I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
Man Utd might not thank me, but get the contract out put it on the table & let him sign it, let him right whatever numbers he wants, let him sign the contract. Carrick’s at the wheel man! #VILMUN @ChampionsLeague
Not again. In the first half United were awful. Seriously lucky not to be 2 down. After an hour with the subs they looked a bit better but no one should delude themselves that was a good performance. Good result, certainly, good performance definitely not.
I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
Sounds made up, but presumably is not. What I'm trying to figure out is what explanation there would be for deciding upon yellow badges of all possible choices (like a lanyard which says you are exempt, which many exempt people use).
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
No, no these are the real hard men of UK politics. When the going gets tough, they, err, send a letter. Brutal huh?
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
Plus of course even when May faced a no confidence vote of Conservative MPs in December 2018 she still won it by 200 votes to 117.
There is no point calling a no confidence vote unless you are sure you have over 50% of MPs in your party behind it
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
"So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader"
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
Dozen, schmozen. 54 needed before anything happens.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
No, no these are the real hard men of UK politics. When the going gets tough, they, err, send a letter. Brutal huh?
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Just back from 2 days in North Shropshire. A few comments. 1. Having criss-crossed the constituency form Whitchurch to Wem and from Oswestry to Market Drayton I can say that I saw not a single window poster or stakeboard. Even the fields are not voting Tory. 2. I met Helen Morgan the Lib Dem candidate. Like a good politician she approached me first. Apparently she has a history degree from Cambridge, works as an accountant, and is a parish councillor in the constituency. No sign of any of the other candidates. 3. There is an astonishing number of houses which have names rather than numbers ( quite often Welsh). In many streets there are both which makes deliveries very difficult. 4. There seem to be a large number of elderly single person households. Need to check the demographics. 5. My feeling is that turnout will be poor. This means I think a significantly reduced Conservative majority. The Lib Dems need a momentum boost - not sure what it could be. 6. The Lib Dems have the most up market HQ ever. Beats the shop front or the unit on an industrial estate. Check out Soulton Court.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
When the Tories got rid of Thatcher they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it got rid of election winner Blair. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
There must be a chance you actually did say something along the lines of "Getting rid of May and replacing her with Boris would Get Brexit Sorted and probably win the Tories a big majority" to hoots of derision! The stick you took for championing Boris in mid 2019 was incredible, esp as you turned out to be right
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
Pretty convenient that - who came up with that rule out of interest?
There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.
It was above all CORBYN.
I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.
And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.
It was above all CORBYN.
You're projecting, I'm analysing.
You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.
But he wasn't.
You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.
I did read it. You are right they were all major factors but the most important one was Corbyn.
But that said I'm sure someone has the evidence to support either your or my point. I tried a mini-google but gave up.
Brexit, for me, since it was the biggest (almost only) issue in its own right and it also impacted positively on Johnson's image and negatively on Corbyn's. Hence it had a massive direct impact and a significant indirect impact. This is to repeat the main point in the post I wrote so I think that needs to be a wrap.
The issue as to why Corbyn was quite so disastrous though was that he was disliked by all sorts, so there was far less room for Labour to gain or hold people who were bothered about Brexit but might cast a vote differently, whichever way they jumped. A significant number of staunch remainers would never vote for him - either because they were generally Tory and viewed him as PM an even more dangerously stupid idea than Brexit or were ex-Labour/floating voters bothered by antisemitism or the extremism it served as a prime example of. It's remarkable in hidsight given the divides on Brexit that there were no Tory to Labour defections given how the significant anti-Brexit minority were basically told to get out of the Tory Party. Except of course it wasn't because someone like David Gauke was never going to endorse Jeremy Corbyn as PM - even as a gamble to get a desired outcome on Brexit.
Disastrously, though he couldn't embrace Brexit to counterbalance that, as why on Earth would a Labour leave/UKIP voter bothered about things like immigration, sovereignty and national prestige, vote for someone whose entire persona and support base was being vocally in opposition to those notions? Even if they turned round and said 'Brexit is great'. So they ended up where they had to be on damage limitation - in part because they had a leader so unpopular he couldn't take his own stance on Brexit and build a coalition around that.
Good analysis imo. Couple of points I'd not so much add but stress.
That Corbyn was unpalatable to Remainer Tories and Centrists meant they forewent the opportunity to put him in as caretaker PM with a brief to deliver Ref2 and cancel Brexit. PM Corbyn was a bigger bad for them than Hard Brexit was.
Antisemitism was a self-inflicted wound for Labour but Brexit was not. The policy they ended up with for the GE was the worst possible apart from all the alternatives. Soon as Johnson threw the DUP under a bus, accepted the Brexit deal that 'no PM could ever accept', and framed the 'people v parliament' narrative, Labour were sunk. It was only about the margin. Big or very big. Maybe a not Corbyn could have limited it to just big.
The issue was that many people weren't prepared to give Corbyn a hearing on Brexit because it was Corbyn. Of course he did spectacularly well (as @isam continues to remind us) vs previous Labour efforts but for a significant number of people just being Corbyn meant that whatever Brexit arguments Lab might have had weren't heard.
Now you think it was Brexit first then Corbyn but my point is that Corbyn rendered moot Lab's Brexit position by being Corbyn. Slick, affable salesman he is not. Would it have made a difference to have, say a Tony Blair in charge? I believe it may well have.
I will absolutely grant you that a better leader wouldn't have lost to BoJo and Get Brexit Done by such a margin. My point is just about the line we hear a fair amount from people who hate both Johnson and Corbyn that GE19 was all about how bad Corbyn was and nothing about how powerful the Boris/Brexit proposition was. It's a bad take. I doubt anybody on here hates BJ more than me but I have to credit him where credit is due. He set that election up brilliantly, campaigned brilliantly, and he won it. Jez just made it easier than it needed to be. If you want numbers, he put 20 to 30 on the majority.
I don't see where you're getting your evidence. Voters didn't have a clue what Corbyn would do and what they did know they didn't like and neither did anyone know if he was in favour of Leave or Remain. He wasn't just toxic he went way beyond that. He was unvotablefor even against Johnson!
Ok, so before May got the chop, Labour under Corbyn were consistently level with or even ahead of the Cons. Then comes Johnson and his Get Brexit Done + Parliament v People framing, and boom it's the Cons miles ahead, and GE19 confirmed this lead was real. I therefore conclude that the BoJo/Brexit package was a big factor in the GE19 result.
I think that's all correct but there was a point when it hit people that Corbyn couldn't be Prime Minister. The thought suddenly became ridiculous. It happened for me and for possibly the first time I decided not to vote. I didn't think him a racist unlike Johnson of whom I had no doubts but I did think he was a fraud. He never campaigned for Remain and to my knowledge had spent his career trying to wreck his own party. Furthermore he had assembled a shadow cabinet that looked like an audition for the Adams Family and the power of Momentum made him look dangerous. With a gun to my head and I had to choose between him and Johnson I'd have gone for Corbyn but most of my Labour friends would have taken the bullet
I've not gone right through the thread but I thought the 2019 Conservative majority was built on 75% of the identified LEAVE voters at the time (48%) and an additional 9% from among the REMAIN voters (52%) who could not stomach the prospect of Corbyn at No.10 and voted Conservative tactically to keep him out even though that meant endorsing Brexit.
