Katy Balls

What is the main take away from ITV’s leaders’ debate? Listen to the news bulletins and it appears to be that the Conservatives have been accused of misleading the public. During the debate on Wednesday night, one of the Conservative party Twitter accounts was renamed (and rebranded) as a ‘fact-checking’ site. Throughout the showdown between Boris

At what point did the Conservatives’ 2017 campaign start to go off the rails? A lot of Conservative MPs point to the manifesto launch and the creation of the so-called dementia tax. However, many view comments Theresa May made during a stump speech on fox hunting as just as damaging. The then prime minister said

As the election campaign enters its third week, the Conservatives are enjoying a 17-point lead, according to a YouGov poll. However cautious Tory MPs are quick to point out nothing should be taken for granted, as this is broadly speaking where the Tory party was at this point in the 2017 campaign. But for Labour

In this election, the Tories hope to persuade voters who have never backed the Conservative party before to turn blue. Key target seats lie in parts of the Midlands and North that are historically Labour. As I say in this week’s magazine, to help candidates and activists take on this new terrain, the party has

Tory MPs used to think they could rely on telltale signs while out on the campaign trail — a detached house or a neatly kept lawn — to help them find their target voters. These days, things are more complicated. The Tories’ electoral strategy now rests on persuading voters who have never voted Conservative in

Will a Leave alliance lead the Tories to victory in the snap election? Nigel Farage has today announced that the Brexit party will be unilaterally creating one. The Brexit party leader rowed back on an earlier plan to stand candidates in 600 seats. Instead, the Brexit party will focus its efforts on Labour-held seats. Speaking

The first official week of the Conservatives’ election campaign did not go as many inside CCHQ had hoped. A cabinet minister resigned, a row erupted over insensitive Tory comments on the Grenfell fire and a candidate stepped down over previous comments on rape. Despite this, the Conservatives end the week with a sense of cautious

Will former Labour MPs help the Tories break the red wall? A key plank of the Tory path to a majority consists of winning seats in the Midlands and the North which have been Labour for generations. Many of these areas voted to leave in the EU referendum. The Tory hope is that a well-executed campaign in

Will the Scottish Conservatives face near extinction in the snap election? In recent months, talk in the Tory party has turned to what seats the party can pick up in the Midlands, North and Wales to make up for the seats they will lose north of the border. The thinking goes that a combination of

The Liberal Democrat election campaign launch was beset by technical difficulties which meant that Jo Swinson was at times hard to make out. However, the anti-Brexit message was loud and clear. The enthusiastic Liberal Democrat leader said she was ‘excited’ to stand as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Prime Minister. Swinson said there was a

The era of John Bercow as Speaker is no more. This evening MPs voted for Sir Lindsay Hoyle to succeed Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons. Elected by secret ballot through a series of knockout rounds, Hoyle was triumphant with 325 votes, following four rounds of voting. Chris Bryant came second with 213 votes.

There’s been much speculation this week about how the Brexit party will approach the incoming general election. Varying reports suggested Nigel Farage’s party could choose to target anything from 20 to 100 seats. However, speaking in Westminster this morning, Farage made clear that he had bigger ambitions. The Brexit party leader said that unless Boris

Of all those fighting this general election, the Conservatives are the only ones who need a majority. Labour just needs enough seats to club together with the SNP in order to form a government. The nationalists aim to win almost every seat in Scotland and then call a new independence referendum. The Liberal Democrats would

The last PMQs before the general election offered a teaser for what to expect over the next six weeks. With Boris Johnson keen to fight the incoming election on a promise to get Brexit done so the UK can focus on domestic issues, it’s clear Jeremy Corbyn plans to respond by suggesting the Prime Minister’s

As a vote on the government’s plan to hold an election beckons, the Prime Minister has made the decision to restore the Conservative whip to 10 of the 21 Brexit rebels. This group collectively lost the whip when they voted for the Benn bill which forced the government to seek an Article 50 extension rather than

Will an election be called this week? That’s the growing expectation among Conservative MPs. Later today the government will hold a vote on an early election for December 12 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. To pass, Boris Johnson needs two thirds of MPs to back him. However, this is very unlikely – with Labour MPs