The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
I wouldn't count on that. We see from the experience of Brexit that flag-waving and sovereignty trumps economic and financial logic in the minds of many voters.
The British people voted to make themselves poorer, why shouldn't the Scottish?
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
Surely the lesson of Brexit is that emotion can out-vote common sense in such matters.
Panelbase: Sunday Times - voting intention Westminster
SNP 47% (+5) Lab 23% (-1) Con 19% (-2) LD 8% (+1) oth 3% (-2)
(+/- Panelbase/Sunday Times 26-29 April)
Baxtered (new boundaries):
SNP 53 seats (+5) LD 2 seats (nc) Lab 1 seat (nc) Con 1 seat (-5)
Oh come on @StuartDickson, can't you see that the real headline should be:
"LibDem surge in Scotland sees them predicted to win as many seats as Conservatives and Labour combined"
Very nice example of the geographical distribution of voting affecting the final result in terms of seats, allowing for the errors in herent in such estimates. But Con and Lab can't complain as supporters of FPTP: still, ironic that the two parties which support reform of the Westminster voting system win out.
I suspect the LD seats are Orkney and NE Fife (St Andrews in particular). Do we know?
Nope. Orkney & Shetland and Edinburgh West are the 2 SLD holds (according to Baxter).
NE Fife’s Baxter is:
SNP 43% SLD 37% SLab 10% SCon 8%
The new boundaries are viciously cruel to the Unionists. Another Tory wheeze that they didn’t think through very well.
If the LDs can encourage tactical voting, they have a chance. I'd make the SNP favourites (60-65% chance), but not massive ones.
Edit to add: should have said "even more tactical voting"
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
The chap starting second is favourite to win. The chap starting third is second favourite. The pole-sitter is third favourite.
The man starting 5th has shorter odds than the man starting 4th by some margin (11 to 17).
Interesting to see usual grid positions to odds distorted by weight of money on Verstappen and Hamilton.
[For Verstappen, this is justified. It remains to be seen if Mercedes have improved their car enough. An interesting comment I read elsewhere was that the higher car position due to tread on the intermediates would also have helped Hamilton out, alongside his substantial wet weather skills].
Panelbase: Sunday Times - voting intention Westminster
SNP 47% (+5) Lab 23% (-1) Con 19% (-2) LD 8% (+1) oth 3% (-2)
(+/- Panelbase/Sunday Times 26-29 April)
Baxtered (new boundaries):
SNP 53 seats (+5) LD 2 seats (nc) Lab 1 seat (nc) Con 1 seat (-5)
So SNP below 50% and Sturgeon's gamble of making the next general election in Scotland a proxy referendum would fail.
Unionist Conservatives, Labour and LDs combined on 50%, SNP only on 47%.
Why do you care? You keep telling us that Scots are going to be held in the Union irrespective of how they vote.
Tanks, gun-boats and truncheons are your tools, not pocket calculators.
As Sturgeon might use a 50%+ of the vote mandate at the next general election in Scotland to declare UDI after the UK government continues to refuse an official indyref2 and ignores the result of any unofficial referendum.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
Er, when has that ever been true? Heart over head always works.
It was 55-45 last time after all, it will only take a relatively small number more to simply not care about this issues this time and then its on a knife edge.
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
The SNP was of course responsible for starting the ball rolling that led to the timing of the 2019 GE being pretty much perfect for the lying hypocrite to win his majority....
On topic, I think Starmer resigning would be a benefit to Labour. His job of delousing is over, or nearly so, and the need is for some one with a bit more ability to generate excitement to take over.
Both parties are being dragged down by their leaders.
Panelbase: Sunday Times - voting intention Westminster
SNP 47% (+5) Lab 23% (-1) Con 19% (-2) LD 8% (+1) oth 3% (-2)
(+/- Panelbase/Sunday Times 26-29 April)
Baxtered (new boundaries):
SNP 53 seats (+5) LD 2 seats (nc) Lab 1 seat (nc) Con 1 seat (-5)
Oh come on @StuartDickson, can't you see that the real headline should be:
"LibDem surge in Scotland sees them predicted to win as many seats as Conservatives and Labour combined"
Very nice example of the geographical distribution of voting affecting the final result in terms of seats, allowing for the errors in herent in such estimates. But Con and Lab can't complain as supporters of FPTP: still, ironic that the two parties which support reform of the Westminster voting system win out.
I suspect the LD seats are Orkney and NE Fife (St Andrews in particular). Do we know?
Nope. Orkney & Shetland and Edinburgh West are the 2 SLD holds (according to Baxter).
NE Fife’s Baxter is:
SNP 43% SLD 37% SLab 10% SCon 8%
The new boundaries are viciously cruel to the Unionists. Another Tory wheeze that they didn’t think through very well.
If the LDs can encourage tactical voting, they have a chance. I'd make the SNP favourites (60-65% chance), but not massive ones.
Agreed.
The problem is that that SCon 8% figure is already rock-bottom, core Tory true believer territory. These are not folk easily shifted. Ditto SLab 10%.
On PB we sometimes look at The Big Picture and wonder why voters don’t do the “obvious” thing? But people are just people: not everyone thinks like a psephological genius.
Good morning everyone; bright and sunny here today again! Essex cricket was extremely good yesterday!
On topic, I think it will be a disaster if Starmer is fined. I think he'll keep his promise to resign and Johnson will go all pseudo-moral about how he didn't have to resign. I think to that it might actually encourage him to go for a general election, as was suggested yesterday!
Now that would be something completely shitty.
Your main political rival has just resigned and his party is therefore rudderless for a period. I've said before its completely crap that both the Labour and Liberal Democrats can take months (or even years) to hold their elections, so it's very likely it wouldn't get resolved should Johnson call an immediate General Election.
I'm piling in. Put the house on a GE should Starmer resign after getting fined........
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Another interesting option would be they both are fined, they both agree to resign, but they are staggered so SKS resigns, Rayner is interim leader while they elect a new one, then she resigns.
Does BoZo try and call an election in those circumstances?
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Johnson and Sunak were fined, if Starmer was fined so almost certainly would Rayner be
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Good morning everyone; bright and sunny here today again! Essex cricket was extremely good yesterday!
On topic, I think it will be a disaster if Starmer is fined. I think he'll keep his promise to resign and Johnson will go all pseudo-moral about how he didn't have to resign. I think to that it might actually encourage him to go for a general election, as was suggested yesterday!
Now that would be something completely shitty.
Your main political rival has just resigned and his party is therefore rudderless for a period. I've said before its completely crap that both the Labour and Liberal Democrats can take months (or even years) to hold their elections, so it's very likely it wouldn't get resolved should Johnson call an immediate General Election.
I'm piling in. Put the house on a GE should Starmer resign after getting fined........
The funniest thing about a snap election would be Johnson losing his own seat, the first PM to do so in modern times.
Labour could appoint a leader quickly if it needed to do so. Rules can be changed.
Good morning everyone; bright and sunny here today again! Essex cricket was extremely good yesterday!