The fear of a Corbyn-led Government trumped the fear of Britain leaving the EU.
Yet it's five and a half years since the Referendum now and nearly two years since the GE - to what extent and in what way should we allow the results of the June 2016 Referendum to be the only barometer by which people vote and the chances of parties are assessed? Is it still a valid measure or are there other measures (education, prosperity, house prices etc which are now or have once again become more meaningful?)
It's still big, I think, Brexit, in that it's delivered a high structural base to the Cons which under FPTP is a godsend. On your analysis, yes, the landslide was built on consolidating the Leave vote plus some Remainers who couldn't stomach Corbyn, but also a 3rd group - Remainers and Brexit agnostics who were sick of the impasse and wanted it over. Hence the power of Get Brexit Done. For many the 'Brexit' there just meant 'it' - being the interminable parliamentary bickering. We loved it on here but lots out there didn't.
Yes, the 'get brexit done' was a brilliant slogan and swayed a few staunch Labour that I know personally. The better news is that they won't be fooled again.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
In terms of voteshare Boris also got 43.6% in 2019 to Major's 41.9% in 1992.
Boris got the highest Tory voteshare since Thatcher's 43.9% in 1979
There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.
It was above all CORBYN.
I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.
And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.
It was above all CORBYN.
You're projecting, I'm analysing.
You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.
But he wasn't.
You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.
I did read it. You are right they were all major factors but the most important one was Corbyn.
But that said I'm sure someone has the evidence to support either your or my point. I tried a mini-google but gave up.
Brexit, for me, since it was the biggest (almost only) issue in its own right and it also impacted positively on Johnson's image and negatively on Corbyn's. Hence it had a massive direct impact and a significant indirect impact. This is to repeat the main point in the post I wrote so I think that needs to be a wrap.
The issue as to why Corbyn was quite so disastrous though was that he was disliked by all sorts, so there was far less room for Labour to gain or hold people who were bothered about Brexit but might cast a vote differently, whichever way they jumped. A significant number of staunch remainers would never vote for him - either because they were generally Tory and viewed him as PM an even more dangerously stupid idea than Brexit or were ex-Labour/floating voters bothered by antisemitism or the extremism it served as a prime example of. It's remarkable in hidsight given the divides on Brexit that there were no Tory to Labour defections given how the significant anti-Brexit minority were basically told to get out of the Tory Party. Except of course it wasn't because someone like David Gauke was never going to endorse Jeremy Corbyn as PM - even as a gamble to get a desired outcome on Brexit.
Disastrously, though he couldn't embrace Brexit to counterbalance that, as why on Earth would a Labour leave/UKIP voter bothered about things like immigration, sovereignty and national prestige, vote for someone whose entire persona and support base was being vocally in opposition to those notions? Even if they turned round and said 'Brexit is great'. So they ended up where they had to be on damage limitation - in part because they had a leader so unpopular he couldn't take his own stance on Brexit and build a coalition around that.
Good analysis imo. Couple of points I'd not so much add but stress.
That Corbyn was unpalatable to Remainer Tories and Centrists meant they forewent the opportunity to put him in as caretaker PM with a brief to deliver Ref2 and cancel Brexit. PM Corbyn was a bigger bad for them than Hard Brexit was.
Antisemitism was a self-inflicted wound for Labour but Brexit was not. The policy they ended up with for the GE was the worst possible apart from all the alternatives. Soon as Johnson threw the DUP under a bus, accepted the Brexit deal that 'no PM could ever accept', and framed the 'people v parliament' narrative, Labour were sunk. It was only about the margin. Big or very big. Maybe a not Corbyn could have limited it to just big.
The issue was that many people weren't prepared to give Corbyn a hearing on Brexit because it was Corbyn. Of course he did spectacularly well (as @isam continues to remind us) vs previous Labour efforts but for a significant number of people just being Corbyn meant that whatever Brexit arguments Lab might have had weren't heard.
Now you think it was Brexit first then Corbyn but my point is that Corbyn rendered moot Lab's Brexit position by being Corbyn. Slick, affable salesman he is not. Would it have made a difference to have, say a Tony Blair in charge? I believe it may well have.
I will absolutely grant you that a better leader wouldn't have lost to BoJo and Get Brexit Done by such a margin. My point is just about the line we hear a fair amount from people who hate both Johnson and Corbyn that GE19 was all about how bad Corbyn was and nothing about how powerful the Boris/Brexit proposition was. It's a bad take. I doubt anybody on here hates BJ more than me but I have to credit him where credit is due. He set that election up brilliantly, campaigned brilliantly, and he won it. Jez just made it easier than it needed to be. If you want numbers, he put 20 to 30 on the majority.
I don't see where you're getting your evidence. Voters didn't have a clue what Corbyn would do and what they did know they didn't like and neither did anyone know if he was in favour of Leave or Remain. He wasn't just toxic he went way beyond that. He was unvotablefor even against Johnson!
Ok, so before May got the chop, Labour under Corbyn were consistently level with or even ahead of the Cons. Then comes Johnson and his Get Brexit Done + Parliament v People framing, and boom it's the Cons miles ahead, and GE19 confirmed this lead was real. I therefore conclude that the BoJo/Brexit package was a big factor in the GE19 result.
It's not credible to suggest otherwise I think, though its extent is certainly arguable.
It's basic push/pull stuff. Corbyn had loads of push factors, and those may well be regarded as having increased for a lot of people since the 2017 vote, but you might win because of that, but not win as big as the Tories did. There had to be something actually pulling people to vote Tory as well, not merely the absence of May.
That said even under May post 2017 the Tories were in front for long stretches from 2018ish. The sizable leads in 2019 remain inexplicable, even with the temporary factor of ChangeUK.
If I had one sentence for why Johnson won so big I'd say it's because he consolidated the Leave vote and added to it voters who couldn't stand Corbyn and those who simply wanted Brexit over. Then, like you say, it's about the relative influence of the various factors. Eg Corbyn. He put how many on the Con majority? For me, maybe 25, but others will argue with that. Is it a good and worthwhile argument to have? Course it is. It's important because it impacts how to call the next election and therefore make good long-range bets on it.
Get Brexit done was a one off slogan, which tempted many Labour who would normally never consider Tories. That majority will not be repeated in 2024, the effect could even he more than 25 seats.
Just back from 2 days in North Shropshire. A few comments. 1. Having criss-crossed the constituency form Whitchurch to Wem and from Oswestry to Market Drayton I can say that I saw not a single window poster or stakeboard. Even the fields are not voting Tory. 2. I met Helen Morgan the Lib Dem candidate. Like a good politician she approached me first. Apparently she has a history degree from Cambridge, works as an accountant, and is a parish councillor in the constituency. No sign of any of the other candidates. 3. There is an astonishing number of houses which have names rather than numbers ( quite often Welsh). In many streets there are both which makes deliveries very difficult. 4. There seem to be a large number of elderly single person households. Need to check the demographics. 5. My feeling is that turnout will be poor. This means I think a significantly reduced Conservative majority. The Lib Dems need a momentum boost - not sure what it could be. 6. The Lib Dems have the most up market HQ ever. Beats the shop front or the unit on an industrial estate. Check out Soulton Court.
Thank-you.
I have to date dismissed any possibility of a Lib Dem win, but if the LDs can scoop up the combined Lab/LD vote - as they managed in C&A - they do have a chance.
