Election campaign trails: How party leaders are upping the ante as poll day looms
This week the party leaders made their final pleas to voters. The Labour and Lib Dem leaders visited some of their most ambitious targets so far, while the prime minister took a scattergun approach, fighting for votes in even some of the safest of Tory seats.
Watch their journeys this 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.
Crunch time
We’re fast approaching election day. In their closing gambits, the Conservatives have been trying to claw back straying voters and convince undecided ones, while Labour have endeavoured to stick to the script and avoid any missteps.
The Conservatives are fending off a potential Labour landslide and are fighting on multiple fronts, while both leaders are wary of losing votes to smaller parties or apathy where people believe the result is already a foregone conclusion.
The big picture
It’s been a long five weeks for the Tories, whose campaign has been mired with several high-profile embarrassments: from Sunak’s D-Day gaffe to the growing sleaze scandal surrounding insider betting allegations at Westminster.
This hasn’t helped their attempt to narrow the polls, and the campaign has remained deep in defensive territory throughout. The prime minister has visited seats with an average 25% Conservative majority.
Nearly 9 in 10 (88%) of Sunak’s 51 constituency visits have been to seats his party is defending. Fourteen of those are places where the Conservatives’ closest rivals are the Lib Dems, and the remaining 34 in places where Labour is the strongest challenger.
In contrast, 84% of Starmer’s 44 constituency visits have been to seats Labour are targeting. All but four of them have been places the Tories are defending.
Labour’s challenge has been to generate enthusiasm for a Starmer government. On average, the target seats he has visited need a 10.5 point vote swing to become Labour gains – just above the figure that Tony Blair achieved in 1997.
Labour must achieve higher than this – a record swing of 12 percentage points from the Conservatives – to secure a majority, however, and Starmer has been visiting seats that require a vote swing as high as 18 points.
The Labour leader has mostly steered clear of the primarily Conservative vs Lib Dem battlegrounds in the south, but has ventured to parts of the South East that only Blair has previously managed to conquer.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey has seemingly been having the most fun on the campaign trail, with a series of attention-grabbing stunts including photo ops on rollercoasters and dips in the Thames.
All but one of his 40 campaign visits have been to seats the Lib Dems are targeting, including one Labour-held and one SNP-held seat, with the rest of his time spent targeting Conservative-held seats.
How does the ground battle match the digital one?
Looking at data from Who Targets Me, Sky’s partner for our Online Campaign Team, we’ve now got a pretty full picture of how the main two parties have using political advertising on social media.
The Conservatives have consistently trailed Labour both in terms of spend and in the number of adverts posted (you’d expect those to correlate).
But there doesn’t seem to be any coherence to the current campaign – not even a strategy of retrenchment, as Tom King from Who Targets Me notes: “it appears there is no directive, and every seat is sorting itself out.”
Labour has maintained its blanket coverage. And the tone of its adverts is very different.
They tend to focus on Labour and its central message: 22 per cent of all of the more than 5,500 adverts they’ve put up have contained the message “Change”.
The Conservatives have been a lot more negative. 83 per cent of their adverts mention Labour – and only 1 per cent mention their own leader Rishi Sunak. It’s definitely a rearguard action.
Hiding in plain sight
One theme that has been shared across the two main parties’ campaigns is their reluctance to send their leaders to the public or large crowds.
Rishi Sunak has been to see small crowds at many business locations, and the micro-management of his audiences was revealed early in the campaign when at one event it transpired that supposed members of the public were Conservative councillors.
Sir Keir Starmer has played on his football links, visiting two stadiums including Northampton Town this week, but has likewise mostly stuck to closely managed events.
Read more:
Analysis – Sunak’s tetchiness over betting scandal speaks volumes
How will Britain’s ethnically diverse communities vote?
