The voters in Boston (and many other places) voted for Brexit because they wanted to reverse the trend of their town being filled by workers from Eastern Europe employed to pick fruit and other low-wage work. Now Truss has promised a major expansion of both the number of unskilled seasonal workers and the length of time they are allowed to stay. These new workers may or may not be from Eastern Europe, but that hardly matters. This isn't what the Bostonites voted for, is it? I thought the intention was to raise wages enough to attract local, 'indigenous' workers to the farms and elsewhere? Something's not right.
We voted for Parliament to control it.
If Parliament ends up with a system whereby low-paid permanent workers aren't given free movement, but low-paid seasonal workers are allowed in (which has always happened, even pre-EU AFAIK) then that would be a "controlled" system.
For most people it is permanent labour that matters far more than seasonal.
A misreading: these people wanted immigrant labour to cease entirely. If it resumes they will feel a vast and agonizing sense of betrayal, regardless of whether it's the UK government or the EU that wields the (never-to-be-used) veto.
Do you know any of these people?
I don't need to. The Leavers have been the voice of the unheard and champion of their cause for years. They got the message across load and clear.
Apparently you weren't listening.
Rishi reiterated it today. He said that a return to imported labour is anti-Brexit.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
C'mon it's middle ground chaps.
Manifestos are neither legally enforceable nor meaningless.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
On the article below the headline.. this winds me up.
I don't want the basic rate cut to 16%. I want the new NI levy reversed (before it becomes a trojan horse) and for the 20p/40p bands to go up in line with inflation each year, just as they used to.
If there's spare revenue, use it for that please.
Or just target NI for any and all cuts in future. Reduce Employers and Employees NI progressively until they're gone. They're literally a tax on jobs and on working.
Have checked the HMRC ready reckoner.
If there are the funds to reduce basic rate income tax by 4% AND to avoid the corporation tax rise, then instead of doing these, we could drop the main rate of Employees NI by 4% AND Employers NI by 4% from 24-25 onwards. Pretty close, anyway)
I would guess that this would have a better effect on growth and the amount of money in the pockets of those working.
Um no -
1p Income tax = £5,250m in Government income 1p Employee NI = £4,050m in Government income 1p Employer NI = £7,450m in Government income
Corporation tax at 1p = £2,400m means that you need 3p of that to cover less than 1p of Employer NI
Also Rishi isn't talking about Corporation Tax and Income tax unless I've missed something he still wants the Corporation tax increases as he views low Corporation tax = low incentive for companies to invest.
I was looking at the year later and onwards.
1p income tax £6400 per penny and £6350 per penny in 24/25 and 25/26 = 25.6 bn and 25.4 bn for 4p 1p Employee NI - 4100 and 4250 in 24/25 and 25/26. 4p on that is 16.4bn and 17bn 1p Employer NI - 7,600 and 7850. 4p is 30.4 and 31.4 bn Corp tax in 24/25 and 25/26 = 3,200 and 3,400 = 19.2bn and 20.4bn in 24/25 and 25/26
I had thought he'd suddenly turned to saying he'd also abort the corporation tax rise in a recent U-turn? I could be wrong.
But I made it 25.6+19.2 = 44.8 bn in 24/25 and 25.4+20.4 = 45.8bn in 25/26 for income tax and corporation tax. The Employers and Employees NI would come out to 30.4+16.4 = 46.8bn in 24/25 and 17.0+31.4 = 48.4 bn in 25/26.
Thus the "pretty close" - it came to 44.8bn for income tax/corporation tax versus 46.8bn for the double NI in 24/25, and 45.8 bn in income tax/corporation tax versus 48.4bn in the double NI in 25/26.
Which is within 2-3 billion each time, and to be honest, I'd expect an error margin probably greater than that in the ready reckoner.
Personally I think when in Government the MPs should decide on the leader but that's just me
Yep - a small bunch of members of one political party choosing our PM is an absurdity. Feels wrong, IS wrong.
The party’s members are electing the party leader. The PM is merely whoever commands the support of the House of Commons, from among MPs elected by the People.
I know that. Members choose the leader per Con rules and the party has a majority so that leader commands the Commons and is thus PM per Parliamentary rules. But those 2 rules together have produced an absurdity that is - on the deeper level - wrong.
Better would be if the vacancy arises in government - as here - the new leader is chosen by MPs only. These being the people *in* that Commons that the leader must command the confidence of in order to be PM. The members aspect is gratuitous and distorting in this case.
The problem we are grappling with here is not who elects the party leaders, but that the party leaders, and also the PM, have become too powerful within our political system, and so the identity of the party leader is too consequential.
It's Presidential politics which doesn't fit well with our Parliamentary system.
Regardless of whether Truss or Sunak is elected leader the Conservative Party will still have the same MPs, and have received votes from the same people at the last election. If the MPs were more in control of government, and the party as a whole in charge of internal party discipline, rather than the leader alone, then we would not have large policy swings dependent on the election of any one individual.
That bothers me more than who it is that elects that individual.
I agree but the points are linked. If PMs weren't so hegemonic it wouldn't feel so wrong having Truss foisted on us by 100k Con members. Or 65% of them rather.
Well that's my point. Lots of people will be unhappy whatever method is used to elect the PM because politics is contested, and since any method in between elections will only involve a subset of the electorate, so people aren't able to participate in the contest.
You can't devise a right way of doing this thing, because the strength of the role of party leader makes it a thing that is inherently wrong.
Third brother in the Long Hand family - MLRS MARS II from Germany - has arrived in Ukraine. Thank you to Germany and personally to my colleague #DefenceMinister Christine Lambrecht for these systems. Our artillerymen salute our German partners! https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1554054634746126337
Finally, Germany starts sending arms. What’s up Herr Sholz, have you seen the winter gas price futures?
Third brother in the Long Hand family - MLRS MARS II from Germany - has arrived in Ukraine. Thank you to Germany and personally to my colleague #DefenceMinister Christine Lambrecht for these systems. Our artillerymen salute our German partners! https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1554054634746126337
Finally, Germany starts sending arms. What’s up Herr Sholz, have you seen the winter gas price futures?
The Germans sent some well-regarded self-propelled 155mm artillery so long ago that there's starting to be concern about it wearing out.
Manufacture of new equipment for Ukraine will become increasingly important.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
You would fully expect Tory members to be to the right of the general population. Where else ought they to be? What is interesting for me is they are to the left of the MP's.
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine. -Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day -Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day -12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
On the article below the headline.. this winds me up.
I don't want the basic rate cut to 16%. I want the new NI levy reversed (before it becomes a trojan horse) and for the 20p/40p bands to go up in line with inflation each year, just as they used to.
If there's spare revenue, use it for that please.
Or just target NI for any and all cuts in future. Reduce Employers and Employees NI progressively until they're gone. They're literally a tax on jobs and on working.
