General election campaign midpoint: Lonely Sunak fights battle on three fronts

Published

10 months ago

June 15, 2024

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This week the leaders were selling their visions to voters as they launched their manifestos, and Sunak and Starmer went head to head in Grimbsy at the Sky News live election special The Battle For Number 10.

Watch their journeys in the latest week in our animated map below.

This campaign is being fought on new electoral boundaries, with many constituencies undergoing significant changes since 2019.

For the purposes of this analysis, we use notional results based on calculations by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, Honorary Professors at the University of Exeter, which estimate the 2019 election seat results if they had taken place on the new constituency boundaries.

Manifesto week

We’re now more than halfway through the general election campaign and voting will soon be under way as postal ballots start to arrive through letterboxes.

In the final pushes to persuade the electorate, this week the parties have been releasing their manifestos.

The choices they’ve made about where to launch them reveal a narrative of safety.

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The prime minister chose Northamptonshire South in the East Midlands to launch the Conservative manifesto, where they have a 42.4% majority.

This is Andrea Leadsom’s old seat, one of the safer Conservative constituencies in that region. Boundaries have changed over time, but none of its predecessors have been Labour.

But it’s starting to look like there are no safe Tory seats. Recent Sky News/YouGov MRP polling suggests they could lose it, placing this seat as a “toss-up” Conservative hold, i.e. too close to call. If Labour won here, the required swing of 21.2 means they’d be well into decisive majority territory.

On Thursday Sir Keir Starmer chose Manchester Central as the launching pad for Labour’s manifesto. This is Lucy Powell’s seat and her majority is 44.4%.

This is home turf, and a rare venture into Labour heartlands for Starmer, who so far has only visited seats his party already hold three times in his 23 constituency tally – a safe choice for a safety first manifesto.

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Both location choices are key areas of support for the main parties. The Greens did the same in choosing to launch in Hove, the home of their first and only seat in the House of Commons, Brighton Pavilion.

Sir Ed Davey, who has been keeping everyone guessing throughout his campaign, made the curious choice of Hackney South & Shoreditch, a seat that has been Labour since its creation, represented by chair of The Public Accounts Committee Meg Hillier since 2005.

But he was soon back on the attack in Tory territory, following up with a visit to ride a rollercoaster at Thorpe Park in Surrey.

Where are the troops?

The prime minister has cut a lone figure on the campaign trail, rarely seen with senior members of his party or indeed visiting their seats.

As Sky News revealed earlier this week, his image and Conservative Party branding have often been absent on much of their campaign material. One man who did make an appearance on Andrea Jenkyns’ leaflets for Leeds South West was Reform leader Nigel Farage, and that’s indicative of Sunak’s problem.

In the first two weeks he was fighting on two fronts, but now it seems the new Reform leader has just opened a third. Sunak’s woeful week ended with a YouGov poll suggesting his party could have now even dropped into third place.

So which cabinet ministers in trouble have had a visit from Sunak to boost their chances?

This week, none of them, and since the start of the campaign, just two of them.

Those were Work an Pensions Secretary Mel Stride’s Devon Central in the first week of campaigning, and Michelle Donelan, Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary in Melksham & Devizes in the second week.

He has visited four other ministerial seats, all of which polling has suggested could be at risk. Those were Justin Tomlinson in Swindon North, Jacob Young in Redcar, David Johnston in Didcot & Wantage, and David Rutley in Macclesfield.

So far no visit from the PM to the likes of Penny Mordaunt, Johnny Mercer and Grant Shapps, all of whom are said to be in a close fight for their parliamentary careers.

Sir Keir Starmer has also spent little time in shadow cabinet constituencies, instead taking many of them on the road with him to seats he’s targeting from the Tories.

Some have also been deployed in key areas where they’re popular, like deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner who has been spending time in the north of England seats that Labour lost to the Conservatives in recent elections. She’s also been hitting “true blue” northern areas like Macclesfield and Altrincham & Sale West, which have never been represented by a Labour MP.

Battle is in the areas that take Labour to a large majority

At Sky’s event on Wednesday, Starmer let slip that he’s expecting to be in government.

A national uniform swing of 8.3 points from the Conservatives would make Labour the largest party, one of 12.7 would deliver them a majority. If Labour uses its vote more efficiently than in the past and gains extra seats in Scotland then it reduces the overall swing required.

So far, Starmer has visited nine target constituencies which require swings of less 8.3 points vs 11 which require a greater vote swing. One of those which he visited this this week was Redcar, where Sunak went last week.

Labour’s candidate Anna Turley is trying to win it back after losing to the Conservatives in 2019. Last week we outlined its importance for each party’s campaign.

He has only visited five places where the swing required is more than 12.7, such as Nuneaton, a Brexit voting constituency in the West Midlands held by Labour in the early Blair years but Conservative since Cameron. The required swing to gain for Labour is 14.5 points.

Twenty-one of the 34 seats that Sunak has visited are Con-Lab battles that he defends. Seven have swings of less than 8.3 for it to be a Labour gain, while eight require swings bigger than 12.7.