On topic, I think it will be a disaster if Starmer is fined. I think he'll keep his promise to resign and Johnson will go all pseudo-moral about how he didn't have to resign. I think to that it might actually encourage him to go for a general election, as was suggested yesterday!
I think one thing that has been proved time and again is voters punish those who call unnecessary elections.
I think the true lessons of recent years are that (a) the worst outcome always happens and (b) Johnson always gets away with it. So I would expect if Starmer resigns then Johnson calls an election with Labour in disarray and wins it.
Labour needs to be very quick on this one therefore. Should Starmer resign, and then Johnson calls a 'snap' General Election, ignore the rules. Pick an alternative, permanent leader within 10 days perhaps just a simple MPs vote, and simply say to any dissenters that if you don't, you'll be lucky to hold Bootle.
People vote for parties yes.... but also Prime Ministers. Who would be standing at the debate? What would the answer be to the question, "Who will be Prime Minister in the event of a Labour win?"
On topic, I think Starmer resigning would be a benefit to Labour. His job of delousing is over, or nearly so, and the need is for some one with a bit more ability to generate excitement to take over.
Both parties are being dragged down by their leaders.
Corbyn generated excitement, fat lot of good that did Labour in 2019.
Of the most recent general elections won by the centre left in the US, Australia and Germany, all were won by the deathly dull ie Biden, Albanese and Scholz. The Socialist Hollande too won in France in 2012 despite being very boring
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Johnson and Sunak were fined, if Starmer was fined so almost certainly would Rayner be
Yes but other people at the same meeting were not.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
It does seem ironic that the most unionist party is the one doing so much damage to the union in both Scotland and NI.
Good morning everyone; bright and sunny here today again! Essex cricket was extremely good yesterday!
On topic, I think it will be a disaster if Starmer is fined. I think he'll keep his promise to resign and Johnson will go all pseudo-moral about how he didn't have to resign. I think to that it might actually encourage him to go for a general election, as was suggested yesterday!
Now that would be something completely shitty.
Your main political rival has just resigned and his party is therefore rudderless for a period. I've said before its completely crap that both the Labour and Liberal Democrats can take months (or even years) to hold their elections, so it's very likely it wouldn't get resolved should Johnson call an immediate General Election.
I'm piling in. Put the house on a GE should Starmer resign after getting fined........
The funniest thing about a snap election would be Johnson losing his own seat, the first PM to do so in modern times.
Labour could appoint a leader quickly if it needed to do so. Rules can be changed.
… and prime ministers haven’t always sat in the Commons! 😉
David Cameron responded to the vote against independence in 2014 by congratulating himself for being the prime minister who settled the matter once and for all. Very smug, very Cameron and very wrong.
The SNP is going to keep pushing until either it is removed from power, which doesn’t look likely in the foreseeable future, or it gets another crack at independence.
The Conservative party is now largely in the hands of people who claim to treasure the UK while trashing its unity. Once asked what he thought of independence for Scotland, Mr Johnson responded by humming the tune of There’ll Always Be an England. Since he and his fellow Brexiters took control, the Conservatives have become less a unionist party and more an English nationalist party.
On Mr Johnson’s to-do list, preserving the union comes a very long way behind saving his own skin. In so much as he thinks about Scotland at all, it is as a problem for the next prime minister. “Putting our fingers in our ears and saying nah-nah-di-nah-nah is not a sustainable position,” says one senior Tory who cares about the union.
Many at Westminster appear to take the view that something will turn up to make the Scottish question go away. It seems much more likely that it will continue to fester, trapping everyone in circular and rancorous arguments, until it is resolved one way or the other. Crudely relying on delaying tactics could rebound on the unionist cause.
Ms Sturgeon may very well fail to get a 2023 vote, but I have become convinced that Scotland’s future will not be settled definitively without a second referendum at some point. It takes two. [...as in Quebec]
Good morning
Excellent analysis
Having just listened to Sophie Ridge spending most of her interviews on the appalling Pitcher and the interminable indyref2 debate that seems never ending, I quite frankly despair at the present state of our nation
I see our own Aaron Bell is hoping to be elected to the 1922 and I wish him every success and back him 100% in his efforts to rid us of Johnson and his acolytes - it cannot come soon enough
Johnson will not call an election because the Tories will get hammered.
Anyone who thinks that Starmer going will make Boris go is dreaming. Boris will have to be prised out of No.10 with a crowbar and the Tories will not vote him out either because too many depend on his patronage and the rest also know that they will get hammered at the ballot box.
This is a party and PM who do not give a d*mn about public opinion - the Pincher incident is merely the current proof of this.
The election will be on the last possible day that they are legally forced to have it.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
As someone whose knowledge of Scottish politics is effectively zero please could someone explain what “zoomers” are and what “toom tabards” are - I see the phrases used but no idea why! Thanks
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Hint to Labour: behave like decent, honourable and dependable people. There are worrying indications that the Tory rot is spreading to HM Opposition. Soon decent folk on the big island will only have the Greens, Plaid, Liberal Democrats or SNP to choose from.
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Johnson and Sunak were fined, if Starmer was fined so almost certainly would Rayner be
But then Simon Case, a multiple party attended was not. Johnson too attendee events where minions were fined and he wasn't. I suspect Johnson realised taking an FPN if it meant Sunak would also received one was worth its weight in gold.
But I suspect Starmer, Rayner and Foy are all going down. In fact this single event will haul in a total for Durham Police of between 10 and 15% of all the Met fines issued. What did the Met actually do in their £450,000 investigation?
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
If only the same could be said about the politicians for whom the English vote. Of course there’s no obligation to discuss ‘it’ here.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
Agree and I am married to a Scot. Our view is it is up to them, but now we have Brexited it is much more difficult to justify.
Re NI I have the same position, although always with that nagging feeling that it really does belong in the south.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Well then, give them a referendum and shoot the SNP fox if you are so confident....
Johnson will not call an election because the Tories will get hammered.
Anyone who thinks that Starmer going will make Boris go is dreaming. Boris will have to be prised out of No.10 with a crowbar and the Tories will not vote him out either because too many depend on his patronage and the rest also know that they will get hammered at the ballot box.
This is a party and PM who do not give a d*mn about public opinion - the Pincher incident is merely the current proof of this.
The election will be on the last possible day that they are legally forced to have it.
I'm pretty sure in early 2010, a few on this site jokingly suggested the Parliament Act 1911 had a problem with it, and the 7 year term still allowed by the Septennial Act 1715 was the valid one.
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Johnson and Sunak were fined, if Starmer was fined so almost certainly would Rayner be
But then Simon Case, a multiple party attended was not. Johnson too attendee events where minions were fined and he wasn't. I suspect Johnson realised taking an FPN if it meant Sunak would also received one was worth its weight in gold.
But I suspect Starmer, Rayner and Foy are all going down. In fact this single event will haul in a total for Durham Police of between 10 and 15% of all the Met fines issued. What did the Met actually do in their £450,000 investigation?
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
Johnson will not call an election because the Tories will get hammered.
Anyone who thinks that Starmer going will make Boris go is dreaming. Boris will have to be prised out of No.10 with a crowbar and the Tories will not vote him out either because too many depend on his patronage and the rest also know that they will get hammered at the ballot box.
