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TheTories haven’t yet found a way of dealing with the LDs? – politicalbetting.com
TheTories haven’t yet found a way of dealing with the LDs? – politicalbetting.com
At the next general election which will happen in the next couple of years, the incumbent Tory Party will be facing two very different factions and this was seen in last week by-elections. There will be the straight battles with LAB to retain many of the seats won by the Tories in December 2019.
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While I think that abortion (up until a point, obviously) should be legal, I also think that it is the job of legislators to make that decision not members of the Supreme Court. And yes, I realise that will have some shitty consequences for women. But in total, that harm is less bad than allowing judges to make law.
That, of course, leads me to be very rude about the Supreme Court overturning New York's century old law on concealed carry permits.
It is far from clear to me - or to lawyers or Supreme Courts over the last 100 years - that the law was in any way in conflict with:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The central LibDem machine will be prepared to back perhaps 20 to 30 challengers with intensive effort. The goal will be to take the party from the 11 seats it won in 2019, to at least 20 and probably more like 30 seats.
Such a leap is possible, but far from easy.
There are just two non-Conservative seats in the top twenty LibDem targets: Dunbartonshire East and Sheffield Hallam. The former of those will be difficult because the SNP is polling meaningfully higher than in 2019, while the latter will no longer have the hangover from one of the worst MPs in recent memory.
That means that the top 20 real LibDem targets are all Conservative seats.
Now, sure, there are four with sub 1,000 vote majorities - Wimbledon, Carshalton & Wallington, Cheltenham, Winchester - at least three of which I'd expect to fall, but then their path gets harder.
By the time you get to seat 20 (Harrogate), you are up to an 8.5%/9,700 vote majority. Doable? Sure. But far from easy.
By the time you get to the 30th Conservative seat on the LDs radar, you're looking at majorities well in the five figures and 11-13% margins.
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OK, now I've been a bit of a perma-bear on LibDem chances, but let's take a look at some of the seats, and let's ask the question:
What happens if the Conservative vote falls by a tenth, and the LibDems pick up half the Labour vote? That seems like an eminently reasonable assumption for 2024.
Well, that takes the LDs to 12 to 18 gains. They grab everything up to Hazel Groze (about ten gains), and then the path gets harder. Surrey South West, Sutton & Cheam, Wokingham... it all depends on the willingness of Labour supporters to vote tactically.
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My forecasts for LD seats in each of the last three elections have been pretty accurate, although I thought it would be 12 to 14 seats in 2019, which was slightly high. For 2024 (and this is very much subject to change), I am going with 23 to 28 seats, with a slight bias to the higher end of the range. In other words, I expect the LDs to do very slightly better than they did when they were the Alliance or in 1992, but meaningfully worse than in the 1997-2010 period.
If gay marriage is legal in Connecticut, and a married couple move to Utah where it is not, do spousal benefits continue?
Thanks for doing the analysis that I couldn’t be bothered doing.
I should know the answer, but is there a website where you can tweak party shares to generate a 2019 re-run, one that specifically allows for progressive tactical voting?
The central tension in the US as a federal system is you need to allow states freedom to vary, but within limits in order to hang together as a unified nation.
If you have various differences in sales taxes, and education systems, then that's all fine, If you have marriages which are recognised in one state but not another, and have women literally fleeing one state for a medical procedure that is a CRIME in their own, it unravels badly.
And your attitude that it has "some shitty consequences for women" but, y'know, small price to pay, is quite frankly exteremely unpleasant and you need to take a long, hard bath with yourself.
Statistically in a country as big as the US, there will definitely be some gay married couples moving to Utah.
But I also know that you don't tear down systems because you prefer a given outcome.
Otherwise you are little better than Trump.
Here in the UK we also recently allowed NI to restrict abortion more than GB did and it still can limit abortion to 12 weeks on request. Several Australian and Canadian and Mexican states also have different laws on abortion
Approaches based on originalism and based on a living constitution are both intellectually defensible, and both have certain flaws. Overall, however, it's interesting to see Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas apply a supposedly originalist approach to a document whose legal protections neither the drafters of the constitution nor people at the time considered extended fully to them. That's an incredibly difficult point for originalists, and one I've never seen adequately answered.
Ultimately, what you are doing is wringing your hands at what is inflicted on OTHER people on the basis of a totally misconceived, pseudo-intellectual view of what is right. You need to check yourself, and educate yourself.