Have checked the HMRC ready reckoner.
If there are the funds to reduce basic rate income tax by 4% AND to avoid the corporation tax rise, then instead of doing these, we could drop the main rate of Employees NI by 4% AND Employers NI by 4% from 24-25 onwards. Pretty close, anyway)
I would guess that this would have a better effect on growth and the amount of money in the pockets of those working.
Um no -
1p Income tax = £5,250m in Government income 1p Employee NI = £4,050m in Government income 1p Employer NI = £7,450m in Government income
Corporation tax at 1p = £2,400m means that you need 3p of that to cover less than 1p of Employer NI
Also Rishi isn't talking about Corporation Tax and Income tax unless I've missed something he still wants the Corporation tax increases as he views low Corporation tax = low incentive for companies to invest.
I was looking at the year later and onwards.
1p income tax £6400 per penny and £6350 per penny in 24/25 and 25/26 = 25.6 bn and 25.4 bn for 4p 1p Employee NI - 4100 and 4250 in 24/25 and 25/26. 4p on that is 16.4bn and 17bn 1p Employer NI - 7,600 and 7850. 4p is 30.4 and 31.4 bn Corp tax in 24/25 and 25/26 = 3,200 and 3,400 = 19.2bn and 20.4bn in 24/25 and 25/26
I had thought he'd suddenly turned to saying he'd also abort the corporation tax rise in a recent U-turn? I could be wrong.
But I made it 25.6+19.2 = 44.8 bn in 24/25 and 25.4+20.4 = 45.8bn in 25/26 for income tax and corporation tax. The Employers and Employees NI would come out to 30.4+16.4 = 46.8bn in 24/25 and 17.0+31.4 = 48.4 bn in 25/26.
Thus the "pretty close" - it came to 44.8bn for income tax/corporation tax versus 46.8bn for the double NI in 24/25, and 45.8 bn in income tax/corporation tax versus 48.4bn in the double NI in 25/26.
Which is within 2-3 billion each time, and to be honest, I'd expect an error margin probably greater than that in the ready reckoner.
Given that I can't find any evidence that Rishi has binned the Corporation tax increase I would say you are wrong.
And Rishi's income tax plan is 1p a year from 2025 to 2029 not all in 1 big one off deduction.
Fair enough. Could have sworn he was being knocked for the U-turn. It's either/or then, which does decrease the savings. And spread out over the years. So year one: 1p of Employees NI rather than income tax; Yr 2 1p of Employers NI rather than income tax, Yr 3, 1p of Employees NI again; yr 4, 1p of Employers NI again.
Instead of 4p of income tax, we end up at 2p off each of Employees and Employers NI. If we extrapolate out 25/26 onwards, that'd be a total of 25.4bn for 4p income tax versus 24.2bn for 2p each of Employers NI and Employees NI.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
On the article below the headline.. this winds me up.
I don't want the basic rate cut to 16%. I want the new NI levy reversed (before it becomes a trojan horse) and for the 20p/40p bands to go up in line with inflation each year, just as they used to.
If there's spare revenue, use it for that please.
Or just target NI for any and all cuts in future. Reduce Employers and Employees NI progressively until they're gone. They're literally a tax on jobs and on working.
Have checked the HMRC ready reckoner.
If there are the funds to reduce basic rate income tax by 4% AND to avoid the corporation tax rise, then instead of doing these, we could drop the main rate of Employees NI by 4% AND Employers NI by 4% from 24-25 onwards. Pretty close, anyway)
I would guess that this would have a better effect on growth and the amount of money in the pockets of those working.
Um no -
1p Income tax = £5,250m in Government income 1p Employee NI = £4,050m in Government income 1p Employer NI = £7,450m in Government income
Corporation tax at 1p = £2,400m means that you need 3p of that to cover less than 1p of Employer NI
Also Rishi isn't talking about Corporation Tax and Income tax unless I've missed something he still wants the Corporation tax increases as he views low Corporation tax = low incentive for companies to invest.
I was looking at the year later and onwards.
1p income tax £6400 per penny and £6350 per penny in 24/25 and 25/26 = 25.6 bn and 25.4 bn for 4p 1p Employee NI - 4100 and 4250 in 24/25 and 25/26. 4p on that is 16.4bn and 17bn 1p Employer NI - 7,600 and 7850. 4p is 30.4 and 31.4 bn Corp tax in 24/25 and 25/26 = 3,200 and 3,400 = 19.2bn and 20.4bn in 24/25 and 25/26
I had thought he'd suddenly turned to saying he'd also abort the corporation tax rise in a recent U-turn? I could be wrong.
But I made it 25.6+19.2 = 44.8 bn in 24/25 and 25.4+20.4 = 45.8bn in 25/26 for income tax and corporation tax. The Employers and Employees NI would come out to 30.4+16.4 = 46.8bn in 24/25 and 17.0+31.4 = 48.4 bn in 25/26.
Thus the "pretty close" - it came to 44.8bn for income tax/corporation tax versus 46.8bn for the double NI in 24/25, and 45.8 bn in income tax/corporation tax versus 48.4bn in the double NI in 25/26.
Which is within 2-3 billion each time, and to be honest, I'd expect an error margin probably greater than that in the ready reckoner.
Given that I can't find any evidence that Rishi has binned the Corporation tax increase I would say you are wrong.
And Rishi's income tax plan is 1p a year from 2025 to 2029 not all in 1 big one off deduction.
Fair enough. Could have sworn he was being knocked for the U-turn. It's either/or then, which does decrease the savings. And spread out over the years. So year one: 1p of Employees NI rather than income tax; Yr 2 1p of Employers NI rather than income tax, Yr 3, 1p of Employees NI again; yr 4, 1p of Employers NI again.
Instead of 4p of income tax, we end up at 2p off each of Employees and Employers NI. If we extrapolate out 25/26 onwards, that'd be a total of 25.4bn for 4p income tax versus 24.2bn for 2p each of Employers NI and Employees NI.
Not going to leave a lot for sorting out social care is it?
Posting as one who is beginning to feel that he's going to need it!
Actually 9000 is probably a low estimate for the total annual production, and no doubt it will be being increased, but the constraints on supply of the rockets are obvious.
There were a lot more of the earlier MRLS rockets, but they were less accurate area denial munitions using cluster bomb warheads: ...When production of the M26 series ceased in 2001 a total of 506,718 rockets had been produced. Each rocket pod contains 6 identical rockets. M26 rockets and its derivatives were removed from the US Army's active inventory in June 2009, due to their submunitions not satisfying a July 2008 Department of Defense policy directive on cluster munitions issued under President George W. Bush that US cluster munitions that result in a rate of more than a 1% of unexploded ordnance must be destroyed by the end of 2018...
(edit - the UK at one point had 90,000, I think, before they were destroyed.)
On the article below the headline.. this winds me up.