This is a party and PM who do not give a d*mn about public opinion - the Pincher incident is merely the current proof of this.
The election will be on the last possible day that they are legally forced to have it.
I'm pretty sure in early 2010, a few on this site jokingly suggested the Parliament Act 1911 had a problem with it, and the 7 year term still allowed by the Septennial Act 1715 was the valid one.
So Johnson could have until January 2027 before he needs to call an election? That would give him a satisfyingly long tenure that surpasses Cameron, which I suspect would cheer him immensely.
Don't see how his resignation puts pressure on phatboi. He'll just say Circs completely different, I shall continue to get the big calls right.
Indeed.
I’ve never understood arguments based upon the concept that Boris Johnson is concerned with ethics. It has been proven on hundreds of occasions that that is not the case.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Well then, give them a referendum and shoot the SNP fox if you are so confident....
Absolutely not, the poll was Scots do not want such a referendum and the UK government will ensure they don't get one, respecting the once in a generation 2014 vote
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
Agree and I am married to a Scot. Our view is it is up to them, but now we have Brexited it is much more difficult to justify.
Re NI I have the same position, although always with that nagging feeling that it really does belong in the south.
Correction: Badly worded the NI bit. My position is the same ie it is up to them, but the Brexit position is reversed. Unlike Scotland Brexit makes a breakaway more logical.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
Coming from a Brexiteer, you should know that argument is bollocks.
Good morning everyone; bright and sunny here today again! Essex cricket was extremely good yesterday!
On topic, I think it will be a disaster if Starmer is fined. I think he'll keep his promise to resign and Johnson will go all pseudo-moral about how he didn't have to resign. I think to that it might actually encourage him to go for a general election, as was suggested yesterday!
I think one thing that has been proved time and again is voters punish those who call unnecessary elections.
I think the true lessons of recent years are that (a) the worst outcome always happens and (b) Johnson always gets away with it. So I would expect if Starmer resigns then Johnson calls an election with Labour in disarray and wins it.
Labour needs to be very quick on this one therefore. Should Starmer resign, and then Johnson calls a 'snap' General Election, ignore the rules. Pick an alternative, permanent leader within 10 days perhaps just a simple MPs vote, and simply say to any dissenters that if you don't, you'll be lucky to hold Bootle.
People vote for parties yes.... but also Prime Ministers. Who would be standing at the debate? What would the answer be to the question, "Who will be Prime Minister in the event of a Labour win?"
Johnson calling an election from the bottom of his deepening hole at just the moment when Labour has a vacancy for leader would be seen as so irresponsibly opportunist that Labour would win the election without one.
Indeed the question could be thrown back at the Tories, "Who will be leader when your lying hypocrite loses his seat?"
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
“We hate the English, they don’t care about us, Vote Yes”. Makes sense to me, a lot of truth in it.
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
‘However I will repeatedly sift through and cherrypick these polls to support my Falangist views.’
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Well then, give them a referendum and shoot the SNP fox if you are so confident....
Absolutely not, the poll was Scots do not want such a referendum and the UK government will ensure they don't get one, respecting the once in a generation 2014 vote
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Well then, give them a referendum and shoot the SNP fox if you are so confident....
Absolutely not, the poll was Scots do not want such a referendum and the UK government will ensure they don't get one, respecting the once in a generation 2014 vote
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Johnson and Sunak were fined, if Starmer was fined so almost certainly would Rayner be
But then Simon Case, a multiple party attended was not. Johnson too attendee events where minions were fined and he wasn't. I suspect Johnson realised taking an FPN if it meant Sunak would also received one was worth its weight in gold.
But I suspect Starmer, Rayner and Foy are all going down. In fact this single event will haul in a total for Durham Police of between 10 and 15% of all the Met fines issued. What did the Met actually do in their £450,000 investigation?
Staff party?
But surely, if one takes the hit, all should take the hit. Which is what did for poor Mr Sunak (although Case seems above the law).
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
Agree and I am married to a Scot. Our view is it is up to them, but now we have Brexited it is much more difficult to justify.
Re NI I have the same position, although always with that nagging feeling that it really does belong in the south.
Correction: Badly worded the NI bit. My position is the same ie it is up to them, but the Brexit position is reversed. Unlike Scotland Brexit makes a breakaway more logical.
Most of the Protestant Unionist areas of Northern Ireland voted for Brexit
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
“We hate the English, they don’t care about us, Vote Yes”. Makes sense to me, a lot of truth in it.
I have been groped a number of times - including being jumped on by a group of Korean girls in the snow (long story) but never felt uncomfortable about it -except once. I was at a black tie dinner and one of my wifes friends asked me to dance - she kept putting her hands inside my jacket and groping my chest when she couldnt be seen. When I told her to back off she started kissing me on the neck and told me I was enjoing it..I managed to get her to sit down but then thought about what if it had been other way around...
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
Surely the lesson of Brexit is that emotion can out-vote common sense in such matters.
Except we are told the Scots are above that.
Which is why they voted to Remain. Even though the case for neither heart or head was made by the Remain campaign.
On topic, I think Starmer resigning would be a benefit to Labour. His job of delousing is over, or nearly so, and the need is for some one with a bit more ability to generate excitement to take over.
Both parties are being dragged down by their leaders.
Corbyn generated excitement, fat lot of good that did Labour in 2019.
Of the most recent general elections won by the centre left in the US, Australia and Germany, all were won by the deathly dull ie Biden, Albanese and Scholz. The Socialist Hollande too won in France in 2012 despite being very boring
No point generating loads of love among your supporters if you generate even more fear and loathing amongst your opponents and the undecided.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
Panelbase: Sunday Times - voting intention Westminster
SNP 47% (+5) Lab 23% (-1) Con 19% (-2) LD 8% (+1) oth 3% (-2)
(+/- Panelbase/Sunday Times 26-29 April)
Baxtered (new boundaries):
SNP 53 seats (+5) LD 2 seats (nc) Lab 1 seat (nc) Con 1 seat (-5)
Oh come on @StuartDickson, can't you see that the real headline should be:
"LibDem surge in Scotland sees them predicted to win as many seats as Conservatives and Labour combined"
Oh sorry, I forgot. Your dad does have a rare talent for seeing the Peril upside. Only exceeded by the singular talents of the late, and much missed, Mark Senior.
The Unionists could do with a Mark or two right now.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
Next Tory leader. Wallace leads Mordaunt by two votes in over seven hundred. July 3, 2022
Far from licking our lips at the prospect of a leadership election, ConservativeHome hasn’t asked this question for over six months.
When we did, Liz Truss led Rishi Sunak by 20 votes – 181 to 161; 23 per cent to 20 per cent.
Since then, the Chancellor has been engulfed by the controversy about his wife’s former non-dom status and his previous possession of a U.S green card. He is now ninth in the table on five per cent.
Ben Wallace, who wasn’t even named in the December question, comes top in this survey. He has 119 votes and is on 16 per cent.
Penny Mordaunt is second by only a sliver. She has 117 votes and is on the same percentage.
