VOTE 24

AUTHOR: William Kedjanyi

VOTE 24: Campaigns & Conferences

There’s a news avalanche currently taking place, as Party Conference season is fully underway, there’s less than 50 days left until the Presidential Election, we’re down to four in the Tory leadership race and focus is turning to special markets in the US, writes WILLIAM KEDJANYI.

⭐ TORY LEADERSHIP BETTING ⭐

🔴 The Latest with Labour

Labour’s first conference in power for 14 years takes place today, and the party heads to Liverpool under a cloud. I spoke to Ranajan Balakumran on Friday about it:

🇺🇸 Race For The White House

One of the wildest US elections in memory took another turn at the weekend after US Secret Service agents opened fire when they spotted a would-be assassin in the bushes of Donald Trump’s golf course – narrowly preventing the second attempt on Trump’s life during this election campaign.

The attempt has put more attention on the level of protection Trump receives – Officials acknowledged that because Trump is not in office, the full golf course was not cordoned off. “If he was, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said during Sunday’s briefing. “Because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”

There have been calls for enhanced protection – meanwhile, the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, described voting for Trump when he won the presidency in 2016 and expressed support for a White House ticket of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. He also travelled to Ukraine and volunteered to provide what the son described as “humanitarian” aid to troops in 2022. His politics appear to be confused to say the least.

On the Democratic side of matters, the market and the models are now trending fairly strongly in the direction of Kamala Harris. Here’s something on the market moves:

PRESS RELEASE: Harris widens gap over Trump

Polls, both state and national, along with models, have been positive for her and Democrats since the debate, as shown by Adam Carlson’s collection below.

The models – all bar Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin – are all moving towards Harris, although there are differing methodologies. Find them below (* indicates that this is a new high for the candidate)

• FiveThirtyEight – 🔵 Harris 63-37%*
• The Economist – 🔵 Harris 57-43%*
• RacetotheWH (Logan Phillips) – 🔵 Harris 60-40%*
• Jack Kersting – 🔵 Harris 57-42%*
• DecisionDeskHQ – 🔵 Harris 55-45%
• @CNalysis – 🔵 Harris 54-45%*
• @NateSilver538 – 🔴 Trump 52-48%

It’s still all to play for – there’s a margin of error in all polls and the state races are too tight to call right now, and the electoral college would appear to favour Trump also.

🔵 Round 2

We have four in the Tory leadership race! Here’s a refresher on the last round of voting and the candidates themselves:

🔵 Robert Jenrick: 33
🔵 Kemi Badenoch: 28
🔵 James Cleverly: 21
🔵 Tom Tugendhat: 21
🔵 Mel Stride: 16 – eliminated!

And here’s William Kedjanyi’s analysis:

Current Prices:

🔵 Robert Jenrick: ?
🔵 Kemi Badenoch: ?
🔵 James Cleverly: ?
🔵 Tom Tugendhat: ?

🔵 Meet The Tories

Here are the remaining contenders left in the race:

🔵 Robert Jenrick (MP for Newark and former secretary of state for housing and communities)

Has held several ministerial roles but most known for being former immigration minister, who quit Rishi Sunak’s government when it was revealed that a piece of legislation introduced to save the bill did not allow the government to override the international laws that have stopped the government sending asylum seekers to central Africa.

His campaign has been based on the need to win back Reform voters and he’s quickly become a favourite of key figures on the right of the party – he has backing from Ester McVey and Mark Francois – whilst he’s also been on the front foot regarding immigration. His campaign has the most confidence – his allies told HuffPost that he’s “nailed on” to make it to the final two candidates in the race to be the next Tory leader. Topped both rounds of voting so far.

Round 2 votes: 33

Odds with Star: ?

🔵 Kemi Badenoch (MP for Saffron Walden and shadow secretary of state for housing communities and local government)

Long touted by many in the party on the right and described by some as a culture warrior on key issues, Badenoch is the former business secretary who has long been a major contender for this role according to the markets. Has a number of ex-ministerial endorsements, including Laura Trott, Clare Coutinho, Jesse Norman and Andrew Bowie. A strong performer in public polling – she has topped three members polls including two from YouGov, and is competitive in all head to heads. Second place in both rounds although she has drifted since then.

