Election 4th July

That's the most sense I've heard from Andrew Neill in quite a while..

Yes, according to the lying, deceiving garbage that oozes out of the Tory Press and Media, and which is so eagerly swallowed by fixed opinionated supporters who probably  stopped thinking for themselves as soon as they started buying their favourite pro Tory newspaper.

Nothing new then, they are always on the end of some bung or another, maybe they will refuse it as they have done such a crap job.

Here's another thing bugging me, haven't No.10 heard of umbrellas.

You could be right. None of us can say for certainty what will happen. But I think you are far more likely to be wrong. Yes I think the polls might narrow a bit and yes the Tories will probably poll a little better on the day than the worst polling suggests.

But voting patterns in byelections and local elections recently have been throwing up a lot of evidence for widespread anti-Tory tactical voting, as if most voters aside from die hard Tories have decided they want to see the back of them and are prepared to vote for whomever can best defeat them. At least in England. There may also be an anti-SNP factor in Scotland. This means that whilst the Lib Dems might poll nationally only in single figures, they are likely to do far better where they are the main challengers to the Tories and take seats with the help of Labour supporters. Also Labour might poll nationally well below 40 percent but are likely to do much better in just those seats where they are best placed to defeat the Tory.

Anti-Tory tactical voting - if it happens on any significant scale - will doom the Tories much more than overall vote share.

There is precedent for polls to narrow substantially. Labour almost wiped out a huge Tory poll lead in 2017, and there is of course the John Major Tory victory of 1992. And unseen events can change things radically, as the Falklands War did for Thatcher. And of course Reform and Farage are wild cards. If they challenge the Tories from the right they are likely to damage the Tory vote still further. But if they do a secret deal - which cannot be entirely ruled out - to stand down and back the Tories in return for a right wing agenda after any victory, then that would obviously substantially shore up the Tory vote.

Because whilst many floating voters and centrists and former red wall voters are deserting the Tories for Labour and other moderate parties. the Tory hard core are increasingly leaning towards Reform. Some sort of deal that involves Reform standing down could radically alter Tory fortunes or at least limit the damage sufficiently to make a hung parliament more likely