Best Of

Meanwhile, on this warm sunny morning in Germany, today’s Rawnsley:

The leader of Reform is…beginning to look a bit desperate. He had been flirting with trying to present his party as one maturing into “respectability” in an effort to persuade voters who are Reform-curious but queasy about racism and extremism that they no longer have anything to worry about. So what explains his ugly turn towards the politics of racial paranoia? Panic is probably the best answer.

Reform still leads all other parties, but any deflation of its bubble is disconcerting for a leader who has prized momentum as the definition of success. Usually inescapable at byelections, he has been largely absent from the contest for Makerfield, where he might be exposed to questions about that [£5 million] donation.

Also troubling to him is the durability of the Conservative party. The Tories are not exactly in fabulous shape, but they are resolutely refusing to concede to Mr Farage’s demand to be recognised as the undisputed master of the right in British politics. Defections from the Conservatives, much fanfared at the time, have caused more strife for Reform than they have trouble for the Tories.

What matters to Mr Farage is that he is threatened by a new competitor he hadn’t expected. After a quarter of a century menacing the Tories from the right, now there is a fireship aimed at his own party from the even further right. If you think relations between Reform and the Conservatives are bad, those between Reform and Restore are ferocious.

For those of us watching from a safe distance, there is a temptation to smile at this cage fight on the extremes of the right. But there is also a disturbing dimension to the grim grapple over who can be the most nasty party of the right. If this grisly competition has so little respect for the wishes of a grieving family, you can be sure it has absolutely none for the rest of us.

Empty waffle. No more insightful than political Twitter.

It’s hardly a Damascene revelation that relations between Reform and Restore are less than cordial.

Reform are also holding/gaining slightly in the polls.

I don't think pooh-poohing Rawnsley's argument here works, either as thesis or as tactic.

The fact that the Tories have not collapsed, despite figures such as Jenrick walking out is, I think, pretty significant. The defections have helped the Tories by getting rid of an overly ambitions and disloyal crew, but have weakened the RefUK "insurgency" brand. The polls are not demonstrating the kind of momentum that could lead RefUK to any kind of power, and may have already turned over. Even more problematic, increasingly Farage is being challenged on the dodgy donations, his closeness to Trump and the question of what he got for mouthing Putin propaganda over Ukraine- and this is defintely cutting through. If the punters are right, Farage will win nothing in the three by-elections and may even see the Tories snatch an unexpected victory in Aberdeen South, which seriously challenges the idea that the right should unite under his questionable leadership.

This could be the beginning of a slow puncture for RefUK which takes them out of the game.

Rawnsley has been phoning it in for a while now

The Tories have gone backwards. I think Kemi is doing a decent job but I’m not the target audience and never likely to vote for them. They’re not gaining or moving forward in the polls

Yet. It’s going to be a long haul but undeniably Badenoch* is the least unpopular leader of the main parties.

*How much do I love that her name is essentially Bad Enoch (as in Powell). Far too much.

Kemi’s problem is that although she isn’t personally unpopular, her party still are, and it’s going to take a few more years for that to change.

That might also be Nigel Farage's problem – that Kemi's party is unpopular and Reform is top-heavy with Tory retreads.

Looking at Starmers approval ratings they crashed straight after the WFA debacle .

I still find it astonishing that no one in No 10 and Starmer himself didn’t stop Reeves from putting through what will end up being the worst policy decision of recent times .

All that political pain for what was a paltry sum saved .

Starmer is a lawyer, not a politician, and has no discernible political judgement. As for why Number 10 generally did not act, that begs the question whether they knew about it in advance. Rachel Reeves is also a technocrat and, as with George Osborne's omnishambles budget, it is likely the Chancellor accepted the WFA cut from a list of Treasury suggestions without a great deal of thought.

It was a perfectly sensible financial decision presented badly.

There are worse crimes.

It was and sadly once they were on the back foot, it was the same with slowing the rate of growth of benefits, and their backbenchers under pressure from well organised lobbying campaigns they were always going to fold and SKS lost his authority overnight.

WFA was a ridiculous frippery from a bygone age before pensioners did not form a large part of those with the highest disposable income after housing costs in the country. It was absolutely the right thing to do, it is astonishing that this relic survived the Osborne years. We have got to get away from the situation where so much of our limited resources are given away to those not in need by way of universal benefits. Sooner or later that is going to include at least some of the pension.

Not even that, it was exceeded by the double bubble malfunction that the triple lock does when an inflation spike is followed by a pay spike the subsequent year. Something that I'm sure nobody considered at the time, but you can't help seeing once it's there.

