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What will Rishi’s PM chances look like after today’s budget? – politicalbetting.com
What will Rishi’s PM chances look like after today’s budget? – politicalbetting.com
As regular PBers will know I have a significant stake in Sunak’s future following a £20 bet I placed with Ladbrokes in November 2019 when Rishi was just a junior minister. The quoted odds of him being next PM were 200/1 increased by the firm’s “odds boost” to 250/1. I know that some other PBers are also on at those odds following the post by Phillip Thompson.
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Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
Most of the goodies have been in the papers for weeks.
The only thing I can think of that would wrongfoot the media is announcing HS2 is going ahead in full and reading the correct cost (£63 billion at 2010 prices, or around £82 billion now) into the record. But that would in itself leave them feeling they had been led up the garden path and very angry.
Otherwise, it's going to be about major tax rises and spending cuts, and the squealing from affected interests will dominate the news cycle for the next fortnight.
"90 seconds of rage on the Capitol steps"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/16/us/capitol-riot.html
Hint: Google the title above.
Personally, I don't have a big problem with pre-announcements of budget measures. These are complicated issues and producing the package as a single rabbit out of the hat is as good a way to hide stuff as any. I don't share the Speaker's concern about this.
Especially as it's been done for years by so many Chancellors and always ended in humiliation. Why can't they ever learn?
My guess is the good stuff dragged out gets days of positive news and sets a positive environment for the speech.
Whereas by putting all the bad news in one day with a good rabbit too to get the headlines, then you hope to bury the bad news. In the event one bit of bad news catches the media zeitgeist and gets rowed back (see pasties) then the rest of it still gets through pretty much unnoticed.
Has this worked? No. Note last night's Broadcasting Boris Carrie News lead story that Aaaah! Sunak said he was giving people a payrise but Aaaaaah! we won;t say what payrise to who until next year so Aaaaaaah! Rishi is shit - a classic in Number 10 trying to torpedo Number 11. A one-dimensional scuttle your own fleet move that will surely make Mr Speaker even more pissed off.
Anything popular in the budget will either try and be claimed by Boris or will be sunk by Carrie. Even if that which is popular boosts the government because this isn't about the party or the country this is all about Boris, and by Boris we mean Carrie.
Great fun isn't it!
Authorities do not have the power to force Members of Parliament to wear masks but will now require them for all other staff
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/26/face-masks-become-mandatory-commons-everyone-except-mps/
It will be interesting to see how many masks are worn this afternoon, and by whom.
Einstein's famous definition of insanity springs to mind.
In engineering, people use Excel for everything, even for actual documents that should be done in Word.
In law, people use Word for everything, even for data handling that should be done in Excel.
But it would make him look silly so I don't think he will.
Europe: Yes. The issue had bedevilled the nation and the Party for decades. He ended that division, for which we should be very grateful.
Austerity: Ha! What austerity? Brown absolutely wrecked the public finances, Osborne fixing them without any real austerity was really impressive.
UC: As much as I rail against this (and I do) and the originally proposed taper would have been much better (and still too high) its far better than Brown's tax credits where people used to say "I'm not allowed to work more than 16 hours" as a response to it.
Lets not also forget the defeat of electoral reform.
(I don't know enough about the NHS reforms to have an opinion either way on that one)
What should concern everyone is that by 2030 everyone might be saying the same thing about Boris Johnson and the Covid Years!
The point about the rest of the bad stuff getting through unnoticed is that we didn't notice it happened. 😉
But then that would be playing Russian Roulette with being banned....
There is actually very little that can be announced as new in the budget - all the plausible significant tax rises have already been pre-announced either in September or in the last budget.
Saying "what Austerity" just demonstrates your utter disconnection from the real world. Austerity was destroying the police - tens of thousands of officers cut. Education reduced to the 3 rs because the budget for everything else was cut. The wholesale slaughter of local government funding. And yes, NHS reforms so big you could see them from space as they ensured that record ever spending at the top line meant crippling cuts to front line provision.
