Vuelio’s Election Briefing, 1 November 2019 Welcome to Vuelio’s weekly Election Briefing. The election campaign will be formally underway on 6th November and in reality has already started. Whilst the polls continue to point to a commanding lead for the Conservative Party of up to 10%, there is still a concern that the election could move onto other policies which are less comfortable for Boris Johnson, and that the election to ‘Get Brexit Done’ as in 2017, might prove again indecisive and lead to an unclear result. As it stands the impact of nearly 60 MPs standing down is unknown, but it does seem likely that this 2019 election will see a noticeable generational change in terms of newly elected MPs. Commentators have suggested the impact of newly elected MPs could be as significant as it was in the 1997 Labour landslide or the formation of the Coalition government in 2010, which followed the MPs expenses crisis of 2009. We look forward to monitoring the campaign as it develops and to covering the manifesto launches, key speeches, polling and individual seat predictions. What do we know? • The General Election has been confirmed for Thursday 12 December. MPs voted in favour of the Early Parliamentary General Election Bill by 438 to 20. The Bill received its Royal Assent. • Parliament will dissolve in the early hours of Wednesday 6 November. • There will be a short campaign period of 5 weeks. • The deadline for candidate nomination papers to be submitted is Thursday 14 November. • The deadline to register to vote in the election is Tuesday 26 November. Press reports that more than 300,000 people registered to vote in two days this week, with 65% of them 34 years old or younger. First day on the campaign trail Conservatives Boris Johnson’s first day on the campaign trail included visits to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, a primary school in Bury St Edmunds and to meet police recruits in Hendon. It was to reinforce his focus on Conservative spending commitments on key public services of the NHS, schools and policing. He also issued a separate message explaining why a General Election was now necessary: ‘There are too many people [in Parliament] who are basically opposed to Brexit, who want to frustrate it and so the only thing we can really do now is go to the people, go to the country and say come on, let’s get this thing done. ‘We have got an oven-ready deal, put it in the microwave as soon as we get back after the election on December 12, get it done and then let’s get on with our domestic agenda.’ And he tweeted a similar message to supporters echoing this view, though commentators have questioned why it was filmed with the Prime Minister sitting in the back of his chauffeur- driven car. It was certainly a contrast on a day when Jeremy Corbyn launched his campaign with a fierce attack on the elites, which he argued dominate British business and also have overdue influence in UK politics. Labour The Labour leader singled out several billionaires whom he criticised for their irresponsible actions, including the Duke of Westminster, who Corbyn branded a ‘dodgy landlord’; Mike Ashley, the owner of Newcastle United and Sports Direct, who he said had ‘exploited’ his workforce; and ‘greedy bankers like Crispin Odey’, referring to a hedge-fund manager and Conservative donor. He also set out the impact of cuts to services were having on real communities up and down the country, in a sign that he is keen as in the 2017 General Election to move the conversation onto the territory of domestic policy: ‘After a decade when real wages have fallen, for too many people, what they see is the community they love being run down through years of deliberate neglect. The evidence of a decade of economic vandalism is all around them. ‘It’s there in the boarded-up shops. In the closed library and swimming pool. In youth centres that have closed their doors. The high street like a ghost town. The elderly couple who are scared to walk down their road because violent crime has doubled. The army veteran sleeping under blankets in a doorway. People struggling to make ends meet. The mother and her children eating from a food bank because they’ve been forced onto universal credit.’ The Labour leader also defended the NHS against the potential threat of a US trade deal opening it up to American companies: ‘Remember Johnson’s famous promise of £350m a week for the NHS? Well his toxic Brexit trade deal with Trump could hand over £500m a week of NHS money to big drugs corporations. ‘We will stop them. Labour won’t let Donald Trump get his hands on our National Health Service. It’s not for sale, to him or anyone.’ Mr Corbyn also touched on the Labour campaign, which he said would be ‘the biggest and most confident campaign that our country has ever seen’, powered by the hundreds of thousands of Labour members and supporters ‘who will make this the biggest people-powered campaign in history’. Liberal Democrats The Liberal Democrats also launched their campaign slogan, ‘Stop Brexit – Build a brighter future’, yesterday. Party leader Jo Swinson said: ‘This General Election is about the direction of our country for the next generation. The Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of Remain and we are ready to take the fight to Boris Johnson & Jeremy Corbyn. ‘They are stuck in the past and the Liberal Democrats represent a brighter future. We want to stop Brexit and ensure that we can build a brighter future for our United Kingdom.’ The party was also boosted by the news that former Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach had joined the party and would be contesting her Eddisbury constituency as a Liberal Democrat candidate on 12 December. Intervention from Donald Trump Breaking the usual convention of not getting directly involved with the elections in other countries, Nigel Farage’s LBC show secured an interview with President Trump, in which he criticised Jeremy Corbyn and attacked Boris Johnson’s EU Withdrawal Agreement. President Trump said of the Labour leader: ‘Corbyn would be so bad for your country, he’d be so bad, he’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places’. More worryingly for the Prime Minister, the President questioned the UK’s deal with the EU which Boris Johnson has been resolutely defending as he seeks to ‘Get Brexit Done’: ‘To be honest with you, this deal, under certain aspects of the deal, you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t trade. We can’t make a trade deal with the UK... ‘Under certain ways, we’re precluded - which would be ridiculous.’ The President also reinforced the point that Nigel Farage himself has been making about the need to create a ‘Leave alliance’ in the election to ensure that Brexit can be achieved. Trump said of his relationship with Johnson: ‘I have great relationships with many of the leaders, including Boris. He’s a fantastic man and I think he’s the exact right guy for the time and I know you and him will end up doing something that could be terrific if you (Farage) and he, if you and he get together as, you know, an unstoppable force.’ Launch of the Brexit Party’s campaign Nigel Farage issued a plea to the Conservative Party to form a ‘Brexit Alliance’ which he argued should see the Conservatives stand down in 150 seats that they have never won to maximise its chances of electing MPs and depriving Labour of seats in the next parliament. Whilst stating that this figure was not set in stone, he was clear if the Conservative party would not entertain any pact at all with his party then the Brexit Party campaign would proceed. He said there were two things he would guarantee if not agreement was reached with Boris Johnson’s party: ‘The first is to make sure that every house in this land is informed as to what is in the treaty, and what is in the political declaration, what the costs of this are, what the time implications are, to make people truly understand the extent to which this is a sell-out. ‘And the second thing in those circumstances that we will do is we will contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales. ‘Please don’t doubt that we are ready. Don’t underestimate our determination, or our organisation. Indeed next Monday we have 500 candidates coming to London, and they will all be signing their candidate forms on that day.’ Retiring MPs A growing number of MPs have announced that they will not be standing as candidates in the forthcoming election. The Institute for Government’s Gavin Freeguard has been keeping a list, which stands at 58 MPs standing down. Whilst there are always a certain amount of retirements at the end of a parliament, the concern is that the list includes a significant number of female MPs who have cited social media trolling and pressure on their families as reasons for stepping down. Those stepping down include MPs such as Amber Rudd, Nicky Morgan, Mims Davies, Seema Kennedy and Sarah Newton. Former Conservative MP Heidi Allen also announced she would not be standing again, though she had recently defected to the Liberal Democrats. Former Conservative minister David Jones announced this week he was withdrawing his resignation after being urged by his local party in North Wales to stand for re-election.