In the USA, states had different laws on abortion before last week's Supreme Court ruling, as is the case within the UK and between states in other countries. The right to an abortion confered by Roe was scarosanct but NEVER absolute. States were able to, and did, make decisions on how to regulate abortion but could not deny women's right within the first trimester (essentially that IS the 12 weeks as you say). So there was significant variation in abortion laws across the USA and you are completely factually wrong.
" I also think that it is the job of legislators to make that decision not members of the Supreme Court. And yes, I realise that will have some shitty consequences for women. But in total, that harm is less bad than allowing judges to make law."
Decisions which showed contempt for elected legislatures bipartisan efforts to limit the influence of big money in politics.
The only consistency I see in Roberts’ efforts is a determination to advance his conservative politics in a more subtle manner than his incendiary colleagues.
I’ll do you the courtesy of assuming it was unintentional
Did anyone manage to bag tickets to Headingley today? With England bringing some aggression back to Test cricket, it should be over by lunchtime though.
That the rest of the majority did not leaves some uncertainty as to how they would rule if it came before the court.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/
… The increasing divergence—and antagonism—between the red nation and the blue nation is a defining characteristic of 21st-century America. That’s a reversal from the middle decades of the 20th century, when the basic trend was toward greater convergence.
One element of that convergence came through what legal scholars call the “rights revolution.” That was the succession of actions from Congress and the Supreme Court, mostly beginning in the 1960s, that strengthened the floor of nationwide rights and reduced the ability of states to curtail those rights. (Key moments in that revolution included the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the Supreme Court decisions striking down state bans on contraception, interracial marriage, abortion, and, much later, prohibitions against same-sex intimate relations and marriage.)
Simultaneously, the regional differences were moderated by waves of national investment, including the New Deal spending on rural electrification, the Tennessee Valley Authority, agricultural price supports, and Social Security during the 1930s, and the Great Society programs that provided federal aid for K–12 schools and higher education, as well as Medicare and Medicaid.
The impact of these investments (as well as massive defense spending across both periods) on states that had historically spent little on public services and economic development helped steadily narrow the gap in per capita income between the states of the old Confederacy and the rest of the country from the 1930s until about 1980. That progress, though, stopped after 1980…
Although as Mr Sandpit says it could all be over by lunchtime at Headingley! Personally I think 3 pm!
I suspect one interesting headline this morning is that in the Daily Mail about fraud.
Certainly the local Facebook page is full of comments about fraud on the elderly, but I wonder whether the most serious issue around UK fraud is that taking place in the City! I wonder if Ms Cyclefree will comment.
Okay, so I jest. But written constitutions that can only be altered with extreme difficulty (as in the US at the moment) are not fit for purpose, and probably become less fit for purpose over time.
(*) Sorry, Ishmael. I know you don't like smileys, but that's your issue. Deal with it.
We could combine the issues, and talk about the fraud committed by certain justices who claimed in their appointment hearings that Roe v Wade was ‘settled law’…
I am not a Glasto-type person. It's not my sort of thing. But for the acts, it must be a real high to be on stage in front of so many people, even on the smaller stages, once any initial nerves have worn off.
Me? I'd probably be terrified all the way through.
I think I’d prefer rain.
"A stupid post, as those which feature that dickless wink emoji invariably are."
As a side note, the French assembly is pushing to put through an amendment their their constitution protecting the right to abortion. This is not just virtue signalling - the Loony Right (which is generally anti-abortion, though Le Pen claimed that she no longer was anti…) could get to the level that they could block such a change, in the near future.
Perhaps one of those weird private bounty laws that the Republicans came up with would be of use - anyone interfering with the right to travel between states for an abortion can be sued for no less than $1 billion, by any private person, their expenses in the matter paid?
It would be fun to see the current court choking on such a law.
Whilst I get your comment about being terrified (and I would be the same) there must be something awe inspiring and moving about hearing a hundred thousand people belting your songs back at you.
If you’re a performer, it’s almost certainly the biggest audience you’ll ever play to, even on the smaller stages there are tens of thousands watching. It must be pretty awesome to have that many people singing and dancing to your music.
They sold a record 200,000 tickets this year (at £280 a pop!), which makes it the largest ticketed event held in the UK for decades.
