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Flag of United Kingdom Birleşik Krallık Seçim Anketi:
Red square %38 İşçi Partisi Orange square %37 Muhafazakar Parti Purple square %10 Liberal Demokrat Parti White large square %5 İskoç Ulusal Partisi Green square %5 Yeşiller Partisi
I'd never realised you were a Turkish(?) bot, BJO Code malfunction?
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English-resident [edit for clarity] student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
That voting has already been happening, whether to keep out the SNP or Tories I am not sure (but you are obviously a better mindreader than I am). Point is the number of students is now limited whereas there is a big wodge of inhabitants of a non-LD voting seat being added.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
I do agree with you, about the torys, even if I have lost patants and left the party.
On the lib Dems in particular, Gay marage? it was done by the coalition, but was paused most I understand by the Lib Dems.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
Students can be different - personal experience suggests some have had less time to become familiar with distinctively local politics and its differences from rUK. But it's interesting to see what Pro Rata and you say.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
If you don't understand where the loss of trust of the Lib Dems comes from then you'll struggle to deal with it.
The Lib Dems made a big deal of having their candidates sign a pledge to vote against an increase in tuition fees. A voter could be forgiven for believing this meant it was the most important policy in the Lib Dem manifesto.
Yet, when it came to negotiating the coalition, they ended up prioritising other policies (pupil premium, increasing personal allowance, AV referendum). In isolation this may have been understandable, but they hadn't signed pledges on those other policies.
To compound matters, having negotiated a cop-out that allowed them to abstain on tuition fees, they got themselves into an enormous mess because they'd taken on the Cabinet post responsible for the policy as one of their cabinet ministers, and so eventually many of them voted for it.
That doesn't really scream, "the nasty Tories made us do it," which might have been a defensible position.
It's rightly seen as an epoch-defining breach of trust.
I never have much trust in the Tories anyway, so I can't usefully comment on why potential Tory voters are more forgiving of their myriad transgressions.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
I think the search is still out for the beginning...
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
When I lived in St Andrews English people were probably over represented among Labour voters - they were certainly over represented in the CLP. NE Fife is an interesting seat because it used to be dependably Tory, then loyal Lib Dem, and is now SNP. If the seat is getting some of the former Glenrothes seat I would guess it may be more firmly in the SNP camp, otherwise I would think it is one likely to flip back to the Lib Dems should the nationalist tide ever recede. I'm not sure the preponderance of posh English students (or Yahs as they were known in my day) is a significant electoral factor. I would imagine they are mostly too busy acting like prats to vote.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
I do agree with you, about the torys, even if I have lost patants and left the party.
On the lib Dems in particular, Gay marage? it was done by the coalition, but was paused most I understand by the Lib Dems.
Indeed at the 3rd reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 127 Conservative MPs voted against and 118 for with 51 DNVs and 7 abstentions.
Labour MPs voted 114 for and 14 against with 46 DNVs.
LD MPs voted 43 for, 4 against and 9 DNV.
So it was the LD element of the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-15 which was pivotal to getting gay marriage passed, a plurality of Conservative MPs voted against it.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
Are you saying that there isn't much difference between English and Scottish voters?
Almost like they would be able to form a mutually beneficial political union...
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
When I lived in St Andrews English people were probably over represented among Labour voters - they were certainly over represented in the CLP. NE Fife is an interesting seat because it used to be dependably Tory, then loyal Lib Dem, and is now SNP. If the seat is getting some of the former Glenrothes seat I would guess it may be more firmly in the SNP camp, otherwise I would think it is one likely to flip back to the Lib Dems should the nationalist tide ever recede. I'm not sure the preponderance of posh English students (or Yahs as they were known in my day) is a significant electoral factor. I would imagine they are mostly too busy acting like prats to vote.
NE Fife is LD at both Holyrood and Westminster, or am I missing something? But both were SNP in recent years.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
I'm talking about the disproportionate focus on a single negative event, not a scorecard of achievements. But I get the point, people look at the package.
As a minority in coalition the party - largely through the initiative of Ed Davey - brought forward most of the the policies that accelerated Britain's decarbonisation since 2010. The current government is currently trading off Lib Dem policies from 10 years ago. They also launched the green investment bank, which was then later scrapped.
The Lib Dems introduced the pupil premium, the hike in the tax exempt threshold, and brought forward the bill for same sex marriage.
All things the Tories now claim credit for. Yet are able to scapegoat the Lib Dems for a tuition fee policy that, ultimately, was George Osborne's.
Now you can argue over the relative merits or otherwise of these policies, but likewise I can happily argue over the merits of Brexit deal or Covid policy. But the fact is the LD party is being punished a decade later for one single policy, which was a Tory policy!
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
NE Fife has been LD since the LD's began.
Memory and Wiki says not (Westminster one)
Election Member[1] Party 1983 Barry Henderson Conservative 1987 Menzies Campbell Liberal 1992 Liberal Democrats 2015 Stephen Gethins SNP 2019 Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrats
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Put me down as a newly-voting SNP voter in Banff and Buchan. Actually, put 4 new votes down as Mrs RP and my brother / sis-in-law are doing the same.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
I do agree with you, about the torys, even if I have lost patants and left the party.
On the lib Dems in particular, Gay marage? it was done by the coalition, but was paused most I understand by the Lib Dems.
Indeed at the 3rd reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 127 Conservative MPs voted against and 118 for with 51 DNVs and 7 abstentions.
Labour MPs voted 114 for and 14 against with 46 DNVs.
LD MPs voted 43 for, 4 against and 9 DNV.
So it was the LD element of the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-15 which was pivotal to getting gay marriage passed, a plurality of Conservative MPs voted against it.
