UK heads to the polls

Rishi Sunak has called an election for 4 July, a few months earlier than expected.

It is going to be a bloodbath. On current polls the Conservatives will do worse than they did in 1997 vs Blair.

At the end of April the Conservatives were 21% behind Labour and forecast to win just 85 out of 650 seats. The betting markets have them at only 9% to win.

The country direction is a net -44% and Rishi Sunak has a -34% net favourability rating.

Starmer is not wildly popular with an average +8% favourability rating, but he doesn’t need to be. He generally leads Sunak by 15% in Preferred PM polls.

So things I’ll be looking for are:

• How big is Starmer’s majority
• How Labour does vs SNP in Scotland
• Do Conservatives keep 100 MPs?
• Who replaces Sunak after the election
• Are there any huge gaffes like Gordon Brown being recorded referring to a woman as a bigot