Best Of

Good to finally get an MRP. We've been in the dark about whether Reform's vote share would translate into seats; at these proportions, it looks like they could just squeeze in.

I appreciate constituency-level analysis with an MRP is a bit silly, but if the Conservatives really are on track to lose the Scottish border seats to Reform then they are doomed.

We are picking up a lot of anger amongst farmers towards the Tories. A LOT of anger. Not helped by peacocking Tories who think farmers are their block vote who will never leave despite being royally shafted by their government.

Didn't farmers shaft themselves over Brexit?

It's a general phenomenon much wider than farmers. Brexit voters are the heart of Reform, the "Red Wall" etc. They shafted themselves with Brexit, but have to find someone else to blame for it. A decade of division and stagnation has resulted from their poor decision and they want to inflict even greater misery on us as a consequence.

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!