The Defence Secretary has topped our Cabinet League Table since February, so that he also leads our Next Leader Survey is perhaps unsurprising.
Mordaunt’s second place, above seven Cabinet members, is more startling.
It’s very hard for a non-Cabinet Minister to gain the profile of a Cabinet Minister – or of a prominent backbencher either, who will be free to say what he thinks. But the Trade Minister is somehow managing a bit of both. She makes no pretence of having backed Boris Johnson in the recent leadership ballot, operates in the Government as a semi-independent, and has a way of pushing populist buttons – on tax cuts, for example.
The Prime Minister may not be in a strong enough position to fire her, and either way she is making hay while the sun shines.
Truss is third with 14 per cent. It may be that the association of the top Cabinet members with Johnson is tarnishing their brand among some members of the panel.
On the other hand, 39 panel members have refused to answer the question.
This is a higher refusenik total than elsewhere in the survey, and these will be the Prime Ministerial loyalists – believing that there is no vacancy and that the question is premature.
However, well over 700 take a different view, and that speaks for itself.
No potential leadership candidate other than our top three gets into double figures percentage-wise. And obviously, if no candidate can amass more than 16 per cent, then the next Conservative leadership election looks currently wide open.
Which is why tomorrow we will publish play-off results.
We will put the top MPs named, and others, up against each other – and see what happens when the panel is offered a choice, and cannot instead support a third party.
One of the major problems for the Union is the ever diminishing footprint of the UK government in Scotland. Yes Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown, I am looking at you, metaphysically in the first case. The proposition that devolution or devomax was ever going to reduce the desire of the significant minority who want independence is and always was complete muppetry. Of course it has not worked. It was always irrational.
What the average Scot now sees is a country where education, health, housing, criminal justice, care and, now, thanks to the muppets, Social Security is run by the idiots in Holyrood as opposed to the incompetent sex pests in Westminster. The man in Whitehall is more and more irrelevant to the way that they live their lives.
What does the Union mean in Scotland? Well, defence, foreign policy, interest rates, broader macroeconomic policy and no doubt some other bits and pieces. It hardly sets the pulses racing for the majority. I accept my strong interest in these things is very much a minority interest.
In reality, of course, it is much more important. We have access to the SM with the rest of the UK, we have freedom of movement within it, our NHS can and does call for support from its bigger neighbour in times of crisis and our financial services industry has the support of both the BoE and the FSA which gives them huge international weight. But these very considerable advantages are nebulous and hard for most Scots to see. Having had them their entire lives it is hard to contemplate their absence.
This government, specifically Michael Gove, has recognised the problem but, other than sticking large Union Jacks on UK government buildings, it has struggled to do much about it. There were some attempts to emphasise during Covid that it was the UK government that was coming to the rescue with Furlough, bounce back loans etc, but it is not clear how successful that was.
Last time around the Better Together campaign was led by Darling who found it incredibly difficult to say much that was good about the UK in case he was thought to be cheering on the Conservative government. Only Ruth Davidson was positive about the Union. The campaign was negative and, in many respects, project fear. This was a mistake that cannot be repeated. The case for the Union, the benefits it gives to Scots, the increased standing in the world and just how much we have in common needs to be put forward loud and proud.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
As he has exhibited on multiple occasions on this forum, HY is perfectly comfortable with the concept of political violence. He is a self-avowed Franco fan.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
Was considering the runners and riders within the Conservative Party to replace Johnson as PM again yesterday evening, on the assumption that the replacement will fit the pattern of previously holding a great office of state (Chancellor, Foreign, Home), and also being a current MP.
I believe that gives these candidates: Sunak Javid Truss Raab Hunt Patel May I'm fairly confident that Raab and Patel would be even less popular in Scotland than Johnson. I'm not sure about the others. Don't believe the hype. Things can always get worse.
It's perhaps not surprising that none of the males here are admitting to ever behaving in inappropriately!
A theory about that.
Some comments from @Cyclefree got me thinking - I and the men I would consider friends regard even the lowest level harassment stuff as unacceptable. We would instantly ditch any bottom pinchers as abhorrent - I can recall an occasion many years ago, where a friend brought someone along on a night out who harassed a waitress. That killed the evening and he (the arsehole) was not seen again.
The problem is that this creates a filter on your view of the world. By excluding such people, some may think they don’t exist. I think that such people are somewhat like the various drug sub cultures - they seek out and gravitate towards people who accept them. And (if successful in life) are adept at hiding their behaviour from those who don’t go along with it.
Probably why he was known as Pincher by name, pincher by nature then........
The downfall of such… characters is that with years of getting away with it, they become bolder and more careless. A reputation appears. Finally they do something in front of people who will take action.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
The sort of incisive deep analysis of the geo-political situation that explains why our Prime Minister is seen across the world as a diplomatic colossus...
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
It’s inevitable anyway. If HYUFD’s tanks and Dickson’s/TUD’s reflexive blood and soil Anglophobia are in any way reflective of opinion on both sides of this petty nationalistic debate then we may as well start the shooting now to get it over with. So depressing.
Next Tory leader. Wallace leads Mordaunt by two votes in over seven hundred. July 3, 2022
Far from licking our lips at the prospect of a leadership election, ConservativeHome hasn’t asked this question for over six months.
When we did, Liz Truss led Rishi Sunak by 20 votes – 181 to 161; 23 per cent to 20 per cent.
Since then, the Chancellor has been engulfed by the controversy about his wife’s former non-dom status and his previous possession of a U.S green card. He is now ninth in the table on five per cent.
Ben Wallace, who wasn’t even named in the December question, comes top in this survey. He has 119 votes and is on 16 per cent.
Penny Mordaunt is second by only a sliver. She has 117 votes and is on the same percentage.
The Defence Secretary has topped our Cabinet League Table since February, so that he also leads our Next Leader Survey is perhaps unsurprising.
Mordaunt’s second place, above seven Cabinet members, is more startling.
It’s very hard for a non-Cabinet Minister to gain the profile of a Cabinet Minister – or of a prominent backbencher either, who will be free to say what he thinks. But the Trade Minister is somehow managing a bit of both. She makes no pretence of having backed Boris Johnson in the recent leadership ballot, operates in the Government as a semi-independent, and has a way of pushing populist buttons – on tax cuts, for example.
The Prime Minister may not be in a strong enough position to fire her, and either way she is making hay while the sun shines.
Truss is third with 14 per cent. It may be that the association of the top Cabinet members with Johnson is tarnishing their brand among some members of the panel.
On the other hand, 39 panel members have refused to answer the question.
This is a higher refusenik total than elsewhere in the survey, and these will be the Prime Ministerial loyalists – believing that there is no vacancy and that the question is premature.
However, well over 700 take a different view, and that speaks for itself.
No potential leadership candidate other than our top three gets into double figures percentage-wise. And obviously, if no candidate can amass more than 16 per cent, then the next Conservative leadership election looks currently wide open.
Which is why tomorrow we will publish play-off results.
We will put the top MPs named, and others, up against each other – and see what happens when the panel is offered a choice, and cannot instead support a third party.
