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The past year in Westminster by-elections – politicalbetting.com
The past year in Westminster by-elections – politicalbetting.com
The last year has seen 6 parliamentary by-elections of which just two saw a change in the party holding the seat.
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What a great way to the end the year!
Truss also the first PM in history not to face a by election given she was in office for so short a period
Did we ever see Parish's John Deere letter?
The most extreme nuclear war/biological war concepts ever created would kill maybe 90% of the human race. Survival would be biased to hunter gathers and low tech farmers.
Rebuilding would be much easier. The steel in a few building structures might be more iron than the Roman Empire used. In its entirety…
Flint knapping wouldn’t be a useful skill.
We can clearly see Sunak doing worse than Johnson in northern seats with Labour the main challenger..
I presume you're of the view the removal of Boris Johnson by the Conservative Parliamentary Party constitutes an error of similar magnitude to the ousting of Margaret Thatcher in November 1990?
Sunak has got a bounce relative to Truss but not relative to Boris overall maybe but there is some evidence Sunak has got a bounce relative to Boris in the bluewall
Pure
insider tradingluck.https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-21-22-november-2022/
We haven't had any recent polling to see if the Conservatives have improved their fortunes. The May local elections will have a lot of contests in Blue Wall Council areas such as Guildford, Waverley and West Berkshire to name but three. It will be interesting to see what movement there has been since 2019.
Biological Armageddon could be more global and a little more like the Black Death but as you say with more infrastructure and technology readily available.
Runaway global warming gives us some serious issues because there’s no simple reset and regrowth once the runaway process starts. But it’s not in the likely scientific scenarios at the moment and we would at least have a bit more notice.
AI taking over…if and when it happens I reckon we go out not with a bang but a cyborg whimper.
and by 9% even at your link
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/blue-wall-voting-intention-13-14-november-2022/
*Keir Starmer goes ahead in the polls*
Keir Starmer is useless, he can't even win a by-election
*Keir Starmer wins a by-election*
Keir Starmer is useless, he can't even achieve a large swing in by-election
*Keir Starmer achieves a massive swing in a by-election*
Keir Starmer is useless, he can't even go 20 points ahead
*Keir Starmer goes 24 points ahead*
So what next year?
Politico.com - McCarthy struggles to appease conservative demands as speakership battle nears
The GOP leader again raised making it easier for members to force a vote to depose the speaker, a move that could severely weaken him if he does manage to take the gavel next term.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/30/gop-leader-votes-kevin-mccarthy-00075867
Rollcall.com - Speaker race headed toward dramatic floor election
McCarthy opponents and supporters not budging, expect multiple ballots
https://rollcall.com/2022/12/30/speaker-race-headed-toward-dramatic-floor-election/
Foxnews.com - GOP faces delay in unlocking full powers of House if McCarthy cannot clinch speakership - Legislation, subpoenas face delays if House does not elect a speaker on Jan. 3
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-faces-delay-unlocking-full-powers-house-mccarthy-cannot-clinch-speakership
We might as well parcel up the rest of England. The brick wall: inner urban labour strongholds. The purple heart: the ukip-scented Tory stronghold from the Thames estuary up into the East Midlands and Lincs. That just leaves the comfortably stable West midlands and the very politically mixed outer suburbs without their own walls.
I'd be looking at somewhere like Dartford - currently, the 42 Councillors are split 29 Conservative, 10 Labour and 3 Residents. Last time, the Conservatives won 53% and Labour 27.5%. It's a Council Labour held from 1995 to 2003 so if you're thinking about a 1997-style result you'd need t see this authority back under Labour control but they need 12 gains.
The swing in voting intention from Conservative to Labour is 20%.
The other thing to remember is this is a forced choice between Sunak and Starmer which is not the same as the Voting Intention question which allows for other parties. It's always possible LD and Green supporters might "prefer" Sunak but that doesn't mean they'll vote Conservative. 21% Don't Know is also worth bearing in mind unless you think, as with Reform Party supporters, they are all basically Tories.
A complete cut off of Northern Hemisphere originated trade would drop the carry capacity of South America by 70%+, I reckon….
A thought occurs.
Game Theory time.
Postulates
1) The Conservative Party is heading for a drubbing
2) Many Conservative MPs will lose seats
3) This will mean many Conservative MPs will be on the job market.
4) the kind of jobs ex politicians want - consulting, influence pedalling etc are not infinite in number.
How many might quit early? Announcing you are standing down at the next election is one thing. A number have done this.
Standing down *now* and getting away from the association with the “oncoming freight train” might be attractive.
How many will do that? Early “defectors” win…
Could we see a non trivial erosion of the governments majority?
With the assistance of his therapist and support of his family, let's all hope he becomes an ex-tractor fan in 2023.