@bigjohnowls Would you possibly have guessed you had Covid if you hadn't tested ?
One thing about the testing regime is it picks up cases that would never otherwise have been found. For instance in a normal winter is it possible flu circulates far more widely than previously thought but the number getting sick from it is simply a fraction ?
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
NE Fife has been LD since the LD's began.
Memory and Wiki says not (Westminster one)
Election Member[1] Party 1983 Barry Henderson Conservative 1987 Menzies Campbell Liberal 1992 Liberal Democrats 2015 Stephen Gethins SNP 2019 Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrats
Big week on week increase in reported cases, and the hospital admissions numbers seem to have bottomed out with early signs of an uptick.
Let's hope it is a blip.
I'm convinced the combined effects of the cold weather a week ago, more broadly the end of the unusually dry and mild weather of November, and the start of Christmas party season must have given R a bit of a boost. Most of it is still Delta for now.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
NE Fife has been LD since the LD's began.
Memory and Wiki says not (Westminster one)
Election Member[1] Party 1983 Barry Henderson Conservative 1987 Menzies Campbell Liberal 1992 Liberal Democrats 2015 Stephen Gethins SNP 2019 Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrats
they slipped up once!
More than once: look at Holyrood (not sure if always same boundaries, but never mind)
1999 Iain Smith Liberal Democrats 2011 Roderick Campbell SNP 2016 Willie Rennie Liberal Democrats
It is odd that PBers seem to think that NEF has always been eternal LD terrain, whereas it's a little more nuanced than that. Maybe Messrs Campbell's and Rennie's prominence gave that impression.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Although it has to be said that St Andrews is neither more nor less Lib Demmy than most of the other 80% of Fife NE, and twas ever thus.
Indeed. I’ve seen very little evidence that English immigrants vote differently from the indigenous population. The very little polling evidence I’ve ever seen (and anecdotal and personal evidence) suggests that English people in Scotland vote for the various political parties in roughly the same pattern as Scots do. Obvious exception being IndyRef1, but even there there were plenty of English-identifying voters who cast Yes votes.
When I lived in St Andrews English people were probably over represented among Labour voters - they were certainly over represented in the CLP. NE Fife is an interesting seat because it used to be dependably Tory, then loyal Lib Dem, and is now SNP. If the seat is getting some of the former Glenrothes seat I would guess it may be more firmly in the SNP camp, otherwise I would think it is one likely to flip back to the Lib Dems should the nationalist tide ever recede. I'm not sure the preponderance of posh English students (or Yahs as they were known in my day) is a significant electoral factor. I would imagine they are mostly too busy acting like prats to vote.
NE Fife is LD at both Holyrood and Westminster, or am I missing something? But both were SNP in recent years.
Sorry, I forgot the LDs won it back in 2019. It's been a while since I lived there! If the seat has gained a bit of the Glenrothes seat the SNP may get it back, mind you.
< Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the positives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
That's the political process - the Party of Government stands on its record and both it and its supporters will accentuate the positives while the other parties and the Government's opponents will accentuate the negative.
The people then decide via the ballot box.
As to what a party not in Government has or hasn't done or would or wouldn't have done - entirely irrelevant.
Every party puts forward its programme in its manifesto and everyone has the right and opportunity to read, scrutinise and ask questions about the content of those documents.
The Government has to answer for the past and the future, the Opposition just for the future. Some people will judge only on what has happened, others will look to the future plans. Neither is right or wrong.
@bigjohnowls Would you possibly have guessed you had Covid if you hadn't tested ?
One thing about the testing regime is it picks up cases that would never otherwise have been found. For instance in a normal winter is it possible flu circulates far more widely than previously thought but the number getting sick from it is simply a fraction ?
My 10 year-old daughter currently sick with Covid. Wouldn't have considered her symptoms obvious for it - a fever that has flitted between high and very high, headache & stomach ache, very tired. Can still smell and taste, no cough.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Bellingham noted that the referee Felix Zwayer has previously been involved in a match-fixing scandal. How is Zwayer allowed to referee a top Bundesliga match after that?
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
People used to be such fanbois of cowpox they deliberately infected themselves with it. unbelievable.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Bellingham noted that the referee Felix Zwayer has previously been involved in a match-fixing scandal. How is Zwayer allowed to referee a top Bundesliga match after that?
Because he didn't actually fix the match, he was the assistant ref, he received a €300 bonus from the referee who did engage in match fixing, he eventually gave evidence against the bent referee.
But the German FA covered it up for years and by the time it came out he was regarded as a top referee.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
The boundary changes give the Conservatives 13 extra seats UK wide and Labour 8 less and the LDs 3 less and Plaid 2 less, even if they may even boost the SNP.
So Boris will obviously still do them as they increase his chance of staying in power. Even if the SNP won every Scottish Westminster seat it would not matter as long as Boris still had a UK wide majority as he would just refuse indyref2 as he is now and nothing the SNP can do about it. Though I expect the Tories to at least hold the 3 Scottish border seats and Banff and Buchan even with the boundary changes and the LDs to hold Edinburgh West and Orkney and Shetland with Tory and Labour tactical votes https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/boundaries2023.html
You know what I find endearing about Tories? Their total absence of self-awareness.
Most people are ashamed to behave dishonourably, but not a True Blue Tory.
They are like wee bairns. Your jaw drops at the world they inhabit.
- Cases are still rising. Around the 28th/29th there was a uptick which reached across the age group down to 50.. - Falls in admissions overall have stopped and show signs of going into reverse. R for hospital admissions is pretty much 1 - Deaths are still falling due to falling strongly in some areas. In the near future we can expect that to be overwhelmed by rises in other areas.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
People used to be such fanbois of cowpox they deliberately infected themselves with it. unbelievable.