Yes, Ben Wallace leads the new ConHome next Tory leader survey (I also took part in it last week as a Tory member).
For God's sake why don't they end their own misery? I know most of them know they would not be in the next leaders cabinet because they are shite but at least some of them must fancy they would be:
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 47m It's going to be interesting to see how this is going to play out over the next few hours. Because I'm pretty sure there are a number of senior cabinet ministers who will point blank refuse to peddle the line Boris didn't know and they didn't know.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Yes, making the same error as the Remain campaign, talking down the country, concentrating on economics, and failing to make an emotional case and vision for the future together.
The independence campaign will continue to fail as long as all it has is the emotional case and refuses to engage with the big picture: currency, jobs, pensions, head of state, hosting nuclear weapons, the cost of rejoining the EU....
The most prolific Recruiting Sergeant for Independence is the continuation of the Boris Johnson premiership.
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
Was considering the runners and riders within the Conservative Party to replace Johnson as PM again yesterday evening, on the assumption that the replacement will fit the pattern of previously holding a great office of state (Chancellor, Foreign, Home), and also being a current MP.
I believe that gives these candidates: Sunak Javid Truss Raab Hunt Patel May I'm fairly confident that Raab and Patel would be even less popular in Scotland than Johnson. I'm not sure about the others. Don't believe the hype. Things can always get worse.
And when you consider that the top two in the ConHome survey aren't on that list, it speaks of a party that, deep down, is longing for some time out of government to get its head together.
The other thing. If you wanted a leader to clean up the party... Someone untainted by association with 2019-whenever, with the grim moral certainty that you only get as a child of the vicarage... One name stands out.
It won't happen, it shouldn't happen, but it would be maximum bants.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
Not when you consider the gap between reality and self-image, with which the English already struggle - hence the nonsense of Brexit in the first place, the generation in power having been brought up on the stories of Britain bestriding the world and never coming to terms with our future as a key player inside the European family. Losing Scotland would make this acute - whereas the Scots never pretended nor aspire to lead the world. Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst will be prize enough.
It's perhaps not surprising that none of the males here are admitting to ever behaving in inappropriately!
A theory about that.
Some comments from @Cyclefree got me thinking - I and the men I would consider friends regard even the lowest level harassment stuff as unacceptable. We would instantly ditch any bottom pinchers as abhorrent - I can recall an occasion many years ago, where a friend brought someone along on a night out who harassed a waitress. That killed the evening and he (the arsehole) was not seen again.
The problem is that this creates a filter on your view of the world. By excluding such people, some may think they don’t exist. I think that such people are somewhat like the various drug sub cultures - they seek out and gravitate towards people who accept them. And (if successful in life) are adept at hiding their behaviour from those who don’t go along with it.
Probably why he was known as Pincher by name, pincher by nature then........
The downfall of such… characters is that with years of getting away with it, they become bolder and more careless. A reputation appears. Finally they do something in front of people who will take action.
See Harvey Weinstein.
There is probably a reasonable disconnect between the flatter management structures of a lot of middle class employers and institutions like the Tory Party (Pincher), the Met (Couzens) or Hollywood (Weinstein), where individuals and seniority have more power than they should.
As someone whose knowledge of Scottish politics is effectively zero please could someone explain what “zoomers” are and what “toom tabards” are - I see the phrases used but no idea why! Thanks
A toom tabard (a phrase @malcolmg is particularly keen on) is an empty jacket, a person of no weight or influence, a no mark. It was a nickname for John Balliol who was notionally King during the wars of indepedence but had no influence or power within Scotland itself. I think @malcolmg uses it to describe people as placemen of the English as Balliol was.
Zoomers I am a little less sure of the etymology of. I think it had to do with the early days of the internet where very keen Nationalists would race to use every opportunity to promote independence and gleefully explain why each and every development meant that it was all the more inevitable, something we see all too often to this day, and not least this morning.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
Not when you consider the gap between reality and self-image, with which the English already struggle - hence the nonsense of Brexit in the first place, the generation in power having been brought up on the stories of Britain bestriding the world and never coming to terms with our future as a key player inside the European family. Losing Scotland would make this acute - whereas the Scots never pretended nor aspire to lead the world. Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst will be prize enough.
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
Yes, the Union is reserved to Westminster. If 98% backed independence it might make it practically more difficult to enforce the Union but legally and constitutionally it would remain a matter for the UK government.
Scots had their referendum in 2014 which was supposed to be once a generation. When the Catalan nationalist government held a referendum in independence in 2017 the Spanish government and courts banned it, refused to recognise it and arrested the Catalan nationalist leaders for sedition.
Scottish nationalists should be grateful they were allowed even 1 vote. The GFA of course only came about after 30 years of terrorism and Westminster direct rule in NI
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
You are like a broken record and just add votes to the independence cause
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
Yes, the Union is reserved to Westminster. If 98% backed independence it might make it practically more difficult to enforce the Union but legally and constitutionally it would remain a matter for the UK government.
Scots had their referendum in 2014 which was supposed to be once a generation. When the Catalan nationalist government held a referendum in independence in 2017 the Spanish government and courts banned it, refused to recognise it and arrested the Catalan nationalist leaders for sedition.
Scottish nationalists should be grateful they were allowed even 1 vote. The GFA of course only came about after 30 years of terrorism and Westminster direct rule in NI
You and Dickson really are two cheeks of the same narrow nationalistic arse.
Visegrád 24 @visegrad24 · 10h The Uzbek Army is starting to mobilize troops in Karakalpakstan, the region which is now seeing mass protests against the government.
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
It’s inevitable anyway. If HYUFD’s tanks and Dickson’s/TUD’s reflexive blood and soil Anglophobia are in any way reflective of opinion on both sides of this petty nationalistic debate then we may as well start the shooting now to get it over with. So depressing.
Your self imposed ban doesn't seem to be worth the pious pixels with which it was written.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
You are like a broken record and just add votes to the independence cause
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
Scots are hardly imprisoned.
To properly imprison Scottish nationalists, no referendum would have been allowed even in 2014. Holyrood would have been scrapped and direct rule imposed on Scotland from Westminster after all Scottish MPs had also been expelled from the Commons
Oliver Carroll @olliecarroll Breaking: Russ Ministry of Defence claims Kyiv fired Tochka ballistic missiles w cluster munitions on residential districts in Kursk and Belgorod overnight. Claim is absurd to anyone 1/2 serious or interested in truth. But I do worry Moscow talking itself into another escalation
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
Not when you consider the gap between reality and self-image, with which the English already struggle - hence the nonsense of Brexit in the first place, the generation in power having been brought up on the stories of Britain bestriding the world and never coming to terms with our future as a key player inside the European family. Losing Scotland would make this acute - whereas the Scots never pretended nor aspire to lead the world. Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst will be prize enough.
What a load of rubbish. The whole reason the Union came about in the first place was Scotland was trying to build an empire via the Darien Scheme which collapsed leading to its Parliament pleading to join England to form the UK.
As for English grief if Scotland went, rubbish, England would swing harder to the Nationalist, Brexit right, a hard right government would be elected to take as hard a line with Edinburgh in Scexit negotiations as Brussels took with the UK after the Brexit vote.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
You are like a broken record and just add votes to the independence cause
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
Scots are hardly imprisoned.
