Best Of

On topic - is there not a meme on this board that the most accurate pollster is that which has Labour doing worst?

FPT:

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

I can't speak for others but I think you do your opponents a disservice by referring to wounded pride.

Amongst those I spend time with (mostly teachers, and most were on the Remain side) Brexit doesn't really get talked about any more.

But I do think you are putting blinkers on if you only talk about pomposity and arrogance and discount the much more rational view that we have harmed ourselves economically and in relation to our security by divorcing from Europe just at the moment when other reliable global partners have imploded.

Yes, but that golden rule was broken in 2010, 2017, and 2019.

I'm in Santa Monica now on business. I just tried a robotaxi for the first time and was extremely impressed after the initial 20 seconds of weirdness looking at the empty driver's seat from the passenger's side:

- extremely smooth acceleration and driving
- excellent lane control
- dealt with LA's lunatic drivers fine
- no worry if the driver if drunk, high or tired
- no need to make awkward conversation
- no worries about tipping
- half the price of an Uber (with an initial 30% discount)

Overall an excellent experience and I'm looking forward to them starting in London in the spring if the current government doesn't screw it up somehow.

The only type of taxi I use in London is the traditional black cab with someone who spent years learning The Knowledge.

I don't because so many of them appear to have an attitude problem and don't want to take you where you want to go.

So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...

https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/07/10/im-a-leftist-who-didnt-vote-labour-why-am-i-happy-with-the-election-results/

This closing paragraph was spot on:

"Starmer is not personally popular, his policies are not popular, but left wing policies are. Voters for the Conservatives or Reform UK are never going to be persuaded to vote Labour – so if they are the only voters Labour panders to they will alienate more of their left wing and parties like the Greens will grow."

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

Spare us the insulting language, Casino.

It's time you recognised that Brexiteers and their project are deeply unpopular. You shat the bed for all of us. Time to be a little less dismissive of those who want to change the sheets.

I don't read any insulting language in Casino's post - am I missing something?

I read his post simply as a rather cynical one that Starmer may well benefit from a tack towards the EU, despite being rather disliked, but that he might be so disliked by that point that people won't be willing to hold their noses.

I for one would put up with a pretty crap next few years policy-wise if a closer economic and security relationship with the EU was on the ballot next election.

Yes, some people have never made their peace with the result, and the push for Rejoin—in whatever packaging—still owes as much to wounded pride as to policy. For a certain set, the Leave vote wasn’t just wrong; it was an affront to the natural order in which they are always ‘right.’ Losing to people they openly despise is something they still haven’t processed. The irony is that the pomposity and arrogance that turns so many off remains entirely invisible to the because, in their minds, ‘the facts’ excuse everything - in fact, they provide an excuse for it. That in turn drives a vociferous reaction.

But the politics of 2025 aren’t the politics of 2015. That world isn’t coming back. A pro-EU tilt might help Starmer consolidate his core vote, but it risks bleeding plenty of Reform-facing marginals.

He’d shore up his presence in Parliament, but it’s not a route to another majority.

So I haven't posted here in a long time because life... got extremely busy. BUT, I was looking at polling that was putting the Greens as potential Official Opposition and I remembered that on election day - I literally said that as a leftist who didn't vote Labour that I was very happy with the result and saw a bright future for the Greens. Now, even I didn't quite imagine a future THIS bright for the Greens (somewhat spoiled by the majorities predicted for Reform), but still, I thought I'd tag back in the relevant article I wrote way back when to see what people think now...

https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/07/10/im-a-leftist-who-didnt-vote-labour-why-am-i-happy-with-the-election-results/

@148grss Good to see you back - more thoughtful voices from the left make this board much more valuable in my view.

I didn't have time to comment on your article at the time, though I agreed with much of it and still do.

My main sticking point with the Greens (having previously been a member) is their economic illiteracy. Much as I would like our country to shift back towards more social democratic policy and to unwind neoliberalism, too rarely do I hear voices on the left describing how to do this without getting caught in a debt/bailout trap that would strengthen the neoliberal ideologues by making us even more beholden to a broken financial market.

