It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
I don't think Starmer will be releasing any balloons until the votes are in and counted.
Not listening are you?
You know this period in hindsight, still thinking there’s a big lead so nothing to worry about, ignoring all the signs this is changing, so do nothing but faff about with balloons, you know this period in insight is when the Tories were winning the election?
Yep, no room for complacency until the GE is done & dusted. Not for Keir anyway. I plan on getting complacent in the summer if the polls are still good.
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
I've snipped the pictures but it's interesting that the two main take aways from this for each party aren't simply 'Conservatives bad, Labour good'.
The two stand outs for the Cons are 'Rich' and 'Don't know'. And whilst Labour is 'Helping Britain' the other stand out is also 'Don't know'.
If Labour win, it'll be more of a 'mewh, time to let the other lot mess things up for a bit' sort of vote rather than any genuine desire for a Labour government.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's why I've been saying for months that Sir Keir needs to either get his programme into his manifesto (preferably having trailed it for up to a couple of years) or win a landslide. Winning a small majority with the public in "meh" mode won't make it easy to get through anything that isn't in the manifesto.
I think that's fair comment. Labour party policy, while far from non-existent, remains a bit nebulous if considered as a program for government. That can't stay the case all the way to the next election if Starmer aspires to govern effectively.,
Exactly so, and this leads to the next question: does he (and his party) care? If Labour posters here are representative of Labour activists generally, then I'm not at all sure they do - all they seem to care about is winning the election, with little if any thought apparently given to what happens next.
I'm on the left so naturally want some equality promotion, wealth tax, more foreign aid, etc., but even I don't really want to churn it out 18 months ahead of the election. Nebulous is fine for now.
Yes.. never let the electorate know what a Labour Govt has in store for you......
Utah Rep. Burgess Owens — who has filed for bankruptcy protection five times — is against President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, saying, "debt cannot be canceled." https://twitter.com/sltrib/status/1638166066022031361
Today's headlines:
Republican representative is a stupid hypocrite.
Boris Johnson is an incompetent self seeking liar.
Mr. Valiant, pretty sure that's not available for consoles, but how are you finding Victoria 2?
Victoria 2? Or Victoria 3 (the new game)?
I've not played Vicky 3 at all, so can't comment. I really like Vicky 2, but you do need some mods though the base game + all the DLC is perfectly playable.
I'm not very good at it, so I tend to play on Very Easy and even then I don't do very well.
But it's a sublime game. Yes, it's called a Spreadsheet simulator for a reason, but a lot of fun can be had, especially if you play as a Great Power, or a Secondary looking for greatness.
Very easy is my mode on strategy games. It's ok so long as they dont customise the difficulty names to something like 'infant' level
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
I've snipped the pictures but it's interesting that the two main take aways from this for each party aren't simply 'Conservatives bad, Labour good'.
The two stand outs for the Cons are 'Rich' and 'Don't know'. And whilst Labour is 'Helping Britain' the other stand out is also 'Don't know'.
If Labour win, it'll be more of a 'mewh, time to let the other lot mess things up for a bit' sort of vote rather than any genuine desire for a Labour government.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's why I've been saying for months that Sir Keir needs to either get his programme into his manifesto (preferably having trailed it for up to a couple of years) or win a landslide. Winning a small majority with the public in "meh" mode won't make it easy to get through anything that isn't in the manifesto.
I've wanted for a while to write a piece on tribal voting. You know, those people who vote for the same old party irrespective? But:
1. I've not the time. 2. I'd want to do some research on the subject, but I've never seen anything about tribal voting ever. I presume no one actually asks a voter, "Look, we all know you're a thick ignorant idiot but you do vote. Do you really think about your vote, or do you simply vote for who you voted for last time/who your parents told you to vote for without putting any thought into the matter?" and therefore true 'data' on tribal voting is quite rare.
The Conservatives are going to lose votes and seats, but I still wonder if a slender majority for them is completely out the question.
In Bootle, everyone hates the Labour party, except on General Election day.
