Coffee House Shots
Who will survive?
If you don't subscribe to The Spectator now is the perfect time to give us a try. We're having an election time offer, three pounds for three months, that's a pretty good deal, magazine, digital access and to top it off you get a free mug with Morton Moreland's election artwork. So to get the software go to spectator.co.uk/mug. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, I'm James Seal, I'm joined today by The Spectator's Political Editor Katie Bawls and James Kanagasor and the Chief Research Officer at Focal Data. Now first of all Katie, we've just had some breaking news that the Conservative party has suspended two of its candidates following the betting scandal, Craig Williams and Laura Sanders. Tell us more. Yeah so this betting row has been brewing since last week, actually since before last week, you know, a week is a long time in politics clearly I cannot cope but you know it actually goes back to a few weeks when Rishi is the next PPS, Craig Williams. I was in the answer who's being investigated by the gambling commission over a bet on a July election, plays just a few days before Rishi's student called one. At the time that quickly I think travelled online with lots of people saying the story is just crazy, is it really the case, you know, one of Rishi's units, closest aides in the sense your PPS tends to, you know, I think what you call it in Westminster, the bag carrier, which not everyone wants that to be their job title, but you're often, you know, with your boss, you're helping them in terms of all the MP engagement, making sure they get to the right places and also picking up information in the comments. So it is a role where you end up seeing the prime minister a lot and therefore I think lots of people thought surely this person could have known and then decide to try and make some money from it. Now we do not know if that is the case, as well pointed, the investigation is ongoing, but I think in terms of the optics and the fact that, you know, I think Craig Williams said he was, he had made a mistake, but he didn't go into exactly what that mistake was, you know, did he not know and place the bet, did he know and place the bet, all those type of things, but the optics were pretty awful. That right seemed to go away, damaging at time frustrating to colleagues, then it all came back when there was a third of story last week, which was that another Tory candidate was being investigated, and this Tory candidate is married to the director of campaigning in CCHQ, who has since had to take a leave of absence. Over the weekend we had a fourth Tory in terms of the head of data, and it's meant that the story has just, you know, ballooned, and you saw in the sun's leader special last night, never mind the ballots, you had originally been asked lots of questions on this. He was asked questions earlier in the day by ITV. I think that we can begin to use a T word, he did seem a little bit catchy, you know, something often used to describe Richard, not always fairly, but yes, they did seem catchy, and today we have a statement just now from the Conservative Party from a spokesman saying, as a result of ongoing internal inquiries, we have concluded that we can no longer support Craig Williams or Laura Saunders as parliamentary candidates at the forthcoming general election. We have checked with the gambling commission that this decision does not compromise the investigation that they are conducting, which is rightly independent and ongoing. So why now? Ultimately, Richard has been criticised since last week, perhaps since before, for not taking further action. I think it became really quite intense over the weekend, it was just saying, why can't you just sack them? You had, as we talked about in the podcast yesterday, Fraser was making the points quite simple, Richard said it could ask them if they had, if they placed these bets on knowing something, Richard said it might know if they had known, and he could take action. And the line from the government has been that, oh, well, we can't, interrupt an investigation, that was a line Chris Heaton Harris was putting out yesterday. So now I think we could be in a worst of both worlds scenario for Rishi Sunak, whereby he was already taken a lot of flack for not acting. He sent his ministers out onto the airwaves to defend his decision not to act. He sat through various interviews getting flack for it, and they have decided on Tuesday morning to actually do whatever he was calling on them to do. And just on my walkover from Parliament, I would say in a couple of messages I was getting from Tory candidates. The sense I'm getting is a sense of, if you were going to do it, you should have done it early on. And now does it just look so you're giving in and going back on your line? So I think we are back to one of those days where it's going to be a bad day for the Conservatives. Speaking to candidates, they did feel this was really cutting in on the doorstep. So I suspect that was a factor in trying to bring it to a close. But at least in the short term, it just means more people are going to be talking about them. And there's two seats as you say there, Katie, Laura Sanders seat Bristol Northwest, Labour held not competitive for the Tories. But Craig Williams