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00:00It's the final day of campaigning for the general election in the United Kingdom,
00:04a poll that's tipped to end 14 years of conservative rule.
00:08Top issues for voters include the cost of living, health, immigration and climate.
00:12The Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer,
00:14could gain as many as 70 per cent of seats in the House of Commons,
00:18though Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is insisting
00:21he's fighting for every vote till the last moment of the campaign.
00:25Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has even made a last-ditch effort
00:28to rally support for the Tory party and the man who helped turf him out of office.
00:35Is it not therefore the height of insanity, if these polls are right,
00:40that we are about to give Labour a super-majority,
00:45which they will use to make us nothing but the punk of Brussels,
00:51taking EU law by dictation with no say on how that law is made,
00:57paying into Brussels' budgets again? You watch, you watch.
01:01Now, Boris is right to say now is the time for all conservatives to come together
01:07to deny Labour that super-majority that Keir Starmer craves.
01:13We have 48 hours to save Britain from the danger of a Labour government.
01:19Well, for more analysis, we can bring in Tim Bale,
01:22a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London.
01:26Thank you very much for joining us on France 24.
01:29Why, then, is it that the conservatives are so unpopular?
01:34Well, the fundamentals are not good for them.
01:37The economy is sluggish, even flatlining at times.
01:41The National Health Service and other public services
01:44are really in crisis, crumbling, if you like.
01:48The conservatives have also failed to demonstrate that
01:52Brexit has had many benefits for the UK.
01:55And, of course, they've elected two or three leaders
01:58who are pretty unpopular with the public.
02:01If you put all those three things together,
02:03then, to be honest, it's not surprising they're in a lot of trouble.
02:08And earlier, we heard some pretty shocking statistics
02:10about the state of people's everyday lives
02:14and people even suffering from malnutrition in the UK.
02:18Can you give us a sense of what it's really like there?
02:21Well, I mean, I wouldn't want people to go away with the idea
02:24that everybody in the UK is somehow suffering from malnutrition.
02:28But it is certainly the case that poverty,
02:30particularly among households with young children,
02:34has risen over the course of the last 14 years.
02:38The number of food banks, for example, has increased dramatically.
02:42So, poverty is a real problem in this country.
02:45It's not something, interestingly, that has been discussed much at this election,
02:50but it is something that is going to be a challenge for the next government.
02:54And Labour, meanwhile, has seemed to be lying low throughout the campaign
02:59on potentially polarising issues like transgender rights, Britain's colonial past.
03:06It's even treading carefully on immigration.
03:08What do you make of this, then?
03:10Well, it's no surprise, really,
03:12because those issues are far from important to most voters,
03:16clearly on either side of those particular debates.
03:21They are quite crucial.
03:23But as far as most voters are concerned,
03:25it's the so-called bread and butter issues that really matter.
03:29So, it's the economy, the cost of living, the National Health Service.
03:33Immigration does matter to a fair number of voters,
03:36but most of those voters who are very concerned with that
03:39are the voters who are either sticking with the Conservatives
03:43or going to reform.
03:44For Labour voters, although immigration is not unimportant,
03:47it's not a particularly important issue.
03:50And it's also one, obviously, that is very, very difficult
03:53for any party in government to solve.
03:55So, it's not entirely surprising that Labour is not saying very much about it.
03:59And hopefully, when it gets into government,
04:04is able to do something that the Conservatives haven't been able to do.
04:07In other words, stop the boats coming across the Channel.
04:09But it will be a very, very difficult thing for any government to do in the UK.
04:14Right. Well, Brexit is also an issue that's been largely absent from the campaign,
04:18even though it was a big one in previous years.
04:22Why is that?
04:23Why are we not hearing so much about it this time around?
04:26Well, for two reasons.
04:27On the Conservative side, they really haven't got very much to crow about.
04:31It's very difficult to demonstrate that Brexit
04:33has actually brought the benefits that some people suggested
04:36that it would back in 2016 or when we left in 2020.
04:40Certainly, it hasn't enabled us to take back control of our borders
04:44in the sense of reducing immigration.
04:46On the Labour side, they are still worried, understandably,
04:50that some of the voters that they have managed to claw back
04:53from the Conservatives from 2019 are still concerned about immigration.
04:59And therefore, Brexit is an issue which they don't want to talk about,
05:06lest those voters decide that actually they still care about it
05:10and go back to the Conservatives or perhaps to reform.
05:13So both parties, in some senses, have got a motive for maintaining
05:18what some people see as a conspiracy of silence over Brexit.
05:22You mentioned the Reform UK party earlier.
05:26Does that party have a real chance of getting some seats?
05:30Well, some seats, I think, is the operative phrase.
05:34We have a first-past-the-post system in this country.
05:36Reform can really touch between 15% and 20%
05:40and still only get a handful of seats in Parliament.
05:44It looks as if actually their polling numbers have gone down a little bit.
05:48So one would expect them to poll maybe just over 10%,
05:52somewhere between 10% and 15%.
05:53But that will still only give them one, two, three, four seats in Parliament.
05:59That's what's expected.
06:01The first-past-the-post system can sometimes throw up
06:05some interesting local results.
06:06I would have thought that Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform,
06:09will actually win the seat he's going for in Clacton.
06:12But the question is, will he bring many more people
06:15into Parliament with him?
06:16I doubt that.
06:18OK, and if these polls are correct
06:23and the Conservative party does suffer a humiliating defeat,
06:26where does that leave them for the future?
06:29Well, it leaves them with a lot of hard thinking to do.
06:32It will probably take them into a leadership contest
06:35in the next few months, at which point they will have to decide
06:38which direction they go in.
06:40Either they stick with the kind of populist radical right direction
06:44they've been going in for some time
06:46in order to try and counter Reform and Nigel Farage,
06:50or they decide that, in fact, elections, generally speaking,
06:54are one in the centre of British politics
06:56and elect a more moderate so-called one-nation Tory.
07:00So really, it's the leadership contest after the election
07:04that we should be watching if we want to see
07:06what the future direction of the party will be.
07:10OK, indeed.
07:11Thank you very much, Tim Bale, Professor of Politics
07:13at Queen Mary University.
07:15Thank you very much.