You have to be FAIRLY interested in politics to be a floating voter. If you're VERY interested you probably have a clear preference and become pretty tribal. If you only give a modest toss, you vote each time - if you vote at all - for the same team.
Hereditary allegiance is rare nowadays - witness the continuing Tory edge among the elderly and the near-monolithic Labour vote in the 18-21 range. Do parents often get worked about it, I wonder? My Tory parents were ultra-tolerant of my communist sympathies - even bought me Land og Folk, the Danish party paper - which made me in turn more tolerant when I grew up. Are there parents who shout "stupid child, you can't vote like that!"?
I am a very interested in politics and I am a floating voter or in @kinabalu 's words 'a highly partisan raging centrist.'
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
I've snipped the pictures but it's interesting that the two main take aways from this for each party aren't simply 'Conservatives bad, Labour good'.
The two stand outs for the Cons are 'Rich' and 'Don't know'. And whilst Labour is 'Helping Britain' the other stand out is also 'Don't know'.
If Labour win, it'll be more of a 'mewh, time to let the other lot mess things up for a bit' sort of vote rather than any genuine desire for a Labour government.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's why I've been saying for months that Sir Keir needs to either get his programme into his manifesto (preferably having trailed it for up to a couple of years) or win a landslide. Winning a small majority with the public in "meh" mode won't make it easy to get through anything that isn't in the manifesto.
I've wanted for a while to write a piece on tribal voting. You know, those people who vote for the same old party irrespective? But:
1. I've not the time. 2. I'd want to do some research on the subject, but I've never seen anything about tribal voting ever. I presume no one actually asks a voter, "Look, we all know you're a thick ignorant idiot but you do vote. Do you really think about your vote, or do you simply vote for who you voted for last time/who your parents told you to vote for without putting any thought into the matter?" and therefore true 'data' on tribal voting is quite rare.
The Conservatives are going to lose votes and seats, but I still wonder if a slender majority for them is completely out the question.
In Bootle, everyone hates the Labour party, except on General Election day.
You have to be FAIRLY interested in politics to be a floating voter. If you're VERY interested you probably have a clear preference and become pretty tribal. If you only give a modest toss, you vote each time - if you vote at all - for the same team.
Hereditary allegiance is rare nowadays - witness the continuing Tory edge among the elderly and the near-monolithic Labour vote in the 18-21 range. Do parents often get worked about it, I wonder? My Tory parents were ultra-tolerant of my communist sympathies - even bought me Land og Folk, the Danish party paper - which made me in turn more tolerant when I grew up. Are there parents who shout "stupid child, you can't vote like that!"?
I am a very interested in politics and I am a floating voter or in @kinabalu 's words 'a highly partisan raging centrist.'
'Raging loony centrist' - but ok you can drop the 'loony' when self describing, I suppose.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
This is a simple and excellent idea which the UK should adopt forthwith. (The US Supreme Court will probably rule it unconstitutional...)
1. @FTC is proposing a rule to ban deceptive business tactics designed to trick or trap consumers into paying for unwanted subscriptions. The proposal would mandate “click to cancel,” requiring firms to make it as easy to cancel as they make it to sign up. https://twitter.com/linakhanFTC/status/1638885955561205761
A friend is a member of a gym with a refreshing policy: to cancel, just cancel the direct debit with your bank. When the gym tries and fails to take the next payment, they rescind your access. No other steps required.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Anyone who expresses readable opinions on here has been wrong and been seen to be wrong many times. I certainly have. But the time between your post and the latest Yougov must be close to a record. Excellent work.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
How many people actually have a dedicated law for their personal pension arrangements?
Every DPP that there's been in recent times?
Why? Presumably so people who have already maxed out their LTA in their well paid career don’t get crucified for tax when they take a position with pension entitlements. It would seriously disincentivise some serious candidates. Not sure SKS was in that happy place though.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, apart from being rude. I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out, not the range you get that actually paint the picture. The picture has to be meaningful, not all the words are. And also trends are the important way to use them. So compare todays word clouds to the previous ones, and still tell me I’m wrong in my analysis.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
That lead would represent a 19% Con to Lab swing since the last general election. The kind of situation that in days gone by psephologists considered only as "just a bit of fun".