They didn't call the Chancellor "Osbrown" for nothing. For all that you berate Brown and praise Osborne, they were two cheeks of the same arse. "I'm abolishing Labour's wasteful PFI" said Osborne as he then tendered record amounts of PFI being just 1 example of Osbrownism.
And I suspect that in 90% of both examples above neither Excel or Word would be the best tool if you had a bigger tool kit. But this comes from someone who has made his money for 30 odd years converting Excel / Word documents into proper systems.
He exorcised the issue that has bedevilled the country and the Party for generations. Real generations, not Scottish ones.
EDIT: Its funny how your post is getting plenty of "likes" from people who probably don't want and don't vote for a series of Conservative governments that are Cameron's legacy.
Winning an outright majority was a stunning victory as nobody expected it least of all Cameron. Sadly that was the absolute zenith of his ministry - the pure Tory government that followed was dire, was getting eaten by that fool Farage and Cameron massively misjudged his own talent and forced through a referendum against his own senior team's advice.
In the final full fiscal year before the recession began the country was running a very small deficit, which had been reduced every single year since 2010. As opposed to going from a budget surplus to a massive and unnecessary structural budget deficit pre-recession.
Anyone who says "Osbrown" is going for cheap shots, not serious.
A party that loves the ideas of coalitions was oddly uncomfortable being in one.
But either way, Cameron failed. It was not his objective to lose the referendum, see his policy collapse and hand over to May. If you watch the Cameron documentary you see his hubris played an almighty part in his downfall. As I say, he’s a tragic figure.
For all the we enjoyed Cleggmania, he was a shit politician.
The issue had riven the nation and the Party for generations. Brown and Blair had ran scared of the issue promising a referendum on the EU Constitution then passing Lisbon without one. The Lib Dems ran scared of the issue promising an in/out referendum (2010) and a referendum on the EU Constitution (2005) but rejected their own policy of a referendum when it was put before them by Cameron.
Between Blair, Brown, Clegg and Cameron the latter was the only leader brave enough and honest enough to put the choice to the people despite all four of them promising to do so. He then accepted the result with grace. As a result the issue that had plagued us for generations has now been resolved and the schism has been closed.
Knowing when you've lost and accepting it magnanimously is an important part of democracy too. See Trump for when that breaks down.
Changes would mostly have been smaller, but it would have been interesting to see if the more ardent pro-EU types (both here and overseas) might have pushed for us to go 'all in'. I suspect some, at least, would've used even a narrow win as a pretext/green light for trying to throw away more rebate and go for the single currency.
Instead of the division being on the right of British politics, that division has now been closed and the division has been moved to a much more palatable position. Well done Cameron.
You are meant to pretend that PMs are too be judged on what they do for their country, not their party, unless you want people confusing you with hyufd
So, in Scotland, the SNP had achieved an absolute majority in Holyrood on a manifesto seeking a referendum. Do you think, in a democracy, that Cameron could really say no? He did the right thing and won.
The position was the same for the EU. This was not some wild fancy, it was a view held by the majority of the British people who had been lied to and misled about various treaties and their effects since at least 1992. Refusing such a referendum again would have been seriously undemocratic and undermined our social society. In this case he lost but the referendum was not a mistake: it was an inevitable consequence of living a democracy.
Has Hoyle cancelled Rishi yet?
As I said I don't agree with all of the results Philip points out but that wasn't what I was complementing him on.
I am finding both sides of the argument persuasive. Only history will tell.
Generally I think the coalition was one of our best governments.
The referendum, the aftermath, the form of Brexit - all have been done solely on the equation that what is good for the party is good for the country. Which incidentally is the same mindset as the Chinese Communist Party...
Until the opposition is willing to be positive about the future, they're not going to start winning.
At the time it was reported as making an impossible requirement to kill the possibility of a referendum. Again, IIRC.
Given that Hoyle is trying to hold the upper hand against the government I can't see this - the Budget Speech is one of the big set-piece parliamentary events. How he skewers government business after the speech is more likely the tactic he will use.
If politics is mainly about campaigning, then "winning each day on the grid" is part of the game. So you dribble/preview/leak various bits of good news in advance because that wins you lots of days.
