Election 2024: the worst is yet to come

If you’ve been following the election closely – and if you have been, you’re in a minority given there are almost five weeks to go – you might have noticed something apparently puzzling: parties don’t seem to be attacking each other’s candidates.

There have certainly been scandals and embarrassments. Labour’s deselection of Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Faiza Shaheen, and particularly its vacillation over whether or not it would allow Diane Abbott to stand again has attracted plenty of coverage. But notably none of that row required any Conservative Party involvement – it has been a red-on-red dispute.

Few Conservative candidates have attracted a similar level of coverage, but Iain Dale experienced an abortively brief return to politics after quitting his LBC show to run as a candidate in Royal Tunbridge Wells – only to have to stand down again after relatively recent comments of him insulting the town.

What gives? Given we’re in a general election, where is the cross-party hostility? Surely Labour and the Conservatives have had teams trawling through the social media histories of their opponents’ candidates – has there been some non-aggression pact that we’re not hearing about?

Unsurprisingly, there has not. What is actually going on behind the scenes is an early election period phony war. The deadline for submitting the paperwork to become a general election candidate is the end of the day on Friday 7 June.

Much of the time before that, especially when the timing of an election has taken people by surprise, is scrabbling to get candidates selected by that time – which can include an element of circular firing squads, as internal rivals try to stop one another getting ahead.

More importantly to the issue of inter-party hostilities, if a candidate is discredited before 7 June, the party concerned can simply drop them. So to use an invented example, if the Tories leaked to friendly media that a Labour candidate had a history of racist social media posts, Labour could simply say it was shocked and appalled, drop the candidate and replace them. The party as a whole might even come out looking good, due to its unwillingness to tolerate bad actors.

After Friday, that is no longer an option: you are stuck with the candidates that you have selected. They will be on the ballot on 4 July, and there is no replacing them. If they cause a scandal, you are left with either explaining it away or disowning them and pulling campaign funds from that seat – which of course makes it harder to win a general election (and means if that candidate wins, they will hardly feel loyal to the party).

The result is this early phony war at the start of an election. If Labour notices the Conservatives have selected a terrible candidate for a seat, they will be as quiet as they possibly can until Friday, in the hope that the Tories will then be stuck with them – and the bad news stories can start to emerge.

This is hardly edifying, but it is the nature of politics and is by no means restricted to the two largest political parties. Until candidate selection closes, the biggest threat to candidates is from members of their own party. After that point, the gloves are off and the fur will fly.

So, enjoy the last few days of the election being about the “launch” of battle buses, Tory policies released on the back of napkins, and Labour trying to relaunch its various talking points from the last few months.

In a week or two, we’ll look back on these as the good old days – as parties push their manifestoes, their policies, and their key messages with one hand, while with the other hand (kept slightly out of sight) they shovel as much shit on their opponents as they can manage.

If you’re a candidate, congratulations on getting selected. Enjoy that moment – as the worst is almost certainly yet to come.