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
Good. This one is easy. The tricky trick is harder. Which is correctly to catch and embody the public mind on how to progress the post-Brexit world. No-one has yet achieved this. Until it is done it remains a hot potato and a ticking bomb.
It seems to me that this big question is gradually and inexorably joining the list of really important issues to which there is no rational answer, however hard you try. Brexit is the next 'Northern Ireland' politically, all the more ironic because its NI dimension is a significant if small piece in the jigsaw.
We all see the problems, we all know what we don't want, but no-one captures an reasoned account of what we actually do want. As if the entire UK has joined forces with the DUP.
0.25 % on interest rates. I think that the UK has finally caught up the credibility gap they had with the Fed. Sterling stabilised at around $1.20. No more imported inflation due to depreciation. Probably only one more rise of a quarter to go.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
An interesting (to me) finding there is only a minority of trans people identify as one particular gender. Eg just 12% as trans men and 22% as trans women - the category that just about all of the debate here gets focussed on. Also striking how there's a wide and level spectrum on to what extent trans people present to society as a gender different to that at birth. It's very often not a binary all-or-nothing situation. This sort of real life complexity rarely gets a look-in when the topic is discussed. It's extremely poorly served imo.
Have you listened to that JK Rowling podcast yet.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
Add the safeguarding provisions (see amendments - prisons, medical exams etc) and the bill would not have hit the issue either with safeguarding obligations or, probably, the UK government.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
The main problem being, as described in the JKR podcast, is why on earth should people rely on a "qualified gatekeeper" (eg gender recognition certificates) to determine their gender. Quite a compelling argument.
I really like being an expert on the trans issue btw.
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
The 2019 Tory new intake contains some of the thickest MPs in history, with the obvious exception for the member for Newcastle-under-Lyme.
If I understand it correctly this chap has won the local contest to be the Tory candidate in the new boundary seat, contested between him and the MP for Penrith and Border. (Who is a thoughtful and reasoned academic and vet).
(BTW this also means of course that Willie Whitelaw's wonderful old seat ceases to exist - about the largest in England, all of it God's own country.)
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
Starmer's advisers will be absolutely delighted by those mind map responses.
They will not at this stage be spooked by the large "Don't know" and somewhat smaller "nothing" responses for Starmer, and in any case those are rather surprisingly for a LOTO no larger than those for Sunak - a PM and former Chancellor who has by now had several years in high office to define his values through the implementation of his policies. For Labour, the "don't know" and smaller "nothing" responses will shrink in the run up to the general election campaign, especially in the final 6 weeks of the campaign proper, as the party's offer is defined clearly. Remember 2017, when Labour's focus on policy closed the polling gap?
What is important for Labour is that all the other key messages in large print are positive ones that Labour would want to see: i.e. Helping the country/people, fairness/equality, change, good, honesty (bigger than "dishonesty"), A better Britain. The fact that "healthcare/the NHS" is not larger is a bit surprising but it is no bad thing if people are associating Starmer with values rather than a specific policy area. You need a magnifying class to see poor ones such as "wokeness".
Just as importantly for Labour, Sunak's responses are nearly all awful ones. The big print responses apart from "Don't know" include: The rich, Corruption/greed, Dishonesty ("honesty" is tiny), Themselves. "The Economy" is more a reflection of his background as Chancellor but can be interpreted both ways. "Helping the country/people", "Fairness/equality" and "A better Britain" are there but in far smaller print than the print accorded to Starmer.
I see your own post now. I appreciate now why you were so grumpy I shredded your spin laden analysis. 🙂
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
Edit: plus he's done it to signal early to his own backbenchers and members that there is no effing way a GR bill is going in the manifesto.
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
Starmer's advisers will be absolutely delighted by those mind map responses.