If politics is mainly about government, none of this matters, because most voters aren't watching. All you have to do is ensure that Mr, Mrs, Miss, Mx (etc) Voter have more money in their bank account at the end of each month. Achieve that, they'll probably vote for you. Fail, they probably won't.
And that leads to the 100 billion pound question. Which of those theories matters more? Lots of political operatives flatter themselves that it's the first, but I suspect that the second is dominant. Hence my inability to see the 202{3/4} election as a shoe-in for the government.
The lie and fallacy were initially deployed by Cameron in the AV campaign.
An outright win like that would have torpedoed Farage & Co.
I was very content with the coalition government and give Cameron credit for putting the EU question to public
To all those who attack Cameron for offering a vote on our membership of the EU I would simply say why on earth were you all so complacent and lost a very winnable proposition
Maybe look at your own role and failure
And he still lost because a majority were not persuaded of the benefits (of which there were several) and did not believe the downsides (of which there were also several, albeit much exaggerated). The argument boils down to the proposition that the majority view of the British people should have been ignored by those who knew better than them. Again. It's wrong.
A PM has two jobs: Prime Minister of the country, and Party Leader for his own Party.
HYUFD goes too far in putting one before everything else under all circumstances, but its a juggling act it isn't either/or. To neglect either position is to ask for failure.
I also don't think for a moment that could be said for Wilson, Blair or Brown and certainly none of them could be called stupid. I think they all came over as very bright, although I think Brown in particular was very ill suited for the job.
You seem to lack any objectivity when it comes to Labour. You never come on here ad objectively dismantle them. It just seems to be a hatred and you seem to think we are all in cahoots on a plot with Labour to rubbish the Tories (even though a significant number of us don't even support Labour).
Referendums were never part of the set up, and a parliamentary vote that makes them part of the set up doesn't legitimise them any more than a parliamentary vote to hand all legislative powers back to the monarch would be legitimate. Even you can't be arsed to pretend that they have any legitimacy, because I don't detect any principle based argument for them from you. Why haven't you clamoured for referendums on lockdown, or mask wearing, or today's budget, or anything at all, ever?
There are far too many who were on the losing side in denial about the fact they lost a winnable argument and cannot accept the result
Having a single vote without any worked up "leave" proposition was a clear mistake on such a key constitutional issue. He should either have got the leave side to come up with the specifics of what leave would mean (as you can bet the UK government will insist, whenever the Scots get their next referendum), or set down a two-stage process with a vote 'in principle' followed by the parliamentary decisions on leaving followed by a ratification vote on the detail.
Leading the remain campaign himself was a mistake; in particular it made it difficult for Labour to throw itself more fully behind the campaign, and inevitably turned some voters to see it as a proxy for voting on the government.
And that's before we consider his role in the 'renegotiation' - which was a clear failure of presentation, which is supposed to be his professional competence.
AV referendum?
Indyref?
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldselect/ldconst/99/99.pdf
2009 Government Briefing Note
So if they'd never been used before 2016 then how do you explain 1975 and 2011?
Not to forget:
1973 Northern Ireland border poll on leaving the UK and joining the Republic
1979 Scottish devolution referendum
1979 Welsh devolution referendum
1997 Scottish devolution referendum
1997 Welsh devolution referendum
1998 Greater London Authority referendum
1998 Northern Ireland Belfast Agreement referendum
2004 North East England devolution referendum
2011 Welsh devolution referendum
2014 Scottish independence referendum
And far many more local referendums than its possible to list.
Maybe before the 1970s they were never part of the set up, but by 2016 they were.
The referendum was the direct result of our indirect democracy failing to represent a significant chunk of public opinion for 30 years or so. I remember John Major's argument that we shouldn't have a referendum on Maastricht because that's not the way we do things. It was disingenuous then and it's disingenuous now.
The main argument that I can see against a referendum is that indirect democracy allows us the ability to pretend all our disagreements are just the result of 'stupid politicos' - direct democracy shines a spotlight on our disagreements that we would rather not have.
https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/vote-in-general-elections/referendums-held-in-the-uk/