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LDs very close to taking Wokingham in new constituency poll – politicalbetting.com
LDs very close to taking Wokingham in new constituency poll – politicalbetting.com
Wokingham, constituency voting intention:CON: 42% (-15)LDEM: 38% (+22)LAB: 12% (-13)BREX: 5% (+5)GRN: 3% (+1)via @Survation, 01 – 04 NovChgs. w/ GE2017 result
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Like an unknown party in Wokingham.
However, it will require some (perhaps uncharacteristically) mature campaigning.
They need to avoid talk of "decapitation", or otherwise personalising it around "big names" (like Redwood). They need to avoid putting Labour voters off holding their nose and voting tactically (which means not patronising them). They will only win these seats *if* some greater proportion of those Tories stay home (and Labour voters stay on side).
https://archive.md/A6980 (The Economist)
This sort of stuff reminds of that classic Mr Burns quote, "Well, for once the rich white man is in control!"
However given Wokingham was 57% Remain and is 18th on the LD target list it was already going to be vulnerable in 2024
Safeguarding ought to be low cost, but it is being spurned here.
Finally is not reasonable for women to believe they're already subjected to too much risk and additional risk, which you acknowledge, at their expense is unjustifiable?
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has denied that her decision to expense hundreds of pounds on Apple electronics is the same as Whitehall’s use of government procurement cards on luxury items.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/feb/13/conservatives-tories-rishi-sunak-expenses-spending-angela-rayner-labour-uk-politics-live
*My most cited paper really belongs in the Journal of No Shit Sherlock results - it's well cited because it's handy citation to justify doing something a certain way in a lab which everyone knew was the right way to do it but no one had previously published on what quantifiable impact it had. It's almost a quarter of my total citations across all my papers and double the next most cited, so something like that can really skew those numbers.
I'm seeing November 2019.
And in December 2019, Lib Dems did get 38 %, but BXP didn't stand and Redwood appears to have hoovered up their vote, ending on 50 %.
These feel like the kinds of seats that are going to cap out the LD potential at the next GE.
The more obvious comparison would be 2019 which was:
Con: 49.6
LD: 37.7
Lab: 10.4
Grn: 2.2
Which means the movements in this latest poll are Con -7.6, LD +0.3, Lab +1.6, Ref +5.5 and Grn +0.8C.
Less of a Lib Dem surge and more of a Tory slump at the expense of BXP. Not quite so hopeful as it first looked.
After a dizzying series of changes of mind, UK corporation tax is now going up to 25% from April. It's a bad idea which I unenthusiastically support.
https://twitter.com/DanNeidle/status/1624839739164573705
Every time a Labour minister stays in a 5* hotel (often organised by the host) they’ll have this thrown back at them.
You're making a fantastic pro Brexit argument there Scott. 👏
You'd assume that the Tory vote would fall compared to 2019, but will the anti-Tory vote stay united behind the Lib Dems? Any boundary changes to confuse tactical voting?
Finding people who are sympathetic to/aligned with your organisation's vision seems as good a way as any as whittling down a manageable longlist.
The Tories aren’t yet in as big a mess as the post-black Monday crew got themselves into - although it’s certainly possible they get there and then some.
Starmer is no Blair - who was viewed with genuine enthusiasm as a “breath of fresh air”. Starmer’s main attraction is “he’s not the other one”. The absence of a negative isn’t as motivating as the presence of a positive.
I think we’re heading for Labour clearly largest party, possibly shy of a majority. If SLAB can focus on the NHS/economy then they can attack both SNP and the Tories - and continue their silence on the GRR bill, then they might get enough seats to gain a majority.
How the Tories do will depend on how they behave between now and then. “Steady as she goes” should see them thumped but surviving. Leadership coups will get them the little they will deserve.
Actually well run smaller independent countries like SK, Taiwan and Singapore tend to do much better than the bureaucratic behemothic bloc does.
I don't know if that works in Wokingham- at least some of the Lib gains there last time look like "can't stand Corbyn", and they may drift back.
I'm sure the LIbDems will be making this point in countless direct mail squeeze letters.
It’s almost as if the Labour spin doctors are trying to blur the story about Conservative sleeze out. Why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Constituency_polling
Here in sunny Tewkesbury the LDs are coming from so far back the considerations you mention may well apply. I'm unsure how I would vote myself.
Down the road in Cheltenham however it's a different gether altothing. If the LDs don't win there, they've had a very bad night.
Jonathan Haskel, an external member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, said that the “productivity penalty” resulting from Brexit equated to about £1,000 per household, or 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product.
He told the website The Overshoot that 2016, the year in which Britain voted to leave, was a turning point for UK productivity compared with other big economies. “We suffered much more,” Haskel, a professor of economics at Imperial College London and a member of the committee since September 2018, said. “I think it really goes back to Brexit.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-has-cost-uk-economy-29bn-in-lost-investment-mk2wf7d5j
FPT, I see Michael Gove is the latest scapegoat for the failure of Brexit to be any fucking use at all.
The revolution devours its young...
Taiwan's electronics supply chains have been forced to diversify because of restrictions on trading with Huawei and others.
Singapore's electronics supply chains are being affected by restrictions on trading with China.
South Korea relies on Russia for gas - and hasn't followed other countries in ending imports. They have concerns about Russia deepening economic ties with the North.
All collateral damage from deepening great power competition.
This has been a blind spot of yours predating the referendum.
An honest appraisal would accept downsides - as well as opportunities from Brexit.
It's the sort of easy rebuttal that they shouldn't be open to, which is one reason some of the petty accusations are as others have noted a tactical mistake.
The hope is general profligacy gets associated with the much more serious corrupt stuff, but the danger is the more serious stuff gets lost in arguments over hotels or airpods.
(If Wokingham has changed from a place where the Conservatives massively overachieve compared with national share to one where they roughly track it, that's interesting in itself. Probably helps their efficiency in good years, but dangerous in bad ones.)
Predating the regerendum I was pro-Remain, switching to undecided during the campaign and only plumping for Leave in the final few weeks.
Precisely because I've always seen both pros and cons.
Yes SK etc may have had negative impacts due to the trade wars happening but find me any of those countries eager to subsume themselves into China in order to evade those costs? Or find any where Chinese GDP per capita is better than theirs? All of those countries are better off outside of China, just as we should be better off outside of the EU.
I have always thought there will be costs for Brexit and there'll be a likely hockey stick effect as the costs for divergence will be more upfront while the benefits will accrue over time.
Historically the third party has always had its best results when a Conservative government is unpopular, because many Conservative voters have always been resistant to voting Labour even when thoroughly disillusioned with 'their own side', whereas the other way around whilst Labour may have had a historically strong tribal vote, once a voter is ready to break with the tribe they are mostly quite willing to jump to the Tories without stopping to vote for a centre party - cf. the former red wall.
At the 2019 GE the party shares in Wokingham were Con 49.6%, LD 37.7%, Lab 10.4%.
So the change in shares is Con -8%, LD 0%, Lab +2%, Brexit/Reform + 5%, Green +1%.
What's surprising about this poll is that the LDs are still 4% behind, given where they are starting from and the scale of the national collapse in the Conservative vote.
British semiconductor bosses threaten to move overseas as U.S. and EU splurge on chips
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/13/uk-semiconductor-strategy-chip-firms-threaten-to-move-overseas.html
...In the U.S., President Joe Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act, a $280 billion package that includes $52 billion of funding to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
The EU, meanwhile, has earmarked 43 billion euros ($45.9 billion) for Europe’s semiconductor industry with the aim of producing 20% of the world’s semiconductors by 2030...
...The U.K. won’t have the kind of financial firepower to match those bold spending packages, they say. However, they’re hopeful the country will commit to investment in the several millions, tax incentives, and an easier immigration process for high-skilled workers...
...A U.K. semiconductor strategy was expected to come out last year. But it has faced a series of delays due to political instability. The government previously suggested establishing a national institution, among other initiatives, to boost its semiconductor industry.
“The rumors I’ve heard is [it may arrive] any day now,” Chris Ballance, co-founder of U.K. quantum computing startup Oxford Ionics, told CNBC. However, he added the process had been “going on for the last four or five months.”
If our national objectives are a free and open international trading system, as are Singapore's, the emergence of a fragmented trading system divided into competing blocs is a negative development.
The EU is becoming increasingly protectionist. Using the green economy rules as a figleaf.
Biden is now doing the same under the IRA programme.
Where that leaves us is a long enough topic for a blog post. Waiting for the Hockey Stick upturn is the politest version I can write.
Certainly SK and Taiwan are monitoring China's determined development of national industries (on an import substitution model) with interest.
We can also expect the EU market to gradually move away from us. Will fisheries offset that? I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Actually if you look further back, the third party did very well in 1983 (where they doubled their seats) while the Tories were scoring a landslide and Labour were doing very badly. The last time before that they did well was February 1974 when both major parties fell backwards by a combined 13.4% of the national vote share. While their worst result was of course 2015 when both major parties gained vote share.
There's no discernible pattern it seems to me to be a case of this party doing well is good news for the third party, rather it seems to be a case of the third party can do well when a party suffers, whether it be Tories (1997) or Labour (1983) or both (1974).
I expect self-determination to offset that. More than offset that.
Yes SK, Taiwan, Singapore etc are monitoring China with interest, as they should, but they're not seeking to become provinces within China, are they?
We too ought to monitory the EU with interest, and China and the USA and the rest of the globe too for what its worth, but without seeking to be a province within Europe.
I wholeheartedly agree t hat over time the EU will move away from us, and us from them, but what we gain from self-determination ought to more than offset that. And if it doesn't, its because we're not running ourselves well, and we have democratic control over that.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23317776.poll-big-lead-no-gulf-public-snp-priorities/
Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three floating objects shot down by warplanes in as many days, Gen. Glen VanHerck said: “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out.
“I haven’t ruled out anything.””
https://nypost.com/2023/02/13/top-general-not-ruling-out-aliens-after-3-ufos-shot-down/
Creating the right tax incentives and having the right immigration etc policies seeking to attract the best and brightest from the entire planet regardless of their nationality is eminently sensible.
Whatever this is, it's huge news either way. The world's leading military and technological superpower just has no idea what's going on. Even if it's just China or some private individual, that also would be huge news, in terms of the global power hierarchy.
I'd prefer to have some of the highly profitable industries in the UK.
But then people say "look at this profitable industry, they should be paying more tax" and then firms choose to invest elsewhere.
Just recognise that there are some rather important industries which need incentives to be in the UK.
Is this more an attempt to see off labour as a threat to ditching the Tories.
In 2025 when DPM Rayner is off to Paris for a summit she won't be staying in a sodding Ibis will she?
As I note upthread the significant thing here is, barring ET, there appears to be man-made technology out there that far exceeds what the man on the street thought possible.
How you structure the incentives matters. Simply writing a cheque to a flagship and hoping it works isn't the best way of doing it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/13/tories-battle-plan-class-war-lee-anderson-working-class-britain
There has been in recent times a deliberate attempt to muddy public understanding of what social class means. For instance, it’s notable that commentators often seem to consider Anderson as some kind of authentic voice of “ordinary” people, but not, say, the RMT’s Mick Lynch, another white man of a similar age. Why? Because Lynch has a subversive conception of class, whereby those without wealth or power can pursue their interests through collective action. Anderson’s status, on the other hand, is the product of a redefinition of class – on cultural rather than economic lines. For the new right, to be working class doesn’t mean having nothing but your labour to sell, but being opposed to rootless, urban progressives who favour immigration, multiculturalism and “wokery”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11742541/Montana-congressman-says-object-state-NORAD-dismissed-anomaly.html
Briefly, Sulivan says Biden is copying Clinton's "triangulation".
(I mostly agree with Sulivan's analysis.)
Either way, there's not enough data from a sample of 1 to give any rule of thumb. The Lib Dems ought to do better in the next election simple due to a rising tide effect, there's more opportunities from the Tories doing badly (and less dislike of the Lib Dems than in the past so that should unwind) but then when Labour next becomes unpopular that too could lead to new opportunities for the Lib Dems just as they gained seats in 1983.
Churn and chaos creates opportunities.
It should be a civilised process, no protracted election, and Sunak should be offered a prominent cabinet Role (Foreign Sec.), to avoid rancour and signal a broad cabinet.