They will not at this stage be spooked by the large "Don't know" and somewhat smaller "nothing" responses for Starmer, and in any case those are rather surprisingly for a LOTO no larger than those for Sunak - a PM and former Chancellor who has by now had several years in high office to define his values through the implementation of his policies. For Labour, the "don't know" and smaller "nothing" responses will shrink in the run up to the general election campaign, especially in the final 6 weeks of the campaign proper, as the party's offer is defined clearly. Remember 2017, when Labour's focus on policy closed the polling gap?
What is important for Labour is that all the other key messages in large print are positive ones that Labour would want to see: i.e. Helping the country/people, fairness/equality, change, good, honesty (bigger than "dishonesty"), A better Britain. The fact that "healthcare/the NHS" is not larger is a bit surprising but it is no bad thing if people are associating Starmer with values rather than a specific policy area. You need a magnifying class to see poor ones such as "wokeness".
Just as importantly for Labour, Sunak's responses are nearly all awful ones. The big print responses apart from "Don't know" include: The rich, Corruption/greed, Dishonesty ("honesty" is tiny), Themselves. "The Economy" is more a reflection of his background as Chancellor but can be interpreted both ways. "Helping the country/people", "Fairness/equality" and "A better Britain" are there but in far smaller print than the print accorded to Starmer.
I see your own post now. I appreciate now why you were so grumpy I shredded your spin laden analysis. 🙂
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
It is a bit pathetic actually. Politicians should be leading public opinion, not taking instructions from Twitter.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
It is a bit pathetic actually. Politicians should be leading public opinion, not taking instructions from Twitter.
Absolutely - As Tony Benn used to say, MPs should be signposts not weather-vanes.
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
The Boris show yesterday, and the allied circus around it, had an elegiac feel of a display from yesterday's men. (What on earth was Lord Pannick doing involving himself in this?). It all felt a bit sad.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
It is a bit pathetic actually. Politicians should be leading public opinion, not taking instructions from Twitter.
Absolutely - As Tony Benn used to say, MPs should be signposts not weather-vanes.
It is pretty clear - the public are fine with self ID. Providing some very obvious exceptions are made.
Given that Sturgeon, herself, effectively implemented one of those exceptions by executive fiat....
I'm not sure this is the best parallel for Boris Johnson's supporters to make.
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
The Boris show yesterday, and the allied circus around it, had an elegiac feel of a display from yesterday's men. (What on earth was Lord Pannick doing involving himself in this?). It all felt a bit sad.
Cab-rank rule applies.
A reminder our taxes paid for Lord Pannick to help and advise Boris Johnson.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing giving Labour silly unrealistic leads, proven Gold standard pollsters now regularly have Tories moving up through the 30’s.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
What triangulation - saying that the self-id issue needs a rethink is self evident. The bill plus the safeguards suggested would be fine, for example.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing giving Labour silly unrealistic leads, proven Gold standard pollsters now regularly have Tories moving up through the 30’s.
You're like Professor John Curtice on acid today, aren't you?
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
It is a bit pathetic actually. Politicians should be leading public opinion, not taking instructions from Twitter.
Absolutely - As Tony Benn used to say, MPs should be signposts not weather-vanes.
It is pretty clear - the public are fine with self ID. Providing some very obvious exceptions are made.
Given that Sturgeon, herself, effectively implemented one of those exceptions by executive fiat....
Yep.
It reminds me, when listening to the recent JK Rowling podcast (did I mention I have been listening to that?) that it is a bit like art. Almost impossible to define but if the artist says it is art, then art it is.
Similar with gender. You could have endless debate about gender but given those safeguards which the public wants, no one really cares who has a penis or what they call themselves as long as the safeguards are in place.
Do I think that as time progresses the nature of those safeguards will change? Probably. Society is changing the whole time, but as it stands today, they are required in the format put forward by many sensible commentators and politicians.
