General election: Britain heads to the polls

"The hurly-burly is almost done," said the Daily Mail: polling day is upon us. The parties spent the final week of the campaign making last-minute pitches to voters. Rishi Sunak urged them not to "surrender" to a Labour "supermajority", warning that it would lead to major tax hikes and pose a threat to national security. Keir Starmer asked voters for a strong mandate to get on with what he called "the change we need". 

At their second head-to-head debate last week, Sunak gave what was widely regarded as his punchiest performance to date, but few expect it to stave off a punishing election defeat for his party. When the PM stunned his colleagues by calling an early election six weeks ago, they "feared the worst", said Katy Balls in The Spectator. Yet what "they originally saw as the worst case scenario now looks like quite a good result". At the time, it seemed plausible that the Tories might hold on to 200 MPs; they now fear they may end up with as few as 50. 

The 2024 election campaign has certainly been eventful, said Jack Blanchard on Politico. Since Sunak launched it during a rainstorm, he's made numerous mistakes, not least his bizarre decision to leave the D-Day commemorations early. We've also had the surprise return of Nigel Farage to front-line politics, and the grimy revelations of the Westminster betting scandal. All of this against the backdrop of a Tory meltdown over their dire polls. "For political nerds, there have been few campaigns like it."

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Yet for voters it has been a curiously unengaging exercise. Neither Sunak nor Starmer have meaningfully addressed the big issues facing Britain in 2024, such as the housing crisis, the university funding deficit, or the problem of runaway welfare payments. For the Tories, the campaign has served only to highlight their shortcomings, said The New Statesman. Sunak's D-Day decision betrayed his complete lack of political judgement; the Tories' manifesto, centred on £17bn of "implausible" tax cuts, confirmed the party's "intellectual exhaustion"; the betting scandal exposed its "moral torpor". 

The ousting of the Tories can't come soon enough, said The Guardian. "After 14 years in power, they are a shambles." Just imagine how depressing it would be to wake up and discover that, against the odds, they'd somehow won a fifth term in office. The Conservatives have to go, agreed the FT. Britain needs a fresh start. The Tories have had to deal with numerous external shocks during their stint in government, including the Covid pandemic and Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but for the most part they've brought disaster on themselves, through their incompetence, infighting and contempt for the rules. "This generation of Tories has squandered its reputation as the party of business, and its claim to be the natural party of government." It needs a spell in opposition to regroup. 

That's the negative case for voting Labour, said The Economist, but there's a positive one, too. The party has changed a lot under Starmer, who has dragged it away from "radical socialism" to a more pragmatic, centrist position. While he may have run a "maddeningly cautious" campaign, he has rightly highlighted the restoration of economic growth as a key priority. Labour is best placed to deliver that growth because its "young, aspiring, urban supporters will give it permission to act in ways that the Conservatives have avoided" – building more houses and infrastructure, for instance, and forging closer links to the EU. 

But voters who seek "change" with Labour, despite the party's "refusal to reveal its full agenda", may come to regret their choice, said The Sunday Telegraph. The last Labour government introduced many reforms that have caused lasting damage: it "vandalised the constitution, began the devolution experiment, hugely increased the size of the state" and left the economy "reliant on mass migration". Who knows what a future Starmer government might do, armed with a massive majority? 

The thought of a Starmer government doesn't terrify me, said Matthew Parris in The Times. His agenda seems reasonable enough. I do fear, though, that his instinctive reaction to problems will always involve more government intervention, leading to an ever-larger state. That's why, although I don't believe the Tories deserve re-election, they'll still get my vote. I hope at least a few other people feel the same, said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. "The voters want to give the Tories a kicking. And, boy, are they going to get a kicking." But it would be unhealthy for politics if the party is reduced to a state where it can't even act as an effective opposition.