I don't want the basic rate cut to 16%. I want the new NI levy reversed (before it becomes a trojan horse) and for the 20p/40p bands to go up in line with inflation each year, just as they used to.
If there's spare revenue, use it for that please.
Or just target NI for any and all cuts in future. Reduce Employers and Employees NI progressively until they're gone. They're literally a tax on jobs and on working.
Have checked the HMRC ready reckoner.
If there are the funds to reduce basic rate income tax by 4% AND to avoid the corporation tax rise, then instead of doing these, we could drop the main rate of Employees NI by 4% AND Employers NI by 4% from 24-25 onwards. Pretty close, anyway)
I would guess that this would have a better effect on growth and the amount of money in the pockets of those working.
Um no -
1p Income tax = £5,250m in Government income 1p Employee NI = £4,050m in Government income 1p Employer NI = £7,450m in Government income
Corporation tax at 1p = £2,400m means that you need 3p of that to cover less than 1p of Employer NI
Also Rishi isn't talking about Corporation Tax and Income tax unless I've missed something he still wants the Corporation tax increases as he views low Corporation tax = low incentive for companies to invest.
I was looking at the year later and onwards.
1p income tax £6400 per penny and £6350 per penny in 24/25 and 25/26 = 25.6 bn and 25.4 bn for 4p 1p Employee NI - 4100 and 4250 in 24/25 and 25/26. 4p on that is 16.4bn and 17bn 1p Employer NI - 7,600 and 7850. 4p is 30.4 and 31.4 bn Corp tax in 24/25 and 25/26 = 3,200 and 3,400 = 19.2bn and 20.4bn in 24/25 and 25/26
I had thought he'd suddenly turned to saying he'd also abort the corporation tax rise in a recent U-turn? I could be wrong.
But I made it 25.6+19.2 = 44.8 bn in 24/25 and 25.4+20.4 = 45.8bn in 25/26 for income tax and corporation tax. The Employers and Employees NI would come out to 30.4+16.4 = 46.8bn in 24/25 and 17.0+31.4 = 48.4 bn in 25/26.
Thus the "pretty close" - it came to 44.8bn for income tax/corporation tax versus 46.8bn for the double NI in 24/25, and 45.8 bn in income tax/corporation tax versus 48.4bn in the double NI in 25/26.
Which is within 2-3 billion each time, and to be honest, I'd expect an error margin probably greater than that in the ready reckoner.
Given that I can't find any evidence that Rishi has binned the Corporation tax increase I would say you are wrong.
And Rishi's income tax plan is 1p a year from 2025 to 2029 not all in 1 big one off deduction.
Fair enough. Could have sworn he was being knocked for the U-turn. It's either/or then, which does decrease the savings. And spread out over the years. So year one: 1p of Employees NI rather than income tax; Yr 2 1p of Employers NI rather than income tax, Yr 3, 1p of Employees NI again; yr 4, 1p of Employers NI again.
Instead of 4p of income tax, we end up at 2p off each of Employees and Employers NI. If we extrapolate out 25/26 onwards, that'd be a total of 25.4bn for 4p income tax versus 24.2bn for 2p each of Employers NI and Employees NI.
Not going to leave a lot for sorting out social care is it?
Posting as one who is beginning to feel that he's going to need it!
It's not like either of the candidates seem to have that in mind. If they're obsessing over tax cuts, this is an alternative.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
You would fully expect Tory members to be to the right of the general population. Where else ought they to be? What is interesting for me is they are to the left of the MP's.
To the right, yes, but I think they're drifted off further than they generally are. And they're selecting these bonkers MPs too. They'll be the full Trump in 10-15 years, I think. Anti-abortion, the whole caboodle. Wonderful.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
The key quote in that article is:
"One change does seem obvious. While the Conservatives have always had a strain of authoritarian rightwing opinion, this was balanced by a more liberal wing – one which, since Johnson became leader, has almost disappeared."
Except for Johnson himself. This is the thing.
Johnson is, basically, a liberal Conservative. A very cynical, adroit liberal Conservative who's ready to hitch himself to any populist wagon that he thinks will make people love him; but a liberal Conservative nonetheless. He believes in big state investment, levelling-up, net zero, cycle tracks, HS2, all of that. He's about as far from the Singapore-on-Thames wing as it's possible to be.
But he has surrounded himself with a group of Singaporeists and worse (*cough* JRM *cough*). Without Johnson to anchor them to something broadly centre-right and electable, the "authoritarian rightwing" tendency will have free rein.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
DC was a big fan of referendums to settle issues.
2011 - Alternative Vote Referendum to settle that issue and gain support of Lib Dems# 2014 - Scottish Independence Referendum 2016 - Brexit Referendum
Had the 2016 EU referendum gone his way he would have successfully stood on the winning side in all 3, each time subduing a waring faction trying to gain control.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
Personally I think when in Government the MPs should decide on the leader but that's just me
Yep - a small bunch of members of one political party choosing our PM is an absurdity. Feels wrong, IS wrong.
The party’s members are electing the party leader. The PM is merely whoever commands the support of the House of Commons, from among MPs elected by the People.
I know that. Members choose the leader per Con rules and the party has a majority so that leader commands the Commons and is thus PM per Parliamentary rules. But those 2 rules together have produced an absurdity that is - on the deeper level - wrong.
Better would be if the vacancy arises in government - as here - the new leader is chosen by MPs only. These being the people *in* that Commons that the leader must command the confidence of in order to be PM. The members aspect is gratuitous and distorting in this case.
The problem we are grappling with here is not who elects the party leaders, but that the party leaders, and also the PM, have become too powerful within our political system, and so the identity of the party leader is too consequential.
It's Presidential politics which doesn't fit well with our Parliamentary system.
Regardless of whether Truss or Sunak is elected leader the Conservative Party will still have the same MPs, and have received votes from the same people at the last election. If the MPs were more in control of government, and the party as a whole in charge of internal party discipline, rather than the leader alone, then we would not have large policy swings dependent on the election of any one individual.
That bothers me more than who it is that elects that individual.
I agree but the points are linked. If PMs weren't so hegemonic it wouldn't feel so wrong having Truss foisted on us by 100k Con members. Or 65% of them rather.
Well that's my point. Lots of people will be unhappy whatever method is used to elect the PM because politics is contested, and since any method in between elections will only involve a subset of the electorate, so people aren't able to participate in the contest.
You can't devise a right way of doing this thing, because the strength of the role of party leader makes it a thing that is inherently wrong.
Yes and it's a good point. There's a tension between our parliamentary democracy and the increasingly presidential nature of the PMship. It carries the power of a president in many ways and lots of people vote at a GE on the basis of which individual it's going to be. Yet their names are not on the ballot except in their own constituency.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
My point was, *non-legal* pressure was enough to get them out.
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine. -Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day -Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day -12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
We are supporting Ukraine in a war against a major military power. This requires increasing production to wartime levels from current peacetime levels.