Mr. kle4, I play Civ VI just a notch or two above default, but Stellaris on Grand Admiral. The latter has a pretty long time before encountering other empires which makes it easier to try and get past the huge bonuses to resource output (the same thing happens in Civ, I think, but the empires are met way sooner and also get multiple starting cities).
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
What triangulation - saying that the self-id issue needs a rethink is self evident. The bill plus the safeguards suggested would be fine, for example.
He’s really serious about winning, you’ve got to give him that.
He really is.
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
I've been expecting this. The reform is good but a gift to the Tories.
A gift to the Tories? He's done it not because he believes it but because he wants to neutralise a possible Tory attack line. Same as he now claims to be a Brexiter ha ha.
It is a bit pathetic actually. Politicians should be leading public opinion, not taking instructions from Twitter.
Absolutely - As Tony Benn used to say, MPs should be signposts not weather-vanes.
It is pretty clear - the public are fine with self ID. Providing some very obvious exceptions are made.
Given that Sturgeon, herself, effectively implemented one of those exceptions by executive fiat....
Yep.
It reminds me, when listening to the recent JK Rowling podcast (did I mention I have been listening to that?) that it is a bit like art. Almost impossible to define but if the artist says it is art, then art it is.
Similar with gender. You could have endless debate about gender but given those safeguards which the public wants, no one really cares who has a penis or what they call themselves as long as the safeguards are in place.
Do I think that as time progresses the nature of those safeguards will change? Probably. Society is changing the whole time, but as it stands today, they are required in the format put forward by many sensible commentators and politicians.
Indeed. The problem for some is that they can't have a nice absolutism - "All people must be treated exactly how they wish on gender, all the time."
Humans are messy and complex. Simple nostrums crush *someone*.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing giving Labour silly unrealistic leads, proven Gold standard pollsters now regularly have Tories moving up through the 30’s.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
How many people actually have a dedicated law for their personal pension arrangements?
Every DPP that there's been in recent times?
Why is it necessary?
Because a DPP needs to be an eminent KC.
Eminent KCs can earn a lot more in the private sector, to make it attractive to attract the best you give them perks.
Same principle applies to the judiciary.
Do you think Starmer is wrong to scrap the exemption for DPP?
If I understand correctly, the changes that Hunt made at the budget have opened this up for everyone.
So future DPPs won't need a special law.
Sky were reporting at lunchtime that Starmer has said that, if Labour win the next election, the cap will be put back in place and the DPP exemption will be scrapped.
Apparently @Anabobazina is unable to post and wishes me to draw attention to this fact, but he is able to send me a vanilla message. Any of the @PBModerator (s) able to take a look? Is @rcs1000 up?
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
Agrees with my phony war analogy.
There are a possibly lot of votes around the centre not yet deeply committed either way. But the Tories are going to have a much harder task winning them.
Apparently @Anabobazina is unable to post and wishes me to draw attention to this fact, but he is able to send me a vanilla message. Any of the @PBModerator (s) able to take a look? Is @rcs1000 up?
I’ll have to clear him out of the spam trap later.
Looks like the system saw him as a spammer with his one word sentences
Apparently @Anabobazina is unable to post and wishes me to draw attention to this fact, but he is able to send me a vanilla message. Any of the @PBModerator (s) able to take a look? Is @rcs1000 up?
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations still for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
Apparently @Anabobazina is unable to post and wishes me to draw attention to this fact, but he is able to send me a vanilla message. Any of the @PBModerator (s) able to take a look? Is @rcs1000 up?
I’ll have to clear him out of the spam trap later.
Looks like the system saw him as a spammer with his one word sentences
Repeatedly posting
T
R
U
S
S
Sets of the spam trap.
Ah. Mildly surprised my own contributions haven't been identified as spam before now. A very forgiving spam filter.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing giving Labour silly unrealistic leads, proven Gold standard pollsters now regularly have Tories moving up through the 30’s.
Two months before the 2019 election, YouGov had a poll with the Lib Dems on 23%, ahead of Labour. I suspect that what's happening is that some of the same froth is now in the Labour column, but will it stay there for a General Election?