I believe the necessary swing from Tory to Lab/LD is actually less than achieved in C&A.
Against that of course is everything we know about the local demographics, and the Tory candidate does not seem to be a numpty like the guy in C&A.
There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.
It was above all CORBYN.
I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.
And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.
It was above all CORBYN.
You're projecting, I'm analysing.
You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.
But he wasn't.
You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.
I did read it. You are right they were all major factors but the most important one was Corbyn.
But that said I'm sure someone has the evidence to support either your or my point. I tried a mini-google but gave up.
Brexit, for me, since it was the biggest (almost only) issue in its own right and it also impacted positively on Johnson's image and negatively on Corbyn's. Hence it had a massive direct impact and a significant indirect impact. This is to repeat the main point in the post I wrote so I think that needs to be a wrap.
The issue as to why Corbyn was quite so disastrous though was that he was disliked by all sorts, so there was far less room for Labour to gain or hold people who were bothered about Brexit but might cast a vote differently, whichever way they jumped. A significant number of staunch remainers would never vote for him - either because they were generally Tory and viewed him as PM an even more dangerously stupid idea than Brexit or were ex-Labour/floating voters bothered by antisemitism or the extremism it served as a prime example of. It's remarkable in hidsight given the divides on Brexit that there were no Tory to Labour defections given how the significant anti-Brexit minority were basically told to get out of the Tory Party. Except of course it wasn't because someone like David Gauke was never going to endorse Jeremy Corbyn as PM - even as a gamble to get a desired outcome on Brexit.
Disastrously, though he couldn't embrace Brexit to counterbalance that, as why on Earth would a Labour leave/UKIP voter bothered about things like immigration, sovereignty and national prestige, vote for someone whose entire persona and support base was being vocally in opposition to those notions? Even if they turned round and said 'Brexit is great'. So they ended up where they had to be on damage limitation - in part because they had a leader so unpopular he couldn't take his own stance on Brexit and build a coalition around that.
Good analysis imo. Couple of points I'd not so much add but stress.
That Corbyn was unpalatable to Remainer Tories and Centrists meant they forewent the opportunity to put him in as caretaker PM with a brief to deliver Ref2 and cancel Brexit. PM Corbyn was a bigger bad for them than Hard Brexit was.
Antisemitism was a self-inflicted wound for Labour but Brexit was not. The policy they ended up with for the GE was the worst possible apart from all the alternatives. Soon as Johnson threw the DUP under a bus, accepted the Brexit deal that 'no PM could ever accept', and framed the 'people v parliament' narrative, Labour were sunk. It was only about the margin. Big or very big. Maybe a not Corbyn could have limited it to just big.
The issue was that many people weren't prepared to give Corbyn a hearing on Brexit because it was Corbyn. Of course he did spectacularly well (as @isam continues to remind us) vs previous Labour efforts but for a significant number of people just being Corbyn meant that whatever Brexit arguments Lab might have had weren't heard.
Now you think it was Brexit first then Corbyn but my point is that Corbyn rendered moot Lab's Brexit position by being Corbyn. Slick, affable salesman he is not. Would it have made a difference to have, say a Tony Blair in charge? I believe it may well have.
I will absolutely grant you that a better leader wouldn't have lost to BoJo and Get Brexit Done by such a margin. My point is just about the line we hear a fair amount from people who hate both Johnson and Corbyn that GE19 was all about how bad Corbyn was and nothing about how powerful the Boris/Brexit proposition was. It's a bad take. I doubt anybody on here hates BJ more than me but I have to credit him where credit is due. He set that election up brilliantly, campaigned brilliantly, and he won it. Jez just made it easier than it needed to be. If you want numbers, he put 20 to 30 on the majority.
I don't see where you're getting your evidence. Voters didn't have a clue what Corbyn would do and what they did know they didn't like and neither did anyone know if he was in favour of Leave or Remain. He wasn't just toxic he went way beyond that. He was unvotablefor even against Johnson!
Ok, so before May got the chop, Labour under Corbyn were consistently level with or even ahead of the Cons. Then comes Johnson and his Get Brexit Done + Parliament v People framing, and boom it's the Cons miles ahead, and GE19 confirmed this lead was real. I therefore conclude that the BoJo/Brexit package was a big factor in the GE19 result.
It's not credible to suggest otherwise I think, though its extent is certainly arguable.
It's basic push/pull stuff. Corbyn had loads of push factors, and those may well be regarded as having increased for a lot of people since the 2017 vote, but you might win because of that, but not win as big as the Tories did. There had to be something actually pulling people to vote Tory as well, not merely the absence of May.
That said even under May post 2017 the Tories were in front for long stretches from 2018ish. The sizable leads in 2019 remain inexplicable, even with the temporary factor of ChangeUK.
If I had one sentence for why Johnson won so big I'd say it's because he consolidated the Leave vote and added to it voters who couldn't stand Corbyn and those who simply wanted Brexit over. Then, like you say, it's about the relative influence of the various factors. Eg Corbyn. He put how many on the Con majority? For me, maybe 25, but others will argue with that. Is it a good and worthwhile argument to have? Course it is. It's important because it impacts how to call the next election and therefore make good long-range bets on it.
Get Brexit done was a one off slogan, which tempted many Labour who would normally never consider Tories. That majority will not be repeated in 2024, the effect could even he more than 25 seats.
I don't think that's true. I think a lot will be tempted to repeat in 2024. However, the breaking of pretty much all the levelling up promises is likely to negate that.
Some of you may recall me saying for years that "Brexit" in of itself will not be enough. The Tories have to ensure that Brexit results in an improved standard of living, even if that improved standard of living is not in reality due to Brexit. If they can do that, they deserve to keep all their red wall seats and more. Can they do it? Dunno.
Ben Houchen was overwhelmingly re-elected on Teesside because he delivered everything he had promised and more. Boris has already decided not to deliver what he had promised.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
In terms of voteshare Boris also got 43.6% in 2019 to Major's 41.9% in 1992.
Boris got the highest Tory voteshare since Thatcher's 43.9% in 1979
Sir John also got the highest absolute number of Tory votes EVER in 1992.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
Of course Mrs May lost a nationwide election dragging the Tories down to an unprecedented 8.8%
Hard to see a trigger like that happening nowadays.
There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.
It was above all CORBYN.
I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.
And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.
It was above all CORBYN.
You're projecting, I'm analysing.
You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.
But he wasn't.
You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.
I did read it. You are right they were all major factors but the most important one was Corbyn.
But that said I'm sure someone has the evidence to support either your or my point. I tried a mini-google but gave up.
Brexit, for me, since it was the biggest (almost only) issue in its own right and it also impacted positively on Johnson's image and negatively on Corbyn's. Hence it had a massive direct impact and a significant indirect impact. This is to repeat the main point in the post I wrote so I think that needs to be a wrap.
The issue as to why Corbyn was quite so disastrous though was that he was disliked by all sorts, so there was far less room for Labour to gain or hold people who were bothered about Brexit but might cast a vote differently, whichever way they jumped. A significant number of staunch remainers would never vote for him - either because they were generally Tory and viewed him as PM an even more dangerously stupid idea than Brexit or were ex-Labour/floating voters bothered by antisemitism or the extremism it served as a prime example of. It's remarkable in hidsight given the divides on Brexit that there were no Tory to Labour defections given how the significant anti-Brexit minority were basically told to get out of the Tory Party. Except of course it wasn't because someone like David Gauke was never going to endorse Jeremy Corbyn as PM - even as a gamble to get a desired outcome on Brexit.
