It is enough to strike fear into the hearts of MPs with even the strongest majorities. Sunday newspapers gave our first hint of the date when the Conservatives pencilled in the next election: 31 October 2024 – meaning Britain would go to the polls on Halloween. The Sunday Times quoted a Tory source suggesting a Halloween election is the most likely time for the next election. “October 31 is a Thursday,” they told the paper. But rather than preventing a resurgent Labour from coming back from the dead, a Halloween election date does not strike me as a good idea for the government. It’s traditional for skeletons to come tumbling out of the closets on Halloween, after all. Having the election then is unlikely to dispel the image of the Sunak administration as a zombie government, as it shambles aimlessly towards its rendezvous with the electorate. But what will be the consequences of having an election at a time of year when primitive fears rise to the surface, morbid stories are told and teams go door to door menacing householders? October is not a bad month for an election, and it used to be the tradition – voting took place in October in 1959, 1964 and 1974. The clocks going back and the autumnal weather can make campaigning difficult, but these factors will impinge a lot less than they did in the December 2019 election.
In the present conditions, avoiding an election for another year has the merit for the government of giving time for things to go right on the economy and Sunak’s five pledges – there is a lot of ground to make up given the national polls and the byelection results in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire. When things were going well for the Conservatives in 1983 and 1987, Margaret Thatcher chose a June election. But this might be inadvisable in 2024 because of the likelihood of heavy losses in the local elections in early May, and the recent discouraging experience of Theresa May in June 2017. Late October is a middle option as regards the student vote – some will be on campus, a few first years in the initial flush of activism, but others will be dispersed for reading week. If the Conservatives are still polling poorly, they would probably prefer student votes to be concentrated in university towns rather than dispersed to suddenly marginal towns and blue-chip suburbs. But many students, and others who move house, may not yet be registered at their new place of residence. A consideration for autumn 2024, as it has not been since 1964, is the US presidential election – the effects of a Trump v Biden contest, particularly the instability if Trump wins or the election is disputed, are incalculable.
The confluence of Halloween and elections is perhaps another indicator of Sunak’s acculturation to the US. Every two years, there is a week or so between Halloween and election day across the Atlantic. Election signs in the garden coexist with the most grandiose Halloween decorations. Doorstep campaigning is usually suspended for Halloween night itself, but that option is not open to British “knockers-up” if the election is on the day. Campaigners should be prepared for even more people than usual turning off their lights and pretending not to be in. It remains to be seen whether the Halloween election of October 2024 will drive a stake through the heart of recent Conservative dominance of government. It is quite possible that it might be followed by another election before too long: with such a gruesome polling day, there is always the chance of a hung parliament. • Lewis Baston is a political analyst and writer