To properly imprison Scottish nationalists, no referendum would have been allowed even in 2014. Holyrood would have been scrapped and direct rule imposed on Scotland from Westminster after all Scottish MPs had also been expelled from the Commons
Incredible to think it's been two whole days since "The PM thinks he's done the decent thing by resigning. There is no need for an investigation and no need to suspend the whip" https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1543521260335947778
An interesting twist would be if Starmer is fined (and resigns) but Rayner is not fined, so does not resign. A lot of the other FPN cases have been that random.
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Another interesting option would be they both are fined, they both agree to resign, but they are staggered so SKS resigns, Rayner is interim leader while they elect a new one, then she resigns.
Does BoZo try and call an election in those circumstances?
Wouldn't it be a joyous irony if Johnson calls and wins a GE as a direct result of Partygate.
The nation and the Union are done for, but hats off to BigDog. Pure Trumpism!
Again, what is No.10's strategy here. The claim Boris didn't know is a lie. Today he's hiding behind Therese Coffey. But he can't hide forever. He's going to be asked about it in Parliament. Is he going to lie to the Commons again? And then be investigated again? https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1543518385023115265
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
Do you not see that your reply does not respond to the point being made and therefore you lose support for your argument. Stuart has made the point (as he did earlier in the thread and one I responded to) that you state something that does not logically follow from the previous statement. You then respond with something completely unrelated. There is no discussion.
You did this with me the other day. I was actually agreeing with you on something. I asked some questions and you replied with nonsense. You seem unable to comprehend stuff people post, you seem unable to comprehend irony or sarcasm so misunderstand whether someone is in agreement or not, and you don't understand logical flow in a debate.
FYI If I had a vote on Scottish Independence I would vote 'No' [although I would qualify that with a) I shouldn't get a vote and b) it being based upon little knowledge as I am not a Scot and 500 miles away, but because the UK Brexiting makes such a decision very damaging]
I bet you didn't expect that as I am arguing with you.
But that is because your arguments, as with many things, do far more damage to the cause you support, because people like me who may agree with you end up arguing with you rather than the other side because you spout such nonsense.
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
It’s inevitable anyway. If HYUFD’s tanks and Dickson’s/TUD’s reflexive blood and soil Anglophobia are in any way reflective of opinion on both sides of this petty nationalistic debate then we may as well start the shooting now to get it over with. So depressing.
Like I said, I gave it up this morning. In any event I’m not commenting on Scotland’s constitutional status, I’m commenting on the narrowness of thinking of three specific ultra nationalist posters on this board. One of whom happens to be you
Your self imposed ban doesn't seem to be worth the pious pixels with which it was written.
Im commenting not on Scotland’s constitutional status but on the narrow ethnic nationalism of three specific posters that I named. One of which happened to be you. When you get over yourself and your view that the Celt is in some way more truthful, honest, just NICER than the benighted Saxon come back and talk to be about piety. Until then you Dickson and HYUFD can go sit in a room and sort it out however you choose.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
You are like a broken record and just add votes to the independence cause
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
Scots are hardly imprisoned.
To properly imprison Scottish nationalists, no referendum would have been allowed even in 2014. Holyrood would have been scrapped and direct rule imposed on Scotland from Westminster after all Scottish MPs had also been expelled from the Commons
Your problem is that you are an aggressive anti Scot Little Englander who has no connection or interest in Scotland or the Sots and think that you can prevent them exercising a democratic choice by bullying and intimidation that enflames and drives more supporters to the cause rather than being diplomatic and accepting the real politics of this and negotiating a referendum and going out to win it
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
Not when you consider the gap between reality and self-image, with which the English already struggle - hence the nonsense of Brexit in the first place, the generation in power having been brought up on the stories of Britain bestriding the world and never coming to terms with our future as a key player inside the European family. Losing Scotland would make this acute - whereas the Scots never pretended nor aspire to lead the world. Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst will be prize enough.
Just go. It’s boring now. Claim your “prize”.
Afaicr IanB2 is an English LD who lives on the south coast of England. What prize do you think he's claiming?
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
But it's true. Scotland generally and independence specifically is barely ever talked about by English people in my experience. The only place I ever discuss it is here. There's this weird Nat idea that the English are obsessed about the union, in reality the English barely ever think about the other countries.
And when it is - particularly when actually visiting Scotland - I think the English (and Americans) find it very easy to sympathise, even empathise, with the sort of romantic Outlander-style faux-Scottish history that will feature heavily in any IndyRef2 campaign and will have a lot of us quietly cheering the Scots along. Just so long as we don't sit down in a cooler moment and consider what sort of miserable rump of a country we'd have left to us afterwards.
England alone would still be the 7th largest economy in the world and a permanent member of the Security Council. An independent Scotland would not even be in the top 50 largest economies, have a massive deficit and face a hard border at Berwick with England, its largest export market.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
Not when you consider the gap between reality and self-image, with which the English already struggle - hence the nonsense of Brexit in the first place, the generation in power having been brought up on the stories of Britain bestriding the world and never coming to terms with our future as a key player inside the European family. Losing Scotland would make this acute - whereas the Scots never pretended nor aspire to lead the world. Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst will be prize enough.
Just go. It’s boring now. Claim your “prize”.
Afaicr IanB2 is an English LD who lives on the south coast of England. What prize do you think he's claiming?
“ Watching England's self-imposed grief and angst…”
One teensy weensy Yes poll lead and the Unionists collapse into a writhing knot of bottomless grief.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
No we haven't at all, we are just going to continue to refuse an indyref2 for a generation after 2014. We don't care less about individual independence polls as the UK government will just refuse an official indyref2, making such polls irrelevant
If there was a poll that showed 98% in favour of independence would you still hold that view?
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
It’s inevitable anyway. If HYUFD’s tanks and Dickson’s/TUD’s reflexive blood and soil Anglophobia are in any way reflective of opinion on both sides of this petty nationalistic debate then we may as well start the shooting now to get it over with. So depressing.
Like I said, I gave it up this morning. In any event I’m not commenting on Scotland’s constitutional status, I’m commenting on the narrowness of thinking of three specific ultra nationalist posters on this board. One of whom happens to be you
Your self imposed ban doesn't seem to be worth the pious pixels with which it was written.
Im commenting not on Scotland’s constitutional status but on the narrow ethnic nationalism of three specific posters that I named. One of which happened to be you. When you get over yourself and your view that the Celt is in some way more truthful, honest, just NICER than the benighted Saxon come back and talk to be about piety. Until then you Dickson and HYUFD can go sit in a room and sort it out however you choose.
Fucking up the quote system, a sure sign of losing it.
The Yoons are at the ‘everyone knows Panelbase are biased in favour of the Nats’ stage of grief. The poor souls have been on tenterhooks waiting for a big dip in the polls for Indy and the SNP since Nicola’s disastrous indyref announcement.
I don’t understand why Unionists have given up arguing the merits of the Union. They are now 99% focused on fundamentally anti-Scottish and anti-democracy lines of argument. Such tactics are only going to achieve a strategic result that they will find profoundly unpleasant.
Engage dear chaps. Engage.
Why do you care? Everyone knows that Scottish Independence is an inevitability. Your presence on here is to add fuel to your oppression fantasies. You’re mistaking a lot of us for unionists when far fewer of us are than you think.
Perhaps the SNP should adopt the slogan: vote yes because no-one in England cares very much about Scotland one way or the other.
Perhaps untrue.
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK: No 69% Yes 10% DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Most Scots do not want an indyref2 next year based on the latest polls, yes
Today’s non sequitur du jour.
The SNP are like a screaming toddler always demanding more.
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
You are like a broken record and just add votes to the independence cause
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
Scots are hardly imprisoned.
To properly imprison Scottish nationalists, no referendum would have been allowed even in 2014. Holyrood would have been scrapped and direct rule imposed on Scotland from Westminster after all Scottish MPs had also been expelled from the Commons
Your problem is that you are an aggressive anti Scot Little Englander who has no connection or interest in Scotland or the Sots and think that you can prevent them exercising a democratic choice by bullying and intimidation that enflames and drives more supporters to the cause rather than being diplomatic and accepting the real politics of this and negotiating a referendum and going out to win it
No I am not, if I was I would have voted for Brexit and happily see Scotland go. I just refuse to appease and give in to the SNP and their endless demands for independence referendums until they get the result they want
Comments
The British people voted to make themselves poorer, why shouldn't the Scottish?
Edit to add: should have said "even more tactical voting"
Once Johnson has been seen off, I suspect more in Scotland will consider the Union the happier place to be. Of course by the time that moment arrives it might all be too late.
Tanks, gun-boats and truncheons are your tools, not pocket calculators.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7963e940-fa3d-11ec-9dc9-dea4f592180c?shareToken=fc924b7a21ac954bfffbf8e3e5024441
The chap starting second is favourite to win. The chap starting third is second favourite. The pole-sitter is third favourite.
The man starting 5th has shorter odds than the man starting 4th by some margin (11 to 17).
Interesting to see usual grid positions to odds distorted by weight of money on Verstappen and Hamilton.
[For Verstappen, this is justified. It remains to be seen if Mercedes have improved their car enough. An interesting comment I read elsewhere was that the higher car position due to tread on the intermediates would also have helped Hamilton out, alongside his substantial wet weather skills].
This poll destroys even that SNP tactic
It was 55-45 last time after all, it will only take a relatively small number more to simply not care about this issues this time and then its on a knife edge.
Both parties are being dragged down by their leaders.
The problem is that that SCon 8% figure is already rock-bottom, core Tory true believer territory. These are not folk easily shifted. Ditto SLab 10%.
On PB we sometimes look at The Big Picture and wonder why voters don’t do the “obvious” thing? But people are just people: not everyone thinks like a psephological genius.
Your main political rival has just resigned and his party is therefore rudderless for a period. I've said before its completely crap that both the Labour and Liberal Democrats can take months (or even years) to hold their elections, so it's very likely it wouldn't get resolved should Johnson call an immediate General Election.
I'm piling in. Put the house on a GE should Starmer resign after getting fined........
Ms Rayner is a good Commons performer and I have long been a fan.
Does BoZo try and call an election in those circumstances?
"Sturgeon’s announcement last week felt like the beginning of the end of her leadership" | @euanmccolm
https://trib.al/PRL9Cey
Should Scotland be an independent country?
UK:
No 69%
Yes 10%
DK 21%
(Techne UK; Sample size 1,632; 29-30 June)
What is not given is the *strength* of conviction. An awful lot of English shrugs out there. Compare and contrast with the Scots themselves.
Labour could appoint a leader quickly if it needed to do so. Rules can be changed.
People vote for parties yes.... but also Prime Ministers. Who would be standing at the debate? What would the answer be to the question, "Who will be Prime Minister in the event of a Labour win?"
Of the most recent general elections won by the centre left in the US, Australia and Germany, all were won by the deathly dull ie Biden, Albanese and Scholz. The Socialist Hollande too won in France in 2012 despite being very boring
Excellent analysis
Having just listened to Sophie Ridge spending most of her interviews on the appalling Pitcher and the interminable indyref2 debate that seems never ending, I quite frankly despair at the present state of our nation
I see our own Aaron Bell is hoping to be elected to the 1922 and I wish him every success and back him 100% in his efforts to rid us of Johnson and his acolytes - it cannot come soon enough
Anyone who thinks that Starmer going will make Boris go is dreaming. Boris will have to be prised out of No.10 with a crowbar and the Tories will not vote him out either because too many depend on his patronage and the rest also know that they will get hammered at the ballot box.
This is a party and PM who do not give a d*mn about public opinion - the Pincher incident is merely the current proof of this.
The election will be on the last possible day that they are legally forced to have it.
… and David Herdson.
But I suspect Starmer, Rayner and Foy are all going down. In fact this single event will haul in a total for Durham Police of between 10 and 15% of all the Met fines issued. What did the Met actually do in their £450,000 investigation?
Of course there’s no obligation to discuss ‘it’ here.
Re NI I have the same position, although always with that nagging feeling that it really does belong in the south.
When the historians analyse the fall of the British state, they will write screeds on the extinction of the once-famous Victorian stiff upper lip.
https://twitter.com/benarty/status/1543493913268338688?s=21&t=kbzXFSAk2vVBaQzr_vKQBA
I’ve never understood arguments based upon the concept that Boris Johnson is concerned with ethics. It has been proven on hundreds of occasions that that is not the case.
Indeed the question could be thrown back at the Tories, "Who will be leader when your lying hypocrite loses his seat?"
Which is why they voted to Remain. Even though the case for neither heart or head was made by the Remain campaign.
The Unionists could do with a Mark or two right now.
Coffey: to the best of my knowledge the PM didn’t know about any specific allegations.
SR: have you spoken to the PM?
TC: no.. it’s been a busy international week…
SR: who told you then?
TC: someone in the number 10 press team.
SR: how are you sure
ad infinitum
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1543517404617129984
No. You had your referendum in 2014 you lost it, you are not getting another one for a generation
If yes do you not see the conflict with your previous stance of being happy to give into violence in NI but not concede anything to peaceful democrats?
There lies future terrorism.
Our survey.
Next Tory leader. Wallace leads Mordaunt by two votes in over seven hundred.
July 3, 2022
Far from licking our lips at the prospect of a leadership election, ConservativeHome hasn’t asked this question for over six months.
When we did, Liz Truss led Rishi Sunak by 20 votes – 181 to 161; 23 per cent to 20 per cent.
Since then, the Chancellor has been engulfed by the controversy about his wife’s former non-dom status and his previous possession of a U.S green card. He is now ninth in the table on five per cent.
Ben Wallace, who wasn’t even named in the December question, comes top in this survey. He has 119 votes and is on 16 per cent.
Penny Mordaunt is second by only a sliver. She has 117 votes and is on the same percentage.
The Defence Secretary has topped our Cabinet League Table since February, so that he also leads our Next Leader Survey is perhaps unsurprising.