In the thread he says that the US military has about 500 of the launchers. That means that peacetime levels of missile production can only support each launcher to fire three times in a year. There has to be a contingency plan to increase that level of production, and if you don't activate the contingency plan at a time like this, when would you?
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
You would fully expect Tory members to be to the right of the general population. Where else ought they to be? What is interesting for me is they are to the left of the MP's.
To the right, yes, but I think they're drifted off further than they generally are. And they're selecting these bonkers MPs too. They'll be the full Trump in 10-15 years, I think. Anti-abortion, the whole caboodle. Wonderful.
That's the danger of extrapolating trends, though. By that measure in 2017 it would have been predicted Labour would be full on SWP by now Instead, they are dull centrist, with a lack of any radical thoughts. From those charts Tory MP's views are at odds with political reality ATM. So. They'll either be betrayed, or lose. Perhaps both
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
The key quote in that article is:
"One change does seem obvious. While the Conservatives have always had a strain of authoritarian rightwing opinion, this was balanced by a more liberal wing – one which, since Johnson became leader, has almost disappeared."
Except for Johnson himself. This is the thing.
Johnson is, basically, a liberal Conservative. A very cynical, adroit liberal Conservative who's ready to hitch himself to any populist wagon that he thinks will make people love him; but a liberal Conservative nonetheless. He believes in big state investment, levelling-up, net zero, cycle tracks, HS2, all of that. He's about as far from the Singapore-on-Thames wing as it's possible to be.
But he has surrounded himself with a group of Singaporeists and worse (*cough* JRM *cough*). Without Johnson to anchor them to something broadly centre-right and electable, the "authoritarian rightwing" tendency will have free rein.
Yes, good point. He sold his soul to the Singaporian devil!
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine. -Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day -Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day -12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
The decision to supply HIMARS was made some months ago now. The decision had significant logistical implications but surely orders for a significant increase in supply of missiles would have been made at that time?
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine. -Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day -Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day -12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
We are supporting Ukraine in a war against a major military power. This requires increasing production to wartime levels from current peacetime levels.
In the thread he says that the US military has about 500 of the launchers. That means that peacetime levels of missile production can only support each launcher to fire three times in a year. There has to be a contingency plan to increase that level of production, and if you don't activate the contingency plan at a time like this, when would you?
Very much agreed. It doesn’t take long for complicated weapons to be depleted in an actual shooting war. There’s also the cost, each pod is $1m or thereabouts, $32m a day.
You’d like to think that the manufacturer has the option to move to wartime production levels, when activated to do so. Well someone needs to make that call now, for all the equipment that’s heading into theatre. This is yet another example of logistics winning wars.
Chatting to a friends son yesterday. He has a year in Spain as part of his degree. The visa is a nightmare. 35 pieces of paper required including bank statements, all originals, translated into Spanish by an official recognised translator, notarised and stamped.
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine. -Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day -Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day -12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
We are supporting Ukraine in a war against a major military power. This requires increasing production to wartime levels from current peacetime levels.
In the thread he says that the US military has about 500 of the launchers. That means that peacetime levels of missile production can only support each launcher to fire three times in a year. There has to be a contingency plan to increase that level of production, and if you don't activate the contingency plan at a time like this, when would you?
I agree completely. I've argued since nearly the start of this conflict that rebuilding of munition stocks is an essential prority for defence spending. It has always been the first economy when cuts are made, as it doesn't show up in the headline figures... while the MoD congratulates itself for (eg) building new carriers. Applies to everything from artillery shells and rockets to air-air missiles.
But massively increasing production can't be done overnight, and stocks are a real constraint for this year at least, I think.
(edit) A government with real foresight would have started to address this at the beginning of the invasion. Neither we not the US really did. The Poles and the Baltics are an exception, as they realised the existential threat - but they don't as yet have the same proaction capability. Though in Poland's case that's changing rapidly.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
The voters in Boston (and many other places) voted for Brexit because they wanted to reverse the trend of their town being filled by workers from Eastern Europe employed to pick fruit and other low-wage work. Now Truss has promised a major expansion of both the number of unskilled seasonal workers and the length of time they are allowed to stay. These new workers may or may not be from Eastern Europe, but that hardly matters. This isn't what the Bostonites voted for, is it? I thought the intention was to raise wages enough to attract local, 'indigenous' workers to the farms and elsewhere? Something's not right.
We voted for Parliament to control it.
If Parliament ends up with a system whereby low-paid permanent workers aren't given free movement, but low-paid seasonal workers are allowed in (which has always happened, even pre-EU AFAIK) then that would be a "controlled" system.
For most people it is permanent labour that matters far more than seasonal.
A misreading: these people wanted immigrant labour to cease entirely. If it resumes they will feel a vast and agonizing sense of betrayal, regardless of whether it's the UK government or the EU that wields the (never-to-be-used) veto.
And if it doesn't resume they will feel a vast and agonising sense of having nothing to eat. It's not like they are queueing up for the vacant jobs
Why? Will nobody be working bringing in imports?
The entire UK agriculture sector could die [it won't, and I wouldn't desire that] and we'd still have food to eat.
You could say that about any sector. If we closed all our medical schools, we'd import all our doctors. If we closed our car industry, we'd import cars (and that has been tested). And if we ignore our steadily deteriorating balance of payments and security of supply, as governments have often done, life would indeed go on.
Pretty much, yes.
People love to argue that their sector is special, because reasons. But for decades we haven't had self-security on either food or electricity.
Addressing our security and balance of payments can be useful things to do, but shielding uncompetitive sectors from competition isn't the way to do so.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
Both can be true at once.
If you are sitting comfortably as a homeowner with covid lockdown savings and a private sector pay rise, life looks fine.
If unable to pay your utilities having run down savings over the last two years and getting a real terms pay cut, it looks pretty miserable.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
Well a bunch of leavers on here consistently and vehemently argue that breaking the (not legally binding) pledge for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was why Brexit happened. Had the latest dose of this just at the weekend.
Min. 50 Ukrainian POWs, mostly from Azovstal, were killed in a 29 July blast; Ukraine says it was staged by Russia. ICRC &UN acted as guarantors for POWs during Azovstal surrender
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
State ownership of 90% of UK land ?
Yes, Pore has some quite collectivist aspects. Also authoritarian and parochial whilst at the same time laissez faire in other ways. I know it better than I know most foreign countries and 'foreign' is apt in that it feels very different to here in how it ticks.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
She is abandoning the manifesto on which they were elected
But we are always told that party manifestos are meaningless and non binding. Why should they suddenly become meaningful in this specific situation?
To be fair, in our parliamentary system, no candidate should be running on anything other than the manifesto from the previous GE unless they want to submit themselves to a new one.
Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it, with no real democratic mandate.
The democratic mandate applying to manifestos, if it ever existed, was abolished by the Wheeler case.