Disastrously, though he couldn't embrace Brexit to counterbalance that, as why on Earth would a Labour leave/UKIP voter bothered about things like immigration, sovereignty and national prestige, vote for someone whose entire persona and support base was being vocally in opposition to those notions? Even if they turned round and said 'Brexit is great'. So they ended up where they had to be on damage limitation - in part because they had a leader so unpopular he couldn't take his own stance on Brexit and build a coalition around that.
Good analysis imo. Couple of points I'd not so much add but stress.
That Corbyn was unpalatable to Remainer Tories and Centrists meant they forewent the opportunity to put him in as caretaker PM with a brief to deliver Ref2 and cancel Brexit. PM Corbyn was a bigger bad for them than Hard Brexit was.
Antisemitism was a self-inflicted wound for Labour but Brexit was not. The policy they ended up with for the GE was the worst possible apart from all the alternatives. Soon as Johnson threw the DUP under a bus, accepted the Brexit deal that 'no PM could ever accept', and framed the 'people v parliament' narrative, Labour were sunk. It was only about the margin. Big or very big. Maybe a not Corbyn could have limited it to just big.
The issue was that many people weren't prepared to give Corbyn a hearing on Brexit because it was Corbyn. Of course he did spectacularly well (as @isam continues to remind us) vs previous Labour efforts but for a significant number of people just being Corbyn meant that whatever Brexit arguments Lab might have had weren't heard.
Now you think it was Brexit first then Corbyn but my point is that Corbyn rendered moot Lab's Brexit position by being Corbyn. Slick, affable salesman he is not. Would it have made a difference to have, say a Tony Blair in charge? I believe it may well have.
I will absolutely grant you that a better leader wouldn't have lost to BoJo and Get Brexit Done by such a margin. My point is just about the line we hear a fair amount from people who hate both Johnson and Corbyn that GE19 was all about how bad Corbyn was and nothing about how powerful the Boris/Brexit proposition was. It's a bad take. I doubt anybody on here hates BJ more than me but I have to credit him where credit is due. He set that election up brilliantly, campaigned brilliantly, and he won it. Jez just made it easier than it needed to be. If you want numbers, he put 20 to 30 on the majority.
I don't see where you're getting your evidence. Voters didn't have a clue what Corbyn would do and what they did know they didn't like and neither did anyone know if he was in favour of Leave or Remain. He wasn't just toxic he went way beyond that. He was unvotablefor even against Johnson!
Ok, so before May got the chop, Labour under Corbyn were consistently level with or even ahead of the Cons. Then comes Johnson and his Get Brexit Done + Parliament v People framing, and boom it's the Cons miles ahead, and GE19 confirmed this lead was real. I therefore conclude that the BoJo/Brexit package was a big factor in the GE19 result.
It's not credible to suggest otherwise I think, though its extent is certainly arguable.
It's basic push/pull stuff. Corbyn had loads of push factors, and those may well be regarded as having increased for a lot of people since the 2017 vote, but you might win because of that, but not win as big as the Tories did. There had to be something actually pulling people to vote Tory as well, not merely the absence of May.
That said even under May post 2017 the Tories were in front for long stretches from 2018ish. The sizable leads in 2019 remain inexplicable, even with the temporary factor of ChangeUK.
If I had one sentence for why Johnson won so big I'd say it's because he consolidated the Leave vote and added to it voters who couldn't stand Corbyn and those who simply wanted Brexit over. Then, like you say, it's about the relative influence of the various factors. Eg Corbyn. He put how many on the Con majority? For me, maybe 25, but others will argue with that. Is it a good and worthwhile argument to have? Course it is. It's important because it impacts how to call the next election and therefore make good long-range bets on it.
Get Brexit done was a one off slogan, which tempted many Labour who would normally never consider Tories. That majority will not be repeated in 2024, the effect could even he more than 25 seats.
I don't think that's true. I think a lot will be tempted to repeat in 2024. However, the breaking of pretty much all the levelling up promises is likely to negate that.
Some of you may recall me saying for years that "Brexit" in of itself will not be enough. The Tories have to ensure that Brexit results in an improved standard of living, even if that improved standard of living is not in reality due to Brexit. If they can do that, they deserve to keep all their red wall seats and more. Can they do it? Dunno.
Ben Houchen was overwhelmingly re-elected on Teesside because he delivered everything he had promised and more. Boris has already decided not to deliver what he had promised.
Better pay isn’t going to be enough - people want to see actual change and that means seeing new roads being built and other improvements. And that simply isn’t going to happen now
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
Of course Mrs May lost a nationwide election dragging the Tories down to an unprecedented 8.8%
Hard to see a trigger like that happening nowadays.
And I believe CON did quite well in another election later that year...
This is why we shouldn't get too excited over opinion polls or by elections especially at this stage of the Parliament.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
I’m surprised there aren’t more polls being done at the mo. Seems to be a good time to get headlines
I don't think yesterday will have done Johnson any harm at all with RedWall voters. He may have enraged me, Tory grandees and the CBI, but Johnny Northern-Voter saw the human side of Alexander Johnson.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Was Blair "forced out" in 2007? He certainly wasn't ousted the way Margaret Thatcher was in November 1990.
The flaw in your theory is we don't know whether the "proven general election winner" would continue to be such. Would Thatcher have defeated Kinnock in 1992 as Major did? I think I know your answer to that.
Let's try a different one - a Cameron vs Blair general election in 2010. Would Cameron have done as well with Blair as PM as he did with Brown? That's one for counterfactual historians and I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
I think you’ll find that he can…..
It's actually quite an important issue, how far voting totals for parties translate into actual views on the constitutional question, but once one has nailed one's much more simplicistic hypothesis to the mast it's a bit late to backtrack and add subtleties without accepting one was wrong to begin with. When I were a lad I learnt population dynamics a bit at a time, starting with the basic exponential curve - but at least I was a student. No serious adult researcher would go for the simplest model and assert it was a reliable reflection of the world, certainly when working to two or three significant figures [edit] as is required by the tight margins of Scottish politics.
Johnson's bumbling speech cut through like no other, with Declan Donnelly (of Ant and Dec fame) mocking the PM by pretending to lose his place while presenting that night’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!
When politicians are openly ridiculed like this on primetime television, it is time to worry.
🔴And plenty of Conservatives are now openly doing just that
⚡️Read more on how the Prime Minister still does have the power to put things right here 👇
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
In terms of voteshare Boris also got 43.6% in 2019 to Major's 41.9% in 1992.
Boris got the highest Tory voteshare since Thatcher's 43.9% in 1979
Sir John also got the highest absolute number of Tory votes EVER in 1992.
I blame all those absentee South African voters in 1992.
( From memory!) The story may well be apocryphal, I haven't Googled it.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
The Unionist and Nationalist parties votes were about the same. I was just pointing out that because a minority of SLab voters are Nats it makes little difference as some SNP voters are Unionists.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
Sounds made up, but presumably is not. What I'm trying to figure out is what explanation there would be for deciding upon yellow badges of all possible choices (like a lanyard which says you are exempt, which many exempt people use).
