Best Of

This is a stunning poll! And a Yougov poll to boot!


🟡 SNP – 29% (-1)
➡️ REF – 22% (+15)
🔴 LAB – 19% (-16)
🟠 LD – 11% (+1)
🔵 CON – 10% (-3)
🟢 GRN – 7% (+3)

Via
@YouGov
/
@ScotVoting
, 13-19 Jun (+/- vs GE24)

https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/1948706156353819074

Almost perfect fragmentation of Unionist vote.

Enough to ensure a comfortable Unionist majority at Holyrood next year with PR though and block indyref2. Keeping Swinney neutered

England must surely get 500 here. Seven wickets left to get 139 runs, on an OK pitch

You're not making too many friends here Leondarmus...though it's quite the jinx gift you have.

BETTING THOUGHT

Is there any sport where the odds can vary so much, so quickly, as Test cricket?

Obviously it's unique in going on for five days, but still. Odds can swing wildly from one over to the next, and then back again within thirty minutes

Golf is similar. Very volatile. Makes for great in-running betting opportunities (and risks).

I think Hunt would make a fine Leader of the Opposition in normal times - but these are not normal times. The Tories are on the verge of dropping to fourth.

I really don't like Jenrick, and he should be ruled out due to the stench of corruption emanating from his dealings in government, but it feels like he's the pugilistic political street fighter that the Tories need right now. That's in part what they thought they were getting with Badenoch - someone spiky and energetic who would take the fight to the other parties - but she's been a bit like a rabbit frozen in the headlights.

Once the Tories have survived the challenge from Reform and the Lib Dems, and retained their status as the official opposition, then they can move on to a more broadly reassuring figure like Hunt (supposing an individual with real leadership ability hasn't emerged in the interim).

What is right now depends, quantum like, on the future. As a competitor in Reform's space, Jenrick is qualified to be the leader who loses such centre voters the Tories still have, and succeeds in splitting the Jenrick/Farage vote so that like Aesop's scorpions they kill each other and, at about 23% each, they come joint second well behind Labour, who, with 27/28% of the vote form the next government with LD/SNP support.

But if Jenrick means a Tory Reform electoral pact, then it is formidable, though unwelcome to me. Such a pact will win fairly easily.

In the unlikely event that the Tories wanted to rediscover role, purpose, principle, policy and a bit of hard truth telling, then Hunt looks like the only candidate for now, though not a stellar one.

Given Britain's use of the FPTP system the first task for a Tory leader is to ensure that they remain the leading party to the right of centre. This means that they absolutely must eclipse Reform and Farage. Where they fall relative to Labour is a secondary concern (though, of course, they should not admit this).

This is a historical account. A radical Tory leader might start to accept that outside the extremes the terms 'left' and 'right' have no special use because we are all slightly differing shades of social democrat. This IMO includes Reform, though for proof we shall have to await events.

Finding a place for Conservatism which ignores platitudinous fact free distinctions of left and right, and starts to think what might be a model for society once the 1945 - the present day social democrat consensus has run its course would be useful.

(The only remotely serious non social-democrats in visible politics are Corbyn style genuinely socialist and properly libertarian movements).

Jez takes the hard unionist, flog the bankers and the Jews vote from Labour. Farage takes the shut the door / flog the criminals vote from the Tories.

You’re basically left with three wishy washy status quo parties of around 10-15% each. The Centrist Dad party. Logically they should merge and consolidate their agenda for an ever growing client welfare state, paid for by easy borders and at the cost of managed gradual decline.

Or perhaps Starmer will gamble and kill off FPTP before the next election, with the aim of them all entering a grand coalition to keep out Nasty Nigel.

good point, but I would in fact contest the 'wishy washy' claim about Tory. Lab and LD even though I have no fondness for any of them at the moment.

The Lab/Con and slightly LD performance since WWII has its points, as we can see by the effects of it going awry. The social democrat state of high spend, (therefore high tax), regulated capitalism, welfare safety net, pensions, free education to 18, social services, social housing, NHS, NATO is a very good thing in a multitude of ways. To create and sustain it (and fund it) for 80 years is not a wishy washy achievement but a sustained effort.

At some point people will start to notice the obvious. Farage has not the slightest intention of dismantling any of it. Pay careful attention to what he says, and even more to what he doesn't say.

It's blatantly obvious, of course, that both Your-Corbyn and Reform would almost certainly be more fiscally incontinent than the most feckless of their predecessors.

I think, as a possible recruit for the new party (and I'm a former MP over 13 years and chair of my constituency Labour party), that it's too soon to say whether it will break through. There is a large audience for a progressive party with a positive message with a realistic flavour, and I don't think that left/right designations entirely reflect the reality. A positive leftish party that reaches for the centre ground and avoids getting bogged down in internal disputes could do extremely well; Corbyn's involvement would be important but not sufficient.

I'm not volunteering for the first wave - over 50 years in Labour counts for a good deal and we'll need to see the early direction of the new party. But it deserves serious consideration on its merits, and electoral projections ("What if the Labour vote broke exactly evenly?" etc.) aren't too relevant at this stage, as a great many votes are highly fluid.

...

I think, as a possible recruit for the new party (and I'm a former MP over 13 years and chair of my constituency Labour party), that it's too soon to say whether it will break through. There is a large audience for a progressive party with a positive message with a realistic flavour, and I don't think that left/right designations entirely reflect the reality. A positive leftish party that reaches for the centre ground and avoids getting bogged down in internal disputes could do extremely well; Corbyn's involvement would be important but not sufficient.

I'm not volunteering for the first wave - over 50 years in Labour counts for a good deal and we'll need to see the early direction of the new party. But it deserves serious consideration on its merits, and electoral projections ("What if the Labour vote broke exactly evenly?" etc.) aren't too relevant at this stage, as a great many votes are highly fluid.

You are deluded. Corbyn's new vehicle simply furnishes Farage or the Tories with a win.

Are you putting your trust in a man who lost two general elections and got the Labour Party censured by the ECHR as racist?

Putting a far right Government into Downing Street by default on the back of the comfortable Corbyn's ideology buys not one nurse's salary or even a free school meal.

Dream on.

Look at the chart, Corbyn’s new party would not even be in the top three in any age group over 26.

It will have an impact in inner cities and university towns but marginal seats not so much and even less with tactical voting