Brmm brrm

Boris Johnson won by a landslide in 2019 by choosing a wedge issue and declaring a snap election on October 24 that year. The Tory Party Conference ran from 29th September to Wednesday 2nd October. Polling Day was Thursday 12 December. 

The Tory Party Conference 2023 starts on Sunday. The Autumn Statement is due on November 22, but to hit the timetable for an early December election, parliament would have to be dissolved in the first or second week of November. In 2019 a promised November 6 Budget was simply cancelled. The  November Inflation Figures will be published on Wednesday 13th December. 

Is it cars ?

In 2021, approximately 25.6 million people in Great Britain lived in a household that owned one car. In the same year, nearly nine million people lived in a household with two cars, an increase compared to the previous year. Over 17 million people lived in a household with no car at all.

In 2021: Black people (40%) were most likely out of all ethnic groups to have no access to a car or van; this compares with 33% of people from other ethnic groups, 33% of people with a mixed ethnicity, 21% of Asian people and 17% of  white people. 

From the 2021 census: 92% of households in detached houses have access to a car, 84% of semi-detached householders, and 78% living in terraces. 49% of those living in flats have access to a car. 

Meanwhile, a reminder of research by the Electoral Commission after the 2019 election. 

More than half of people (58%) agreed with the statement that, in general, “campaigning online is untrue or misleading” 

A similar proportion (60%) disagreed that “information available online about politics is trustworthy” 

Overall, nearly one in five people (18%) said they were not confident the election was well-run, and of these people nearly half (49%) selected as a reason that “campaigning was based on incorrect information/made untrue claims”

When we asked people to prioritise their concerns about the election from a list of issues, two thirds of people (67%) said “media bias” was a problem and half (52%) said “inadequate control of political activity on social media” was a problem