seat, Montgomery should more competitive perhaps. Do we expect this route to continue perhaps more names to come forward in the coming days? I mean, he wants to try and draw a line onto this. But will this actually bring this to a close? Well, I think there's lots of speculation more names come out. Ultimately, we don't know, right? Lots of rumours as ever in Westminster. As you say, when it comes to Craig Williams seat, I think this was a seat when they first called the election. They thought there's a fight to keep it, but they were quite optimistic. They'd keep it. Now you have a candidate who's no longer supported by the Conservative Party and what was quite a tight race anyway. Now, obviously, you can't change what was on the polling card now, you know, rather past that point. But I think, you know, it's clearly a gift in terms of the opposition. And I think it's going to make it harder for the Tories to hold. And I think there'll be some in the Tory party thinking Craig Williams, potentially potentially being a bit kind here. I just mean, because there is an investigation going, did something really, really, really stupid. But he's also one of the Prime Minister's longest serving aides. He is, you know, his eyes and ears in the comments, and they have quite a close relationship. So you're probably, as ever, you can't please everyone in, you know, in life and particularly in the Tory party. But I think some will be suggesting this, you know, perhaps if he'd gone this far, he should have stuck with his colleague. Elsewhere, James, you've come to say, to talk about the new MRP poll your firm has put together, it shows the Labour on 450 seats, which will be the biggest number of seats won since the 1931 general election, conservatives down to 110 seats, with their worst performance since the modern party was founded. What were the things that jumped out to you from this finding? And tell us more as well about the range as well. You say the Tories could be anywhere down to 86 seats, up to 133 in your model. What's the reason for this range here? Obviously, the news is pretty terrible. And also, I mean, the thing to really know is that our MRP estimates, which is kind of multi-level regression and post-tratifications, we're doing seat forecasts, is basically in the middle of all of the different forecasts. You know, we have, I think, two or maybe three providers who are suggesting the conservatives are well below 100. So in that case, we're very much middle of the pack. A couple of things stood out. You've already pointed out one, which is the large ranges. And I would say actually the effective ranges are actually even bigger than that. So we found that there were 109 marginal seats that we forecast for my MRP. Marginality, here we've defined as a party winning by less than 5% basically, which is up because generally the number of marginals across British elections is pinged around between around 50 to 75. So that indicates, you know, quite a substantial rise in the number of marginals. The thing I think if you're a conservative that was concerning was that of the 110, and again, it's a probabilistic assumption, so we've added up the probabilities that they're going to win in every single seat. But even if you take that aside, around 50 of those are marginal. So I think what the MRP implied, which is different to the actual forecast, was actually, there's only the floor is 60, which is which is a low floor. But actually also at the top end of the spectrum, let's say that things go right. Katie's been talking very much about how things continue to go wrong every day as to you. Something could go right. Which I think is unusual as well. We should dwell on that a bit later. That's that's very unusual for me, at least from a kind of polling and political science perspective. But say think say Labour or the Liberal Democrats actually happen to lose the seats that we forecast them to win, especially the ones that are less than 5% in terms of victory. The Tory seat count, and I got slightly mocked on using the word ballooned, but it could go up to 150 or so, even 160. But so the getting close to 1997. Close to 1997. Yeah, so I'm in great success. I think at the beginning of the campaign, I was very clear that what the polls disagreed on was whether this is 1997 for the UK on 1993 for Canada. And I don't think actually we're number wiser, actually. So come to the exit poll. I still think that and it's okay. I think, you know, in a way, it's saying that we don't know there's a large range of possibilities. Everyone wants certainty. But given the levels of how fine the margins are, you know, it's okay to say actually there's a very wide number of of seat forecasts out there. But you know, the result is a forecon conclusion. It is a Labour majority. I think we're looking at something really catastrophic. We're kind of wrong with the polls of Labour and not heading for a majority. But other things that stood out in terms of you asking, I think is the performance of reform. So we actually had to drop a lot of our polling sample just before we released it, because the numbers have changed a lot. Now, the thing about MRP is that you actually expect some quite stability and quite slow change. You don't expect them to jump around like you do voting intention polls. But we've