One leader who hasn’t been afraid of crowds is Reform’s Nigel Farage. Starting his campaign on a pub bench in Clacton, this week he had something of a homecoming in Newton Abbot where 1,500 spectators came to see him speak on Monday. The town was the location of UKIP’s headquarters in their heyday.
Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has also had a much more public-facing campaign in his various campaign stunts.
The Greens are the only ones to have really made use of celebrity endorsement. This week they won the vocal support of two Hughs – chef Fearnley-Whittingstall and actor Grant.
Upping the ante
The types of seats the Labour and Lib Dem leaders have visited have been markedly different this week.
Sir Keir Starmer has been to increasingly more ambitious targets, visiting Leicestershire North West this week which requires an 18-point swing for Labour to gain, the highest on his trail so far.
That’s also been the trend for Sir Ed Davey. In the final week of campaigning, he’s visited seats where the Liberal Democrats need a swing of 17 points on average to gain, up from 12 points in the previous week.
The prime minister has been less consistent. Indicative of the broad coalition of voters that Johnson built and Sunak has to defend, his visits have spanned from the most marginal defences to what should be the safest of majorities.
Popular places
Over the last 37 days, the three English main party leaders have made 135 visits to 119 unique constituencies. That’s more than 18% of the UK’s seats covered by Sunak, Starmer and Davey.
The seats with the most visits, at three apiece, are Redcar in the North East, Wimbledon in London, and Sunak’s own constituency Richmond & Northallerton in Yorkshire.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Redcar, visited twice by Sunak and once by Starmer, is a Conservative defence where the Conservative minister candidate is looking vulnerable to Labour.
Davey has his sights set on the highly marginal seat of Wimbledon in London, which the Lib Dems have never won before. He’s visited twice, while Sunak has been to the Conservative defence once on the campaign trail.
And the prime minister has visited his own constituency three times, most recently this week. He defends a 46.9% majority but some MRP polls say there’s a chance he’ll lose it.
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.
A man has been remanded into custody charged with child cruelty offences after allegedly lacing sweets with sedatives.
Jon Ruben, 76, of Ruddington, Nottinghamshire, appeared at Leicester Magistrates’ Court on Saturday after youngsters fell ill at a summer camp in Stathern, Leicestershire.
He has been charged with three counts of wilfully assaulting, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning or exposing children in a manner likely to cause them unnecessary suffering or injury to health.
The charges relate to three boys at the camp between 25-29 July.
The scene in Stathern, Leicestershire. Pic: PA
Ruben spoke only to confirm his name, age and address.
Police received a report of children feeling unwell at a camp being held at Stathern Lodge, near Melton in Leicestershire, last Sunday.
Officers said paramedics attended the scene and eight boys – aged between eight and 11 – were taken to hospital as a precaution, as was an adult. They have since been discharged.
Read more from Sky News:
Couple relive watching Rotherham riots unfold
Why the Oasis reunion tour is ‘catastrophic’ for Edinburgh Fringe
Police said the “owners and operators of Stathern Lodge are independent from those people who use or hire the lodge and are not connected to the incident”.
Leicestershire Police has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, after officers initially reported the incident as having happened on Monday, only to later amend it to Sunday.
It is still unclear when officers responded and whether that is why the watchdog referral has been made.
Ruben will next appear at Leicester Crown Court on 29 August.
A bishop who interrupted a church concert in his dressing gown – and told singers to “leave his house” – has formally apologised to the choir.
Jonathan Baker was filmed standing barefoot at a microphone as he criticised performers for making a “terrible racket” at St Andrew’s Church in central London.
Addressing the City Academy Voices choir directly, the bishop of Fulham said: “I write to apologise for the distress and offence I caused in bringing the concert to a premature end.
“This should not have happened … I also apologise for remarks which were made in haste, and which have understandably caused hurt and distress.”
The bishop, in his dressing gown, gave the choir a dressing down
Mr Baker had demanded for the performance to stop because it was 10pm – and says he didn’t realise the choir had booked the church until 11pm.