In some ways what's more telling is "the dog that didn't bark". Johnson not even mentioned on the front page of the Sun. Meanwhile the damage done to the Conservative brand is still very much present:
I've snipped the pictures but it's interesting that the two main take aways from this for each party aren't simply 'Conservatives bad, Labour good'.
The two stand outs for the Cons are 'Rich' and 'Don't know'. And whilst Labour is 'Helping Britain' the other stand out is also 'Don't know'.
If Labour win, it'll be more of a 'mewh, time to let the other lot mess things up for a bit' sort of vote rather than any genuine desire for a Labour government.
Yeah, I agree with that. It's why I've been saying for months that Sir Keir needs to either get his programme into his manifesto (preferably having trailed it for up to a couple of years) or win a landslide. Winning a small majority with the public in "meh" mode won't make it easy to get through anything that isn't in the manifesto.
I think that's fair comment. Labour party policy, while far from non-existent, remains a bit nebulous if considered as a program for government. That can't stay the case all the way to the next election if Starmer aspires to govern effectively.,
Exactly so, and this leads to the next question: does he (and his party) care? If Labour posters here are representative of Labour activists generally, then I'm not at all sure they do - all they seem to care about is winning the election, with little if any thought apparently given to what happens next.
I'm on the left so naturally want some equality promotion, wealth tax, more foreign aid, etc., but even I don't really want to churn it out 18 months ahead of the election. Nebulous is fine for now.
Yes.. never let the electorate know what a Labour Govt has in store for you......
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Blair could get away with doing in office things that weren't in his manifesto because (a) he was actually popular in his own right, and (b) he had a majority of 170-something.
Mr. Valiant, pretty sure that's not available for consoles, but how are you finding Victoria 2?
Victoria 2? Or Victoria 3 (the new game)?
I've not played Vicky 3 at all, so can't comment. I really like Vicky 2, but you do need some mods though the base game + all the DLC is perfectly playable.
I'm not very good at it, so I tend to play on Very Easy and even then I don't do very well.
But it's a sublime game. Yes, it's called a Spreadsheet simulator for a reason, but a lot of fun can be had, especially if you play as a Great Power, or a Secondary looking for greatness.
Very easy is my mode on strategy games. It's ok so long as they dont customise the difficulty names to something like 'infant' level
Agreed. I'm rubbish at strategy games, so its Very Easy in all games like this.
However, I do play Hearts of Iron 2 on..... *drum roll* - NORMAL! I'm quite good at that, but twenty years of playing Hearts of Iron 2 and I'm not bad at that. I even set the AI aggressiveness level to 'Aggressive', but I don't think it does anything....
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
How many people actually have a dedicated law for their personal pension arrangements?
Every DPP that there's been in recent times?
Why is it necessary?
Because a DPP needs to be an eminent KC.
Eminent KCs can earn a lot more in the private sector, to make it attractive to attract the best you give them perks.
Same principle applies to the judiciary.
“Can earn a lot more in the private sector” is true of many who get told to suck it up.
I trust you have never criticised a single public servant’s salary where there’s a higher paid private sector comparator or just a marker for their skills, or else this would come across as you just being a paid up member of the lawyer’s union.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing ...
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
How many people actually have a dedicated law for their personal pension arrangements?
Every DPP that there's been in recent times?
Why is it necessary?
Because a DPP needs to be an eminent KC.
Eminent KCs can earn a lot more in the private sector, to make it attractive to attract the best you give them perks.
Same principle applies to the judiciary.
“Can earn a lot more in the private sector” is true of many who get told to suck it up.
I trust you have never criticised a single public servant’s salary where there’s a higher paid private sector comparator or just a marker for their skills, or else this would come across as you just being a paid up member of the lawyer’s union.
Nope*
My father was a public sector employee until his retirement.
As was his father.
*Except council leaders who earn more than the PM.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
On sales taxes in the United States: As is so often true, it depends on the individual state and, often, localities.
For example: Washington state has no income tax but a fairly high sales tax, which counties often add to. Food is exempt, so I pay sales tax at a grocery store only when I buy beer or wine. Oregon has an income tax, but no general sales tax. Going further down, California has both an income tax, and a general sales tax.
Going up, Alaska actually returns some oil money, each year, to its citizens.
Why are sales taxes almost always separate on bills in the US? For transparency, or, if you prefer, to increase anti-tax sentiment.
(Full disclosure: I admire Value Added Taxes in other nations, for their economic efficiency -- and for the way they hide the total tax take on most purchases.)
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
One simple explanation is, wet behind the ears pollsters who don’t know what they’re doing ...
Like Yougov, for example ?
Yes. Exactly. And Mori Ipsos. The theory has a few holes.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
How many people actually have a dedicated law for their personal pension arrangements?
Every DPP that there's been in recent times?
Why is it necessary?
Because a DPP needs to be an eminent KC.
Eminent KCs can earn a lot more in the private sector, to make it attractive to attract the best you give them perks.
Same principle applies to the judiciary.
There are many roles where you can earn a lot more in the Private Sector where there is a need to attract the best.
SKS got his MPs to vote against giving them a Pension Tax Break (which I agree with)
Makes him look a hypocrite IMO when he has one himself
Yup. He has a water right defence for having it and it was deserved.
However it also now isn’t a good look and if you are explaining then you are losing, as a wise man once said.
As ever, two things can be true at once. If the media want a come back narrative for Sunak (and I think they do) then this can easily be one drip in the drip, drip, drip.
Artillery, missiles, jets, strike drones, helicopters, armored vehicles, mortars, and countless other deadly tools have been developed exclusively for driving enemy soldiers from trenches and killing them.
Against all this, a soldier has a shovel, an assault rifle, and patience...
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
Comments
Republican representative is a stupid hypocrite.
Boris Johnson is an incompetent self seeking liar.
The DfE is full of imbeciles.
And a bear shits in the woods.
https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1638883636974944257
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
Punchy piece by Scott Benton MP in today’s Express, headlined: “Show trial’s echoes of OJ Simpson:
“What I witnessed on Wednesday was an obsessive and disproportionate process that sets a dangerous precedent… it is time for this farce to end and for him to be acquitted.”
https://twitter.com/JAHeale/status/1638845408888733696
But Scott Benton is an absolute roaster, as his recent observations about MOTD show.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/a-tory-mp-tried-to-make-point-about-match-of-the-day-and-it-backfired-spectacularly_uk_640d7b65e4b0ebf03d367c44
I could equally say Lenin's slogan "Who, whom ?" captured an essential truth. I still think him a despicable human being (Lenin, that is
*I don't discount his also intending to wind you up.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.
The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.
However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.
Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.
“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-partygate-latest-news-rishi-sunak-tory-party-live-2023-w2m6sd0bw
A million or so people who'd never heard of him before now think he's a dodgy brief.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
What do you call a UK socialist/social democrat who is "really serious about winning" power to make a difference? A Tory!
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
Labour 49 (+3)
Tories 23 (-4)
LibDems 10 (-1)
Greens 6 (nc)
Reform 6 (nc)
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Boris
or
Sir Keir
One was likeable and an election winner
Both two cheeks of the same Tory Arse
Eminent KCs can earn a lot more in the private sector, to make it attractive to attract the best you give them perks.
Same principle applies to the judiciary.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out, not the range you get that actually paint the picture. The picture has to be meaningful, not all the words are. And also trends are the important way to use them. So compare todays word clouds to the previous ones, and still tell me I’m wrong in my analysis.
It seems to me that this big question is gradually and inexorably joining the list of really important issues to which there is no rational answer, however hard you try. Brexit is the next 'Northern Ireland' politically, all the more ironic because its NI dimension is a significant if small piece in the jigsaw.
We all see the problems, we all know what we don't want, but no-one captures an reasoned account of what we actually do want. As if the entire UK has joined forces with the DUP.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
You should give it a go.
I really like being an expert on the trans issue btw.
(BTW this also means of course that Willie Whitelaw's wonderful old seat ceases to exist - about the largest in England, all of it God's own country.)
Edit: plus he's done it to signal early to his own backbenchers and members that there is no effing way a GR bill is going in the manifesto.
Hardly controversial, and if anything designed to contrast with a more recent Tory PM who was, shall we say, less bothered about the rule of law.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/65051586
Well I certainly had a pep in my step after I got my COVID jabs, perhaps more is a more widespread problem.....
Given that Sturgeon, herself, effectively implemented one of those exceptions by executive fiat....
A reminder our taxes paid for Lord Pannick to help and advise Boris Johnson.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
So future DPPs won't need a special law.
It reminds me, when listening to the recent JK Rowling podcast (did I mention I have been listening to that?) that it is a bit like art. Almost impossible to define but if the artist says it is art, then art it is.
Similar with gender. You could have endless debate about gender but given those safeguards which the public wants, no one really cares who has a penis or what they call themselves as long as the safeguards are in place.
Do I think that as time progresses the nature of those safeguards will change? Probably. Society is changing the whole time, but as it stands today, they are required in the format put forward by many sensible commentators and politicians.
Humans are messy and complex. Simple nostrums crush *someone*.
YouGov are wet behind the ears pollsters.
There are a possibly lot of votes around the centre not yet deeply committed either way.
But the Tories are going to have a much harder task winning them.
Looks like the system saw him as a spammer with his one word sentences
Repeatedly posting
T
R
U
S
S
Sets of the spam trap.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations still for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/mgv6oms6dw/TheTimes_191001_VI_Trackers_w.pdf
However, I do play Hearts of Iron 2 on..... *drum roll* - NORMAL!
I'm quite good at that, but twenty years of playing Hearts of Iron 2 and I'm not bad at that. I even set the AI aggressiveness level to 'Aggressive', but I don't think it does anything....
(HoI2 shameless plug - yes, I'm 'thevaliant' everywhere I go: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/smep-daim-my-own-modification-for-hoi2-arma.1538041/
I trust you have never criticised a single public servant’s salary where there’s a higher paid private sector comparator or just a marker for their skills, or else this would come across as you just being a paid up member of the lawyer’s union.
SKS got his MPs to vote against giving them a Pension Tax Break (which I agree with)
Makes him look a hypocrite IMO when he has one himself
My father was a public sector employee until his retirement.
As was his father.
*Except council leaders who earn more than the PM.
For example: Washington state has no income tax but a fairly high sales tax, which counties often add to. Food is exempt, so I pay sales tax at a grocery store only when I buy beer or wine. Oregon has an income tax, but no general sales tax. Going further down, California has both an income tax, and a general sales tax.
Going up, Alaska actually returns some oil money, each year, to its citizens.
Why are sales taxes almost always separate on bills in the US? For transparency, or, if you prefer, to increase anti-tax sentiment.
(Full disclosure: I admire Value Added Taxes in other nations, for their economic efficiency -- and for the way they hide the total tax take on most purchases.)
However it also now isn’t a good look and if you are explaining then you are losing, as a wise man once said.
As ever, two things can be true at once. If the media want a come back narrative for Sunak (and I think they do) then this can easily be one drip in the drip, drip, drip.
‘I am fighting Russians not because I hate Russia.’ The story of a Ukrainian volunteer infantryman
From a journalist to peace advocate to volunteer fighter
https://globalvoices.org/2023/03/20/i-am-fighting-russians-not-because-i-hate-russia-a-story-of-a-ukrainian-volunteer-infantryman/
...I am going to tell you a secret. Almost all the weapons used by land forces are created for one single purpose: to kill an infantryman.
Artillery, missiles, jets, strike drones, helicopters, armored vehicles, mortars, and countless other deadly tools have been developed exclusively for driving enemy soldiers from trenches and killing them.
Against all this, a soldier has a shovel, an assault rifle, and patience...
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
Using special needs as an insult.
Ugh.