You what? How in the name of God can election on a manifesto not amount to a democratic mandate for that manifesto?
Because even without the precedent of decades of government's ignoring manifestos, that is what the law says. It was decided, in court, on that specific point. There is (sadly) no room for debate on this. Manifestos have no legal standing in our democratic system.
No, utterly wrong, what that case says is that there is no legally enforceable mandate, not there is no mandate.
Just as, if I solemnly promise to pay you £100 and then decide not to, there is nothing you can legally do about it. Doesn't alter the fact that I have an obligation to pay you.
It doesn't stop the fact that, should you be so minded, you could simply refuse and, apart from some reputational damage there is nothing to prevent you doing so. The same applies to manifestos. They are meaningless unless it is possible to convince a majority of people that failing to enact them should be a reason to remove an MP. And whilst that may have been the case at some point in the distant mists of time, it certainly isn't the case now.
That "apart from some reputational damage" is a bit "apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." Look at Boris (and May): it wasn't legal mechanisms that got them out in the end, but out they are. I don't think a bet made by me on here with a fellow PBer would be legally enforceable, but i'd pay up on it even if i didn't much want to.
Nor was it failure to enact manifesto pledges. In the grand scheme of things they are meaningless because all that matters to people is that the Government is vaguely competent and does things that people vaguely agree with. If they do that then no one even looks at what they promised in their manifesto.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
They just aren't. There are other systems of obligation than the courts.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
It was UKIP breathing down the Conservatives' neck that prompted Cameron's referendum commitment.
Well a bunch of leavers on here consistently and vehemently argue that breaking the (not legally binding) pledge for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was why Brexit happened. Had the latest dose of this just at the weekend.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
The time to worry is when working people start to use foodbanks.
The voters in Boston (and many other places) voted for Brexit because they wanted to reverse the trend of their town being filled by workers from Eastern Europe employed to pick fruit and other low-wage work. Now Truss has promised a major expansion of both the number of unskilled seasonal workers and the length of time they are allowed to stay. These new workers may or may not be from Eastern Europe, but that hardly matters. This isn't what the Bostonites voted for, is it? I thought the intention was to raise wages enough to attract local, 'indigenous' workers to the farms and elsewhere? Something's not right.
We voted for Parliament to control it.
If Parliament ends up with a system whereby low-paid permanent workers aren't given free movement, but low-paid seasonal workers are allowed in (which has always happened, even pre-EU AFAIK) then that would be a "controlled" system.
For most people it is permanent labour that matters far more than seasonal.
A misreading: these people wanted immigrant labour to cease entirely. If it resumes they will feel a vast and agonizing sense of betrayal, regardless of whether it's the UK government or the EU that wields the (never-to-be-used) veto.
And if it doesn't resume they will feel a vast and agonising sense of having nothing to eat. It's not like they are queueing up for the vacant jobs
Why? Will nobody be working bringing in imports?
The entire UK agriculture sector could die [it won't, and I wouldn't desire that] and we'd still have food to eat.
You could say that about any sector. If we closed all our medical schools, we'd import all our doctors. If we closed our car industry, we'd import cars (and that has been tested). And if we ignore our steadily deteriorating balance of payments and security of supply, as governments have often done, life would indeed go on.
Pretty much, yes.
People love to argue that their sector is special, because reasons. But for decades we haven't had self-security on either food or electricity.
Addressing our security and balance of payments can be useful things to do, but shielding uncompetitive sectors from competition isn't the way to do so.
Making British agriculture dependent on temporarily imported labour doesn't strike me as improving food security anyway. What happens when the supply of cheap labour dries up?
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
Mr. F, indeed, and the fact the 'pledge' (a manifesto commitment) was broken yet the breaking thereof for a referendum on Lisbon is derided as somehow a minor matter speaks ill of the complacency and arrogance that was the hallmark of much of the Remain campaign.
The referendum vote was the only time in my adult life I could've gone either way. The fact politicians had lied previously over a referendum and were happy to throw away vetoes or half the rebate is ultimately what determined my vote. I couldn't trust them to ever offer another however bad things got. It was only the unique pressure of UKIP on Cameron and the chance to jettison a referendum promise in a possible coalition that led to the referendum occurring.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
What Labour needs to find is a coherent longer-term message that persuades voters that future cost of living crises are less likely if it is in charge. I think that the Tories dash to full-on Americanisation could well help with that.
‘Failed orthodoxy of the last 10 years’ says Sunak
This touches on the point I made last night. The candidates for the leadership are campaigning on what are essentially completely new manifestos - and the only ones who get to make the choice are the wildly unrepresentative Tory selectorate.
It's an affront to democracy irrespective of it being possible under our constitution.
Wilson to Callaghan, an affront to democracy....
Thatcher to Major, an affront to democracy....
Blair to Brown, an affront to democracy....
Either democracy is easily affronted here. Or it's the way we do things.
At least Cameron to May (eventually) and May to Johnson (quickly) led to general elections. But there is no reason for our new PM to do so.
We voted the current crop of Parliamentarians in on a constituency vote basis.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
18 months isn't long to wait for the next general election.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
The time to worry is when working people start to use foodbanks.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
Indeed. The economy is doing so well Mr Sunak intends to cut the base rate to 16%. Why stop there?
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
The time to worry is when working people start to use foodbanks.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
The time to worry is when working people start to use foodbanks.
Hunch- people who don't have to pay for housing, or who are paying a cost that was frozen in 2000 have a massively different experience of the current economy from those paying 2022 prices. And *&£$ knows how you deal with that.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
Indeed. The economy is doing so well Mr Sunak intends to cut the base rate to 16%. Why stop there?
We should be increasing the base rate to 30% or so and scrapping Employee's National Insurance.
Our regular reminder that Betfair has two markets which, with only a month to go, should be more or less the same but right now Rishi is half a point bigger. Check both before you back or lay (and the books too, who may boost their prices).
Betfair next prime minister 1.11 Liz Truss 90% 10.5 Rishi Sunak 10%
What Labour needs to find is a coherent longer-term message that persuades voters that future cost of living crises are less likely if it is in charge. I think that the Tories dash to full-on Americanisation could well help with that.
‘Failed orthodoxy of the last 10 years’ says Sunak
This touches on the point I made last night. The candidates for the leadership are campaigning on what are essentially completely new manifestos - and the only ones who get to make the choice are the wildly unrepresentative Tory selectorate.
It's an affront to democracy irrespective of it being possible under our constitution.
Wilson to Callaghan, an affront to democracy....
Thatcher to Major, an affront to democracy....
Blair to Brown, an affront to democracy....
Either democracy is easily affronted here. Or it's the way we do things.
At least Cameron to May (eventually) and May to Johnson (quickly) led to general elections. But there is no reason for our new PM to do so.
