The Tory ambition is to keep the defeat dignified and hold 200 plus seats. If they did by some miracle win they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with another five years.

In that sense it’s hardly a nail-biting election. But the real question is the scale of the victory, with everything from a minority Labour government to an epochal victory, that has extinction-level consequences for the Conservatives, still entirely possible. Those outcomes lead to very different political futures for the country and everyone involved. Plus elections are great opportunities to learn about the political geography of the country.

Which means we’re going to be upping our coverage of UK politics considerably over the next six weeks, while also protecting those of our readers who are mainly here for Dad’s posts from being bombarded with emails.

On the main site we will continue with our normal rhythm of two posts a week. Mine will all focus on the election, starting with a big guide on the key things to look out for next Wednesday. Dad will continue to focus on conflicts around the world, but this weekend will be looking at the foreign and defence policy issues raised by the election.

For those of you who want more there will be, from next Thursday, daily election briefing emails available.

These briefings will include:

·       Detailed analysis of polls, MRPs, and election models

·       Posts on different battlegrounds (Scotland, the home counties etc…)

·       Analysis of campaign tactics and the thinking behind them

·       Manifesto reviews

And then from the 7^th June, once nominations for all seats are closed, there will be, alongside all this, daily batches of 30 seat previews, with a prediction for each constituency. These will also cover boundary changes and their likely impact, and who the candidates are – highlighting “ones to watch” amongst the likely new cohort of MPs.

These briefings will be for paying subscribers only and to get them you need to go the “manage subscriptions” page, which can be accessed by clicking the icon on the top right hand corner of our substack page.

Then you just need to make sure your notifications are on for the “election briefing” tab, as shown below.

As this is going to be a lot of work I’m delighted to have signed up two of the best data driven analysts around to help me out. Josh who tweets @beyondthetopline and Dylan Difford who tweets @Dylan_Difford. They will be contributing exclusive posts and analysis for the daily briefing throughout the campaign. There will also be exclusive polling from our friends at Focaldata.

If you want access to all of this for no extra cost beyond a normal subscription then you can subscribe here:

You can also give gift subscriptions to friends and family who you think would enjoy this kind of in-depth coverage here: