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.
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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.
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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.
The search for Jay Slater in an area of Tenerife has been called off, police have said, nearly two weeks after his disappearance.
The British teenager, from Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn in Lancashire, has been missing in Tenerife since 17 June, when he vanished the morning after a rave.
The Civil Guard called for volunteers to join a new search in the Masca area – near his last-known location – on Saturday.
It has now confirmed to Sky News that the search has ended. Police are keeping the investigation open and could yet open up searches in the south of the island, but have not provided an update.
A handful of volunteers turned up to help rescue teams on Saturday, forming a total group of 30 to 40 people scouring a huge area of rugged and hilly terrain.
The Los Carrizales ravine where Jay Slater was being searched for. Pic: Reuters
Mr Slater, 19, had been on holiday with friends on the Spanish island and was last pictured at Papayago, a nightclub hosting the end of the NRG festival, late on 16 June.
After the event ended, he got in a car travelling to a small Airbnb in Masca with two men, who police said on Saturday are “not relevant” to the case.
His last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which is about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.
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‘I just want him back’
A local cafe owner told Sky News he tried to catch a bus back to Los Cristianos, where he was staying.
Ofelia Medina Hernandez said she spoke to the teenager at 8am on 17 June, telling him a bus was due at 10am – but he set off walking and she said she later drove past him “walking fast”.
A missing persons poster for Jay Slater in Tenerife
The apprentice bricklayer called a friend holidaying with him at around 8.30am on 17 June and said he was going to walk back after missing the bus.
He also told his friend he was lost and in need of water, with only 1% charge on his phone.
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Teen’s disappearance in Tenerife shrouded in speculation
On Friday, Mr Slater’s friend Brad Hargreaves told ITV’s This Morning he had been on a video call with him before his disappearance when he heard him go off the road.
He said he could see his friend’s feet “sliding” down the hill and hear he was walking on gravel.
Meanwhile, Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager captured on CCTV in a nearby town 10 hours after he was first reported missing.
Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager
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Local police and the Civil Guard, along with Mr Slater’s family, have been involved in the search.
Since his disappearance, rumours and conspiracy theories have emerged amid online speculation on social media.
Some social media sleuths have even travelled to Tenerife to try and find him.
Police have begun visiting more than 160 families in Hull to repatriate ashes recovered from a funeral parlour in the city.
Investigators have been able to identify them through documentation and extensive enquiries.
However, some of the ashes will never be formally identified because cremation makes it impossible to extract DNA.
It emerged earlier in the year that officers had removed a number of bodies from three branches of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors – two in Hull and one in Beverley.
Humberside Police said it had received a “number of calls from concerned members of the public”.
Concerns had been raised about “storage and management processes relating to care of the deceased”.
Now, the force says it has “begun the process of visiting 163 families across the city in regards to the repatriation of ashes” recovered from the branch of the company located in Hessle Road in Hull.
It added: “Officers from the force along with support staff from Hull City Council and East Riding Council will provide those affected with a detailed update on what they’ve recovered and discuss the options available to them.”
Richard Shaw had unidentified ashes in an urn at his home. Pic: Richard Shaw
Richard Shaw, whose wife Rita died after a short illness last October, had unidentified ashes in an urn at his home for many months.
Mr Shaw, 70, used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors. After the firm was raided by police in March, he became concerned he might have been given the wrong ashes.
His worst fears were realised when police recently contacted him to say they had recovered what they believed to be his wife’s ashes during their inquiries.
They have just been returned to him, eight months after her death.
He was given ashes in December while his wife was cremated in January, according to a letter found by police.
The unidentified ashes have been scattered around a rose tree he planted for Rita.
Mr Shaw says grief comes ‘in waves’. Pic: Richard Shaw
It still feels “raw”, he told Sky News.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “It comes over you in waves.”
Mr Shaw, who volunteers at the hospice where his wife died, added: “I’m taking [it] that they’re Rita’s ashes, but it’s just a case of if I didn’t accept that I don’t know how I’d cope with it all.
“I think I’m more positive that they’re Rita’s ashes but they’ve been cremated so they can’t check on the DNA side of it.”
The families are calling for a permanent memorial for their loved ones.
Monthly candlelit vigils have been taking place at the city’s Pickering Park, providing those affected with support in uncertain times.
Some families say it would be the perfect location for a memorial garden.
The Hessle Road branch of Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull
Karen Dry, who used Legacy Independent Funeral Directors when her parents died, has organised the gatherings.
She told Sky News: “We need a permanent memorial – we need somewhere people can come and sit and reflect on their loved ones and families, somewhere that’s peaceful so that we know that they’re always resting.”
She added: “We were all perfect strangers at the beginning and now we’re very good friends. We’ve created our own community.”
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A man, 46, and a woman, 23, were arrested on suspicion of prevention of a lawful and decent burial, fraud by false representation, and fraud by abuse of position.
They have been released on bail while inquiries continue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says there’s a conspiracy of silence this election – that all of the major political parties aren’t being honest enough about their fiscal plans this election.
And they have a point. Most obviously (and this is the main thing the IFS is complaining about) none of the major manifestos – from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative parties – have been clear about how they will fill an impending black hole in the government’s spending plans.
No need to go into all the gritty details, but the overarching point is that all government spending plans include some broad assumptions about how much spending (and for that matter, taxes and economic growth) will grow in the coming years. Economists call this the “baseline”.
But there’s a problem with this baseline: it assumes quite a slow increase in overall government spending in the next four years, an average of about 1 per cent a year after accounting for inflation. Which doesn’t sound too bad except that we all know from experience that NHS spending always grows more quickly than that, and that 1 per cent needs to accommodate all sorts of other promises, like increasing schools and defence spending and so on.
NHS spending grows more quickly than the ‘baseline’
If all those bits of government are going to consume quite a lot of that extra money (far more than a 1 per cent increase, certainly) then other bits of government won’t get as much. In fact, the IFS reckons those other bits of government – from the Home Office to the legal system – will face annual cuts of 3.5 per cent. In other words, it’s austerity all over again.
But here’s the genius thing (for the politicians, at least). While they have to set a baseline, to make all their other sums add up, the dysfunctional nature of the way government sets its spending budgets means it only has to fill in the small print about which department gets what when it does a spending review. And that spending review isn’t due until after the election.
The upshot is all the parties can pretend they’ve signed up to the baseline even when it’s patently obvious that more money will be needed for those unprotected departments (or else it’s a return to austerity).
So yes, the IFS is right: the numbers in each manifesto, including Labour’s, are massively overshadowed by this other bigger conspiracy of silence.
But I would argue that actually the conspiracy of silence goes even deeper. Because it’s not just fiscal baselines we’re not talking about enough. Consider five other issues none of the major parties is confronting (when I say major parties, in this case I’m talking about the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem manifestos – to some extent the Green and Reform manifestos are somewhat less guilty of these particular sins, even if they commit others).
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Taxes going up
First, for all their promises not to raise any of the major tax rates (something Labour, the Conservatives and Lib Dems have all committed to) the reality is taxes are going up. We will all be paying more in taxes by the end of the parliament compared with today.
Indeed, we’ll all be paying more income tax. Except that we’ll be paying more of it because we’ll be paying tax on more of our income – that’s the inexorable logic of freezing the thresholds at which you start paying certain rates of tax (which is what this government has done – and none of the other parties say they’ll reverse).
Second, the main parties might say they believe in different things, but they all seem to believe in one particular offbeat religion: the magic tax avoidance money tree. All three of these manifestos assume they will make enormous sums – more, actually, than from any single other money-raising measure – from tightening up tax avoidance rules.
While it’s perfectly plausible that you could raise at least some money from clamping down on tax avoidance, it’s hardly a slam-dunk. That this is the centrepiece of each party’s money-raising efforts says a lot. And, another thing that’s often glossed over: raising more money this way will also raise the tax burden.
Should the Bank of England be paying large sums in interest to banks? File pic: AP
Third is another thing all the parties agree on and are desperate not to question: the fiscal rules. The government has a set of rules requiring it to keep borrowing and (more importantly given where the numbers are right now) total debt down to a certain level.
But here’s the thing. These rules are not god-given. They are not necessarily even all that good. The debt rule is utterly gameable. It hasn’t stopped the Conservatives raising the national debt to the highest level in decades. And it’s not altogether clear the particular measure of debt being used (net debt excluding Bank of England interventions) is even the right one.
Which raises another micro-conspiracy. Of all the parties at this election, the only one talking about whether the Bank of England should really be paying large sums in interest to banks as it winds up its quantitative easing programme is the Reform Party. This policy, first posited by a left-wing thinktank (the New Economics Foundation) is something many economists are discussing. It’s something the Labour Party will quite plausibly carry out to raise some extra money if it gets elected. But no one wants to discuss it. Odd.
Brexit impact
Anyway, the fourth issue everyone seems to have agreed not to discuss is, you’ve guessed it, Brexit. While the 2019 election was all about Brexit, this one, by contrast, has barely featured the B word. Perhaps you’re relieved. For a lot of people we’ve talked so much about Brexit over the past decade or so that, frankly, we need a bit of a break. That’s certainly what the main parties seem to have concluded.
But while the impact of leaving the European Union is often overstated (no, it’s not responsible for every one of our economic problems) it’s far from irrelevant to our economic plight. And where we go with our economic neighbours is a non-trivial issue in the future.
Anyway, this brings us to the fifth and final thing no one is talking about. The fact that pretty much all the guff spouted on the campaign trail is completely dwarfed by bigger international issues they seem reluctant or ill-equipped to discuss. Take the example of China and electric cars.
Brexit has barely featured in the election. File pic: Victoria Jones/PA
Just recently, both the US and European Union have announced large tariffs on the import of Chinese EVs. Now, in America’s case those tariffs are primarily performative (the country imports only a tiny quantity of Chinese EVs). But in Europe‘s case Chinese EVs are a very substantial part of the market – same for the UK.
Raising the question: what is the UK going to do? You could make a strong case for saying Britain should be emulating the EU and US, in an effort to protect the domestic car market. After all, failing to impose tariffs will mean this country will have a tidal wave of cars coming from China (especially since they can no longer go to the rest of the continent without facing tariffs) which will make it even harder for domestic carmakers to compete. And they’re already struggling to compete.
By the same token, imposing tariffs will mean the cost of those cheap Chinese-made cars (think: MGs, most Teslas and all those newfangled BYDs and so on) will go up. A lot. Is this really the right moment to impose those extra costs on consumers.
In short, this is quite a big issue. Yet it hasn’t come up as a big issue in this campaign. Which is madness. But then you could say the same thing about, say, the broader race for minerals, about net zero policy more widely and about how we’re going to go about tightening up sanctions on Russia to make them more effective.
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Parochial election
Elections are always parochial but given the scale of these big, international issues (and there are many more), this one feels especially parochial.
So in short: yes, there have been lots of gaps. Enormous gaps. The “conspiracy of silence” goes way, way beyond the stuff the IFS has talked about.
But ’twas ever thus.
Read more:
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Think back to the last time a political party actually confronted some long-standing issues no one wanted to talk about in their manifesto. I’m talking about the 2017 Conservative manifesto, which pledged to resolve the mess of social care in this country, once and for all.
It sought to confront a big social issue, intergenerational inequality, in so doing ensuring younger people wouldn’t have to subsidise the elderly.
The manifesto was an absolute, abject, electoral disaster. It was largely responsible for Theresa May‘s slide in the polls from a 20 point lead to a hung parliament.
And while most people don’t talk about that manifesto anymore, make no mistake: today’s political strategists won’t forget it in a hurry. Hence why this year’s campaign and this year’s major manifestos are so thin.
Elections are rarely won on policy proposals. But they are sometimes lost on them.
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