GE 2024

I don't know who will win here. Certainly not the incumbent. I would guess Labour

Now now. Let’s not be hasty, he might announce another Eat to Help Out and if so… to Wagamamas!

My Tory cunt is Labour's Nadia Whittome, who is a proper lefty.

They've gerrymandered the seats around here. Labour held Reading East with an increased majority in 2019, and would take Reading West on the old boundaries. Now there is only one Reading seat (which labour will hold) and Reading West and West Berkshire which favours the Tories.
Wokingham has been carved so all the Lib Dem and or Labour voters have been removed meaning Redwood will probably stay.

Can't see Honest Bob Jenrick losing, unfortunately.

Still amazed and amused by Sunak setting up the visual metaphor of announcing the election while getting soaked by the rain.

Ah, assumed you were Rushcliffe.

So the Tory campaign starts with Sunak getting soaked to ‘things can only get better’ and their security then forcibly removing a bemused Sky journalist from the launch event at a hotel, whilst reporting live on TV

It's like they are doing the new series of the Thick of It.

North bank.

Day one:

Sunak takes questions about immigration from a worker* in hi-vis jacket at a Derbyshire warehouse.

*a worker being a Tory councillor who lists his other employment as part time dentist.

Talking of dentists I went earlier for a hygienist appointment. It was ok. Down in London they used to use a kind of airflow blast thing rather than that old scraping technique. It didn't hurt at all and was very effective. They don't seem to have discovered it in Yorkshire yet. It was a bit painful and I don't think has done as good a job.

There was a second plant at that event - another local Tory councillor posing in high-vis as an apparent factory worker.

Sunak later asked a bunch of Welsh folk in a pub if they were 'looking forward to all the football' this summer before it was pointed out to him that Wales didn't qualify for the Euros.

His interview with Nick Robinson this morning on Radio Four was awful, too.

Seems the Lib Dems in Newark are trying to trick Jam and Kinks fans into voting for them by nominating David Watts. No news so far on whether he's gay and fancy free or the head boy of the school.

Instructive moment for the youngest. He was watching Little Rishi make his announcement in the rain. I remarked on the piss poor optics on how pathetic he looked and that moment had probably derailed any chance, however slim, of some initial momentum for there campaign. He didn't understand. Then the memes rolled in and he understood. Though the Gove one is still my favourite.

The Gove on is the funniest, because it’s true.

Turns out Giles Brandreth’s daughter, Aphra, is a candidate in Chester South. I assume I don’t need to specify the party.