The largest ticketed sporting event in the UK is this coming weekend, as 160,000 decend on Silverstone for the Grand Prix. It was sold out more than six months ago.
https://nypost.com/2022/06/26/obese-retired-russian-general-called-to-fight-in-ukraine-report/
Perhaps Russia have depleted their weapons reserves so much they're having to resort to using human cannonballs ....
I have to say, of all the reasons I thought that Russia might lose this war, running out of senior officers wasn’t one that crossed my mind! Yet they are suffering huge attrition of generals, as poor communications mean they are being stationed right at the front lines.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/like-corbyn-johnson-is-his-partys-super-toxin-rhgwmlmn5
There has an exodus of around 3,000 dentists since the last Covid lockdown, many saying a perverse payment structure leaves them carrying out some NHS treatments at a loss
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/patient-uses-pliers-pull-teeth-27332751
1. This provides a relatively cheap way of levelling-up, and might help save Tory red wall seats.
2. Any problems with the payment structure can be easily and quickly fixed by The Saj.
3. Medium-term fixes by subsidising new surgeries in areas of shortfall are relatively cheap.
4. Long-term fix by increasing the number of dentistry students is also straightforward.
5. There is also room for more private sector and even foreign investment although these might prove unnecessarily controversial.
@rcs1000 just to add a small bit to the replies - there is a very significant difference between 'tearing down systems because you prefer a given outcome' and defending what was supposedly 'settled law' for half a century.
In the necessarily messy business of legislating for a huge country like USA, Roe vs Wade was a practical compromise that worked reasonably well right up until the Supreme Court got very conservative under Trump. It might not have been the right legal ruling on intellectual grounds, but it sure was better than the alternative we have now, both in terms of women's rights and in tems of the governability of the USA.
But, in any event, I am sure that a pregnant woman wishing to travel can find a cathedral she wishes to visit in another state.
In the US, a tribe of old men consider the ancient tablets, then pull new laws out of their fundaments. These new laws are sacred and cannot be touched.
If they decide that everyone must hop on one leg, on pain of death, then that’s how it is. Unless you have about 75% of the population behind you and can directly amend the ancient tablets….
What I do find unpleasant is the way some posters here go in for bullying others.
My opponents are winning the argument. Therefore I will change the rule book to make sure that they have to do what I want anyway.
Tory MP tells The Times: “He has lost the plot. Hard to know how but feel sure he’ll be gone by year end or sooner. Opposition is spreading and deepening and is now likely to organise.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/513d4152-f595-11ec-ad14-7b04276f4c1f?shareToken=ef17175bf83609397d140fc4b14a85b8
Glad it's rather cooler now.
Still think Perez 10 and Sainz 13 (10.5 and 14 with boost) each way to win are too long. The Mercedes being 11 each are too short.
Sainz has been 2nd three times this season, Perez four times plus a victory.
Neither Mercedes has finished in the top 2 so far, and that's even with poor reliability from Red Bull and Ferrari.
So to go back to the question about a gay couple travelling to states that don't recognise their marriage, time for a simple truth: Scrapping Roe vs Wade was the end of America. There are now two countries within the former United States, we still have some sorting to do with regards to exactly where the boundaries lie and what you are permitted to do in the shitkicker states, but the country has split.
Whether this split goes further, or becomes permanent remains to be seen. But the simple truth for gay people or women who don't want to be forced to have their rape baby etc etc is that if you are in a shitkicker state its time to leave. The gay couple would be wise not to travel to these states at all ever. It is no longer safe to do so.
Except for the massive flaw in the difficulty of amending it.
He loses a no confidence vote. Then as they say in the West Wing “It is time for you to write your book now”. Think of all the Ex-PMs who seem much happier (and richer) now they are out of it.
For all we know, the result of the last vote had him wailing and gnashing teeth.
The issue with their car bouncing has been prominent at the temporary circuits, that have dominated the first half of the season. Their best race so far was in Barcelona, at one of only three permanent circuits we have seen in the first nine races.
They might not be ahead of the Ferrari and Red Bull, but they’ll definitely be a lot closer to them.
Suggesting that (a) they are unusually superficial; (b) that they have a particular liking for young men; (c) that they don’ have the capability of a stable marriage with a life partner; and (d) that Utah is the sort of place that there is no other reason to go to except for male eye candy
It treads pretty close to a lot of attacks on gay men that are used by people who are intolerant of their life choices
Labour embraced Blair and New Labour, even while holding their noses, because he promised and delivered a return to power after two decades in the wilderness. The question increasingly troubling Conservative MPs is what is Boris for?
