General election 2024

It's all very dull really. Listening to Times Radio this morning, Libby Purves was saying that the parties need to stick to the basic issues facing people. A bit like cricket "line and length". Economy, NHS, Security.

Frankly if I was in power I would change nothing unless some member of the public could point out some ridiculous inconsistency which was crying out for change (like child benefit withdrawal above a certain level of income). Eventually all the problems would disappear.

…to get a disproportionate amount of attention from the media. Poor Mishal Husain had to interview him on R4 this morning and did a brave job. We didn’t hear her for a while afterwards — time for a long shower and a change of clothes.

Electoral calculus has my new seat as a safe Labour seat now, 99% quoted chance of electing the Labour candidate. Was in a Con/Lab marginal swing seat before, and the surrounding ones were Con safe seats, which now look like Con/LibDem marginals. So hooray for boundary change, even though it means my vote will be utterly worthless until such time as we get PR.

…which wasn’t as wholesome as we were supposed to think. Apart from being given a pre-scrubbed boat to ‘clean’, it appears (and I really hope we can corroborate the email from a Leander Club parent) that young female rowers were solicited to sit with Sunak, on various conditions that they all refused, one of which was that they be UK citizens and voters, and would ask the nice questions they were given to ask.

It took an offer of fifty quid a head to get enough takers — of whom one turned out to be Irish and two Australian — and then, joy of joys, they were instructed to walk ten metres away from Sunak so he wouldn’t look like a toddler. And that was the bit of the day they’d actually planned.

Been out canvassing and leafleting today. The feeling of the tide being with us this time is remarkable. One fabulously old-school Henleyite emerged from her rose-fringed front door to tell me that the Normandy fiasco had been the last straw and her vote was ours. Others crossed the street or stopped their cars to say hello, ask well-informed questions about tactical voting or health service issues, or just to wish us well. Even the occasional Tory hold-outs were mild-mannered rather than strident, as they tended to be in 2019. Felt great!

If there is hope, it lies in the (Waitrose) prosecco.

The Reform fruitcakes would be hilarious if they didn’t represent something so insidious. We have a choice of two here: the one who was dropped as candidate in February for, “saying what we’re all thinking” just a little too loud is standing as an independent, and the man who replaced him is a hell-and-damnation god-botherer who’s been asked to stay away from schools because he was frightening the children with all that Good News. This seems a very small island to be sharing with people like that.

Nothing here from anybody. Though as we've a Labour poster in the window, and usually do at election time, maybe other parties have written us off as a lost cause.

Mrs B is out leafletting for them as I type. The candidate was supposed to be there but got as it's Eid and she's got family in.