We voted the current crop of Parliamentarians in on a constituency vote basis.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
18 months isn't long to wait for the next general election.
That wasn't my point, she is entitled to remain PM until January 2025, them's the rules!
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
The time to worry is when working people start to use foodbanks.
Hunch- people who don't have to pay for housing, or who are paying a cost that was frozen in 2000 have a massively different experience of the current economy from those paying 2022 prices. And *&£$ knows how you deal with that.
Indeed those with large mortgages at low fixed rates and getting inflation matching pay rises are seeing their real terms debt shrink away. They might be quite happy with inflation.
If house prices stagnate while Truss brings about a new Barber Boom, those relying on housing capital to fund their retirement may not be so chirpy.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
Think you're misremembering here. Plenty of people have used the phrase positively.
It's very nicely done. Is Hague well regarded by Tory members? Not sure if he's turned into the comforting elder statesman role for them?
It is nice, though its main message was that Rishi is a great constituency MP. There was not a lot about his suitability for Number 10 as shown by his record next door. Aside from Hague's recommendation, it was another introductory video, like Rishi working for his dear old mum and Liz Truss escaping from Dotheboys Hall.
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
All you get on this site is doom and gloom about the economy which does not seem based on reality. If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high. As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
£15k a year could be a take home pay cut once you account for inflation and higher rate taxes!
Hard to know what's happening with the economy, but I am pretty sure that the NHS backlog is here until the next election at least.
The path of least resistance would appear to be people increasingly going private if they can afford it - but I'd guess even that would have significant political implications with the retired.
The Tory leadership contest has been somewhat remarkable for the lack of discussion of health and social care.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
Think you're misremembering here. Plenty of people have used the phrase positively.
The first article doesn’t mention the phrase at all, the second quotes it as being used by an EU department trying to use the negotiations to prevent UK deregulation post-Brexit, and the third article starts from the premise that opponents keep using the phrase perjoratively.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
Think you're misremembering here. Plenty of people have used the phrase positively.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
It's very nicely done. Is Hague well regarded by Tory members? Not sure if he's turned into the comforting elder statesman role for them?
It is nice, though its main message was that Rishi is a great constituency MP. There was not a lot about his suitability for Number 10 as shown by his record next door. Aside from Hague's recommendation, it was another introductory video, like Rishi working for his dear old mum and Liz Truss escaping from Dotheboys Hall.
By the sounds of things he's busy on a mission to introduce himself to the membership up and down the country. If that seems to be working for him (and judging by some slight movement in the numbers) I can see he'd want to double-down on it. For the moment anyway. Then pivot towards the more ministerial PM-in-waiting promo's in a week or two.
The competition might be more interesting than I'd have thought even at the end of last week.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
Really? THat would make him unusual among Oxford history graduates of my acquaintance. Or were you being sarcastic?
What Labour needs to find is a coherent longer-term message that persuades voters that future cost of living crises are less likely if it is in charge. I think that the Tories dash to full-on Americanisation could well help with that.
‘Failed orthodoxy of the last 10 years’ says Sunak
This touches on the point I made last night. The candidates for the leadership are campaigning on what are essentially completely new manifestos - and the only ones who get to make the choice are the wildly unrepresentative Tory selectorate.
It's an affront to democracy irrespective of it being possible under our constitution.
Wilson to Callaghan, an affront to democracy....
Thatcher to Major, an affront to democracy....
Blair to Brown, an affront to democracy....
Either democracy is easily affronted here. Or it's the way we do things.
At least Cameron to May (eventually) and May to Johnson (quickly) led to general elections. But there is no reason for our new PM to do so.
We voted the current crop of Parliamentarians in on a constituency vote basis.
Ms Truss has absolutely no requirement to go to the country to seek a mandate, she already has one.
18 months isn't long to wait for the next general election.
The last time we've had a Prime Minister come in through winning a general election and then leave office through losing a subsequent one: Ted Heath.
Before that: Harold Wilson (64--> 70 only), Clem Attlee, Baldwin (24-29 only), MacDonald (23-24 only) since 1900.
The conceit that Prime Ministers gain power due to winning a general election and then lose power through losing a subsequent one is far more breached than honoured.
We can but hope: Righter than right: Tories’ hardline drift may lose the public
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
I'd be delighted to see them pitch Singapore on Thames to the electorate in 2024. I think the electorate will say "no just the Thames part thanks for asking".
The only people using the phrase “Singapore-on-Thames”, are using it negatively in opposition to what they think others are proposing.
Think you're misremembering here. Plenty of people have used the phrase positively.
Here is a more sensible (less g*mmon and golf club-friendly) way to choose a PM when the leader of the largest parliamentary party has lost its confidence, retired, flounced, or snuffed it:
* allow all MPs (of whatever party, and the independents too) a vote in a secret ballot; * allow write-ins (of MPs) - essentially every vote would be a write-in (and yes you could write in the sitting PM's name if you wanted); * only those who receive at least one vote in a round are allowed to proceed to the next; * worst performer each round (and any who score zero) to drop out.
Additional garnishes might include:
* make voting compulsory OR * require the winner to win a vote of confidence in the Commons (These achieve the same aim and therefore either of them would be sufficient. Personally I'd favour the first.)
Note: voting to be administered by Commons officials; no party involvement.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
He's 6"7. Was he one of those appointed to the Treasury because he's tall?
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
He's 6"7. Was he one of those appointed to the Treasury because he's tall?
Because he was so much taller than Sunak yes, to belittle the Chancellor. A bit of public schoolboy humour and control from Boris.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
He's 6"7. Was he one of those appointed to the Treasury because he's tall?
Not sure CoE Rishi would have wanted him as Chief Secretary tbh.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
Really? THat would make him unusual among Oxford history graduates of my acquaintance. Or were you being sarcastic?
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
He's obviously a numbers man - Oxford history graduate.
Here is a more sensible (less g*mmon and golf club-friendly) way to choose a PM when the leader of the largest parliamentary party has lost its confidence, retired, flounced, or snuffed it:
* allow all MPs (of whatever party, and the independents too) a vote in a secret ballot; * allow write-ins (of MPs) - essentially every vote would be a write-in (and yes you could write in the sitting PM's name if you wanted); * only those who receive at least one vote in a round are allowed to proceed to the next; * worst performer each round (and any who score zero) to drop out.
Additional garnishes might include:
* make voting compulsory OR * require the winner to win a vote of confidence in the Commons (These achieve the same aim and therefore either of them would be sufficient. Personally I'd favour the first.)
Note: voting to be administered by Commons officials; no party involvement.
Subscribe to OSMaps on your phone. Assuming you can get a signal on Dartmoor of course...
That's a good idea. But I may just buy a new one. You can never have too many OS maps, and if you do your Dad probably wants the duplicates.
Personally I buy the paper maps and use the codes they come with these days to access them on the phone app. That way I don't have to pay the annual subscription (and I get a bonus paper map)...
