My guest is Peter Kalner.

Peter Kalner is the former president of the polling organization

UGov and is a visiting scholar with Carnegie Europe. Welcome to the podcast, Peter.

Glad to be here, Paul. You're one of my first guests, all eight years ago, so we've come a long way since then.

Right, I thought we start, if you don't mind, with talking about the general election in the UK, which is expected some time next year.

And then we move on to how the Labour Party makes use of polls and focus groups to inform its policymaking.

And then finally, if we have time, your views on how you think the Labour Party should engage with the European Union and member

states in this post-Brexit world we're all living in. So first things first, what is your

best guess about when the general election in the UK will take place next year?

Well, let's start with the rules. Well, it has to be held by law at the latest January 2025.

But that would mean campaigning over Christmas.

I can't imagine anybody would really want that.

So unless for some odd reason, they do go to the very, very end.

The options are spring of next year, May, June, or autumn, October,

November. Some people say they might well go in the spring. I doubt that because the polls at the

moment are pretty steady, pretty large labour lead, somewhere between 15 and 20%. And unless the polls

have moved significantly towards the Conservatives

by, say, February, March next year, I can't see them going to the country, having

holding the election with Labour so far ahead. So I think the likeliest time is October, November, and then you get down to the

kind of fiddley issues. Do they have the normal party conferences happen in September,

October, therefore use that as a launch pad for a November election, or will they cancel

the party conferences and have the election in October?

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