The political problem is that there's Noone Quite Like Grandma.

The political problem is that grandma votes consistently and her grandchildren don't. So, inevitably, our political class run scared of grandma.

Good morning

Our grandchildren have learned that what goes on in grandma's house stays in grandma's house and maybe why they love visiting her

And listening to Yusaf on Kuenssberg will someone make him go away

He and Farage are simply nasty and no matter whatever happens, I do not want a reform government

Looking at Starmers approval ratings they crashed straight after the WFA debacle .

I still find it astonishing that no one in No 10 and Starmer himself didn’t stop Reeves from putting through what will end up being the worst policy decision of recent times .

All that political pain for what was a paltry sum saved .

Starmer is a lawyer, not a politician, and has no discernible political judgement. As for why Number 10 generally did not act, that begs the question whether they knew about it in advance. Rachel Reeves is also a technocrat and, as with George Osborne's omnishambles budget, it is likely the Chancellor accepted the WFA cut from a list of Treasury suggestions without a great deal of thought.

It was a perfectly sensible financial decision presented badly.

There are worse crimes.

It was and sadly once they were on the back foot, it was the same with slowing the rate of growth of benefits, and their backbenchers under pressure from well organised lobbying campaigns they were always going to fold and SKS lost his authority overnight.

WFA was a ridiculous frippery from a bygone age before pensioners did not form a large part of those with the highest disposable income after housing costs in the country. It was absolutely the right thing to do, it is astonishing that this relic survived the Osborne years. We have got to get away from the situation where so much of our limited resources are given away to those not in need by way of universal benefits. Sooner or later that is going to include at least some of the pension.

Not even that, it was exceeded by the double bubble malfunction that the triple lock does when an inflation spike is followed by a pay spike the subsequent year. Something that I'm sure nobody considered at the time, but you can't help seeing once it's there.

The political problem is that there's Noone Quite Like Grandma.

The political problem is that grandma votes consistently and her grandchildren don't. So, inevitably, our political class run scared of grandma.

Grandma votes consistently and her grandchildren don't does not explain recent spending initiatives targeted at the young. Does grandma get leftovers from free breakfast clubs or time off babysitting because we give free childcare to couples earning up to £200,000 a year?

Taking the most recent data point, in a council by-election on Thursday, the Tories were on the receiving end of a drubbing, falling from 1st to 3rd behind Reform and Labour.

The Kemigasm is not being translated into votes.

I have a theory about the Kemigasm. I've been hearing in various places how well Kemi is performing not least on here though I myself haven't seen or felt it. She seems to be sailing along midstream rather like Ed Davey. And that is what the polls show her to be doing.

I used to think KB was a stone cold loser. Indeed, on this very site I likened her, both in personality and appearance, to a 45 gallon drum that had rolled through a branch of SpecSavers.

However, she does seem to able to inculcate fanatical loyalty and enthusiasm, not least on here, despite fucking miserable polls and actual election results. That's a great political gift so maybe she does have a future.

17% in the polls and some tories on here would chop their dicks off if she asked them. That's political heft. They also rerun the Corbynite line of "nobody else would do any better" so things could go the other way...

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Andy_JS said:
Can we please continue to talk about why Paul Quinn hasn't received a longer sentence after allowing Andrew Malkinson to spend 17 years in prison?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbLCXIaZBo
Or should we talk about why Malkinson was not released for more than 12 years after DNA evidence exonerated him? Or why the CCRC turned him down twice. Or even how he came to be wrongly convicted in the first place.


I did some research into this and read the various reports. So if there's any interest, happy to share.

Please do share Cyclefree.

I am just bewildered that the CCRC turned the case down twice after the DNA evidence was available. How could they possibly have thought it was a safe conviction after that?

The judicial system has a deep seated fear of acknowledging the system is capable of error. "We do not err. We cannot err. If we are fallible - the system collapses. Regardless of the cost to poor individuals, we have to hold the line."

As evidenced by Lord Denning. The former Master of the Rolls Denning’s was involved in 1980, with the still-incarcerated Birmingham Six’s civil claim against the police. Dismissing the case, he said:

“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial… If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”

Denning did many good things and wrote many fine judgments. That was most certainly not one of them.

Cases like that are why I have always opposed the death penalty. If the judicial system gets it wrong it is often in the most egregious of cases (of which Letby might be one).

Letbys case stands or falls on the insulin evidence. If that can be explained without the need for exogenous administration then I think she may well be innocent.

doesn't explain why the babies stopped dying in that unit

I believe that the unit was downgraded and stopped treating the seriously unwell, very premature babies. And as this is a betting site there is always the chance that the unit was the outlier unit, the statistical freak among the national units.

I have no idea if she was guilty or not. I've read extensively and sadly the debate is very polarised (what isn't these days?) She did some weird things for sure - the notes, the online searches etc. But the idea of her putting insulin into feed bags that would be used on another shift is stretching and explanation to fit a theory. If it is possible for neo nates to have unusual ratios of insulin c-peptide then I think the case against her is in big trouble as those convictions were the key to all the rest.

My father has done his research on this case given his former job and his view now is that whilst her behaviour screams dodgy he thinks there's reasonable doubts on her guilt and if he were a juror he would have voted to acquit.

This had quite the impact on the wider medical community.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgl5yyg1x6o

A panel of medical experts organised by her legal team think she might not be guilty. I’m not certain they count as being representative of the wider medical community.

The key factor was Dr Shoo Lee, his original study was used by the prosecution.

Lee became involved in the Letby case after being made aware that one of his research papers, a 1989 paper on pulmonary vascular air embolism in newborns, was used by the prosecution’s leading expert witness, retired consultant paediatrician Dewi Evans, to support his theory that Letby had injected air into the bloodstream of babies. Lee was not asked to give evidence at the time of the original case and only afterwards became aware that his paper was used.

https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r250

It’s not usual practice to go get the authors of research papers to come be expert witnesses. There’s nothing unusual about Lee not being approached or informed.

The prosecution case was not reliant on that particular piece of evidence. The evidence of insulin overdoses was more important. As also was the fact Letby had stolen medical records and hidden them under her bed, written guilty notes, conducted unusual web searches, her inappropriate behaviour around grieving parents, and the witness evidence about her behaviour around two babies.

And the deaths stopped when she was removed.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

For non-Latin speakers:

"After this, therefore because of this". It is the faulty assumption that because one event happened after another, the first event must have caused the second.

Surely everyone on here watched the West Wing?

No. Don't even know what it was about.

"The West Wing" was an early 2000s American television drama about an idealised Democratic American President played by Martin Sheen. It was for its first set of seasons written by the dramatist Aaron Sorkin, who built on ideas he explored in his (underrated but undercooked) movie "The American President" a few years earlier. It became a haven for Democratic voters traumatised by Bush II's successes and became a success d'estime. After Sorkin's drug usage became too big to ignore, he was replaced and the series veered, becoming more based around dramatic events than personalities. It ended with a season-long exploration of a Republican candidate (Alan Alda) vs a Democratic candidate (Jimmy Smits) in the race to succeed Sheen in the 2006 Presidential election (in the West Wing universe the elections are out of sync with ours).

It dominated the US political drama space for decades in the same way that "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (the TV series) dominated spy dramas, for good and for bad. The writing were brilliant, the characters wonderful, the situations were arch, stylised and not really believable. It's only really yielded to "House of Cards" (US version) and has been rendered entirely obsolete by the excrescences of the Trump era. It was held close by people who believed that American politics was dominated by intelligent people who wanted the best for their country, and when that went out of fashion it finally slipped into history

"Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" was the title of an episode in which that logical fallacy was discussed,

Thank you, and also to everyone else who replied.

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Andy_JS said:
Can we please continue to talk about why Paul Quinn hasn't received a longer sentence after allowing Andrew Malkinson to spend 17 years in prison?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbLCXIaZBo
Or should we talk about why Malkinson was not released for more than 12 years after DNA evidence exonerated him? Or why the CCRC turned him down twice. Or even how he came to be wrongly convicted in the first place.


I did some research into this and read the various reports. So if there's any interest, happy to share.

Please do share Cyclefree.

I am just bewildered that the CCRC turned the case down twice after the DNA evidence was available. How could they possibly have thought it was a safe conviction after that?

The judicial system has a deep seated fear of acknowledging the system is capable of error. "We do not err. We cannot err. If we are fallible - the system collapses. Regardless of the cost to poor individuals, we have to hold the line."

As evidenced by Lord Denning. The former Master of the Rolls Denning’s was involved in 1980, with the still-incarcerated Birmingham Six’s civil claim against the police. Dismissing the case, he said:

“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial… If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”

Denning did many good things and wrote many fine judgments. That was most certainly not one of them.

Cases like that are why I have always opposed the death penalty. If the judicial system gets it wrong it is often in the most egregious of cases (of which Letby might be one).

Letbys case stands or falls on the insulin evidence. If that can be explained without the need for exogenous administration then I think she may well be innocent.

doesn't explain why the babies stopped dying in that unit

I believe that the unit was downgraded and stopped treating the seriously unwell, very premature babies. And as this is a betting site there is always the chance that the unit was the outlier unit, the statistical freak among the national units.

I have no idea if she was guilty or not. I've read extensively and sadly the debate is very polarised (what isn't these days?) She did some weird things for sure - the notes, the online searches etc. But the idea of her putting insulin into feed bags that would be used on another shift is stretching and explanation to fit a theory. If it is possible for neo nates to have unusual ratios of insulin c-peptide then I think the case against her is in big trouble as those convictions were the key to all the rest.

My father has done his research on this case given his former job and his view now is that whilst her behaviour screams dodgy he thinks there's reasonable doubts on her guilt and if he were a juror he would have voted to acquit.

This had quite the impact on the wider medical community.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgl5yyg1x6o

A panel of medical experts organised by her legal team think she might not be guilty. I’m not certain they count as being representative of the wider medical community.

The key factor was Dr Shoo Lee, his original study was used by the prosecution.

Lee became involved in the Letby case after being made aware that one of his research papers, a 1989 paper on pulmonary vascular air embolism in newborns, was used by the prosecution’s leading expert witness, retired consultant paediatrician Dewi Evans, to support his theory that Letby had injected air into the bloodstream of babies. Lee was not asked to give evidence at the time of the original case and only afterwards became aware that his paper was used.

https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r250

It’s not usual practice to go get the authors of research papers to come be expert witnesses. There’s nothing unusual about Lee not being approached or informed.

The prosecution case was not reliant on that particular piece of evidence. The evidence of insulin overdoses was more important. As also was the fact Letby had stolen medical records and hidden them under her bed, written guilty notes, conducted unusual web searches, her inappropriate behaviour around grieving parents, and the witness evidence about her behaviour around two babies.

And the deaths stopped when she was removed.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

For non-Latin speakers:

"After this, therefore because of this". It is the faulty assumption that because one event happened after another, the first event must have caused the second.

Surely everyone on here watched the West Wing?

No. Don't even know what it was about.

A frothy fantasy partly involving intelligent, funny, principled US politicians. Could never happen of course.

It’s striking that the Americans make The West Wing which is a liberal fantasy of what they think the White House should be where in the U.K. we rip politics apart with Yes Minister/Prime Minister and The Thick of It.
I think there’s something profound there.

And when they did do a sharp comedy about politicans as idiots, it was written by Brit.

I don’t think the writer of “John Adams” was British although I could be wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veep

I think @boulay was joking.

Taking the most recent data point, in a council by-election on Thursday, the Tories were on the receiving end of a drubbing, falling from 1st to 3rd behind Reform and Labour.

The Kemigasm is not being translated into votes.

I have a theory about the Kemigasm. I've been hearing in various places how well Kemi is performing not least on here though I myself haven't seen or felt it. She seems to be sailing along midstream rather like Ed Davey. And that is what the polls show her to be doing.

So where is the Kemigasm coming from?

My guess is they have a new PR on the job and their instruction is to build up Kemi. That's what PR does. Choose a selling point and then go hard on it. It's not something I would notice not being someone who receives Tory mail or appeals.

.......but I heard someone on Any Questions yesterday and they were very obviously bigging up Kemi rather tandentially to the subject. Putting forward the things she had personally been involved in that I knew nothing about. It would explain the disconnect between the polls and the reality.

Looking at Starmers approval ratings they crashed straight after the WFA debacle .

I still find it astonishing that no one in No 10 and Starmer himself didn’t stop Reeves from putting through what will end up being the worst policy decision of recent times .

All that political pain for what was a paltry sum saved .

Starmer is a lawyer, not a politician, and has no discernible political judgement. As for why Number 10 generally did not act, that begs the question whether they knew about it in advance. Rachel Reeves is also a technocrat and, as with George Osborne's omnishambles budget, it is likely the Chancellor accepted the WFA cut from a list of Treasury suggestions without a great deal of thought.

I still think the WFA changes were perfectly fine but I accept they communicated it horrendously and perhaps there is no way to do this policy that doesn’t tank your popularity.

Supposedly Osborne and Cameron were also given this policy as an option and vetoed it. That shows they have a lot more political ability than Starmer and Reeves.