Happy to report I have acquired a paper map. Phew. I'm not really 100% comfortable with any technology from after about 2006. I'm now sat in a field with my snoozing 1 year old nephew, looking up at Yes Tor and contemplating the coming week's possibilities.
Here is a more sensible (less g*mmon and golf club-friendly) way to choose a PM when the leader of the largest parliamentary party has lost its confidence, retired, flounced, or snuffed it:
* allow all MPs (of whatever party, and the independents too) a vote in a secret ballot; * allow write-ins (of MPs) - essentially every vote would be a write-in (and yes you could write in the sitting PM's name if you wanted); * only those who receive at least one vote in a round are allowed to proceed to the next; * worst performer each round (and any who score zero) to drop out.
Additional garnishes might include:
* make voting compulsory OR * require the winner to win a vote of confidence in the Commons (These achieve the same aim and therefore either of them would be sufficient. Personally I'd favour the first.)
Note: voting to be administered by Commons officials; no party involvement.
I like it. To speed it up though, anyone with less than 5% of the vote to drop out.
I'd back Simon Clarke as next chancellor with Ladbrokes at 5-1 if I could but they'll only let me have 30 pence; and I'll destroy the price as my account is marked should I place the bet - so I'd rather some PBers got what is imo good value (I think he's at least even chance with Kwarteng)
Christ almighty he's 37. Has it come to this?
Not that this is an endorsement but George Osborne was 38 (by a few days) when he became Chancellor.
I've just breezed around the world for three months, in three continents, and eight countries, with my British passport. Not a single hassle. So this is bollocks
92 seat Labour majority if you plug that into Electoral Calculus 🤣
Edit: Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Shapps, Baker, Raab, Clarke, Villiers... all lose their seats 👏
That the lead is "soft" is a fair interpretation.
But if I was a Conservative strategist I'd be concerned that
a) the Tory Government has comprehensively trashed its own brand for its own voters. b) there is no real fear of a Labour government; the "meh" response to Starmer plays to this, too c) the impact of the Leadership contenders is already priced into this polling - there is no comfort in the "named PM" numbers.
I've just breezed around the world for three months, in three continents, and eight countries, with my British passport. Not a single hassle. So this is bollocks
You directly exited and entered the UK once each, and as I recall it was not directly into and out of the EU.
Comments
Manifestos are neither legally enforceable nor meaningless.
... Some experts query whether the avalanche of hard-right policy ideas, particularly on immigration and asylum, simply show a party out of touch with a public now notably more worried by issues like the cost of living...
Neither has explicitly embraced the state-shrinking ethos of the likes of Badenoch, but the repeated talk of efficiencies and leaner organisations does imply a reduced role for public services.
Both the final two have also been notably cautious over the climate emergency... New polling for the Onward thinktank has shown that Conservative voters are notably keen on the target of net zero emissions by 2050, with almost a quarter saying they would no longer back the party if the commitment was ditched.
Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, argues that on immigration and taxation the party also risks becoming “increasingly out of line with where the public, and even the Conservative-voting public, are”...
“This tax-cutting, Singapore-on-Thames Thatcherism has always been a kind of elite hobby,” Ford said. “There has never been a mass electorate for that stuff. But the people who like it, like it so intensely that they kind of project this idea on to their membership...”
On immigration, long-term YouGov tracking of the three issues voters view as most important has seen the percentage picking immigration more than halve since before the Brexit referendum in 2016, while the proportion citing the economy has shot up.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/01/righter-than-right-tory-conservative-hardline-drift-public-opinion
The blue-on-blue we're seeing is the party talking to itself, to its membership that is now far to the right of the general population. The winner is either going to have to betray the membership, or parrot the fantasies the membership wants to hear and lose the country.
Fox Host Attacks Service Members in Spat With Former Marine, Says Vets Went ‘Across the World’ to ‘Murder Brown People’
https://www.mediaite.com/news/fox-news-contributor-attacks-service-members-in-twitter-brawl-with-ex-marine-suggests-iraq-and-afghanistan-vets-went-across-the-world-to-murder-brown-people/
And Rishi's income tax plan is 1p a year from 2025 to 2029 not all in 1 big one off deduction.
You can't devise a right way of doing this thing, because the strength of the role of party leader makes it a thing that is inherently wrong.
https://twitter.com/OliverDowden/status/1554036901111365632?s=20&t=HR7lGnna-j9fIFGmYiaVPg
Manufacture of new equipment for Ukraine will become increasingly important.
I am not saying I think it should be this way. I would happily see manifestos be legally binding though I accept that might be impractical. But in the end they really are meaningless.
What is interesting for me is they are to the left of the MP's.
...There are reasons we have provided the limited number & type systems....
-16 HIMARS in Ukraine.
-Each HIMARS fires a minimum (MINIMUM!) of 2 pods/day
-Each pod has 6 missiles...12 missiles/HIMAR/Day
-12 missiles x 16 HIMARS = 192 missiles/day
In 1 month, 16 launchers will fire approx 5800 missiles & accurately hit about 5200 (90%) targets...
The HIMARS missile being used by UA have a 200lb warhead, is GPS-guided, & hits what it aims at long range.
Yes, the US does has stockpiles of these precision "smart" missiles, but the manufacturer makes about 9000 per year....
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1551668596803358724
Instead of 4p of income tax, we end up at 2p off each of Employees and Employers NI. If we extrapolate out 25/26 onwards, that'd be a total of 25.4bn for 4p income tax versus 24.2bn for 2p each of Employers NI and Employees NI.
Glaring example; do you think DC would in a million years have held a referendum in 2016 if he hadn't committed to one by manifesto in 2015?
Posting as one who is beginning to feel that he's going to need it!
There were a lot more of the earlier MRLS rockets, but they were less accurate area denial munitions using cluster bomb warheads:
...When production of the M26 series ceased in 2001 a total of 506,718 rockets had been produced. Each rocket pod contains 6 identical rockets. M26 rockets and its derivatives were removed from the US Army's active inventory in June 2009, due to their submunitions not satisfying a July 2008 Department of Defense policy directive on cluster munitions issued under President George W. Bush that US cluster munitions that result in a rate of more than a 1% of unexploded ordnance must be destroyed by the end of 2018...
(edit - the UK at one point had 90,000, I think, before they were destroyed.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-01/sunak-or-truss-britain-s-next-prime-minister-has-help-from-economy-jobs-market
Basically: things aren’t quite as bad as they seem, and the UK is better placed than some. After the first turbulent year, the next PM might find themselves in unexpected sunshine
It’s my thesis from the other night. There are now so many prophecies of horror, if the winter is merely tricky and we recover from then on, the Tories might benefit significantly, by surprising in a good way
"One change does seem obvious. While the Conservatives have always had a strain of authoritarian rightwing opinion, this was balanced by a more liberal wing – one which, since Johnson became leader, has almost disappeared."