seen reform pick up to 16 points substantial. They were around us actually 13 and a couple of our first ever kind of first 12 or 11 actually, and some of the first MRP models. So we're beginning to see that rise flow through. Some of the field work is still quite old. So we began on the 3rd of June and ended on the 20th. So that's kind of ended five days ago. We wouldn't have picked up on some of the staff that you guys have been talking about and seen if there's been a further degradation. Other things also have no, I think of the specific kind of seat losses. So Plymouth more view, which is a very by the way, an notoriously difficult place to poll. But we have Johnny Mercer losing by substantial vote share, grand chaps as well. So we've got conservatives here on 29% and we've got Labour on 42. So again, again, that gap is something that could be closed, but feels a bit less likely. Grand chaps when Hatfield Wales looks difficult. Of course, you've just been discussing a candidate who represents a Welsh seat. And obviously Jeremy Hunt is I think the biggest name I think that looks quite vulnerable in his seat. So, and they guess lower down the list, you think about what's next for the Conservative Party. And actually, the thing that's really interesting is quite how hard to call the future of the Conservative Party. Yeah, it's been a long time picking up on the different aspects of it. But actually, we don't know who's going to be a candidate, because I think if you look at Penny Morden, we have very close to close to court, which is extraordinary given her substantially smaller majority than other people. So clearly, there's a candidate level effect there. Yeah, I mean, I've often had people around Penny Morden kind of make the argument that because she is someone who's had to work her seat for quite a long time, she knows how to defend it. Whereas you have a problem with some of these candidates, now candidates, former MPs who are in traditionally safe seats, but they probably haven't had to work that hard. And then they don't quite know what they're doing when it gets to that. You know, one of the things, what, 10, north of 10 years of staring at CSVs of election results, the one thing that really strikes me is how little MPs make a difference to the vote share of the seat that they're in. And when they do, they really stand out. Actually, interestingly, Johnny Mercer is one of those people. So is Penny Morden. You can see that in the modelling. Like if you try and estimate the vote share of those seats for the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, it's slightly off at each election, because sometimes that captures a regional effect. Other times that actually captures what we call a candidate level effect. And then I guess Priti Patel was closer than we had anticipated. James Cleverley. James Cleverley in Braintree as well. And again, if I guess Theresa May had stood again, I think made in head we had as a toss up. So this is like, this is, this is different. So who do we know is definitely or barring, you know, most likely, and in that leadership round? So, I mean, who's going to be John Hayes, who are the candidates? Yeah, John Hayes, of course, but can, can you beta Knox probably say? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And see about a brotherman. She has the most interesting seat in the UK. Tell us more. So she is Farnham and Waterloo And how many candidates? So of the four main candidates. So we got, we got her on 29%, Labour on 24, Liberal Democrats on 20, Reform on 22. And actually, it's one of these very synthetic constituencies. This is the thing that's new creation. They create these artifices of like communities just bolted on together. They do their best, actually, very, very skilled outfit. You know, it's very fashionable to criticize cringos and stuff like that. But actually the boundary commission, having looked at the detail of their work, there's a huge amount of care and diligence goes into it. Nonetheless, it's produced this incredible seat that has basically got a full way battle, but she does look, you know, she looks five points ahead. Though it's interesting how high reformers that are given throughout a brotherman has pitched herself as a candidate who has suggested that she would hug reform clothes, suggested that she, you know, has made overtures to Nigel Farage. And yeah, that doesn't need to be having too much of an impact on a local level in terms of reform voters like differentiating. Yeah, I mean, the theme, I guess, from the MRPs would be candidates make less of a difference than they may think. No. But, you know, if you're down 22 points, which is what we have, which, by the way, is less. We have one of the more optimistic, conservative virtue numbers. We have the Conservatives at 23%. And samples are giving them sort of 18, 19. And yeah, on your MRP poll, when I watched the presentation yesterday, you only have one reform candidate. Probabilistically. Yeah, talk us through that. Do you think there is, what do you think the ceiling is in terms of reform? Do you think there's a chance they might just get zero, not to put you on the spot? No, I don't think they'll get zero. Yeah. For example, you know, one of the constraints. So we actually wrote a whole part of our blog in terms of our