Mordaunt’s second place, above seven Cabinet members, is more startling.
It’s very hard for a non-Cabinet Minister to gain the profile of a Cabinet Minister – or of a prominent backbencher either, who will be free to say what he thinks. But the Trade Minister is somehow managing a bit of both. She makes no pretence of having backed Boris Johnson in the recent leadership ballot, operates in the Government as a semi-independent, and has a way of pushing populist buttons – on tax cuts, for example.
The Prime Minister may not be in a strong enough position to fire her, and either way she is making hay while the sun shines.
Truss is third with 14 per cent. It may be that the association of the top Cabinet members with Johnson is tarnishing their brand among some members of the panel.
On the other hand, 39 panel members have refused to answer the question.
This is a higher refusenik total than elsewhere in the survey, and these will be the Prime Ministerial loyalists – believing that there is no vacancy and that the question is premature.
However, well over 700 take a different view, and that speaks for itself.
No potential leadership candidate other than our top three gets into double figures percentage-wise. And obviously, if no candidate can amass more than 16 per cent, then the next Conservative leadership election looks currently wide open.
Which is why tomorrow we will publish play-off results.
We will put the top MPs named, and others, up against each other – and see what happens when the panel is offered a choice, and cannot instead support a third party.
What the average Scot now sees is a country where education, health, housing, criminal justice, care and, now, thanks to the muppets, Social Security is run by the idiots in Holyrood as opposed to the incompetent sex pests in Westminster. The man in Whitehall is more and more irrelevant to the way that they live their lives.
What does the Union mean in Scotland? Well, defence, foreign policy, interest rates, broader macroeconomic policy and no doubt some other bits and pieces. It hardly sets the pulses racing for the majority. I accept my strong interest in these things is very much a minority interest.
In reality, of course, it is much more important. We have access to the SM with the rest of the UK, we have freedom of movement within it, our NHS can and does call for support from its bigger neighbour in times of crisis and our financial services industry has the support of both the BoE and the FSA which gives them huge international weight. But these very considerable advantages are nebulous and hard for most Scots to see. Having had them their entire lives it is hard to contemplate their absence.
This government, specifically Michael Gove, has recognised the problem but, other than sticking large Union Jacks on UK government buildings, it has struggled to do much about it. There were some attempts to emphasise during Covid that it was the UK government that was coming to the rescue with Furlough, bounce back loans etc, but it is not clear how successful that was.
Last time around the Better Together campaign was led by Darling who found it incredibly difficult to say much that was good about the UK in case he was thought to be cheering on the Conservative government. Only Ruth Davidson was positive about the Union. The campaign was negative and, in many respects, project fear. This was a mistake that cannot be repeated. The case for the Union, the benefits it gives to Scots, the increased standing in the world and just how much we have in common needs to be put forward loud and proud.
The end of the UK would hit both Scotland and England but would hit Scotland more
I believe that gives these candidates:
Sunak
Javid
Truss
Raab
Hunt
Patel
May
I'm fairly confident that Raab and Patel would be even less popular in Scotland than Johnson. I'm not sure about the others. Don't believe the hype. Things can always get worse.
See Harvey Weinstein.
Full figures:
Wallace 15.7%
Mordaunt 15.5%
Truss 13%
Tugenhadt 7%
Zahawi 6%
Hunt 6%
Baker 6%
Badenoch 5%
Sunak 5%
Raab 4%
Gove 4%
Javid 2%
Patel 2%
Brady 1%
Harper 1%
Head to heads out tomorrow
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/03/our-survey-next-tory-leader-wallace-leads-mordaunt-by-two-votes-in-over-seven-hundred/
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
47m
It's going to be interesting to see how this is going to play out over the next few hours. Because I'm pretty sure there are a number of senior cabinet ministers who will point blank refuse to peddle the line Boris didn't know and they didn't know.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1543508447337107456
The other thing. If you wanted a leader to clean up the party... Someone untainted by association with 2019-whenever, with the grim moral certainty that you only get as a child of the vicarage... One name stands out.
It won't happen, it shouldn't happen, but it would be maximum bants.
Zoomers I am a little less sure of the etymology of. I think it had to do with the early days of the internet where very keen Nationalists would race to use every opportunity to promote independence and gleefully explain why each and every development meant that it was all the more inevitable, something we see all too often to this day, and not least this morning.
Scots had their referendum in 2014 which was supposed to be once a generation. When the Catalan nationalist government held a referendum in independence in 2017 the Spanish government and courts banned it, refused to recognise it and arrested the Catalan nationalist leaders for sedition.
Scottish nationalists should be grateful they were allowed even 1 vote. The GFA of course only came about after 30 years of terrorism and Westminster direct rule in NI
Indeed if you were running UK PLC I would have little hesitation in supporting the independence cause as I do not want to be part of a Little England
My own view is that sometime in the next two to three years the pressure for indyref2 will become irresistible and Parliament will need to grant a Section 30 if only to address a subject that is not only divisive in UK politics, but is dividing the Scots themselves almost into 50/50 camp and of course at the same time adversely affecting future investments into Scotland
For those of us who love Scotland and have many family ties we understand Westminster cannot keep the Scots imprisoned against their democratic wishes, and the time will come to bite the bullet, indeed that time may well be nearer than many think not least of all @HYUFD
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
·
10h
The Uzbek Army is starting to mobilize troops in Karakalpakstan, the region which is now seeing mass protests against the government.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24
To properly imprison Scottish nationalists, no referendum would have been allowed even in 2014. Holyrood would have been scrapped and direct rule imposed on Scotland from Westminster after all Scottish MPs had also been expelled from the Commons
@olliecarroll
Breaking: Russ Ministry of Defence claims Kyiv fired Tochka ballistic missiles w cluster munitions on residential districts in Kursk and Belgorod overnight. Claim is absurd to anyone 1/2 serious or interested in truth. But I do worry Moscow talking itself into another escalation
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1543517770419437568
As for English grief if Scotland went, rubbish, England would swing harder to the Nationalist, Brexit right, a hard right government would be elected to take as hard a line with Edinburgh in Scexit negotiations as Brussels took with the UK after the Brexit vote.
https://twitter.com/aljwhite/status/1543521260335947778
The nation and the Union are done for, but hats off to BigDog. Pure Trumpism!
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1543518385023115265
You did this with me the other day. I was actually agreeing with you on something. I asked some questions and you replied with nonsense. You seem unable to comprehend stuff people post, you seem unable to comprehend irony or sarcasm so misunderstand whether someone is in agreement or not, and you don't understand logical flow in a debate.
FYI If I had a vote on Scottish Independence I would vote 'No' [although I would qualify that with a) I shouldn't get a vote and b) it being based upon little knowledge as I am not a Scot and 500 miles away, but because the UK Brexiting makes such a decision very damaging]
I bet you didn't expect that as I am arguing with you.
But that is because your arguments, as with many things, do far more damage to the cause you support, because people like me who may agree with you end up arguing with you rather than the other side because you spout such nonsense.
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1543524006468403206
https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1543503625636483072