The chances of humanity going extinct in any year have always been vanishingly small. Say 0.0000001%
Well, next year it is 0.000003%. Still terrifically unlikely but not *quite* as unlikely as it was
The way it would happen would probably be some combination of those threats: all out nuclear war leading to some terrible climate disaster, pushing an already volatile climate into something apocalyptic. Plus a terrible new variant of Covid with R0 of R89 and an IFR of 97% to mop up whose left
A few survivors might make it into 2024, then hunger and cold would take em
Aliens are probably much more of a threat in terms of instant wipe out but they are something of a Deux Ex Machina so I'll leave them be, for now
"I am a dry stone waller.
All day I dry stone wall.
Of all appalling callings,
Dry stone walling's,
Worst of all"
(Pam Ayres)
So, in terms of any erosion being "non-trivial" enough to come anywhere close to threatening their working majority - absolutely no chance.
There will also be a lot of pressure not to trigger by-elections at this stage, and most will stick with that even if it is at a cost (we might see an incongrous knighthood or two this time next year I shouldn't wonder). I'd also note it wasn't really a feature 2005-10 or 1992-1997 when losses were anticipated. Also, quite a few of the jobs people will angle for can actually be done alongside being a (due to "retire") MP and without using the MP salary.
Overall, they could lose one or two but I can't see this being a big feature.
Albeit UK in general, and CUP in particular, would dearly love to. As per BJ the Snow-Man and his brain-frozen elf Frosty.
Is HYUFD highlighting this?
As waiting lists, ambulance and A&E waits reach record lengths
As nurses strike or leave the profession in their thousands
Remember this staggering video by Vote Leave
See the lies then
See the truth now.
https://twitter.com/MarinaPurkiss/status/1609170533542760453/video/1
We now live in the timeline where 97 happened. And the Canadian wipeout.
Even losing 20 MPs would be a big deal - rebellions get a lot easier.
Edit - doesn't seem to be stopping them anyway.
@CorrectHorseBattery3 called it at the time here as peak,Johnson and he was right.
Damn. Too slow.
Happy New Year all!
That as civilisations progress, they accumulate more and more functionaries. Of greater and greater density. Eventually they collapse into Dark Matter. Which is nothing less than stupidity and bullshit at the density of neutronium.
This at once explains the absence of intelligence in the universe and the Dark Matter problem.
In the dark gulfs between the stars, DfE eternal lies dreaming….
Happy New Year all 👍
The sitting MPs of the day are kept on their toes by a computer with a snazzy name picking out at random one constituency seat per quarter where the incumbent has to defend their majority.
Partly to ensure a certain amount of squeaky-bum-ness in sitting MPs - a continual reminder that they could have to justify their seat to the electors at any given moment might focus minds. Partly just for the lulz. Or something.
The new hegemon in this post-apocalyptic world? Probably Brazil, but Chile, South and Australia would run it close. Or, if it’s just a Russia-NATO spat then China becomes sold global superpower.
How helpful is modern steel as a material input to a low-tech civilisation anyway? I'm wondering if it would be the equivalent of porphyry in the post-Roman period, when the techniques and tools for working it had been lost, so preworked porphyry was a status symbol but very hard to repurpose...
Seven points clear at New Year by the looks of it.
Australia is firmly in the NATO sphere, imposing sanctions on Russia, sending military assistance to Ukraine and with its submarine partnership with us and the US to contain China
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/asia/china-xi-russia-putin-video-meeting-intl-hnk/index.html
Sir Keir Starmer channels Tony Blair with plans to launch a 1997 style pledge card.
Edit - I probably meant the Edstone
Were the mugs Ed’s work too?
In the case of Venezuela, the Orinoco belt oil sands contain massive amounts of hydrocarbons, but they are no way near as easy to exploit as traditional oil sources.
Happy New Year everyone!
I am not goading you, it is genuinely perplexing. I hope you enjoy it (Christmas Eve is better than New Year's Eve, to my mind)
In that context, I am spending New Year's Eve.... doing my tax returns. Later I shall make a laksa. Bah humbug
If they play sensibly, Guyanans will all be quite rich by 2030. Tho nearby Trinidad shows what can go wrong. And, of course, Venezuela
https://simpleflying.com/busiest-airline-routes-2022/
Not least the immortal comment 'just because they're on this sculpture doesn't mean our pledges are carved in stone.'
If not for the premiership of Liz Truss it would have been the worst presentational disaster since the MP for Wareham claimed the rumour he wished his workers to vote with their conscience was 'a dastardly lie...I wish and intend those persons to vote for me.'
Didn't Gavin Williamson win an award for his fireplace selling prowess?
In May 2017, it was revealed that the EdStone had become a decoration in the Ivy Chelsea Garden restaurant on King's Road in West London. The restaurant's owners said that it had been bought two years earlier in a charity auction because it would be "fun" to have an "iconic image of the election" in the garden. Steve Vanhinsbergh, co-owner of stoneCIRCLE doubted this was the authentic stone, for practical reasons and the fact that he was "99% sure" it had been demolished.[21]