Except for Johnson himself. This is the thing.
Johnson is, basically, a liberal Conservative. A very cynical, adroit liberal Conservative who's ready to hitch himself to any populist wagon that he thinks will make people love him; but a liberal Conservative nonetheless. He believes in big state investment, levelling-up, net zero, cycle tracks, HS2, all of that. He's about as far from the Singapore-on-Thames wing as it's possible to be.
But he has surrounded himself with a group of Singaporeists and worse (*cough* JRM *cough*). Without Johnson to anchor them to something broadly centre-right and electable, the "authoritarian rightwing" tendency will have free rein.
2011 - Alternative Vote Referendum to settle that issue and gain support of Lib Dems#
2014 - Scottish Independence Referendum
2016 - Brexit Referendum
Had the 2016 EU referendum gone his way he would have successfully stood on the winning side in all 3, each time subduing a waring faction trying to gain control.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/01/uk-border-privilege-low-ranking-passport-brexit-international-travel
In the thread he says that the US military has about 500 of the launchers. That means that peacetime levels of missile production can only support each launcher to fire three times in a year. There has to be a contingency plan to increase that level of production, and if you don't activate the contingency plan at a time like this, when would you?
By that measure in 2017 it would have been predicted Labour would be full on SWP by now
Instead, they are dull centrist, with a lack of any radical thoughts.
From those charts Tory MP's views are at odds with political reality ATM. So. They'll either be betrayed, or lose. Perhaps both
If you want a job you can have one, and optional spending on leisure activities still seems very high.
As for wages a colleague has just handed his notice having got another job( the same as he was doing here) for £15,000 a year more.
You’d like to think that the manufacturer has the option to move to wartime production levels, when activated to do so. Well someone needs to make that call now, for all the equipment that’s heading into theatre. This is yet another example of logistics winning wars.
5 years ago he would have just hopped on a plane.
I've argued since nearly the start of this conflict that rebuilding of munition stocks is an essential prority for defence spending. It has always been the first economy when cuts are made, as it doesn't show up in the headline figures... while the MoD congratulates itself for (eg) building new carriers.
Applies to everything from artillery shells and rockets to air-air missiles.
But massively increasing production can't be done overnight, and stocks are a real constraint for this year at least, I think.
(edit) A government with real foresight would have started to address this at the beginning of the invasion. Neither we not the US really did.
The Poles and the Baltics are an exception, as they realised the existential threat - but they don't as yet have the same proaction capability. Though in Poland's case that's changing rapidly.
People love to argue that their sector is special, because reasons. But for decades we haven't had self-security on either food or electricity.
Addressing our security and balance of payments can be useful things to do, but shielding uncompetitive sectors from competition isn't the way to do so.
If you are sitting comfortably as a homeowner with covid lockdown savings and a private sector pay rise, life looks fine.
If unable to pay your utilities having run down savings over the last two years and getting a real terms pay cut, it looks pretty miserable.
That inequality may well shoot up this winter.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1554066893358653443
Russia denies @ICRC access to site of Ukrainian POW massacre in Olenivka
Min. 50 Ukrainian POWs, mostly from Azovstal, were killed in a 29 July blast; Ukraine says it was staged by Russia. ICRC &UN acted as guarantors for POWs during Azovstal surrender
The referendum vote was the only time in my adult life I could've gone either way. The fact politicians had lied previously over a referendum and were happy to throw away vetoes or half the rebate is ultimately what determined my vote. I couldn't trust them to ever offer another however bad things got. It was only the unique pressure of UKIP on Cameron and the chance to jettison a referendum promise in a possible coalition that led to the referendum occurring.
14% of users already
https://fullfact.org/economy/are-people-work-using-food-banks/
Hunch- people who don't have to pay for housing, or who are paying a cost that was frozen in 2000 have a massively different experience of the current economy from those paying 2022 prices. And *&£$ knows how you deal with that.
Betfair next prime minister
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
10 Rishi Sunak 10%
Next Conservative leader
1.11 Liz Truss 90%
10 Rishi Sunak 10%
If house prices stagnate while Truss brings about a new Barber Boom, those relying on housing capital to fund their retirement may not be so chirpy.
Most economic situations have winners and lovers.
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1554070388396769280?s=21&t=L3bOHLDbyEP0lFT-paq9rA
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6539165/Why-Im-looking-east-vision-post-Brexit-prosperity-writes-JEREMY-HUNT.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sir-martin-sorrell-brexit-singapore-steroids-tax-low-regulation-a9200381.html
https://capx.co/the-case-for-a-singapore-on-thames-brexit/
Not that it matters much for the leadership.
But it may for a GE.
Hard to know what's happening with the economy, but I am pretty sure that the NHS backlog is here until the next election at least.
The path of least resistance would appear to be people increasingly going private if they can afford it - but I'd guess even that would have significant political implications with the retired.
The Tory leadership contest has been somewhat remarkable for the lack of discussion of health and social care.
We also asked if Starmer, Sunak & Truss have what it takes to be a good PM (changes from Jan)
Starmer
Agree 33% (+1)
Disagree 41% (+5)
Sunak
Agree 35% (+2)
Disagree 43% (+9)
Truss
Agree 24% (+11)
Disagree 43% (+3)
The competition might be more interesting than I'd have thought even at the end of last week.
Before that: Harold Wilson (64--> 70 only), Clem Attlee, Baldwin (24-29 only), MacDonald (23-24 only) since 1900.
The conceit that Prime Ministers gain power due to winning a general election and then lose power through losing a subsequent one is far more breached than honoured.
* allow all MPs (of whatever party, and the independents too) a vote in a secret ballot;
* allow write-ins (of MPs) - essentially every vote would be a write-in (and yes you could write in the sitting PM's name if you wanted);
* only those who receive at least one vote in a round are allowed to proceed to the next;
* worst performer each round (and any who score zero) to drop out.
Additional garnishes might include:
* make voting compulsory OR
* require the winner to win a vote of confidence in the Commons
(These achieve the same aim and therefore either of them would be sufficient. Personally I'd favour the first.)
Note: voting to be administered by Commons officials; no party involvement.
92 seat Labour majority if you plug that into Electoral Calculus 🤣
Edit: Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Shapps, Baker, Raab, Clarke, Villiers... all lose their seats 👏
We all know what happens to most of that Green support at a GE.
Labours lead has always tended to be soft, plenty of Tories sitting on their hands and not moving to labour.
The Bloomberg article Leon linked to is interesting and clearly shows a route to victory at the next GE.
But if I was a Conservative strategist I'd be concerned that
a) the Tory Government has comprehensively trashed its own brand for its own voters.
b) there is no real fear of a Labour government; the "meh" response to Starmer plays to this, too
c) the impact of the Leadership contenders is already priced into this polling - there is no comfort in the "named PM" numbers.