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Latest polls suggest no budget bounce – politicalbetting.com
Latest polls suggest no budget bounce – politicalbetting.com
Labour leads by 19%, the first time in 2023 that Labour has led by less than 20%.Westminster VI (26 March):Labour 46% (-1)Conservative 27% (+1)Liberal Democrat 10% (-1)Reform UK 8% (+3)Green 4% (-2)SNP 3% (-1)Other 2% (–)Changes +/- 19 Marchhttps://t.co/XMk3pvh65q pic.twitter.com/Ki7CHGswDT
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Ok, pretty unlikely. But less unlikely than it was when Sunak took over. I’m pretty confident Labour will win the next election, but I’m less sure than I was.
JosiasJessop said:
On another note, Beeching's report 'Reshaping of Britain's Railways' was published sixty years ago today.
I wonder how a contemporary PB would have discussed it? The Conservatives saying how necessary it was, whilst all the Labour people said they wouldn't enact the recommendations if they got power? (Only to enact them when they got power) ?
Meanwhile, old farts would be discussing how the shortening hemlines of girl's skirts meant that the Apocalypse was on its way...
The commons hansard debates are online
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1963-04-29/debates/7c2b20d2-6e98-4254-b7e0-0e78f5791897/Railways
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1963-04-30/debates/4a00b735-ea47-492e-affd-1e700cd980f8/Railways
I'd say the Tories are on c.30%. Labour probably draw back to 40-42% in a GE.
Question is whether the Tories can creep any closer.
Oh, and Starmer is shit.
Britain is also looking less of a unique basket case than it was, what with France in flames, and Scottish indy receding into nowhere. But that in turn means Starmer will probably win a handy number of Scottish seats
Starmer will get a majority of 50-100?
Something g that goes up and doesn’t come down isn’t really a bounce…
For the record, Labour gained 146 seats in 1997.
I do suspect he can and will claw some votes back. I think barring some scandalous or self-destructive event from Labour (never say never) the next flavour of government will be red - the only question is whether there will be a majority, and if there is, what size
Sunak's competent government is rallying the base and Boris/Truss are a busted flush.
"Life expectancy in the US by race, 1900-2019":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_Expectancy_in_the_U.S._by_race_1900-2019.png
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy
As you can see, life expectancy for both blacks and whites rose over those years, with some interuptions like World War II, and the gap between the two groups diminished, slowly.
Until about 2010. And then drugs, particularly fentanyl, took their toll. And the steady increase in life expectancy stopped.
We, as a nation, did not react well to this challenge. Others will differ, but I lay some of the blame for that failure on Barack Obama. Who should have learned from the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
Just as I lay some of the blame for the high COVID toll in the US on Donald the Loser. Who could have learned from competent medical professionals.
(There is good news, and another lesson, in the way life expectancy has increased for Hispanics, so that it is now well above that of whites.)
Sunak's problem is that, once trust is blown, it's damn hard to win back. Even if Sunak manages to repair the real damage done to the economy by the Trussterfuck (and "if" is doing more work there than the average Conservative voter is right now) the voter response is likely to be "Meh. Conservatives clearing up Conservative mess."
That's if the "pounds in your pocket" economy does improve. It might, but it equally might not.
Over about 20 years it's gone from 'jeez - not going near that corner!' to 'oh! look! a midge! how sweet!'.
Really, really very noticeable.
However I reckon this is priced in. We all know he is stupefyingly dull. It won't be a surprise. And it's not like Sunak has Boris levels of brio and charm. TMay's spectrumy woodenness WAS something of a surprise in her campaign, we all thought she was solid and tedious and competent, but it turned out she was something much more offputting, and shrill, and brittle, and she had madly bad policy notions which she then U-turned immediately. Starmer won't do any of that
Labour's problems will start the day after they win. They have zero ideas, Reeves is a void, there's no one else, they will be Woke and worthy, but they will at least keep the UK together until we finally get a real new reforming Thatcher, some time around 2030-35?
Or the robots will kill us for the bantz long before then
It's such a subjective thing, but I am sure the mossies are dying out. And yet I can't find any hard data to back this up
It's like there's the voicebox of a twelve-year boy trying to get out.
On the upside, Starmer is quite ruthless and cunning. He has a genuine streak of clever political brutality. Which can be a very good thing. He may - ahem - surprise on the upside in that department
Under Boris and Truss, the government was both corrupt and frivolous. Now, it's beginning to appear fairly competent.
Sunak's ratings have shown a marked improvement, relative to Starmer's, with Redfield and Wilton.
