General election 2019: Only one more sleep until polling day…

As we stand on the brink of polling day the overwhelming feeling seems to be one of exhaustion. It has not been a good close to an already dire campaign. It might be that much of the country is dispirited about picking between two historically unpopular party leaders. Or perhaps those who said that an election in December was a bad idea due to the dark and the cold weather were on to something. Indeed, the Conservatives cited exhaustion trying to explain why Boris Johnson came across as unempathetic when confronted with the picture of a sick child forced to lie on coats in an NHS hospital earlier this week.

The incident then sprawled out in an unpleasant and undignified manner for several days. Health Secretary Matt Hancock visiting the hospital in question ran into a few protestors which was then blown up by anonymous claims that one of his aides had been punched. This turned out to be false. False claims that the image of the sick boy lying on coats had been staged also circulated. In many ways this sordid affair crystallises various key trends that have run throughout this election.

One has been the growing importance of the NHS in the campaign helping Labour slowly close in the polls, though the Conservatives still hold a healthy lead. While the Conservatives promised to pump more money into the NHS Labour promised more. Not only does the fact the system is under stress, as illustrated by the aforementioned photo, help them but also the argument they’ve peddled that the Tories will not only underfund but even destroy the NHS. A pile of leaked government documents surrounding trade talks with the US were brandished by Corbyn as proof of plans to sell the NHS to Trump. The Conservatives were worried enough to have Donald Trump, who was in London for the NATO conference, deny any interest publicly before he flounced off back to Washington upset by other leaders laughing at him behind his back.

Of course, the timing was at least partly an attempt to divert attention from Corbyn’s disastrous interview by the BBC’s Andrew Neil. Confronted with allegations that antisemitism had flourished in Labour under his watch Corbyn refused to apologise. Pursued about how he would pay for his extravagant plans, in particular his impromptu backing of Waspi women (pensioners) to the tune of £58bn, he appeared unable to do so. Johnson, perhaps taking this as a warning, declined to do the interview inviting opprobrium and accusations of cowardice. Skipping another interview today with Jeremy Vine will hardly help lessen these accusations.

Indeed, another theme of this election has been bad tempered squabbling about the reliability of the media and politicians. The first leaders’ debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson was the subject of a court case by the Liberal Democrats and the SNP as they launched unsuccessful attempts to try to gain a podium of their own in the debate. During the debate itself the Conservatives caught flack for briefly renaming a party account factcheckUK and tweeting out various “fact checks” of Corbyn’s statements. Labour and the Lib Dems frothed with claims of fake news while the Conservatives shrugged their shoulders at it as a minor stunt.

Then came the leader’s debate on climate change which Johnson, and Farage, decided not to show up to – only for Channel 4 to decide to take revenge by refusing to let them send proxies and replacing them with ice sculptures. What was possibly the most surreal election moment since Ed Miliband’s wildly ill-judged decision to pose as a cut rate Moses by engraving his campaign pledges onto a huge stone tablet also sparked an ill-humoured row about Channel 4’s impartiality.

Still, how much of this mattered to the wider electorate is unclear. Many voters already assume most politicians are dishonest and so they aren’t terribly upset by more accusations of duplicity. When Johnson insisted the truth mattered in one of the TV debates the audience laughed – and he still looks set to win a majority.

This can be perhaps attributed to the Conservative party’s disciplined campaign, its very dullness somewhat remarkable considering Boris’ usual proclivities. The line was “Get Brexit Done” and up and down the country that’s what Tory candidates said over and over again. The line was strong enough to help drive Farage’s Brexit Party into near oblivion, polling in the low single digits. The party itself nearly mutinied over Farage’s decision to contest every seat and make life awkward for the Tories, forcing him to scale back his plans – not that it looks like it will make much of a difference. Still whether cannibalising the Brexit party vote and the Brexit mantra will be enough to break Labour’s “Red Wall” in the North and the Midlands and capture the elusive “Workington man” remains to be seen.

Continuing on the theme of growing electoral irrelevance the Liberal Democrats who entered the campaign hubristically declaring Jo Swinson would become prime minister have steadily lost ground. From their polling highs of the 20s before the election they have now been squeezed down to the low teens. Key defectors to their cause such as Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna will likely not be returning to parliament and Swinson might conceivably lose her seat.

Their slow decline seems to have come from the Remain vote grudgingly coalescing behind Corbyn despite the scepticism many feel about him as a leader. This will be key in helping Labour avoid the wipe-out that polls initially predicted at the start of the election. If they go on to even deny the Conservatives a majority it will be in large part fuelled by another trend that favoured them – a surge in registration by young voters.

The Tories still look set for a majority but pollsters also caution that another hung parliament is conceivable. If this does happen expect breathless debate on what went wrong for Boris, what moment proved decisive. One event that seems to have had a strangely muted impact is the terror attack on London Bridge on the 29th November. While the father of one of the victims has spoken out against what he sees as Johnson’s response to the event it seems to have almost been drowned out by the general election noise. Whether it is heartening or depressing that we can have a terror attack in the capital without it upending our entire political debate I am not sure.