Regardless of the sinister historical precedent, the whole thing is crass bollocks. To be exempt, one simply has to declare oneself exempt. There is no legal compunction to state a reason (and, in fact, even finding mask wearing distressing is a valid reason in law). Schools have gone mad.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Was Blair "forced out" in 2007? He certainly wasn't ousted the way Margaret Thatcher was in November 1990.
The flaw in your theory is we don't know whether the "proven general election winner" would continue to be such. Would Thatcher have defeated Kinnock in 1992 as Major did? I think I know your answer to that.
Let's try a different one - a Cameron vs Blair general election in 2010. Would Cameron have done as well with Blair as PM as he did with Brown? That's one for counterfactual historians and I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic.
Brownites started resigning as Ministers to force Blair out in 2007. He went a bit earlier than he wanted because of a Brownite coup.
What we do know is that when Thatcher went the Tories were out of power for 13 of the next 20 years. There is also no evidence as yet any alternative Tory leader would poll better v Starmer than Boris is. So the Thatcher and Major comparison does not yet hold.
Blair I would guess would have got more than the 29% Brown got in 2010
Daily Mail: Baroness Ruth Davidson, former Scottish Conservative leader, branded the CBI speech 'disrespectful' swiping that the country 'deserves more than chaotic and unprepared boosterism'.
Tory insiders have pointed the finger squarely at Rishi Sunak's allies for some of the most brutal briefing, including one line attributed by the BBC to a 'senior Downing Street source'. 'There is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM ... it's just not working. Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes,' the source said.
A senior Conservative said tensions had resurfaced and No11 is 'pushing hard' to undermine Mr Johnson. 'It is Rishi's people, 100 per cent,' they told MailOnline. 'They're too far apart intellectually.'
But another Tory aide said… 'He needs good people around him. But he's got away with bluffing it for so long he thinks he can keep doing it.'
Just back from 2 days in North Shropshire. A few comments. 1. Having criss-crossed the constituency form Whitchurch to Wem and from Oswestry to Market Drayton I can say that I saw not a single window poster or stakeboard. Even the fields are not voting Tory. 2. I met Helen Morgan the Lib Dem candidate. Like a good politician she approached me first. Apparently she has a history degree from Cambridge, works as an accountant, and is a parish councillor in the constituency. No sign of any of the other candidates. 3. There is an astonishing number of houses which have names rather than numbers ( quite often Welsh). In many streets there are both which makes deliveries very difficult. 4. There seem to be a large number of elderly single person households. Need to check the demographics. 5. My feeling is that turnout will be poor. This means I think a significantly reduced Conservative majority. The Lib Dems need a momentum boost - not sure what it could be. 6. The Lib Dems have the most up market HQ ever. Beats the shop front or the unit on an industrial estate. Check out Soulton Court.
Thank-you.
I have to date dismissed any possibility of a Lib Dem win, but if the LDs can scoop up the combined Lab/LD vote - as they managed in C&A - they do have a chance.
I believe the necessary swing from Tory to Lab/LD is actually less than achieved in C&A.
Against that of course is everything we know about the local demographics, and the Tory candidate does not seem to be a numpty like the guy in C&A.
2019
Chesham and Amersham Lab/Lib 39.2% Con 55.4% North Shropshire Lab/Lib 32.1% Con 62.7%
Even if the Liberal Democrat rallied every single Labour and Liberal Democrat vote behind her she would still need the Tory vote to be cut in half to win.
I'm guessing the history department at this school is pretty shit.
A boarding school has come under fire for asking pupils to wear a “yellow badge” to show they are exempt from using a face mask.
Farringtons School in Kent, which charges £34,050 per year for boarders, has made it compulsory for children to wear face masks in classrooms and corridors following a rise in cases of Covid-19.
In a letter to parents, David Jackson, the school’s headmaster, said that pupils who are exempt from wearing masks “should wear a yellow badge to indicate this”.
The move has been criticised by family groups, who say it is “deeply inappropriate” given the “historic connotations” with yellow badges.
Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star so they could be easily marked out for segregation and discrimination.
Sounds made up, but presumably is not. What I'm trying to figure out is what explanation there would be for deciding upon yellow badges of all possible choices (like a lanyard which says you are exempt, which many exempt people use).
Regardless of the sinister historical precedent, the whole thing is crass bollocks. To be exempt, one simply has to declare oneself exempt. There is no legal compunction to state a reason (and, in fact, even finding mask wearing distressing is a valid reason in law). Schools have gone mad.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Daily Mail: Baroness Ruth Davidson, former Scottish Conservative leader, branded the CBI speech 'disrespectful' swiping that the country 'deserves more than chaotic and unprepared boosterism'.
Tory insiders have pointed the finger squarely at Rishi Sunak's allies for some of the most brutal briefing, including one line attributed by the BBC to a 'senior Downing Street source'. 'There is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM ... it's just not working. Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes,' the source said.
A senior Conservative said tensions had resurfaced and No11 is 'pushing hard' to undermine Mr Johnson. 'It is Rishi's people, 100 per cent,' they told MailOnline. 'They're too far apart intellectually.'
But another Tory aide said… 'He needs good people around him. But he's got away with bluffing it for so long he thinks he can keep doing it.'
What we get from Johnson is more like Woosterism than boosterism imo.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
I’m surprised there aren’t more polls being done at the mo. Seems to be a good time to get headlines
I don't think yesterday will have done Johnson any harm at all with RedWall voters. He may have enraged me, Tory grandees and the CBI, but Johnny Northern-Voter saw the human side of Alexander Johnson.
You obviously have not watched it. Believe me it is purest cringe and no one is going to think better of Johnson as a result. In fact it is precisely those recent Tory voters in the North of England that are likely to be least impressed.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
The Unionist and Nationalist parties votes were about the same. I was just pointing out that because a minority of SLab voters are Nats it makes little difference as some SNP voters are Unionists.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
But it's seats in Parliament - any Parliament - that count under the Glorious British Constitution. Which you are trying to subvert.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
The Unionist and Nationalist parties votes were about the same. I was just pointing out that because a minority of SLab voters are Nats it makes little difference as some SNP voters are Unionists.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
But it's seats in Parliament - any Parliament - that count under the Glorious British Constitution. Which you are trying to subvert.
It is seats in the Westminster Parliament alone that are relevant to the future of the Union, as has been the case since 1707 and as under the Scotland Act 1998.
This Tory government has a Commons majority of 80 to refuse indyref2 and that is all that matters
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
I can only conclude the remake isn’t scary enough to kill off any 10 yr olds.
I’m surprised there aren’t more polls being done at the mo. Seems to be a good time to get headlines
I don't think yesterday will have done Johnson any harm at all with RedWall voters. He may have enraged me, Tory grandees and the CBI, but Johnny Northern-Voter saw the human side of Alexander Johnson.
You obviously have not watched it. Believe me it is purest cringe and no one is going to think better of Johnson as a result. In fact it is precisely those recent Tory voters in the North of England that are likely to be least impressed.
Yes, Boris normally gets away with that stuff (either rehearsed or not) because it's all a bit slapstick. On that occasion though it was just someone dying at the mike through lack of prep.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's because antivaxxers shared that very diagram and said that those vaccinated in that age range (obviously concentrated more towards the 59 side than the age 10 side, but glossing over that) had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those unvaccinated in that age range.