Boris has delivered what many backbenchers and even Cabinet ministers see as un-Conservative measures, not least high taxes, but for no electoral benefit as Tories lag in the polls. Turning the question round, they see no legislative benefit in the government's unpopularity as they might have seen when Mrs Thatcher trailed in the polls while reshaping Britain's economy. There is no electoral payoff for tolerating Boris, and there is no long-term transformational payoff for trailing in the polls.
So who will replace him? It is possible the party ends up with someone sensible and palatable. Mordant or Hunt, that kind of leader. Its also possible that they end up with a monster like Patel or Truss.
If the new leader is sensible, and stops the lunacy that has infested this government, the need that voters feel to remove them at any cost will dissipate. In which case the bigger extremes of tactical voting will go away and the LibDems will struggle to gain more than a dozen seats.
But think about Prime Minister Patel. Tactical voting continues, with ever sillier swings feeling possible. Remember that you don't need people to actively support the LibDems in places like Wokingham, only for them to feel tangible revulsion at the idea of John Redwood being re-elected.
Middle England had long feared that the natural instincts of the Labour Party were anti-patriotic, anti-enterprise, anti-the common sense of the saloon bar and the suburb. Blair did superbly well at allaying those fears, but they were resurrected at a stroke when an IRA-sympathising, Nato-loathing, pro-Communist pacifist was made party leader.
There was always a hyper-alertness to Tory sleaze and lies — and then came Johnson, who has been remarkably productive at churning out stories of both sleaze and lies
The similarity is that BoZo and Jezza both precisely embody the worst fears of voters about their respective parties.
I may sound over the top. But not in the context of what states are already doing. Gilead is forming.
It’s difficult to know if this is accidental or deliberate, as the framers were advocates of a smaller federal structure and more powers residing with the States themselves.
What has been noticable, until now, was the unwillingness of the politicians to even suggest amendments, or to pass legislation backing up SC judgements. Perhaps we will start to see this from Democrats, as the court is likely to disagree with their opinions of contentious issues.
Oh, and if you’re Stephen Breyer (aged 83), Sonia Sotomayor (68) or Elena Kagan (62), you’ve got six months to resign and see your successor appointed by Biden and a Democrat Senate. Don’t “Do an RBG”.
1) Should this be a matter for voters and legislators, not courts
2) How does your democracy operate.
The answer to (1) is yes - the SC is right. (And wrong about guns).
The answer to (2) is that it is a matters for USA voters.
As for sub-optimal outcomes, sadly what counts as this depends on where you start on the ethics of the matter and can't be assumed. Good people disagree on hard questions. A number of PB posters think there can only be one answer. That is not the case.
Helluva night.
Parliament is advertising an online history webinar thingy on 7th July (3 days after Trump announces his candidature?).
Monarchy and Parliament: A brief history
Join our expert guide as we explore the intertwined relationship between Parliament and the monarchy. Uncover the key moments that influenced a move from a sovereign-driven body to the Parliament of today, including the constitutional role played by Queen Elizabeth II during her 70-year reign so far.
Beginning with the origins of the first Parliament in the 13th century, discover how the power balance between monarch and Parliament impacted the country. Understand how the Tudors managed their legislative body, while the tensions between the House of Commons and Charles I led to the English Civil War, and eventually the creation of a constitutional monarchy.
This event lasts 45 minutes. At the end of the talk, 15 minutes are available for you to ask questions.
https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/
I've mentioned it often before, but consider the ERA. The text is about as simple and unexceptionable as possible:
"ARTICLE —
"Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
"Sec. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
"Sec. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."
It was passed by two thirds majority of both Houses, and supported by three presidents (of both parties).
35 states voted to ratify it, but it is still not law, fifty years later.
Very good post
A while back, someone posted a link to a PB discussion from 2016, when people were arguing about whether Trump's election would cause rights to be reversed. Many posters thought it did not.
And yet, due to Trump and the Republicans' work, rights are being reversed.
The question is when that reversal will stop.
Sadly, I have a feeling that if someone proposed an amendment today, which simply stated that the sun rises in the morning, half of the country’s politicians would disagree with it - based solely on which party made the proposal.