WELCOME to the first edition of General Election Watch. We hope you enjoy it - you can get the newsletter in your inbox for free every week by clicking here.

Since the clock struck midnight on January 1 this year, the race to win the keys to Downing Street has been on. The champagne corks had barely been popped before it seemed speeches were being written, policies were being drawn up … and hastily scribbled out again, in the case of some.

A month and a half into 2024, we still don’t know when the UK will go to the polls.

And what’s clear from recent events is that’s not the only uncertainty that surrounds this election.

Labour lead slips 

This morning, a poll put Labour’s lead over the Tories at its lowest level since last June.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party has a 12-point lead over the Tories – but it’s down five points, according to Savanta.

Elsewhere, the Tories are up two points and the SNP up one.

Starmer has of course come under fire for many U-turns, most recently backtracking on a £28billion green spending pledge.

And the turmoil in his party over Gaza - which has resulted in the suspension of candidates - continues.

The National:

Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, wrote on Twitter/X that it’s “clearly been a bad couple of weeks for the Labour Party and Keir Starmer” which these factors could have been playing into.

But he also noted the poll could be an outlier, adding “we don’t yet know”.

Meanwhile Rishi Sunak will be breathing a small sigh of relief with the headlines focusing away from what some predicted to would be his worst week ever - since the last one that is.

Today brought the news he has been left unscathed by one key element of this – inflation, which remained unchanged at 4% despite predictions it would creep up.

By-election misery for the Tories?

Now there’s just the small matter of whether GDP figures being published on Thursday will show the UK was in recession during the second half of 2023 and highlight economic misery.

Not to mention the headache for Sunak of the Tories possibly losing two by-elections taking place in Kingswood and Wellingborough tomorrow.

Defeat in both would mean the party would exceed its record of by-election defeats in a single parliament.

Meanwhile recent polls have had wildly varying predictions for the SNP – from returning just 28 MPs to winning 40 seats.

So what can we conclude? Labour are still well ahead – but whether they can secure an overwhelming majority and crush the SNP in Scotland - is far from over and done with yet.

The National:

For one example of how it can all go so badly wrong, let’s cast our minds back just seven years - and three Prime Ministers ago - to Theresa May, who called a snap election in 2017 with the aim of securing a larger majority.

Despite starting out well ahead in the polls, in the end the Tories won 318 seats – 13 fewer than they started with and short of a majority.

So the only thing that we can say for certain right now is there is uncertainty over what is to come.

Here at The National we’ll be keeping you up to date with all the ins and outs of the election campaign.

And of course, that will include the breaking news on the date of the election … whenever Sunak finally makes up his mind, that is.