Then there is the final front on which Sunak is defending: against the Lib Dems. Sunak has been to 11 seats where he’s fighting them off, such as Horsham in West Sussex this week where the Lib Dems need a swing of 15.5.

All bar two of Davey’s 27 visits have been to targets the Tories defend, where the average swing needed is 22.4 points.

Dr Hannah Bunting is a Sky News elections analyst and Co-director of The Elections Centre at the University of Exeter.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Politics

Trump blasts ‘too late’ Powell for not cutting interest rates

Published

4 hours ago

April 17, 2025

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Trump blasts ‘too late’ Powell for not cutting interest rates

US President Donald Trump renewed his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, accusing him of being too slow to cut interest rates and escalating a long-running conflict that risks undermining the central bank’s political independence.

With the European Central Bank (ECB) cutting interest rates again on April 17, “Too Late” Powell has failed to act appropriately in the United States, even with inflation falling, Trump said on Truth Social on April 17.

“Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Trump said.

Florida Senator Rick Scott agreed with the president, saying, “it’s time for new leadership at the Federal Reserve.”

Trump’s public criticism of the Fed breaks a decades-long convention in American politics that sought to safeguard the central bank from political scrutiny, which includes any executive decision to replace the chair.

In an April 16 address at the Economic Club of Chicago, Powell said Fed independence is “a matter of law.” Powell previously signaled his intent to serve out the remainder of his tenure, which expires in May 2026.

Crypto, risk assets look to the Fed for guidance

The Federal Reserve wields significant influence over financial markets, with its monetary policy decisions affecting US dollar liquidity and shaping investor sentiment.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, crypto markets have increasingly come under the Fed’s sphere of influence due to the rising correlation between dollar liquidity and asset prices.

This was further corroborated by a 2024 academic paper written by Kingston University of London professors Jinsha Zhao and J Miao, which concluded that liquidity conditions now account for more than 65% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) price movements.

As inflation moderates and market turmoil intensifies amid the trade war, Fed officials are facing mounting pressure to cut interest rates. However, Powell has reiterated the central bank’s wait-and-see approach as officials evaluate the potential impact of tariffs.

The Fed is expected to maintain its wait-and-see policy approach at its next meeting in May, with Fed Fund futures prices implying a less than 10% chance of a rate cut. However, rate cut bets have increased to more than 65% for the Fed’s June policy meeting.

Politics

Wyoming commission floats whether stablecoin is ‘covered’ by SEC rules

Published

4 hours ago

April 17, 2025

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<div>Wyoming commission floats whether stablecoin is 'covered' by SEC rules</div>

The Wyoming Stable Token Commission, a body authorized by the US state to issue a stablecoin, has suggested that it may clarify its language to better comply with potential guidelines from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In an April 17 meeting in the extension of the Wyoming Capitol building, Commissioner Joel Revill suggested the body could reduce the risk of the state’s proposed WYST stablecoin qualifying as a security under SEC rules. The discussion among the commissioners and Executive Director Anthony Apollo followed the SEC issuing guidelines that certain “covered stablecoins” were considered” non-securities” and largely not subject to reporting requirements.

Government, SEC, Wyoming, Stablecoin — *Wyoming Stable Token Commission Executive Director Anthony Apollo with Senator Cynthia Lummis. Source:* *LinkedIn*

“We’re looking to kind of create our own vernacular around some of this, to clarify, and then use that as a jumping off point of discussion for the commission,” said Apollo, adding there were internal discussions regarding the SEC guidance but the commission was scheduled to address the matter in a May memo.

The commission, established after Wyoming passed a law to issue a state-issued stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and redeemable for fiat currency, has been exploring issues surrounding WYST. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said in August that the government initially planned a launch in the first quarter of 2025 for the stablecoin, later amending the timeline to potentially launch in July.

Looking to the US Congress for guidance

The commission said it would be monitoring efforts by the federal government to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Among the proposed legislation was the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, in the Senate, and the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, in the House of Representatives.

Though Wyoming is the least populated US state, with roughly 600,000 people, it has become home to some crypto firms likely seeking a regulatory-friendly jurisdiction. Custodia Bank, the digital asset bank established by Caitlin Long, is based in Cheyenne. US Senator Cynthia Lummis, who often advocates for crypto-friendly policies, represents Wyoming in the Senate.

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Politics

How Meta’s antitrust case could dampen AI development

Published

9 hours ago

April 17, 2025

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How Meta’s antitrust case could dampen AI development

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, is facing antitrust proceedings that could limit its ability to develop AI amid a field of competitors.

First filed in 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that Meta’s strategy of absorbing firms — rather than competing with them — violates antitrust laws. If the court rules against Meta, it could be forced to spin out its various messenger services and social media sites into independent companies.

The loss of its stable of social media companies could harm Facebook’s competitiveness not only in the social media industry but also in its ability to train and develop its proprietary Llama AI models with data from those sites.

The trial could take anywhere from a couple of months to a year, but the outcome will have lasting consequences on Meta’s standing in the AI race.

