The above chart is from pollster Redfield & Wilton and is a question I don’t think any other mainstream pollsters ask. In addition to its standard “best PM” comparison between Johnson and Starmer the firm include two other questions which to me seem highly relevant.
Comments
This polling doesn't shock me too much as Johnson must still have a lot of positive support in places like the Midlands and Essex as HYUFD has been arguing even if the new found Tory support in the north is quite a bit softer.
What a fine mess for the Tories to untangle.......
There's more chance of Kurt Zouma being made DG of the RSPCA than the Tories winning under Johnson.
I personally don't think many of those lost since 2019 are coming back if Boris leads the Tories into the next election. It will be a bloody hard sell on the doorstep.
However amongst swing voters who the Tories need to win the general election there is now a preference for Sunak over Starmer but not Boris over Starmer. whereas before Boris as well as Sunak lead Starmer.
40% of voters prefer Starmer over Boris as PM to just 33% who prefer Boris.
By contrast 38% of voters prefer Sunak as PM over Starmer to 40% who prefer Starmer.
So even if Starmer would still likely narrowly beat Sunak in a general election, more Tory MPs would save their seats
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
Labour's support is soft and the Conservative position post Johnson is hopeful, but for the economic catastrophe heading our way. I have always agreed with the notion that Governments lose elections, Oppositions don't win them, and at the moment Johnson is making a pretty good hand of confirming that idea.
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-7-february-2022/
Under Saddam it was the most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East.
We only want to get it right in this world.
If someone wants to do the right thing, what should they do if they have Fu Manchu films in their movie Libary now? Do we have to hand them in to the police, or will there be some kind of anonymous amnesty box 😶
PS - you can like this one if you want to, it is quite funny peculiar - the suspicion here accepting Russian or Chinese dirty money, no parliamentary action or party whip withdrawn, use Fu Manchu trope once in a bar conversation, parliamentary bans and whip withdrawn.
We'll know where to send Rishi to door-knock!
FPT in response to @TimT -
The external pressure is needed when you have a sector which refuses to accept the need for change. It's not attack which is needed but a regulator who will ensure that this is something which is always one of the key priorities i.e. who encourages, asks, rewards, who makes it a standing item on the agenda at regular meetings, who encourages best practice, who encourages it to learn from others. That's the kind of external oversight & pressure needed.
I have seen this at close hand in finance. Banks had problem after problem for years before the financial crisis. They did nothing about the underlying problems. Nor did the regulator. It was really only after the Parliamentary report on Banking Standards that they began to get it and the regulator too. And the regulator expecting work on conduct really helped. It helped people like me because when I talked about the repeated behavioural issues I was seeing they started listening. Even the regulators listened. A talk I did was filmed & shared with the SEC, the Swiss & UK regulators as evidence of what was needed & how we were addressing it.
Without something like this it is easy for organizations to slip back into old habits.
The discipline is at the start. It's a way of cleansing the stables. It's a way of showing the good guys that they're not being mugs by being good guys. It gives them opportunities & encourages them to stand up for & reinforce the good behaviour you want.
You need to change peoples' hearts not just give them rules & yes you need to show them & suggest ideas. You also need to make them unafraid of making mistakes & admitting them because people learn best from their mistakes (and those of others). It is counter-intuitive but what I say to my audiences is this: You need to make the sorts of mistakes you can learn from but not the sort that blow the place up.
It was hard in finance because before you could make the change you had to strip away the carapace of denial & arrogance & it's only a few rotten apples. That takes time & effort. And then you start doing the positive stuff & keep on doing it etc.
I think the Met is still at the denial stage. Intellectually some see the problems. But emotionally very many don't or are scared of what it entails. Dealing with that requires a toughness but also an emotional intelligence which is rarer than it should be in leaders.
That is why I say that you need senior leaders & the next layers down to understand & buy into what is needed & exemplify it in their daily professional lives. There will be plenty of them around but they have been either disempowered or disheartened.
I know I have gone about this before. But when I look at the Met I see so many echoes of what my sector went through. I do not pretend to have all the answers. But the Met really would do well to learn something from those organisations which had to go through similar because I really do believe that it would help.
It's not just a river in Africa
the Met are so far into denial, that they are on a houseboat on Lake Victoria.
'
However of the major Arab nations in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, even on the link you provided Iraq is now the least authoritarian and most democratic
As it is often pointed out, the new 2019 Cons MPs all signed the Brexit pledge and the Cons are now more than ever a hard Brexit party. Of course Brexit is done (talking to you, @Leon ) but the character of the party is significantly different even from 2017.
Not to say that a change of leader wouldn't help and probably lead to personnel changes but the guts of the party I (we?) knew and liked have been removed.
Following it through, that would probably mean that Johnson's replacement would prefer that the leadership contest takes place rather closer to the next election, or would otherwise have to call an earlier election while they could still be seen as "change" not "incumbent".
Nonetheless, the longer Johnson remains PM, without some extraordinary bonus falling at his feet, the tougher the ask for the Conservatives.
Insights into how we are racist passive bystanders all these years without realising it 😟
The Conservative Party’s Thatch Tribute Act will be back from her successful self promotion trip, to embed the good work with some Fizz with Liz.
Liz , here, in this EXCLUSIVE clip, in full on campaign mode, sucking up every vote in the room
But is that Leon Sunil & Briskin, bouncing up and down, wagging their tails with tongues hanging out, helping her crowd surf? 😈
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmn2o8Pfj3Q
(But my lay of Lab maj at 6s is not my favourite position, let's just say that.)