releasing of the results is how we could be wrong, which I thought would be... Can I have a little honesty here? No, I think it's because, you know, you get this false certainty. A lot of posters are very proud of their work, which is good to be, but perhaps not as much introspection, I think. And at least from my perspective, it's very probable that Nigel Farage wins Clackton. Our model hasn't picked that up. But again, you can't just go around fiddling models and stuff like that. We may also see a movement, as we do, we're looking potentially at another release of the model. But also, if you look at the reform votes, the reason we're forecasting them, even though we don't forecast them to win any first-past-to-post contests, we have enough of them almost winning. But if you add up all those probabilities, it comes to one. But again, Ashfield looks really, really close in terms of what's happening there. Lee Anderson, you know, we've talked about Clackton where the constituency polls I think make clear that he's very far ahead. Boston Skegnass is another one. That was a pretty big majority from that woman previously. It is. But again, again, I love going back to history. A lot of these seats that are suffering from the conservative perspective, massive vote share falls, are basically the seats where they put on their biggest gains. So there's an elasticity here, right? And particularly on the east coast of England, in particular in the kind of more Brexit heartlands, but where they interact with very kind of levels of social conservatism, you've seen the conservative vote share go up 10, 20, 30, 40 points, basically, over the course. You know, conservatives put on votes, I think six elections in a row, basically from the 2001 election. You do that over time. You can stack up enormous majorities, but you forget that when the prime minister changes, those all go. And this is a final topic. What about Scotland as well? Because, you know, talked about the Tories having a really bad election. Your model shows the SMP losing more than half their seats. Tell us what's happening there. Yeah, it's interesting. So I think at the beginning of the campaign, basically the SMP and the conservators had strong parallels to each other, which was basically governments on the way out. Huge amount of, you know, incumbency discount. People wanted time for change. What's really interesting is the story of this election, I think, is that how a 1997 result turned into something towards the 1931 result, where Stanley Baldwin, I think got 176, right? Got his super majority and a super defeat on the Labour side. What's interesting is that that hasn't really happened with the SMP. And well, I think there's a couple of reasons for that. We can hypothesise. First is, I think, Stephen Flynn, I think, performed quite well in the debates. He comes across as quite a credible leader, just straight out of the gate. First of all, they haven't continued to have a bad performance. You know, Katie basically logging in every day with, you know, episode number 25 of stuff that went wrong. That hasn't been the story of the SMP. If you look into the numbers, the conservatives have held on to basically 50% of their vote, which stands to reason, they're down 22 points. They were at 44. The SMP have held on to more out of 63% of their vote. So it's really substantially down. They basically lost a quarter of their votes just to Labour, Scottish Labour. But it's not been a total collapse. You know, they're on course for 16 or so seats, which is a big defeat. But remember, in 2017, they lost 22 seats. So actually, Scotland is certainly a country but also part of the UK that has swung a huge amount. I've got one final question for you before you go, James. He gave you your MRP. Obviously, the collapse of the Tory vote, looking at the impact of reform, which is clearly making things worse for the Tories. Do you think we're ending up in a situation where potentially we're going to have a super majority for Labour? We can debate whether that term is right. And comparatively, you know, relatively low vote share to match what they're going to get in terms of seats. And potentially quite almost an un-infusiastic public, but yeah, a huge Labour majority. I mean, your model, I think, gives it 41.4% to Labour, which can be less than Tories in 2019. And of course, they only won a majority of 18. This gives us a turnout. So they beat the number of votes that Jeremy Corbyn got in 2017. That's a fun game, if that's the definition of fun. You know, we've all cast Labour to win like 7 out of 10 seats in GP, right? But I guess, you know, if the system is there before, voters know how to use the system. My one answer to that, Katie, would be I think in this election, if you see the amount of tactical voting that's occurring, it's a better idea to think of actually as the Labour plus the Liberal Democrats, because we're seeing a huge amount of borrowed votes between the two parties, basically operating really efficiently. And they're kind of 11%. So really, the effectively, this 30 points, basically, of a block of out-and-out progressive voters that are looking to unseat conservatives. And that's a massive gap. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, James. Thank you for listening to Coffee Outshots. [Music]