Best Of

I see that the far-left takeover of the (no longer) Green Party means that they are now infested with antisemites.

Since the pitiful 'Greens are anti NATO' tactic has proved entirely fruitless, obviously the media is now going full on Maoist bicycle on the road to Auschwitz. Possibly won't work as well as it did with Jezza because as far as I know the Greens don't have an active section of the party plotting to bring down Zack.

The sense of entitlement from Labour is extreme.

The exodus to the Greens is not being driven by anti-semitism, it is being driven by the Reform-adjacent policies of the Labour Party.

As a committed pro-semite (I'm technically Jewish and I was brought up on accounts of the horrors of 30s Germany and the necessity of Israel), I've really had enough of Netanyahu and current Israeli policy, and that doesn't make me an anti-semite. Obviously burning Jewish ambulances is both wrong and stupid, but I don't think that being critical of Israeli policy qualifies at all.

Typical succinct comment from @NickPalmer that many should take on board

Needs a fellow Jew to take him out.

Improve the chance of global peace no end

That seems harsh, poor Nick.

Anyone on the left will be feeling like a total mug if they vote Conservative to keep Reform out and then see their Tory MP filing into the same lobby as PM Farage for the next five years.

Vote Blue, Get Turquoise.

This may well prove a major Tory problem, and there is only one route out of it that I can see.

Labour hold 400 seats, so are the most obvious tactical 'Not Reform' choice. In up to 100 seats where LDs are Labour's proxy, LD is the obvious tactical choice. The Tories are not the first tactical choice beyond their 120 seats, and in those they will only be so if they are committed to opposing Reform AND voters believe them.

Their one and only route out is to be so brilliant for the next two years, and have some luck, that the polling shifts to the Tories being nicely ahead of Reform. Then and only then, the question reverses. You don't ask the Tories if they will back Reform; you ask Reform if they will back the Tories. Tory problem solved.

You then vote Tory because you want a Centre Right government. This outcome is unlikely.

OK...

So this is mostly true.

But if the next election has five parties within 11 points of each other (25 to 14), then there are going to be some seats won on very low vote shares. It's not impossible that -in Scotland, for example- a seat could be won on as little as 18 or 19% of the vote.

We also don't really know how efficiently distributed the various vote shares are. Because the Greens are coming from (practically) nowhere, UNS is adding 15 percentage points to them everywhere. But that might not be accurate at all. Their vote might be extremely diffuse, or extremely concentrated, or somewhere in between.

Talk here of Reform's demise is wishcasting:

1. Last year, Reform, Conservatives, and Labour were close to level-pegging. Now, Reform are 7-8% clear of them. These are FPTP elections, not PR. What matters, is beating your main rival, not what your vote share is overall.

2. Most seats being contested were last fought in 2022. The Conservatives were 29% clear of Reform, then, and Labour 34% clear. Now, they're running well behind them.

3. Local by elections point to a big win for Reform. March's contests saw:

Reform 6,145 votes (29.3%) 5 seats (+4)

Conservatives 4,233 (20.3%) 4 seats (+1)

Labour 2,744, (13.1%) 1 seat, (-2)

Lib Dems, 3,710 (17.7%) 2 seats (-2)

Green Party 3,159 (15.1%) 3 seats (+2)

Independents lost 3 seats.

One should assume that even if Steven Fisher is wrong, the number of gains for Reform will be clear of 1,200, and bet accordingly.

In the last 10 polls/fortnight before the 2025 local Elections Reform were, on average, just over 5 % points ahead of the Tories and on an increasing support trend.
In the past 10 polls Reform are on average 7% points ahead of the Tories and are on a decreasing support trend
They are better off against Labour than 2025 (8% ahead versus 3% ahead over same 10 polls)

But as 2025 showed there is not a direct correlation between polling and LE vote, Reform outpolled anything they had ever achieved in an opinion poll. Will they do the same with support declining? Will the Tory core stay home having seem what happened in 2025? What effect a relative weak area like London?

Theyll make 4 figure gains probably, but it wont look anywhere near as uniquely impresive as 2025

I see that the far-left takeover of the (no longer) Green Party means that they are now infested with antisemites.

Since the pitiful 'Greens are anti NATO' tactic has proved entirely fruitless, obviously the media is now going full on Maoist bicycle on the road to Auschwitz. Possibly won't work as well as it did with Jezza because as far as I know the Greens don't have an active section of the party plotting to bring down Zack.

The sense of entitlement from Labour is extreme.

The exodus to the Greens is not being driven by anti-semitism, it is being driven by the Reform-adjacent policies of the Labour Party.

Is Starmer proposing withdrawal from the ECHR? Deportation of those with settled residence status? Banning the Burka? Banning Muslim prayers in public? Ending the 2 child benefit cap only for those in work? Abolishing inheritance tax? Bringing back more grammar schools via free schools? Increasing oil production? Scrapping EDI schemes? Scrapping net zero? Scrapping completely the family farm and family business tax not just raising the threshold for it? Not that I have noticed yet Farage has proposed all of those policies

And that is why you are a de facto Faragist hiding behind a pro Cleverly agenda

What utter rubbish, Reform lead the polls, if I was really a Faragist I would already have defected to Reform! Cleverly also offers a more moderate One Nation style agenda than Kemi's more Farage adjacent policies anyway

Cleverly is a donkey with no charisma

As I am not a Tory I would be delighted if Kemi was replaced, especially by Cleverly, as it will reduce the number of seats they will win.

That's interesting. Why do you think she's a more attractive leader than Cleverly? Also as a non Tory the only
possible Tory leader I could think of voting for is Cleverly and that's because I saw him on Newsnight a while ago and he was genuinely funny. Something Kemi is not!

That’s also not true, the books themselves aren’t sitting inside ChatGPT. It’s been given a set of training data that contains these books (I assume) and it has been trained on the basis of them.

The information in those books in inside the LLM. All of it. And can be retrieved, as has been demonstrated multiple times.

An amusing riff - write a prompt to get one LLM to tease out the large chunks of a given work from another LLM and reassemble them.

I don’t believe you are correct as I’ve said.

It has “learned” from a set of training data containing the books. And it has derived information from said data. But that’s not the same as just having the books.

It will still hallucinate and make up things that aren’t there. You cannot trust it to just blurt out a novel without very careful checking. Because it is probabilistic (something I wish the very worst rampers would understand), it CANNOT accurately represent a novel accurately and consistently.

I don't know the answer to this question, but...is it? I mean if two different people asked the same question simultaneously from two nearby terminals, would they get a different answer back or the same?

They will get slightly different answers, because LLMs insert randomness via "temperature".