Yes, but that wasn't the virus they were actually afraid of. AFAIK much less closely related to smallpox than say omicron is to delta.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
The boundary changes give the Conservatives 13 extra seats UK wide and Labour 8 less and the LDs 3 less and Plaid 2 less, even if they may even boost the SNP.
So Boris will obviously still do them as they increase his chance of staying in power. Even if the SNP won every Scottish Westminster seat it would not matter as long as Boris still had a UK wide majority as he would just refuse indyref2 as he is now and nothing the SNP can do about it. Though I expect the Tories to at least hold the 3 Scottish border seats and Banff and Buchan even with the boundary changes and the LDs to hold Edinburgh West and Orkney and Shetland with Tory and Labour tactical votes https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/boundaries2023.html
You know what I find endearing about Tories? Their total absence of self-awareness.
Most people are ashamed to behave dishonourably, but not a True Blue Tory.
They are like wee bairns. Your jaw drops at the world they inhabit.
Much of the time looking after you. The world you inhabit is only possible under Tory rule. (I know not literally true SD, but you get the gist)
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Yes, that you're the smartest person in the room.
Nobody believes that.
The video posted by the OP appears to be an analysis of report(s) from official sources in SA. I only watched part of it, but my impression was the authors of said report, all of them senior medical professionals, wouldn't necessarily be dazzled by the light of Chris' gigantic intellect.
Wondering about the definition of the RedWall. Perhaps a useful way of looking at is politically is a series of constituencies where there used to be a disconnect between the underlying demographics and the voting record, due to historical loyalties and traditions. But which now votes much more in line with similar areas in the rest of the country.
I agree. The most important thing about the red wall is that they were constituencies that Labour could and did take for granted for a long time. Now they can't. The result is that what they actually want is now a relevant question. Which is a good thing.
It is a good thing, and perhaps people who were traditionally Tory in Tory safe seats like myself might want to ponder on the new reality that is that if a government thinks it can't rely on an area, it might well invest that much more in that area
Absolutely. Works both ways. Running a country solely in the interests of the Home Counties or North London were never great alternatives. If Labour had more to gain or lose in the south outside London they might be a bit more interested in their economy and force the Tories to be likewise.
Where Davey has a point is that the counterpoint to the Tory gains in the ‘red wall’ isn’t any collection of seats that Labour might win in return - educated urban/university seats moved away from the Tories long ago - but there is a batch of middle class remain-leaning Home Counties seats where the LibDems could pull off surprises. Ed’s stunt with the hammer and wall of blue bricks might yet prove to be prophetic.
Basically Labour's problem is that while many RedWall white working class Leavers who used to be their core vote have gone Tory post Brexit, posh wealthy Remainers in the South might consider voting LD as they did in Chesham and Amersham but would not be seen dead voting Labour
"posh wealthy Remainers"
That's the party leadership, isn't it?
Many of the Labour membership and MPs however are still Corbynites.
The LDs however are more fiscally conservative than Labour if still socially liberal and anti hard Brexit and the LD leader Ed Davey was even a Minister in Cameron's coalition government. For a high earning home owning Home Counties Remainer the LDs are the safe non Tory choice, not Labour
Plenty of the entryists have now either left the party or been kicked out. The PLP has never contained 'many' Corbynites.
However, I agree with your assessment of which party is likely to be a threat to the Tories in the leafy south east.
If I were in charge of Lib Dem strategy I would focus them on becoming the party of choice of parents. There is a huge gap not serviced by either of the other parties. The Tories' client electorate is the retired, and Labour's such as it exists leans more towards the young and those in the rental market as well as public sector employees and urban constituencies like here in Lewisham.
There are a number of ways in which the parent demographic is under-serviced despite this age group - mid 30s to mid 50s, being the biggest contributors of tax revenue and one of the biggest consumer groupings:
- Education is chronically under-invested in, from early years up to A-levels particularly compared with healthcare. Anyone with children in schools will have seen how it has been further hollowed out in recent years - Kids were the fall guys for much of the pandemic, messed around with over exams and in and out of home schooling, and neither of the major parties properly stuck up for them - Local services that benefit children, from libraries to buses and trains to play schemes etc have been cut and cut - Older children have lost the opportunities to live and work abroad afforded by free movement (and Erasmus) and that impact is felt much more widely than the supposed metropolitan elite - School age kids are really sensitive to environmental harm and that's another policy area where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and visible
Why the Lib Dems? Because nobody else is, because education has always been a cornerstone priority of the party, because we need to move on from the shadow of the tuition fees decision, and because this is a very valuable section of the electorate that happens to live disproportionately in the blue wall home counties seats the party is targeting.
Degree educated home owners in their 30s and 40s who have largely moved on from student politics but not yet discovered the joys of patriotic nostalgia and imperial weights and measures should be a prime target market.
And it's a subject that neither Tories or Labour are trusted on - the former are thought not to fund it, the latter thought to be a) more sympathetic to the wants of the unions than the parents, and b) too woke. It's an open goal for the Lib Dems.
Any Education offer from the Lib Dems needs to be accompanied by a scrapping of tuition fees.
(Which was a toxic and totemic fuck-up).
It's not particularly fair, but if the Lib Dems pledge to scrap tuition fees my instinctive response is to fear that they'll end up tripling them again.
Cannot trust them.
It also brings the topic back to the last time they promised that, which is unfortunate, particularly as Ed Davey was - presumably? - one of the promise breakers. It should be an ideal LD policy, but they'd probably do best not to talk about it at all.