Err moving hastily on
ON TOPIC! Polling, betting, politics - I have the following problem with this header
All those people who have only voted UKIP or Conservative in their lives, who turned up on mass in Beaconsfield Tory meeting to attempt to deselect their MP, are they part of “2019” Conservative voters, just the same as those who voted Labour always, except once in 2019?
Bundling these two subsets together could probably disguise the killer swing in the second subset? The first subset doesn’t even have to move an inch away Boris, but if the second swings enough the Red Wall goes Labour?
Tell me where I’m wrong.
Ex-Tory leader suggests Johnson will have to go if he is found to have broken the law.
He tells @elliottengage: "That’s a decision made by my colleagues but I think it would be very tough for anyone to remain after that."
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-iain-duncan-smith-resign-coup-lockdown-parties-police-fine-1456279
Boris' economic policies are also closer to Macmillan's than Thatcher's
https://news.sky.com/story/liz-truss-defends-using-private-govt-plane-to-travel-to-australia-after-being-accused-of-wasting-taxpayers-cash-12526715
3/10
Have you not come across "Butskellism" and the "Post War Consensus"? I don't believe Johnson would fit into any post-war consensus, except perhaps when he was Mayor of London, and that seems like a political lifetime ago. He is now a Trumpian populist.
P.S. Johnson's economic policies are closer to Dave Nellist's than Mrs Thatcher's.
*Although Boris vs Trump on the BMI scale. They might be close.
Obviously however he is not a socialist like Nellist though, he is not nationalising industries, is not raising income tax and inheritance tax and nor is he allowing unions to strike at will, nor is he abolishing Eton or Marlborough, which he and Macmillan and Butler attended. Nellist and Militant wanted to do all that. Boris also complains a six figure income is not even enough for him, Nellist only took the average wage as an MP.
Indeed after Thatcher in 1983 and 1987, the Tory leaders who have won the biggest general election majorities for their party since WW2 are Macmillan in 1959 and Boris in 2019
Imran Khan
Jeremy Corbyn
Neil Coyle
Jonathan Edwards
Margaret Ferrier
Anne Marie Morris
Rob Roberts
Claudia Webbe
https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?SearchText=&PartyId=8&Gender=Any&ForParliament=0&ShowAdvanced=False
'Not nationalising' ... railways, Sheffield Forgemasters ...
'not raising income tax' is a very polite way of describing the increase in NI ...
'not raising [...] inheritance tax' ditto, not changing the allowances in a time of high inflation
Butler was also a north Essex MP for Saffron Walden for many years, so as well as Cambridge had strong East Anglian links
And on another matter - I do hope you're exercising enough and getting your five a day?
Also he *is* raising income tax, both through fiscal drag and an increase in the dividend rates.
Edit: come to think of it, spending £900K or whatever it was on finding out that he was "not building the Ulster bridge" is also on the same lines.
FFFWWWOO
The wagyu burger at Nihonbashi, Colombo. Served by the genius chef himself
Jesus
- Cases falling. R is below 1. Regional R is below 1 for all regions. Age R is below 1 for all age groups
- Hospital admissions down - R is solidly below 1
- MV beds down
- In hospital down
- Deaths down. Massively.
Labour has lots of low-profile policies but both the delays in internal policy process and the difficulty of oppositions in getting coverage are hampering the process - the closest we've got is probably scrapping VAT on energy, which ticks both the "help living standards" and "use Brexit constructively" boxes (though green voters purse their lips dubiously). But it still feels more like tactics than strategy.
The closest the Tories have got is Gove's levelling-up programme, which got a "not ambitious enough" reception rather than outright rejection, but was obscured by Partygate. I do think that the Tories are more than Labour in danger of a sense of drift and decline - people don't really expect the Opposition to be full of practical ideas for the next few months, but they notice if the Government isn't.
Meanwhile the LibDems have Labour's problem only more so, and arguably their strength in by-elections is masking the underlying issue that there aren't a lot of people who know what direction they're going. I doubt if their national poll ratings will improve until that becomes clearer.
@jburnmurdoch
A reminder that UK is only country in the world with regular, reliable data on total infection numbers (not just cases), thanks to
@ONS
random sample representative survey.
It’s vital that the survey’s funding is extended. Without it, we’re flying blind
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1492138146661818372
I think he’s likely safe. He’s bloody good at this politics business.
And here's the thing. How many of those 2019 Tory voters saying they prefer Johnson are actually going to vote for another party if Johnson is not there? On these numbers I would suggest it is clear that Sunak is the better bet if the Tories want to win the next election as he looks to have a much better chance of winning over non-Tory voters.
*hungry*
https://goodlawproject.org/news/partygate-met-police-investigate/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=MetPoliceBlog110222&utm_medium=social media
The best opportunity to level up was throwing Social Fund money at deprived areas, which happened wholesale in the 1980s and 90s. The trouble is when the incentives stopped the fun stopped. That will happen again.
I marked you down as a Tory to take notice of for betting purposes some time back.
Iraq did not elect its President and Parliament in competitive elections under Saddam, so my point stands
No idea whatsoever, what your other comment references tho.
My assumption is that they would give a very low score to Johnson now, but it would be interesting to see how Sunak does against don't knows in that segment.
Russia is also a democracy, if not a perfect one, certainly more so than under Stalin for instance.
My point stands. Iraq is now one of the most democratic nations in the Middle East, under Saddam it was the most authoritarian and repressed nation in the Middle East.
First, adding another two weeks of ONS data means Covid’s infection fatality rate has now crossed below the "2x flu" line.
Latest IFR is roughly 60% higher than flu and still falling.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1492138139103768576