Meta’s antitrust case and its effect on AI

The FTC first opened its complaint against Meta in 2020 when the firm was still operating as Facebook. The agency’s amended complaint a year later alleges that Meta (then Facebook) used an illegal “buy-or-bury” scheme on more creative competitors after its “failed attempts to develop innovative mobile features for its network.” This resulted in a monopoly of the “friends and family” social media market.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had the chance to address these allegations on April 14, the first day of the official FTC v. Meta trial. He testified that only 20% of user content on Facebook and some 10% on Instagram was generated by users’ friends. The nature of social media has changed, Zuckerberg claimed.

“People just kept on engaging with more and more stuff that wasn’t what their friends were doing,” he said — meaning that the nature of Meta’s social media holdings was sufficiently diverse.

At the time of the FTC’s initial complaint, Meta called the allegations “revisionist history,” a claim it repeated on April 13 when it stated the agency was “ignoring reality.” The company has argued that the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp have benefited users and that competition has appeared in the form of YouTube and TikTok.

If the District of Columbia Circuit Court rules against Meta, the global social media giant will be forced to unwind these services into independent firms. Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer, told the Los Angeles Times that such a ruling could cost Meta its competitive edge in the social media market.

“Instagram really is its biggest growth driver, in the sense that it has been picking up the slack for Facebook for a long time, especially on the user front when it comes to young people,” said Enberg. “Facebook hasn’t been where the cool college kids hang out for a long time.”

Such a ruling would also affect the pool of data from which Meta can draw to train its AI models. In July 2024, Meta halted the rollout of AI models in the European Union, citing “regulatory uncertainty.”

The pause came after privacy advocacy group None of Your Business filed complaints in 11 European countries against Meta’s use of public data from its platforms to train its AI models. The Irish Data Protection Commission subsequently ordered a pause on the practice until it could conduct a review.

On April 14, Meta got the go-ahead to use public data — i.e., posts and comments from adult users across all of its platforms — to train the model. If these firms dissolved into separate companies, with their own organizational structures and data protection policies and practices, Meta would be cut off from an ocean of data and human communication with which its AI could be improved.

Andrew Rossow, a cyberspace attorney with Minc Law and CEO of AR Media Consulting, told Cointelegraph that in such an event, “companies would most likely control their own user data, and Meta would be restricted from using it unless new data-sharing agreements were negotiated, which would be subject to regulatory scrutiny and user/consumer privacy laws.”

However, Rossow noted that it wouldn’t be a total loss for Meta. Zuckerberg’s firm would retain the wealth of data from Facebook and Messenger. It could continue to use “opt-in” data from consumers who allow their posts to be used for AI training, and it could also employ synthetic data sets as well as third-party and open data.

Meta, the AI race and data protections

The race to unseat OpenAI and its ChatGPT model from AI dominance has grown more competitive in the last year as DeepSeek joined the fray and Meta launched the fourth iteration of its open-source Llama model.

In addition to training new models, major AI development firms are investing billions in new data centers to accommodate new iterations. In January 2025, Meta announced the construction of a 2-gigawatt data center with more than 1.3 million Nvidia AI graphics processing units.

Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, “This will be a defining year for AI. In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people […] To power this, Meta is building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”

His announcement followed the $500-billion Stargate project, which would see massive investment in AI development led by OpenAI and SoftBank, with Microsoft and Oracle as equity partners.

Amid this competition, AI firms are looking for broader and more varied sources of data to train their AI models — and have turned to dubious practices in order to get the data they need. In order to stay competitive with OpenAI when developing its Llama 3 model, Meta harvested thousands of pirated books from the site LibGen. According to court documents in a case pending against Meta, Llama developers harvested data from pirated books because licensing them from sources like Scribd seemed “unreasonably expensive.”

Time was another perceived motivator for using pirated works. “They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data,” one engineer wrote about services through which they could purchase book licenses.

The practice is not limited to Meta. OpenAI has also been accused of mining data from pirated work hosted on LibGen.

Rossow suggested that, “to ensure lasting impact — beyond short-term profit,” Meta would do well to “prioritize investment in advanced data collection, rigorous auditing and the implementation of privacy-preserving and encryption-based technologies.”

By focusing on transparency and responsible practices, “Meta can continue to genuinely advance AI capabilities, rebuild and nurture long-term user trust, and adapt to evolving legal and ethical standards, regardless of changes to its platform portfolio.”

What a ruling for the FTC would mean

Litigation is now hitting tech firms from all sides as they face allegations of privacy violations, copyright law infringement and stifling competition. Major cases like those facing Google, Amazon and Meta that have yet to play out will decide how and whether these firms can proceed as they have, defining the guardrails for AI development as well.

Rossow said that the current antitrust case against Meta could decide how courts interpret antitrust law for tech firms, spanning tech mergers, data usage and market competition. It would also signal that courts are “willing to break up tech conglomerates” when issues of smothering competition are involved, while at the same time, “taking current precedent a step further in harmonizing it with the laws of cyberspace.”

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