Round 2 votes: 28

Odds with Star: ?

🔵 James Cleverly (MP for Braintree and shadow home secretary)

The most experienced contender of the six, having been Home Secretary at the point of the election, and also a former foreign secretary, education secretary and party chairman. His time at the head of the party will help with grassroots members and his pitch as the party’s great unifier could help him through the votes this week, although it’s possible that being moved to the Home Office could provide a blow to his aspirations given the party’s struggles with immigration. Round 2 tally was below market expectations but

Round 2 votes: 21

Odds with Star: ?

🔵 Tom Tugendhat (MP for Tonbridge and Malling and shadow minister for security)

Regarded highly amongst the One Nation group of moderate Tory MP’s, and perhaps the favoured candidate of the Centre of the Tory Party. Whilst no wing of the Tories remained unscathed at the election, eight of the 24 members of the “One Nation” caucus kept their seats, the five Scottish Conservatives are also on the more moderate wing and if anything the balance of the party went slightly more centrist due to the amount of losses.

Whilst he’s to the left of the membership as a whole, he’d polled reasonably well – in the last three surveys before the first round of MP’s voting he hit 19, 16, and 15% – but his tallies amongst MP’s were low. Must pick up votes from Mel Stride’s supporters if he’s got have a chance of making it through to the final pairing.

Round 2 votes: 21

Odds with Star: ?

🟡 Seaside Takeaways

The Lib Dems had their conference in Brighton. Yours truly was not there – sadly – it’s an amazing place to be – but much fun was had, including – of course – a number of seaside-themed stunts. Here are some takeaways from the conference – mainly drawn from Ed Davey’s speech, a full replay of which is below:

🏥 The playbook isn’t changing – the NHS and social care were the issues he focused on most. Davey urged the government to ‘winter-proof the NHS’ and referenced his own experiences as a parent and carer – and we can expect to see this be a feature, most likely the centrepiece, of the Lib Dems in Government.

🔵 The battle between the Tories and Lib Dems is going to continue for a long, long time – perhaps an obvious takeaway – but the accusation that the party is “scraping the barrel” with Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat is a pretty clear signal for what’s about to come whenever the winner is installed in a few weeks time.

🇪🇺 Expect more pressure on closer relationships with the EU. That Davey called on the government to fix Britain’s “broken relationship with Europe” is not a big surprise but with EU leaders questioning Labour’s ‘reset’, there could well be scope for greater movement here especially given negative public opinion of Brexit.

🔴 There’s plenty of fire to be turned on Labour though – Davey’s remarks that the Lib Dems will “cut through the government’s doom and gloom” suggest that Labour’s black hole narrative will face plenty of pressure. A painful budget lies ahead.

📊 Conference Season

🔵 It’s party conference season, and Reform UK are having their conference as we speak in Birmingham. Co-deputy leader Dr David Bull opened proceedings about an hour ago claiming that the party has nearly 80,000 members, a number apparently close to the Conservatives.

There have been addresses from MP James McMurdock and Ann Widdecombe – and a live stream is below. We’ll bring you some highlights:

🔴 Labour’s delegates will be heading to Liverpool this weekend for a conference that will have two very different moods at the same time. On one hand, Labour were the big winners of the General Election and are back in power for the first time in 14 years, but on the other hand they are being hit with a flood of huge problems including parison capacity, Westminster briefing wars, public backlash for the amount of free gifts Keir Starmer has accepted, Sue Gray’s pay and more. Also with a painful budget in store, opposition parties – already making gains – will be ready and waiting to turn up the heat on Sir Keir Starmer.

Starmer – who is already coming under fire for his response to being asked about an Arsenal box during local media rounds – will sit down with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday. Reflections will be available here.

WILLIAM KEDJANYI 

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