It is indeed the differing age distributions (the average age of those vaccinated in that range was about 43 and the unvaccinated was about 24, and the distribution shapes are exactly as you'd expect).
But an experienced (antivaxxer) surgeon actually pretended to be surprised at the finding that those averaging 43 years old had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those averaging 24 years old. And hinted strongly at vaccines causing swathes of (unrecorded or suppressed and recategorised by secret conspiracy) deaths.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
Yes
It's definitely on the blink today. Yes to which?
Er, to both...
Yes, you're missing the sarcasm and, yes, the age profile (of those who have watched only one of the two films) will undoubtedly be very different for the two films.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's because antivaxxers shared that very diagram and said that those vaccinated in that age range (obviously concentrated more towards the 59 side than the age 10 side, but glossing over that) had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those unvaccinated in that age range.
It is indeed the differing age distributions (the average age of those vaccinated in that range was about 43 and the unvaccinated was about 24, and the distribution shapes are exactly as you'd expect).
But an experienced (antivaxxer) surgeon actually pretended to be surprised at the finding that those averaging 43 years old had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those averaging 24 years old. And hinted strongly at vaccines causing swathes of (unrecorded or suppressed and recategorised by secret conspiracy) deaths.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's because antivaxxers shared that very diagram and said that those vaccinated in that age range (obviously concentrated more towards the 59 side than the age 10 side, but glossing over that) had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those unvaccinated in that age range.
It is indeed the differing age distributions (the average age of those vaccinated in that range was about 43 and the unvaccinated was about 24, and the distribution shapes are exactly as you'd expect).
But an experienced (antivaxxer) surgeon actually pretended to be surprised at the finding that those averaging 43 years old had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those averaging 24 years old. And hinted strongly at vaccines causing swathes of (unrecorded or suppressed and recategorised by secret conspiracy) deaths.
There's an antivaxxer surgeon?!?
There are cranks and conspiracy theorists in all professions. Rarer in the medical sphere, but still around. And when people specialise, they don't necessarily go into other areas.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
The Unionist and Nationalist parties votes were about the same. I was just pointing out that because a minority of SLab voters are Nats it makes little difference as some SNP voters are Unionists.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
But it's seats in Parliament - any Parliament - that count under the Glorious British Constitution. Which you are trying to subvert.
It is seats in the Westminster Parliament alone that are relevant to the future of the Union, as has been the case since 1707 and as under the Scotland Act 1998.
This Tory government has a Commons majority of 80 to refuse indyref2 and that is all that matters
The fact is that at present indyref2 polling is in favour of the Union and it is really upto Nicola to decide whether she wishes to seek a Sec 30 agreement
Without Nicola's first move the rest is irrelevant and your continued repetitive mantra is just boring
However, if Nichola does seek a Sec 30 then it is for Parliament to decide and at present the main parties are against
What happens in the real world at that moment is pure speculation
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Indeed. Boris is the greatest Tory votewinner and election winner since Thatcher and the first Tory leader to win a general election landslide since Thatcher.
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Fake news, Sir John Major is the greatest Tory vote winner since Thatcher.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
Major did get a small majority of 21 in 1992 compared to Boris' large majority of 80 in 2019 but he also led the Tories to their worst defeat since 1832 in 1997 when Labour won a landslide of 179 and the Tories were reduced to just 165 MPs.
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
Not when it comes to the Scottish Parliament though right?
In terms of who forms the Scottish government yes, in terms of demand for an indyref2 no, it is voteshare that determines that
If you say so. Aye, right. Do you have a memory like a goldfish? We reminded you only today that 40% of Labour voters are pro indy. .
There are also at least 20% of SNP voters who are pro Union and that is roughly equivalent to 40% of Labour voters being pro indy given the SNP gets double SLab's vote
But you didn't say that did you? You used totals of raw votes. You can't suddenly back down like that.
The Unionist and Nationalist parties votes were about the same. I was just pointing out that because a minority of SLab voters are Nats it makes little difference as some SNP voters are Unionists.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
But it's seats in Parliament - any Parliament - that count under the Glorious British Constitution. Which you are trying to subvert.
It is seats in the Westminster Parliament alone that are relevant to the future of the Union, as has been the case since 1707 and as under the Scotland Act 1998.
This Tory government has a Commons majority of 80 to refuse indyref2 and that is all that matters
The fact is that at present indyref2 polling is in favour of the Union and it is really upto Nicola to decide whether she wishes to seek a Sec 30 agreement
Without Nicola's first move the rest is irrelevant and your continued repetitive mantra is just boring
However, if Nichola does seek a Sec 30 then it is for Parliament to decide and at present the main parties are against
What happens in the real world at that moment is pure speculation
Big G!! You've ensured we're going to get a rendition of "there will be absolutely no indyref2 under Boris under any circumstances", "no surrender" etc
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois · 45m Covid was the worst pandemic in the last 100 years (with HIV/AIDS). Harsh emergency measures were justifiable, in particular in the pre-vaccine era. Fairly soon, it will be time to recover from the trauma. Try to recover lost friendships and celebrate life, and dance and sing ...
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's like The Curse of Dads Army - less than 20 years after the show finished almost all the cast were dead
I’m surprised there aren’t more polls being done at the mo. Seems to be a good time to get headlines
I don't think yesterday will have done Johnson any harm at all with RedWall voters. He may have enraged me, Tory grandees and the CBI, but Johnny Northern-Voter saw the human side of Alexander Johnson.
You obviously have not watched it. Believe me it is purest cringe and no one is going to think better of Johnson as a result. In fact it is precisely those recent Tory voters in the North of England that are likely to be least impressed.
Yes, Boris normally gets away with that stuff (either rehearsed or not) because it's all a bit slapstick. On that occasion though it was just someone dying at the mike through lack of prep.
I am not convinced he is not suffering some ill health, maybe covid related, but I doubt he can continue with his present shambles
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's because antivaxxers shared that very diagram and said that those vaccinated in that age range (obviously concentrated more towards the 59 side than the age 10 side, but glossing over that) had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those unvaccinated in that age range.
It is indeed the differing age distributions (the average age of those vaccinated in that range was about 43 and the unvaccinated was about 24, and the distribution shapes are exactly as you'd expect).
But an experienced (antivaxxer) surgeon actually pretended to be surprised at the finding that those averaging 43 years old had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those averaging 24 years old. And hinted strongly at vaccines causing swathes of (unrecorded or suppressed and recategorised by secret conspiracy) deaths.
The combination of more effective vaccination plus a more infectious but less dangerous dominant variant is very promising.
Looking at the demographic heatmaps for each UK nation I am struck once again by how many cases could have been avoided if we'd got on and vaccinated children during the ssummer holidays.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Then imagine you said they were thinking of getting rid of the leader who got them the 80 seat majority because he was behind in the polls for a fortnight mid term, having led for almost two years, on between 35-40%!
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's like The Curse of Dads Army - less than 20 years after the show finished almost all the cast were dead
Budgie owners much more likely to die of a heart attack than non budgie owners.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
I haven’t seen it but was warned it was rubbish?!
Which one? The 2021 film, or the female version?
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
I haven’t seen it but was warned it was rubbish?!
Which one? The 2021 film, or the female version?
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
I have no knowledge of the 2021 version, though.
