Best Of

The petition Is already moving towards a million signatures by the end of the day.

A couple of million in time for the Labour conference next week would be a good result.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194?ref=ed_direct

These petitions are often very interesting in terms of the geographical distribution of signatories. There's a wealth of information there.

On this one it's interesting that the major urban centres - e.g. London and Birmingham - have very low rates of signatures at present. Maybe they will catch up later. At a first glance I'd say that it looks like areas with strong Reform support have high rates of signing this petition.

This might just be because it has spread over the parts of social media used by those voters first, but it suggests this won't be a way to win back those voters to Labour.

it is growing at about 1,000 a minute. It will reach 1,000,000 I think.
In some constituencies, over 2% of electors have already signed it.

That's just all the small boats people signing it

Incidentally, just been reading the BBC 'what we know' section on ID cards. Apparently, it'll be on people's phones.

I despise smartphones, and don't have one. At least, not yet. Maybe I'll end up being forced to get one thanks to this genius move.

What seems to be missing with this ID stuff is an announcement in Parliament first together with any Impact Assessment. Seems to be kite flying / regaining the narrative / kicking Burham off the front pages.

The Burnham thing was odd in that he would have been taken more seriously had he been a PM MP. Perhaps he saw his chances of a safe seat being compromised by No. 10 and decided to lash out.

According to the BBC, he wants it introduced by the end of the parliament.

That looks very optimistic to me given the time needed to consult, enact the primary legislation and to build and test everything.

I still think the lack of mandate to do anything in this sphere is deeply concerning.

All part of the Nigel for PM narrative. Who is funding this lot?

A rogue or bad poll is one where you disagree with the result?

Nothing to do with the quality of the poll, which seems accurate according to all recent evidence. The problem is Farage is not being subjected to ANY scrutiny by some mainstream media channels whereas every else is.

Farage's catastrophic paracetamol-autism interview with Ferrari on LBC led every LBC bulletin on Wednesday and was picked up by ITV. Absolutely nothing from the BBC. Zip, nada, nothing. Chris Mason's fawning eulogy on the nature of the Reform Conference was quite remarkable and drove a coach and horse through the BBC's impartiality remit.

Call the beggars out!

As the Labour Party conference begins, can we take a breath and appreciate what we are seeing?

15 months after winning a HUGE landslide the government are now polling distant 2nd at best - or 3rd at worst. With Starmer the least popular PM ever (and that's with recent stiff opposition). With rebellion in the ranks and the King in the North on manoeuvres.

What is the government's Big Plan to win back support and transform the political agenda? Mandatory digital ID cards! How to keep digging from the bottom of the pit.

Are they this disconnected from reality already?

Yes, and it’s fascinating. Other parties take note - this is what happens when you spend all your energy desperately saying nothing controversial in order to win government, and then don’t have a clue what you want to do when you get there.

The Ming Vase strategy has been the death of this government. It’s biggest misstep. The second was that the only policy they came out with (not to raise IT/NI/VAT) hamstrung them on fiscal policy.

So you have a government with no mandate for anything, with no money, with limited scope to pull the fiscal levers in a way that would help, and with a gang of backbenchers who don’t feel beholden to any kind of policy agenda.

It has been an utter disaster.