A completely clean leader could perhaps get away with it, particularly one who expressed oposition at the time.
I dont think anyone follows the Lib Dems - or Ed Davey - to care.
Students of my acquaintance were still mentioning it pre-pandemic (when we still had research group lunches). Might be the 'Thatcher stole our milk' for the next but one generation
But yeah, in many ways people even noticing the LDs could be an improvement for them...
The contrast between the new testament levels of forgiveness and absolution afforded on a daily basis to the Tories for breaking the law, screwing the economy and public services, tanking Britain's reputation and influence overseas and indulging in key stage 1 levels of stupidity, and the zero-tolerance, 1 strike and you're out attitude towards the Lib Dems over 1 policy is one of the great political head scratchers of the era.
But explained because the Lib Dems don't have a fanatical "base". There is no Lib Dem equivalent of HYUFD or BJO.
No that's not it and it just shows your own zealotry and bias talking about "loss of reputation and influence" etc
The difference isn't one of fanaticism, if it was you and others here like Clipp etc could fall under that. The difference is that with the Conservatives you know what you're going to get and a lot of people are OK with that.
You can try and build up a 'charge sheet' against the Conservatives of all the things you dislike that piss you off, but most voters don't view any party as perfect. The Conservatives aren't ashamed to offer the platform they're offering - and they by and large deliver on it. If you vote Conservative you know what you're getting, even if it isn't perfect.
With the Lib Dems what do you get if you vote for them? What major achievement can you point to and say "this is what we represent, this is what we've delivered"?
We've literally got a chancellor of the exchequer briefing the press that he is a tax-cutting chancellor while hiking rates across the economy to the highest in decades, we have a Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland in a way the current PM said only a couple of years no PM could ever sign up to, and we have had several examples in the last 18 months of the government promising one thing on Covid rules one day then changing their minds the very next. These are just a few examples that are LD tuition fees squared.
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Again you're just trying to build a charge sheet of negatives, without looking at the postitives.
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else? What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
I do agree with you, about the torys, even if I have lost patants and left the party.
On the lib Dems in particular, Gay marage? it was done by the coalition, but was paused most I understand by the Lib Dems.
Indeed at the 3rd reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 127 Conservative MPs voted against and 118 for with 51 DNVs and 7 abstentions.
Labour MPs voted 114 for and 14 against with 46 DNVs.
LD MPs voted 43 for, 4 against and 9 DNV.
So it was the LD element of the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-15 which was pivotal to getting gay marriage passed, a plurality of Conservative MPs voted against it.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
People used to be such fanbois of cowpox they deliberately infected themselves with it. unbelievable.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
Those percentage chances of holds are - of course - based on current opinion polls.
My guess - looking at the LD seats - is that Highland North is an SNP gain, O&S and Edinburgh West stay LD, and NE Fife depends entirely on the number of English students at St Andrews.
Yes, Martin Baxter is of course heavily depending on the accuracy of current (mid-term) voting intention polls. Immense pinches of salt are of course obligatory. But if I was Alex Cole-Hamilton, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting “here”.
My gut feeling is that the SLDs will get about the same share as last time (not Baxter’s 2.5 point drop). Yes, they’ve lost their Scottish leader at UK level, but on the other hand it looks likely that a lot of SLD tactical votes for the SCons will be “coming home”.
So, in summary, I concur with your Highland North and O&S guesses. Edinburgh West is tricky due to the unusually poor calibre of the SLD incumbent. I’m not touching your Fife NE prediction: you can say that, but I will get relentlessly hounded if I said anything similar. But well worth noting that the new Fife NE seat gets a huge chunk of the old Glenrothes seat: profoundly poor territory for SLDs.
It's not as if the LDs would benefit much from growth in the student body at St A. AIUI, it's government policy to discourage or at least limit English student attendance in Scotland, W & NI. St A is or was almost chokka on the criterion used. Which implies the LDs won't benefit from any increase in students who are unfamiliar with the SNP at home, except through the rUK media. That could also apply to EW. Caithness and O&S, possibly not so much, but I don't know how many students there are in the local UHI campuses.
They would. St Andrews is filled with posh and rich English students, indeed St Andrews has more private school pupils as a percentage of its student body than any other university in the UK apart from Oxford.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
FUDHY now an expert on the student vote in Fife. Is there no end to this man’s talents?
NE Fife has been LD since the LD's began.
Memory and Wiki says not (Westminster one)
Election Member[1] Party 1983 Barry Henderson Conservative 1987 Menzies Campbell Liberal 1992 Liberal Democrats 2015 Stephen Gethins SNP 2019 Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrats
they slipped up once!
More than once: look at Holyrood (not sure if always same boundaries, but never mind)
1999 Iain Smith Liberal Democrats 2011 Roderick Campbell SNP 2016 Willie Rennie Liberal Democrats
It is odd that PBers seem to think that NEF has always been eternal LD terrain, whereas it's a little more nuanced than that. Maybe Messrs Campbell's and Rennie's prominence gave that impression.
I was talking about Westminster, I'm disagreeing with HUFDY's assertion that it's purely to stop the SNP but otherwise would vote Conservative. I think the dynamics for Holyrood are historically different.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
People used to be such fanbois of cowpox they deliberately infected themselves with it. unbelievable.
Yes, but that wasn't the virus they were actually afraid of. AFAIK much less closely related to smallpox than say omicron is to delta.
Surely that makes the whole experiment more rather than less stupid? If the theory hadn't turned out to be right Jenner would be famous as an example of the wildest excesses of homeopathy. Not that it was a theory anyway, just an observation by a probably illiterate milkmaid
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s net approval rating stands at -10%, a figure which has not changed in the past week. This week’s poll finds 46% disapproving (up 1%) of his overall job performance, against 36% approving (up 1%).
Keir Starmer’s net approval rating has decreased by one point in the past week, now standing at -10%. 36% disapprove of Keir Starmer’s job performance (no change), while 26% approve (down 1%). Meanwhile, 33% neither approve nor disapprove of Starmer’s job performance (no change).
Between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer, 41% say they think Boris Johnson would be a better Prime Minister for the United Kingdom at this moment than Keir Starmer, the same result as in last week’s poll. Conversely, 32% think Keir Starmer would be the better Prime Minister when compared to Boris Johnson (up 1%).
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Isn't this how epidemics come to an end?
No, epidemics are not generally brought to an end by a virus mutating to escape immunity and becoming far more transmissible.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Isn't this how epidemics come to an end?
No, epidemics are not generally brought to an end by a virus mutating to escape immunity and becoming far more transmissible.
Do we actually know that, or is supposition? There have not been many epidemics on anywhere near this scale in the time of modern epidemiology. Just look at all the uncertainty over what happened during the 1918-20 flu.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Yes, that you're the smartest person in the room.
Nobody believes that.
That really does depend on the other people in the room.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Isn't this how epidemics come to an end?
No, epidemics are not generally brought to an end by a virus mutating to escape immunity and becoming far more transmissible.
Professor Paul Hunter, a specialist at the University of East Anglia's school of medicine, said there will come a time we can "stop worrying" about Covid-19 - but that we're not there quite yet.
Asked if the UK was closer to the start of the pandemic than the end, Prof Hunter told BBC Breakfast: “I wouldn’t necessarily agree totally with that. I think this virus is around (and) going to be around forever.
“The last time we had a big coronavirus outbreak we think was 130 years ago and that virus is still circulating, we get infected with it fairly regularly, every three to six years, and it basically just causes the common cold.
“That is likely the way that this pandemic is going, so we will be repeatedly infected with Covid, we will be repeatedly infected with new variants but by and large, they’ll just be another cause of the common cold and at that point, we’ll stop worrying about it, but we’re not we’re not quite there yet.”
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Isn't this how epidemics come to an end?
No, epidemics are not generally brought to an end by a virus mutating to escape immunity and becoming far more transmissible.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Can someone clarify which strain has been a steady 35-45k cases per day if its not Delta? I didn't say "Delta", I said Covid. An exit from one variant to another isn't an exit from Covid is it?
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
using the same tecknick how many (if any) seats do the SNP loes, and do many/any have a low possibility of being retained by the SNP?
A valid question BigRich! And not immediately addressed by myself due to laziness/lack of time.
The short answer is: none, and not really.
The long answer is that if you look purely at the boundary changes (and totally ignore voting intention polling) then 2 SNP seats are abolished (Glasgow Central; and Ross, Skye and Lochaber); and 1 SNP seat (Gordon) “switches out” (seats lost because their political make-up has altered) while 3 seats (Highland North; Fife North East; and Highland East & Elgin) “switch in” to the SNP (seats gained because their political make-up has altered).
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Can someone clarify which strain has been a steady 35-45k cases per day if its not Delta? I didn't say "Delta", I said Covid. An exit from one variant to another isn't an exit from Covid is it?
Cases, positive tests, or actual poor health outcomes?
A man has been convicted for repeatedly stabbing and trying to murder his partner. This wasn't the first woman he's attacked, he'd previously stabbed a previous partner and her child too.
He's been jailed for 13 years. So could be out within a decade to stab a third woman again. Maybe third strike he'll kill someone.
How many times must a man be released back onto the streets to stab another woman before they get locked up for life? The woman he attacked is lucky to be alive but has been left with life altering injuries, how many more women is this man going to attack before he gets a life sentence?
Attempted murder should be treated as murder and as described this should be a life sentence for me.
And yet, its by no means the worst. There are cases, like the murders of Sarah Everard, Lynda Spence, or Barry Wallace that are so chilling.
Queuing was a thing to show how hot the restaurant was. Or was supposed to be. Ask Giles Coren. No idea now after Covid.
Queuing for a restaurant would be my idea of hell but I am 100% not the demographic a new, a la mode restaurant is targeting.
I always book ahead.
For these places queuing is a feature not a bug and hence they don't take bookings.
There are two places that seem to have persistent queues.
The first, “Dishoom”, is a great concept but you do not need to waste any of your life queuing for it. Anyway, you can get in off-peak, or even Deliveroo it.
The second, “Breakfast Club”, is a really shit concept (all day breakfasts) and I’ve never understood it’s attraction to the sort of people who queue (out of towners and giggly students).
The Breakfast Club is effing shite. Despite its bizarre popularity, it doesn't even do the best breakfasts in its own street.
It's very popular with out of town types IMO, I always get asked to go there whenever we have guests from other places. In general we just go with it but the last couple of times I've just let them know where to get it and then my wife and I meet them afterwards. We both just find it terrible. The three times we've done that so far (as I said, it's really very popular with out of towners!) the other people have agreed it wasn't worth it and understand why we just meet them afterwards.
I’m impressed you went more than once. Do you have any theories on its popularity to out-of-towners?
Mind you, food is unbearably grim outside the M25 (or even the Circle Line).
Don't be silly.
On driving - I learnt in Naples and Ireland.
Passed my test after travelling overnight from Cork via Holyhead and the train (a long, grim and sleepless journey) on the day the Argies invaded the Falklands.
Driving a campervan - the ideal vehicle if you have lots of small children - round London taught me more about driving skills than anything else. It was also great fun watching the horrified faces of the more poncey North London parents of some of their school friends as I parked outside their houses. You could see some of them wonder whether gypsies were moving in and what this thing was doing to house prices.
I think there's a novelty value in it and because it's only available in London there's a small aspect of wanting what you can't have I guess.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
At how much risk do you think you are?
At this very moment? As my daughter is currently upstairs sick with Covid, probably at more risk than you ...
Overall? That all depends on how much of a git Omicron is. There seems to be universal views that its very infectious, and are mixed views as to how nasty it is. We all need to hope that the "not very nasty" perspective proves to be right.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Yes, that you're the smartest person in the room.
Nobody believes that.
That really does depend on the other people in the room.
Quite so. There was once a green room that contained all three of Mr Blobby, Cuddles the Monkey and Tinky Winky from Teletubbies.
Just when you think people can't get any crazier, they form a fan club for a new variant of a deadly virus that escapes immunity and spreads at record speed.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
People used to be such fanbois of cowpox they deliberately infected themselves with it. unbelievable.
Yes, but that wasn't the virus they were actually afraid of. AFAIK much less closely related to smallpox than say omicron is to delta.
Surely that makes the whole experiment more rather than less stupid? If the theory hadn't turned out to be right Jenner would be famous as an example of the wildest excesses of homeopathy. Not that it was a theory anyway, just an observation by a probably illiterate milkmaid
Rather more to it than that, it seems (even without noting that Jenner long predated homoeopathy). This is an interesting take:
Scotland has 11 non-SNP MPs. The new boundaries make 8 of those seats more marginal (1 is abolished and the other 2 are unchanged).
Here are the current Unionist seats and successor seats, with Baxter’s prediction (likelihoods of HOLD on current boundaries in brackets). (Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross excluded as his Moray seat is being abolished and he is not standing at the next UK GE. Two seats are have unchanged boundaries.)
SCon seats
Banff and Buchan HOLD (58% Con Hold) new Banff and Buchan SNP GAIN
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD (55% Con Hold) new Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk HOLD
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN (50% Con Hold) new Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale SNP GAIN
Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN (40% Con Hold) new Dumfries and Galloway SNP GAIN
West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine SNP GAIN (35% Con Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
SLD seats
Orkney and Shetland SNP GAIN (44% LD Hold) Unchanged SNP GAIN
Edinburgh West SNP GAIN (35% LD Hold) new Edinburgh West SNP GAIN
North East Fife SNP GAIN (29% LD Hold) new North East Fife SNP GAIN
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross SNP GAIN (22% LD Hold) new Highland North SNP GAIN
SLab seat
Edinburgh South HOLD (89% Lab Hold) new Edinburgh South HOLD
It’s looking like another Unionist massacre, with only 2 seats left (one SCon and one SLab), unless Sarwar, Ross and Cole-Hamilton can turn their ships around. But Johnson’s boundary changes are an unneeded additional headache.
using the same tecknick how many (if any) seats do the SNP loes, and do many/any have a low possibility of being retained by the SNP?
A valid question BigRich! And not immediately addressed by myself due to laziness/lack of time.
The short answer is: none, and not really.
The long answer is that if you look purely at the boundary changes (and totally ignore voting intention polling) then 2 SNP seats are abolished (Glasgow Central; and Ross, Skye and Lochaber); and 1 SNP seat (Gordon) “switches out” (seats lost because their political make-up has altered) while 3 seats (Highland North; Fife North East; and Highland East & Elgin) “switch in” to the SNP (seats gained because their political make-up has altered).
Where are you getting your earlier list from? On Martin Baxter's website the notional changes are -2 for the Lib Dems, and no change for everyone else.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
At how much risk do you think you are?
At this very moment? As my daughter is currently upstairs sick with Covid, probably at more risk than you ...
Overall? That all depends on how much of a git Omicron is. There seems to be universal views that its very infectious, and are mixed views as to how nasty it is. We all need to hope that the "not very nasty" perspective proves to be right.
Best wishes to your daughter for a speedy recovery. My sense is that most of the professional views on omicron are that it is of lower severity – what we don't know is whether those views will stick as and when we get more data.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Can someone clarify which strain has been a steady 35-45k cases per day if its not Delta? I didn't say "Delta", I said Covid. An exit from one variant to another isn't an exit from Covid is it?
Cases, positive tests, or actual poor health outcomes?
I'm still unsure what you and the other PB virology experts are playing. "Actual poor health outcomes" sounds like "unless you're going to die from it we should let it rip".
Case numbers. The number of new positive tests each day.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Can someone clarify which strain has been a steady 35-45k cases per day if its not Delta? I didn't say "Delta", I said Covid. An exit from one variant to another isn't an exit from Covid is it?
Cases, positive tests, or actual poor health outcomes?
I'm still unsure what you and the other PB virology experts are playing. "Actual poor health outcomes" sounds like "unless you're going to die from it we should let it rip".
Case numbers. The number of new positive tests each day.
I certainly am not an expert in any shape or form, nor have I ever claimed to be.
What do you mean by "let it rip"? – we have vaccinated 85% of the population.
@bigjohnowls Would you possibly have guessed you had Covid if you hadn't tested ?
One thing about the testing regime is it picks up cases that would never otherwise have been found. For instance in a normal winter is it possible flu circulates far more widely than previously thought but the number getting sick from it is simply a fraction ?
My 10 year-old daughter currently sick with Covid. Wouldn't have considered her symptoms obvious for it - a fever that has flitted between high and very high, headache & stomach ache, very tired. Can still smell and taste, no cough.
The classic covid symptoms are not necessarily always present, even with original covid. Strong suggestions that delta, especially in vaccinated people presents differently too.
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
We have had our Delta exit wave and the risk from Delta is now very low. A variant always has the potential to change things, though we're yet to see how badly.
Can someone clarify which strain has been a steady 35-45k cases per day if its not Delta? I didn't say "Delta", I said Covid. An exit from one variant to another isn't an exit from Covid is it?
Cases, positive tests, or actual poor health outcomes?
I'm still unsure what you and the other PB virology experts are playing. "Actual poor health outcomes" sounds like "unless you're going to die from it we should let it rip".
Case numbers. The number of new positive tests each day.
Case numbers are utterly meaningless. How many of them are completely asymptomatic?
Its only a crumb. Nobody wants this to take off after month after month at "new normal" very high levels compared to everywhere else. But there's signs that it might. Apparently the bug isn't paying the slightest attention to the PB experts who claimed we had already had our exit wave and thus were not at risk.
At how much risk do you think you are?
At this very moment? As my daughter is currently upstairs sick with Covid, probably at more risk than you ...
Overall? That all depends on how much of a git Omicron is. There seems to be universal views that its very infectious, and are mixed views as to how nasty it is. We all need to hope that the "not very nasty" perspective proves to be right.
Best wishes to your daughter for a speedy recovery. My sense is that most of the professional views on omicron are that it is of lower severity – what we don't know is whether those views will stick as and when we get more data.
Appreciate the best wishes. As I mentioned we all hope the "lower severity" view proves to be correct. Problem is that as we started from a very high baseload of cases, if we get even half the rate of increase that some of our neighbours are getting we're in big trouble.
Comments
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/education/higher-education/1354787/st-andrews-university-slams-uk-government-over-cap-on-english-student-numbers-in-scotland/
As you say, this stuff is baked in. We expect not to be able to believe what they say. Tribalism helps them no end in this respect.
Those students would normally vote Tory back in England to keep out Labour but could be persuaded to vote LD in Fife NE to keep out the SNP
She told me to do one so just done a Lateral Flow whilst posting on here and its positive
Hope the triple vaccines prevent me getting really ill.
I have already got a rare side effect (posting in Turkish)!!
Yes the Chancellor is hiking taxes and I oppose that, but spending is at record levels due to the pandemic and nobody seriously could believe the Opposition would spend less.
The Brexit deal we've been over again and again as to why I think its a great deal, but either way the government got Brexit done. So you can harp all you like as to why its bad, but for those who don't agree with you its done.
On Covid its obviously been a fast moving situation.
But across the sectors you mentioned you can for the Tories point to positives. On the economy there's full employment, furlough etc that they can point to. On Brexit it was done. On Covid there were the vaccines.
You can be glass half empty all you like, but the half full is there too. But what's half full for the Lib Dems. What is the great Lib Dem achievement that is shouted from the rooftops to counter the tuition fee betrayal?
What is the Lib Dem equivalent of getting vaccines, or Brexit done, or furlough or anything else?
What is the greatest Lib Dem success in office?
That's up from 42k cases last Monday.
On the lib Dems in particular, Gay marage? it was done by the coalition, but was paused most I understand by the Lib Dems.
The Lib Dems made a big deal of having their candidates sign a pledge to vote against an increase in tuition fees. A voter could be forgiven for believing this meant it was the most important policy in the Lib Dem manifesto.
Yet, when it came to negotiating the coalition, they ended up prioritising other policies (pupil premium, increasing personal allowance, AV referendum). In isolation this may have been understandable, but they hadn't signed pledges on those other policies.
To compound matters, having negotiated a cop-out that allowed them to abstain on tuition fees, they got themselves into an enormous mess because they'd taken on the Cabinet post responsible for the policy as one of their cabinet ministers, and so eventually many of them voted for it.
That doesn't really scream, "the nasty Tories made us do it," which might have been a defensible position.
It's rightly seen as an epoch-defining breach of trust.
I never have much trust in the Tories anyway, so I can't usefully comment on why potential Tory voters are more forgiving of their myriad transgressions.
I'm not sure the preponderance of posh English students (or Yahs as they were known in my day) is a significant electoral factor. I would imagine they are mostly too busy acting like prats to vote.
Labour MPs voted 114 for and 14 against with 46 DNVs.
LD MPs voted 43 for, 4 against and 9 DNV.
So it was the LD element of the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-15 which was pivotal to getting gay marriage passed, a plurality of Conservative MPs voted against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_(Same_Sex_Couples)_Act_2013#Third_Reading
Almost like they would be able to form a mutually beneficial political union...
As a minority in coalition the party - largely through the initiative of Ed Davey - brought forward most of the the policies that accelerated Britain's decarbonisation since 2010. The current government is currently trading off Lib Dem policies from 10 years ago. They also launched the green investment bank, which was then later scrapped.
The Lib Dems introduced the pupil premium, the hike in the tax exempt threshold, and brought forward the bill for same sex marriage.
All things the Tories now claim credit for. Yet are able to scapegoat the Lib Dems for a tuition fee policy that, ultimately, was George Osborne's.
Now you can argue over the relative merits or otherwise of these policies, but likewise I can happily argue over the merits of Brexit deal or Covid policy. But the fact is the LD party is being punished a decade later for one single policy, which was a Tory policy!
Election Member[1] Party
1983 Barry Henderson Conservative
1987 Menzies Campbell Liberal
1992 Liberal Democrats
2015 Stephen Gethins SNP
2019 Wendy Chamberlain Liberal Democrats
We wouldn't want you posting in Sumerian.
So tommorow should see 217 new cases. If it's different it'll revise the equation..
Let's hope it is a blip.
One thing about the testing regime is it picks up cases that would never otherwise have been found. For instance in a normal winter is it possible flu circulates far more widely than previously thought but the number getting sick from it is simply a fraction ?
Time for your boosted antibodies to get to work.
Could absolutely be a real rise, but that explanation fits just as well for now.
Is there anything too stupid for people to believe?
Starmerite?
1999 Iain Smith Liberal Democrats
2011 Roderick Campbell SNP
2016 Willie Rennie Liberal Democrats
It is odd that PBers seem to think that NEF has always been eternal LD terrain, whereas it's a little more nuanced than that. Maybe Messrs Campbell's and Rennie's prominence gave that impression.
The people then decide via the ballot box.
As to what a party not in Government has or hasn't done or would or wouldn't have done - entirely irrelevant.
Every party puts forward its programme in its manifesto and everyone has the right and opportunity to read, scrutinise and ask questions about the content of those documents.
The Government has to answer for the past and the future, the Opposition just for the future. Some people will judge only on what has happened, others will look to the future plans. Neither is right or wrong.
Nobody believes that.
Jude Bellingham: German FA investigating Borussia Dortmund & England midfielder's comments on referee.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59548308
Bellingham noted that the referee Felix Zwayer has previously been involved in a match-fixing scandal. How is Zwayer allowed to referee a top Bundesliga match after that?
But the German FA covered it up for years and by the time it came out he was regarded as a top referee.
FWIW - He should have never reffed a match again.
Most people are ashamed to behave dishonourably, but not a True Blue Tory.
They are like wee bairns. Your jaw drops at the world they inhabit.
- Cases are still rising. Around the 28th/29th there was a uptick which reached across the age group down to 50..
- Falls in admissions overall have stopped and show signs of going into reverse. R for hospital admissions is pretty much 1
- Deaths are still falling due to falling strongly in some areas. In the near future we can expect that to be overwhelmed by rises in other areas.
Westminster Voting Intention (6 Dec):
Conservative 38% (–)
Labour 36% (–)
Liberal Democrat 9% (-1)
Green 6% (–)
Scottish National Party 4% (–)
Reform UK 4% (–)
Other 2% (–)
Changes +/- 29 Nov
https://news.sky.com/story/derby-man-arrested-and-dozens-of-homes-evacuated-after-suspicious-items-found-during-police-search-12487748
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-59541781
And then today, in Chesterfield:
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/live-updates-bomb-squad-called-6309565
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s net approval rating stands at -10%, a figure which has not changed in the past week. This week’s poll finds 46% disapproving (up 1%) of his overall job performance, against 36% approving (up 1%).
Keir Starmer’s net approval rating has decreased by one point in the past week, now standing at -10%. 36% disapprove of Keir Starmer’s job performance (no change), while 26% approve (down 1%). Meanwhile, 33% neither approve nor disapprove of Starmer’s job performance (no change).
Between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer, 41% say they think Boris Johnson would be a better Prime Minister for the United Kingdom at this moment than Keir Starmer, the same result as in last week’s poll. Conversely, 32% think Keir Starmer would be the better Prime Minister when compared to Boris Johnson (up 1%).
Vaguely sane at least?
I assume a few LDs have disappeared into the ether.
Asked if the UK was closer to the start of the pandemic than the end, Prof Hunter told BBC Breakfast: “I wouldn’t necessarily agree totally with that. I think this virus is around (and) going to be around forever.
“The last time we had a big coronavirus outbreak we think was 130 years ago and that virus is still circulating, we get infected with it fairly regularly, every three to six years, and it basically just causes the common cold.
“That is likely the way that this pandemic is going, so we will be repeatedly infected with Covid, we will be repeatedly infected with new variants but by and large, they’ll just be another cause of the common cold and at that point, we’ll stop worrying about it, but we’re not we’re not quite there yet.”
So Boris stays PM in a hung parliament if he can get DUP support
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=38&LAB=36&LIB=9&Reform=4&Green=6&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=20.5&SCOTLAB=19&SCOTLIB=6.5&SCOTReform=1&SCOTGreen=1.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=48&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
The short answer is: none, and not really.
The long answer is that if you look purely at the boundary changes (and totally ignore voting intention polling) then 2 SNP seats are abolished (Glasgow Central; and Ross, Skye and Lochaber); and 1 SNP seat (Gordon) “switches out” (seats lost because their political make-up has altered) while 3 seats (Highland North; Fife North East; and Highland East & Elgin) “switch in” to the SNP (seats gained because their political make-up has altered).
On driving - I learnt in Naples and Ireland.
Passed my test after travelling overnight from Cork via Holyhead and the train (a long, grim and sleepless journey) on the day the Argies invaded the Falklands.
Driving a campervan - the ideal vehicle if you have lots of small children - round London taught me more about driving skills than anything else. It was also great fun watching the horrified faces of the more poncey North London parents of some of their school friends as I parked outside their houses. You could see some of them wonder whether gypsies were moving in and what this thing was doing to house prices.
I think there's a novelty value in it and because it's only available in London there's a small aspect of wanting what you can't have I guess.
Overall? That all depends on how much of a git Omicron is. There seems to be universal views that its very infectious, and are mixed views as to how nasty it is. We all need to hope that the "not very nasty" perspective proves to be right.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758677/
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/bdy2023_scot_summary.html
Kudos to R&WS for not trailing this as other pollsters would have done.
Case numbers. The number of new positive tests each day.
What do you mean by "let it rip"? – we have vaccinated 85% of the population.