In the statement obtained by Sky News, he added: “I have lived here on site at St Andrew’s for 10 years, for much of which City Academy has rehearsed and performed here.
“You have been, and continue to be, welcome – and I hope that you will be able to continue the relationship with us.
“I can give you every assurance that the events of Friday evening will not recur, and I apologise again to performers (especially those unable to perform at the end of the evening) and the audience alike.”
The choir performed their last song
The choir was performing to a 300-strong audience in Holborn when the lights were suddenly turned off, with Mr Baker declaring the concert was “over”.
A church employee then asked the crowd to leave quietly and for the musicians to step down from the stage, attracting boos from the audience.
The choir went on to perform one last song, an A cappella version of ABBA’s Dancing Queen, before bringing their show to a close.
Read more from Sky News:
Why Oasis tour is ‘catastrophic’ for Fringe performers
North Korea opens its doors to Russian tourists
Jonathan Baker has apologised
One member of the audience, who was attending with his 10-year-old daughter, told Sky News he initially thought the interruption was a staged joke.
Benedict Collins had told Sky News: “This work deserves respect, not to be disparaged as a ‘terrible racket’. The people here had put their heart and soul into it.
“The bishop cut them off in midstream, preventing soloists who had worked their hardest from singing – and preventing the audience, which included people of all ages, from enjoying it to the end.”
The choir told Sky News it was “upsetting” that they were unable to finish their show as planned, but “hold no hard feelings and wish the bishop well”.
A spokesperson added: “If anyone is thinking of joining one of our choirs, the City Academy Voices rehearse on Mondays in central London. Dressing gowns optional.”
The Online Safety Act is putting free speech at risk and needs significant adjustments, Elon Musk’s social network X has warned.
New rules that came into force last week require platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X – as well as sites hosting pornography – to bring in measures to prove that someone using them is over the age of 18.
The Online Safety Act requires sites to protect children and to remove illegal content, but critics have said that the rules have been implemented too broadly, resulting in the censorship of legal content.
X has warned the act’s laudable intentions were “at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach”.
It said: “When lawmakers approved these measures, they made a conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety’.
“It is fair to ask if UK citizens were equally aware of the trade-off being made.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What are the new online rules?
X claims the timetable for platforms to meet mandatory measures had been unnecessarily tight – and despite complying, sites still faced threats of enforcement and fines, “encouraging over-censorship”.
“A balanced approach is the only way to protect individual liberties, encourage innovation and safeguard children. It’s safe to say that significant changes must take place to achieve these objectives in the UK,” it said.
A UK government spokesperson said it is “demonstrably false” that the Online Safety Act compromises free speech.
“As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression,” they added.
Users have complained about age checks that require personal data to be uploaded to access sites that show pornography, and 468,000 people have already signed a petition asking for the new law to be repealed.
In response to the petition, the government said it had “no plans” to reverse the Online Safety Act.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Why do people want to repeal the Online Safety Act?
Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage likened the new rules to “state suppression of genuine free speech” and said his party would ditch the regulations.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said on Tuesday that those who wanted to overturn the act were “on the side of predators” – to which Mr Farage demanded an apology, calling Mr Kyle’s comments “absolutely disgusting”.
Regulator Ofcom said on Thursday it had launched an investigation into how four companies – that collectively run 34 pornography sites – are complying with new age-check requirements.
Read more from Sky News:
British children who drowned off Spain named
Man charged after children fell ill at summer camp
These companies – 8579 LLC, AVS Group Ltd, Kick Online Entertainment S.A. and Trendio Ltd – run dozens of sites, and collectively have more than nine million unique monthly UK visitors, the internet watchdog said.
The regulator said it prioritised the companies based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operated and their user numbers.
It adds to the 11 investigations already in progress into 4chan, as well as an unnamed online suicide forum, seven file-sharing services, and two adult websites.
Ofcom said it expects to make further enforcement announcements in the coming months.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike