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A 2022 Johnson exit surges in the betting – politicalbetting.com
A 2022 Johnson exit surges in the betting – politicalbetting.com
After the huge rebellion of Tory MPs last night against BJ’s Covid plans the chances of BJ going early, perhaps next year appears increasingly likely. That is how punters are seeing it as the betdata.io betting chart shows.
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morningsome time after Christmas, he will be gone in themorningsome time after Christmas...gonnnne in themoooorrrrrrrninnnngJan or Feb, he'll be gone in themorningdefinitely before the summer."The battle for North Shropshire
The by-election is a referendum on Boris Johnson's leadership
BY TANYA GOLD"
https://unherd.com/2021/12/the-battle-for-north-shropshire/
That’s not the problem though. Mid-term leads for the Opposition is bog-standard for England (although not for Scotland these days).
Nope, the problem is not that Labour has a lead, it is *where* they have surged ahead: the Red Wall.
Yesterday’s Survation:
North: Lab 49% Con 29%
Midlands: Lab 47% Con 33%
South: Con 43% Lab 35%
London: Lab 48% Con 27%
England Lab 43% Con 35%
What seems to be happening is that England is reverting to type: powerful Labour urban bases in the Midlands, North and London, with the Tories retreating to their traditional territory in the Home Counties and rural areas. This spells utter disaster for the Conservatives.
It is this geographical pattern that will panic Conservative MPs, not the overall Labour lead.
So he will cling on no matter what happens, until Tory MPs force him out. And if we've learnt anything from May, it's that Tory MPs are cowards; they won't force the confrontation until it's almost too late. I don't think 2022 is too late, I reckon the Tories know they can claw it back in 2023/24. So unlikely to be a leadership election, unlikely for Boris to go of his own accord, 2023 seems like an excellent value bet.
He’d be in more trouble, if the Opposition had voted against the new Covid restrictions last night.
If they’re going to switch to Sunak, Truss or Hunt they’re better doing it soon, to give the new boy or girl time to establish themselves before facing the electorate.
I completely agree this attitude will be disastrous in the medium term, and the Tories are going to be in very deep trouble at the next election, but I think you're overestimating their rationality.
Backsides will be kicked, and the Tories risk losing their new voting coalition for good.
The real reason why Mike is right is Johnson. Boris Johnson is a liability. An appalling disorganised lying incompetent. Those of us who saw his mayorality where he made repeated mistakes won't be surprised. He was a terrible choice to be PM even in a time of calm. As a PM in a storm the Conservatives could hardly have chosen a worse MP to be their leader.
So that's why he'll be ousted. He is useless.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-59654724
The two homeless men, should of course have got their ducks in a row before trying to claim the prize - but many people in that situation find thinking straight difficult in the first place.
It depends how much checking the National Lottery do. I can imagine if the scratchcard was purchased using a card for a 'Mr Joe Smith', and the lottery is claimed by a 'Mr F Witt' using an account belonging to 'Mr P Ratt', it might throw up warning signals.
In fact: if the scratchcard is purchased using a card belonging to one person, yet the win is claimed by another, would they investigate? Who 'owns' the scratchcard?
The appointment of Gove to run DCLG (or whatever they’re called this week) showed that the PM is serious about it, but there need to be tangible results quickly.
The first thing they need to remember, is that most of the working classes use cars as transport - and most of them are old cars. They don’t see trains and EVs as a priority, quite the opposite.
Contra to that there appears to be a startling lack of personal affection for and loyalty to BJ, and your other point re. the Tories' rationality problem also applies.
My point was more that the sort of transport solutions that are loved by civil servants in London, are not those desired by the occupants of the Red Wall towns.
The flip side to that is the longer they leave the accident prone Johnson in place the more trashed the Conservative brand. I am sure that was Starmer's thinking last night. A cornered, wounded dog is prone to the irrational.
A thought on the future.
There's a Vote of Confidence among Tory MP's. Johnson loses, but not by much. In the resulting Leadership election he stands again and comes second, then when the members in the party at large vote, he wins. After all, he seems to have retained his base there.
He is then therefore the elected Leader of the Party, in whom the party's MP's have 'no confidence'.
And, TBH, he has, I suggest, the chutzpah to do it.
What happens then?
If he wants to be especially wounding he could go with 'I lead my party, he can't even follow his.'
This is up from the 3.8% growth in the year to October 2021 http://ow.ly/sL4l50Hb1Wk
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1471012626188673029?s=20
Dr Foxy, does make me wonder if the Bank of England should've increased rates.
The PCP needs to get rid of Johnson.
Here, for example, is where modern light rail / tram systems are in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59609609
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/1224d909-61ff-4c69-9b8c-d66d9c69020a
His address was on the back of the piece of paper...
I think there was another where the robber left his dog outside the bank, then went back to get it later.
Thought there had been something about Parliament rising this Tuesday. Must be next. However, as I desperately try to save face, isn't Johnson on paternity leave, so won't be at PMQ's?
https://twitter.com/DataDrivenMD/status/1470997857704443904?s=20
I love The Book of Heroic Failures. A work of comic genius which as Pile himself noted is ironic given the subject.
A woman takes her young kids into the bank one Saturday. She leaves them at a table as she queues. As she leaves, she notices they've been writing on the back of paying in slips.
Later on, she hears that an elderly gentleman was arrested for trying to rob the bank. One of her kids innocently says he wrote something like: "This is a hold-up. Give me all your money." As a young kid might do.
Obviously the elderly gentleman used that slip without noticing...
But it actual does adjourn tomorrow so there will be PMQs today
To Sunak that might seem a better bet that struggling through the next couple of years with little prospect of engineering pre election giveaways.
To the party there's also a silver lining should they lose the election. It would be something of a hospital pass to Starmer and his inexperienced front bench.
Who stands in for him? Dominic "My brain is missing" Raab?
Im not convinced though, that the DPM will be more convincing in his answers than the PM.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Heroic-Failures-Official-Handbook/dp/0708819087
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1470775538495234051?t=gUeC-pIg5Y95yk0cHVZ5Rg&s=19
City centres have a core mass of offices and shops that mean a lot of journeys are into the city centre - for which public transport is great.
The issue comes when your journey doesn’t end in he city centre at which point every journey requires a minimum of 2 bits of public transport at which point a car becomes the better option.
It’s why @Philip_Thompson loves road building.
See for instance the new HMRC / DWP Newcastle Offices and Treasury North (although that's 1/2 mile from the town centre in a new complex by the train station).
Mobile phone and internet bills. In March all the major networks and MVNOs have in contract rises of CPI +3.9%.
So for most consumers their bills are going up 10%.
This sort of CPI rise is getting hard to ignore. Looks value to me.
For Treasury North - the punishment will be to have to drive into the town centre - if it was on one of the other planned locations their journey would be a lot easier. On a good day leaving at 8:15 it would take 25 minutes for me to do the 1.5 mile drive to that office as traffic is so bad.
One prick and it is gone.
Boris Johnson's decision over O-Patz was awesome as many of us pointed out but the Tories had a majority of 80 so it was fine.
The idea that the coalition that Boris built is available to anyone else in the Tory party is optimistic bordering on delusional. Boris reaches other voters in ways no other Tory has matched in a very long time, with the possible exception of Ruth Davidson.
If I was a first term red waller I would look at the likes of Sunak and think that man is going to bring coherence, stability and he's going to lose me my seat. And I would very probably be right.
Removing a PM is difficult. Even the inexorably useless May hung on for a very long time despite the loss of repeated votes which were effectively votes of no confidence in her and her deal.
I personally think that people are grossly exaggerating the importance of a by election. I think that the Tories will lose NS and it will be a non event. Again.
There are underlying issues of competence, credibility and attention to detail as well as health. There are a variety of ways in these febrile times that Boris could fall next year but I would not be betting on it at these rates or anywhere near them.
An increase in house costs or similar utterly dwarfs piddly stuff like that.
It looks to me that today's CPI and last weeks pathetic GDP figures are quite major warnings of stagflation.
Go electric/hybrid, I felt even more smugger when we had the fuel crisis a few months ago.
Is there evidence of Johnson retaining popularity in Red Wall* towns? He seems a popular as a turd in a swimming pool everywhere.
*I agree with @dixiedean that the Red Wall stereotype is not very accurate, I think voters there are not the fossils that some depict. Indeed not very different to other parts of the country.
As this excellent article from The Economist a while back put it, its all about cars and houses. The Red Wall is full of houses with 2 cars each, its not train sets. The mantra for keeping it needs to be cars and houses, cars and houses, cars and houses. Deal with those and you've got it.
EDIT: It was interesting that the reason for the "shortage" was that after x online orders the system automatically said no more - today. As in it was setup to ration online orders per day. Which is actually rather sensible from a pyschology/OR perspective. Panic buying with zero cost and all that. Someone seems to have been quite intelligent.
Clinging on to Boris "because he's a winner" misses out basic awareness of just how badly he has destroyed his own brand these last few weeks.
Let me tell you why Sunak can carry the red wall. I have watched with a wry smile how he keeps popping up in red wall seats with their 2019 MP very enthusiastically talking about what HIS cash is being invested in. Where red wall MPs can show delivery of *something* they have a chance, and the smart ones are on it - Matt Vickers being a great example of this in Stockton South.
Then we have the Tory heartlands. Sunak pulled the plug on what some see as profligate spending. Wants to cut taxes and has protected their sort of voter from the worst rises. And he's clearly one of them. So I can see how Sunak can replace boosterism with actual delivery AND balance the finances for the people who care.
What can Johnson do?
Trains barely figure at all. Indeed on that chart fewer people use trains in the Red Wall than use bicycles in other types of seat.
Trains are a non-northern obsession. Fuel prices and roads are what matters here.
People with EVs should pay a smugness tax.
This would to be honest indicate the silly strategy was down to Starmer and not him. It upset some people here to say so but Starmer had the numbers yesterday for far more than he achieved.
He thought it was clever to play the card of “we aren’t playing politics with the nation’s health”. It would have been far more clever to force through some sensible improvements so he could say “we are filling the vacuum left by the absence of a functioning government”. Even more so if he’d have made a point of blocking the mandatory vaccinations vote as actually detrimental to short term health outcomes and highlighting how the Tories ideas aren’t just stale and ineffective but outright reckless.
Sigh.
“It is an affliction to which the Conservative right is historically prone, and to which Brexit has added a hubristic streak.”
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1471028993969340418
https://twitter.com/rafaelbehr/status/1471008169140920326
Someone else made the same point last night. The lesson the headbangers took from Brexit is "the public agrees with us" even though that is total bollocks
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1471030117606567941
I've made the case for Sunak, quietly putting himself about in places like Bishop Aukland to talk up how much cash he personally has given their new Tory MP. Red wallers voted for results, if he can deliver something and be associated with it, he is their best shot. Far more so than nobodies like Truss or remote southerners like Hunt.
Ever seen Sunak in action? He is like a tiny John Major, brilliant with people, exudes charm and energy. And unlike Major has the advantage of not having that voice and that face and Edwina as a mistress.