The New Economics Foundation are a rare sliver of light here - I would like to understand more about their views on how to modify Reeves' fiscal rules.

Let's be honest - there's a lot of economic illiteracy to go round and it exists to some degree in all parties but perhaps nowhere more strongly than among the electorate who seem to support raising taxes as long as they don't have to pay them and higher spending as long as they are the beneficiaries.

It's also not surprising those who pander to this line (in all parties) are getting support and those who dare to offer a contrary view are getting a rough ride.

.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

Polanski made a big mistake with that comment as it not only highlighted migrants for jobs that Brits don't want to do but also denigrated an entire profession to the business of 'wiping bums'.

I know far more about social care than I would like due to family situation and this kind of labelling is appalling frankly.

But we all make mistakes and it was live TV and he is a newbie. The best bet for him is to explain himself more and apologise.

Or, knowing how he operates, do a tic tock of him being a carer for a day on the front line etc.

Polanski made a major error there. Migrants come here to do the jobs we don’t want to do.

Reminiscent of Kelly Osborne in the US on The Voice. But at least she was challenged for her supremacy.

I don't think so. Polanski isn't going for the Reform vote.

Being pro-immigration doesn't have a plurality on PB but has significant support and puts clear green water between the Greens and the overcrowded anti-immigrant vote of Mahmood/Jenrick/Farage.

The unrestricted immigration and extreme nimbyism puts Polanski in competition with the LibDems though.

I suppose Polanski isn't even pretending he wants economic growth though.

If you are genuinely pro growth you will argue for immigration. People who don't like immigration will accept the trade off of less growth, which is essentially Starmer's position. Coincidentally, and I think it is coincidental, Polanski's suggestion of immigration for menial jobs was the unspoken policy of previous governments because it's one of the few levers they can pull to improve the economy.

Which is why per-capita GDP would be a more useful headline measure, and therefore target.

Per capita GDP also increases with immigration, albeit not by much, because immigrants are doing the menial jobs and allowing people already here to go up the food chain. Immigration also improves productivity which eventually translates into higher GDP both per capita and total. Total GDP matters because that's how we afford public services etc

Even more simple - only 34 million out of 69 million people in the UK are in work. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age, so they will almost certainly make a significant contribution to GDP per capita. However, immigration tends not to improve labour productivity, which is output per hour worked, and tends to to be suppressed when business/government can depend on cheap labour rather than investment (including training/education). It improves output only.*

GDP only matters to the fiscal position if you are taxing that output. Indeed, the complicated reason that Labour ended up with more cash than expected is because the bits of the economy we tax are expected to grow faster than expected - overall GDP was revised downward over the medium-term.

*there are edge cases where a minimum-wage carer might allow a higher productivity worker to go back into work rather than care for a relative.

Excellent points. It's a pretty stark choice. If you want more growth, better lifestyles, better healthcare etc, managed immigration is the practical way to achieve it. If you don't like immigration because of societal cohesion and so on, you are are in practice committing to relative decline.

The alternative to make a pretty significant investment in the people who already live here. More spending on education and early years, government capital spending in areas with low productivity (or tax rates that make business investment in those areas more attractive), signal to business that the era of cheap labour is over (minimum wage is one, assuming low immigration allows you sustain full employment), measures to increase the fertility rate to 2.1 for a self-sustaining population.

You'll note that this is a lot of spending/tax cuts not for pensioners in the SE of England. So immigration it is.

With reference to your self-sustaining figure of 2.1, the current England and Wales fertility rate is at a record low of 1.41, and an even lower 1.25 in Scotland. By contrast in 2010 it was 1.9 and 1.7 in 2017.

That's what you get when too many families are fearful of financial insecurity, not least when you specifically force into poverty low income benefit-dependent families who have the temerity to have more than 2 children, even when most of those families are in work.

I'd love to agree - but my understanding is that the collapse in the fertility rate is almost entirely to do with more women having other stuff to do other than have kids (as a result of better employment opportunities), and teen pregnancy falling significantly. If women do decide to have kids, the window for having more than two is very small.

That's why you get counter-intuitive results like housing not being a big issue - if you can afford a big flat/house, it's likely you earn a good salary, and therefore the opportunity cost of having kids (travel etc) is much higher. This is a theme not just in the UK, but across the world.

I suggest that you check the facts.

After reaching a post war low in 1977 (1.7), the E&W fertility rate generally rose in the period to 2012 (1.9) although there are some variations in that period. The sharpest fluctuation in that period being a rise from 2001 (1.6) to 2008 (1.9) which coincides quite closely with the introduction of better support for low income families through the Working Families Tax Credit in 1999.

The precipitate drop in the fertility rate came in the period 2012 (1.9) to 2024 (1.4), which coincides with Osborne's austerity squeeze and from 2017 the introduction of the two child benefit cap. And happened in an era generally when the financial interests of pensioners have been prioritised over those of low income families.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/27/england-and-wales-fertility-rate-falls-for-third-consecutive-year

Current fertility rate in Sweden (2024) is around 1.43, and it is a fairly socially liberal country. Not sure who their equivalent of Geo Osborne figure is, in any case this is an issue which is very widespread in a lot of western countries which are not hard-right economically

Highest fertility rates in the world are in Africa, as they are very religious still relative to the West even if poorer

They are dropping in Africa, albeit slower and starting from a higher figure than Europe. Think it has more to do with health care than religion. The late Hans Rosling was an expert on this

https://youtu.be/1vr6Q77lUHE?si=zzYu_NtlYamaqenh

Average fertility rate in Africa is 4.0, nearly 3 times the rate here.

6/10 of the most religious nations in the world are in Africa, 7/10 of the least religious nations are in Europe. China is the least religious nation of all and their fertility rate is only 1

https://ceoworld.biz/2024/04/08/worlds-most-and-least-religious-countries-2024/

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/chinas-fertility-rate-has-fallen-to-one-continuing-a-long-decline-that-began-before-and-continued-after-the-one-child-policy

Yes but China had pretty much a 1 child policy for decades

I honestly think high fertility rate is more about health care (and availability of money) than religion. In the Victorian days, big families were very common as fewer kids would survive. We don't have the same issues now, health care and immunisation have improved survival rates drastically

Watch the YouTube link HYUFD, dont think Mr Rosling mentions religion at all

Well of course he doesn't as he was a physician not a priest but that doesn't mean it wasn't a factor.

If divorce was criminalised, full time work was banned for women of child bearing age and abortion was made illegal again and contraception was banned our fertility rate would rocket within a decade without any change in healthcare.

However of course none of that would happen as it would be unacceptable to most in modern liberal, secular societies

So you're calling for a return to good old Conservatism, then.

The Tories used to just make divorce so expensive that nobody could afford it, and banned contraception and abortion because the C of E (well, the Tories at Church) didn't like it, and so the women had to stay at home and look after the n babies.

That attitude lingered on well into living memory. Still does, so far as I can see [edit] in some quarters.

Not really, divorce was legalised here a century before Roman Catholic Ireland for example and abortion was legalised in the UK nearly half a century before the Irish legalised it too. The Vatican has also been far more anti contraception than the C of E has been.

Conservative Muslims in the UK would also be more sympathetic to restricting divorce and female full time careers than most liberal Anglicans would be

Calling divorce 'legalised' when you needed huge funds to implement it is a bit, erm, pleading the technicalities.

To illustrate the point, the Scots always had divorce on a much moee reasonable basis, marriage being a civil contract and no business of the churches though many thought it nice to be married by the minister (usually in the bride's mother's parlour or the minister's study). .

Or indeed the blacksmith's forge at Gretna Green...

That was the C18 equivalent of deep fried Mars Bars - a tourist trap ...

But yes. The English elite - aristo and legal - got so panicked about their daughters heading off to Gretna, Lamberton, etc. that at one time the judges were beginning to actually disregard Scots law marriages as legally invalid in England. Which would have collapsed the Treaty of Union.

Though wiser counsels prevailed - and in the longer term Westminster increasingly anglicised the Scots legislation on marriage.