Saw the female one a few days ago. It was ok, some good moments, weak ending, but it was fine. Haven't seen the new one yet but the trailers are weird - I couldn't tell if it was a comedy, and it was giving me such 80s vibes I thought it was going to be a trailer for Stranger Things at first.
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Am I missing the sarcasm? It's surely because the age profile is not the same.
It's like The Curse of Dads Army - less than 20 years after the show finished almost all the cast were dead
Less than 7 years actually, Arnold Ridley (yes really) being the last of the older cast to die in 1984.
Then there was quite a gap to the loss of David Croft, Jimmy Perry, Clive Dunn and Bill Pertwee. I believe Colin Bean, Eric Longworth and Pamela Cundell all died about the same time as well.
I personally find the letters talk very tiresome. The one person who knows for sure isn't suppose to talk about it, and the May experience shows lots of people are either making up sending one in, or others are just repeating rumours about lots of people sending in letters.
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
I suspect it's like IDS all over again. Opponents of Boris Johnson have the numbers already, they are just waiting for the right moment, theoretically Boris Johnson winning a VONC makes him secure for a year, although Mrs May didn't after her VONC.
May only went after she trailed in the polls by Spring 2019 after delaying Brexit and as she was leaking votes like a sieve to the Brexit Party. The polls are still level.
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
May trailed in the polls.. and was on about 18%! She also lost the Euro Elections to the Brexit Party, and was in 3rd place in some polls
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Then imagine you said they were thinking of getting rid of the leader who got them the 80 seat majority because he was behind in the polls for a fortnight mid term, having led for almost two years, on between 35-40%!
Sure, but the reason that Thatcher and Blair were pushed out by their parties is that they had become electoral liabilities rather than assets. They left undefeated because they were seen to be well past their sell by by dates. Both parties picked up in the polls under new leaders.
I don't reckon that Johnson has that amount of longevity. How is his charisma looking at the CBI?
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row. ' Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
Was Blair "forced out" in 2007? He certainly wasn't ousted the way Margaret Thatcher was in November 1990.
The flaw in your theory is we don't know whether the "proven general election winner" would continue to be such. Would Thatcher have defeated Kinnock in 1992 as Major did? I think I know your answer to that.
Let's try a different one - a Cameron vs Blair general election in 2010. Would Cameron have done as well with Blair as PM as he did with Brown? That's one for counterfactual historians and I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic.
Brownites started resigning as Ministers to force Blair out in 2007. He went a bit earlier than he wanted because of a Brownite coup.
What we do know is that when Thatcher went the Tories were out of power for 13 of the next 20 years. There is also no evidence as yet any alternative Tory leader would poll better v Starmer than Boris is. So the Thatcher and Major comparison does not yet hold.
Blair I would guess would have got more than the 29% Brown got in 2010
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
I haven’t seen it but was warned it was rubbish?!
Which one? The 2021 film, or the female version?
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
I have no knowledge of the 2021 version, though.
The female one was garbage - I have been told by many. But, I haven’t seen it (nor the new one for that matter).
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
I haven’t seen it but was warned it was rubbish?!
Which one? The 2021 film, or the female version?
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
I have no knowledge of the 2021 version, though.
The female one was garbage - I have been told by many. But, I haven’t seen it (nor the new one for that matter).
The 2016 female one is on Netflix UK. It was smart, funny and good fun. I recommend it. You should watch it and make your own mind up.
I've heard a lot of people say it was garbage, but I've never heard any explanation as to why. I think a lot of people resented it before they even saw it, for the same reason people resented the idea of a female Doctor Who - they thought it was tokenistic meddling with their childhood memories. But the 2016 ghostbusters was really well done (whereas, unfortunately, Jodie Whitaker has struggled with some awful writing for her stint).
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
Would have been more interesting if it had looked at the difference with the superior female Ghostbusters remake.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
I haven’t seen it but was warned it was rubbish?!
Which one? The 2021 film, or the female version?
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
I have no knowledge of the 2021 version, though.
The female one was garbage - I have been told by many. But, I haven’t seen it (nor the new one for that matter).
The female one could have been great. It had a decent script, good effects and some clever twists. The trouble is that sadly, although all the female leads were competent, they just didn't have that spark of comedic genius that Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd brought to the originals. I watched the 2016 version, was mildly amused but that was it.
I am really looking forward to Afterlife. I understand and like the premise and think that anytime a critic has to start a review by stating that the original just wasn't that good and has dated terribly (I am looking at you Mark Kermode) as a reason to attack the new film then they have already lost all credibility. Saying you didn't get the original films and that no one else should have either is pretty damn arrogant. And disappointing as I usually have a lot of time for Kermode's reviews.
Just back from 2 days in North Shropshire. A few comments. 1. Having criss-crossed the constituency form Whitchurch to Wem and from Oswestry to Market Drayton I can say that I saw not a single window poster or stakeboard. Even the fields are not voting Tory. 2. I met Helen Morgan the Lib Dem candidate. Like a good politician she approached me first. Apparently she has a history degree from Cambridge, works as an accountant, and is a parish councillor in the constituency. No sign of any of the other candidates. 3. There is an astonishing number of houses which have names rather than numbers ( quite often Welsh). In many streets there are both which makes deliveries very difficult. 4. There seem to be a large number of elderly single person households. Need to check the demographics. 5. My feeling is that turnout will be poor. This means I think a significantly reduced Conservative majority. The Lib Dems need a momentum boost - not sure what it could be. 6. The Lib Dems have the most up market HQ ever. Beats the shop front or the unit on an industrial estate. Check out Soulton Court.
Thank-you.
I have to date dismissed any possibility of a Lib Dem win, but if the LDs can scoop up the combined Lab/LD vote - as they managed in C&A - they do have a chance.
I believe the necessary swing from Tory to Lab/LD is actually less than achieved in C&A.
Against that of course is everything we know about the local demographics, and the Tory candidate does not seem to be a numpty like the guy in C&A.
2019
Chesham and Amersham Lab/Lib 39.2% Con 55.4% North Shropshire Lab/Lib 32.1% Con 62.7%
Even if the Liberal Democrat rallied every single Labour and Liberal Democrat vote behind her she would still need the Tory vote to be cut in half to win.
Yes, but I said achieved.
The challenge is bigger in NS, but if the Lib Dems achieved the same swing away from the Tories as happened in C&A, they win.
Anyway, it’s not going to happen. But I think a 5% chance is now a 10 or 15% chance.
Comments
Did that really need explained?
So most of the time all it really is is a public warning to the Leader, and I feel like they could just as effectively signal discontent by just putting an anonymous post it on a Commons toilet door.
There is no point calling a no confidence vote unless you are sure you have over 50% of MPs in your party behind it
Sounds a bit like mid term polling
Even IDS got 45% of Tory MPs to still back him in the 2003 no confidence vote and Boris will surely get more than that with one landslide Tory victory already behind him
Imagine then you'd said the Tories would win an 80 seat majority later in the year
Looks like United are going for Valverde.
Corner taken quickly....
After the Tories got rid of Thatcher in 1990 they lost 3 out of 4 of the following general elections and the party ended up split and divided. Getting rid of Boris now could be just as disastrous for the party.
Look at Labour too when it forced out election winner Blair in 2007. It then lost 4 general elections in a row.
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Getting rid of proven general election winners is never a good idea
1. Having criss-crossed the constituency form Whitchurch to Wem and from Oswestry to Market Drayton I can say that I saw not a single window poster or stakeboard. Even the fields are not voting Tory.
2. I met Helen Morgan the Lib Dem candidate. Like a good politician she approached me first. Apparently she has a history degree from Cambridge, works as an accountant, and is a parish councillor in the constituency. No sign of any of the other candidates.
3. There is an astonishing number of houses which have names rather than numbers ( quite often Welsh). In many streets there are both which makes deliveries very difficult.
4. There seem to be a large number of elderly single person households. Need to check the demographics.
5. My feeling is that turnout will be poor. This means I think a significantly reduced Conservative majority. The Lib Dems need a momentum boost - not sure what it could be.
6. The Lib Dems have the most up market HQ ever. Beats the shop front or the unit on an industrial estate. Check out Soulton Court.
Starmer has proven he’s not Corbyn & levelling up has turned out to be bullshit.
In a forced by-election, most would likely hold their seats on current polls.
Best to do it fairly soon before it becomes obvious they’re trying to save their own skin.
Con votes
2019 GE: 13,966,454
1992 GE: 14,093,007
As you say it is seats that matter not voteshare.
1979: 13,697,923
1983: 13,012,316
1987: 13,760,583
Boris got the highest Tory voteshare since Thatcher's 43.9% in 1979
I have to date dismissed any possibility of a Lib Dem win, but if the LDs can scoop up the combined Lab/LD vote - as they managed in C&A - they do have a chance.
I believe the necessary swing from Tory to Lab/LD is actually less than achieved in C&A.
Against that of course is everything we know about the local demographics, and the Tory candidate does not seem to be a numpty like the guy in C&A.
Some of you may recall me saying for years that "Brexit" in of itself will not be enough. The Tories have to ensure that Brexit results in an improved standard of living, even if that improved standard of living is not in reality due to Brexit. If they can do that, they deserve to keep all their red wall seats and more. Can they do it? Dunno.
Ben Houchen was overwhelmingly re-elected on Teesside because he delivered everything he had promised and more. Boris has already decided not to deliver what he had promised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge
Hard to see a trigger like that happening nowadays.
This is why we shouldn't get too excited over opinion polls or by elections especially at this stage of the Parliament.
The flaw in your theory is we don't know whether the "proven general election winner" would continue to be such. Would Thatcher have defeated Kinnock in 1992 as Major did? I think I know your answer to that.
Let's try a different one - a Cameron vs Blair general election in 2010. Would Cameron have done as well with Blair as PM as he did with Brown? That's one for counterfactual historians and I wouldn't want to be too dogmatic.
When politicians are openly ridiculed like this on primetime television, it is time to worry.
🔴And plenty of Conservatives are now openly doing just that
⚡️Read more on how the Prime Minister still does have the power to put things right here 👇
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/23/going-wrong-downing-street-boris-inner-circle/
( From memory!) The story may well be apocryphal, I haven't Googled it.
Regardless there will not be another indyref2 allowed by this Tory government, the fact there is no large Nationalist majority just makes the refusal easier
What we do know is that when Thatcher went the Tories were out of power for 13 of the next 20 years. There is also no evidence as yet any alternative Tory leader would poll better v Starmer than Boris is. So the Thatcher and Major comparison does not yet hold.
Blair I would guess would have got more than the 29% Brown got in 2010
Tory insiders have pointed the finger squarely at Rishi Sunak's allies for some of the most brutal briefing, including one line attributed by the BBC to a 'senior Downing Street source'. 'There is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM ... it's just not working. Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes,' the source said.
A senior Conservative said tensions had resurfaced and No11 is 'pushing hard' to undermine Mr Johnson. 'It is Rishi's people, 100 per cent,' they told MailOnline. 'They're too far apart intellectually.'
But another Tory aide said… 'He needs good people around him. But he's got away with bluffing it for so long he thinks he can keep doing it.'
Chesham and Amersham Lab/Lib 39.2% Con 55.4%
North Shropshire Lab/Lib 32.1% Con 62.7%
Even if the Liberal Democrat rallied every single Labour and Liberal Democrat vote behind her she would still need the Tory vote to be cut in half to win.
Prof Jeffrey S Morris
Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?
Recent data show death rate of 10-59yr olds who have watched the 1984 Ghostbuster Movie is 2x higher than those who have watched the 2021 Ghostbuster movie
I don't know how to explain this other than movie-caused mortality
This Tory government has a Commons majority of 80 to refuse indyref2 and that is all that matters
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=ltla&areaName=Torridge
The combination of more effective vaccination plus a more infectious but less dangerous dominant variant is very promising.
Seems obvious that more younger people in the age range 10-59 went to see the new 2021 Ghostbusters film, and that's would explain a difference in death rate. Looking at the female ghostbusters movie might be more interesting.
It is indeed the differing age distributions (the average age of those vaccinated in that range was about 43 and the unvaccinated was about 24, and the distribution shapes are exactly as you'd expect).
But an experienced (antivaxxer) surgeon actually pretended to be surprised at the finding that those averaging 43 years old had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those averaging 24 years old. And hinted strongly at vaccines causing swathes of (unrecorded or suppressed and recategorised by secret conspiracy) deaths.
Yes, you're missing the sarcasm and, yes, the age profile (of those who have watched only one of the two films) will undoubtedly be very different for the two films.
Without Nicola's first move the rest is irrelevant and your continued repetitive mantra is just boring
However, if Nichola does seek a Sec 30 then it is for Parliament to decide and at present the main parties are against
What happens in the real world at that moment is pure speculation
@BallouxFrancois
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45m
Covid was the worst pandemic in the last 100 years (with HIV/AIDS). Harsh emergency measures were justifiable, in particular in the pre-vaccine era. Fairly soon, it will be time to recover from the trauma. Try to recover lost friendships and celebrate life, and dance and sing ...
What a terrible wasted opportunity that was.
I loved the female version, but it was panned by many purely because it was a female version, and so it got caught up in the whole gamergate, or similar, nonsense.
I have no knowledge of the 2021 version, though.
NEW THREAD
Then there was quite a gap to the loss of David Croft, Jimmy Perry, Clive Dunn and Bill Pertwee. I believe Colin Bean, Eric Longworth and Pamela Cundell all died about the same time as well.
Which leaves Frank Williams and Ian Lavender.
I don't reckon that Johnson has that amount of longevity. How is his charisma looking at the CBI?
I've heard a lot of people say it was garbage, but I've never heard any explanation as to why. I think a lot of people resented it before they even saw it, for the same reason people resented the idea of a female Doctor Who - they thought it was tokenistic meddling with their childhood memories. But the 2016 ghostbusters was really well done (whereas, unfortunately, Jodie Whitaker has struggled with some awful writing for her stint).
I am really looking forward to Afterlife. I understand and like the premise and think that anytime a critic has to start a review by stating that the original just wasn't that good and has dated terribly (I am looking at you Mark Kermode) as a reason to attack the new film then they have already lost all credibility. Saying you didn't get the original films and that no one else should have either is pretty damn arrogant. And disappointing as I usually have a lot of time for Kermode's reviews.
The challenge is bigger in NS, but if the Lib Dems achieved the same swing away from the Tories as happened in C&A, they win.
Anyway, it’s not going to happen.
But I think a 5% chance is now a 10 or 15% chance.