Within the population as a whole, a substantial number (especially in the Midlands and parts of the North) have done pretty well over the past 13 years.
I still think time for a change wins out, in 2024, but I'm quite certain now, the government will be retaining 200+ seats.
I'd favour Tissue Price to hold his seat.
Somehow the UK missed out on their malign influence on the medical profession.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001kk0h/panorama-whats-gone-wrong-with-our-housing
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
That certainly helped start the epidemic -- but that doesn't absolve the rest of us from failing to take steps to control it. Especially our high government officials.
Similarly, murderers are responsible for the high homicide rate in Chicago, but that doesn't mean that others in the city, especially elected officials, are doing all they should to reduce it.
Lettuce is good for you.
Truss, however...
It’s very largely fentanyl which is now laced into almost every illicit substance, from cocaine to “adderall”.
Even a small dose can cause respiratory arrest to the susceptible.
One small grain of hope is that - in theory - a lot of people don’t need to go into the office anymore, so they can work (and live) from Algarkirk or Albequerque.l
So the Brits don’t escape culpability completely.
Somehow the Tories have to lose.
What makes for a real landslide feeling on election night, the true source of drama, is the number of seats changing hands. If Labour are gaining 150-odd seats it’s certainly going to feel quite landslidy because every few seconds around 3am onwards the little red ticker will be flashing up saying “Labour gain north codswollop and sprinkleside”.
Non-Tories are well overdue an exciting election night. I am fully expecting an underwhelming Lib Dem performance but still, just seeing waves of blue seats fall would be a tonic after 4 disappointing elections in a row (2017 being disappointing both because from 10pm it always looked like May would scrape enough to get through with the DUP and because the Labour leader was a disaster).
In fact the last election where the narrative was entirely cheerful was 1997.
An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Real issues have been lack of supply of new builds, lack of regional development, lack of regulation of landlords, artificially low interest rates and the British mentality (of which I’m as guilty as the next man) that a home is a trade-able financial asset.
I'm surprised by that but if you have the figures I'm prepared to listen. The cost of living clearly isn't as high up north as in the south east but the private sector is generally pretty weak.
And it’ll be mortgage increases that do for Sunak. There is a lot more pain to be felt by middle England before we get to October 2024.
French parliament says oui to AI surveillance for 2024 Paris Olympics
Liberté, égalité, reconnaissance faciale for all
https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/24/al_surveillance_french/
There are of course many more retired voters now there were 13 years ago, and the number continues to rise as the population ages. That’s one fact proponents of the “Tories are all dying out” theory forget.
Nan Goldin has been a complete mensch (or female equivalent) on this, will try hard to catch 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' on her life.
'Sackler Trust gave more than £14m to UK public bodies in 2020'
https://tinyurl.com/57pxk55e
Short of another major government screw-up Sunak is currently doing enough to put Boris and Truss into bad memory territory and so there'll be some sort of reversion to the mean from that, particularly when push comes to shove in the polling booth.
Labour picking up a few more seats in Scotland (partly because they probably would have done anyway and partly because Humza Yousaf will fail to enthuse SNP voters) won't quite be the reason for victory but it will certainly be part of the narrative.
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
https://capx.co/brits-should-be-as-angry-as-the-french-about-pensions-but-for-different-reasons/
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/oct/01/campaigners-celebrate-as-va-severs-sackler-links-over-opioids-cash
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/mar/25/british-museum-removes-sackler-family-name-from-galleries
But she decided that central government should effectively nick them.
A massive step towards the evisceration of local government, and the toxifying of housing.
As we all expected, last week’s Deltapoll proved a little over-exciting for some of the Conservatives but a 5-point fall to 30% is more a reversion to the herd than any serious decline or the end of the Sunak honeymoon
.
Tonight’s Redfield & Wilton has little change from last week with Labour’s lead easing from 21 to 19 and but the background questions are actually decent for the Conservatives.
The Sunak honeymoon may be illusory but Starmer’s approval numbers in the R&W poll must be worrying with a big fall this week though he remains preferred PM over Sunk but the gap is steadily closing and if I were Labour that would be more of concern. Once again, it’s less people are warming to Sunak than they are cooling on Starmer.
Looking at the R&W data tables, Labour leads 40-24 mong all likely voters, but the Conservatives lead 36-32 among the over 65 age group. The 2019 Conservative vote splits 57% Conservative, 17% Labour, 12% Reform and 11% Don’t Know. From recollection, a lower DK figure than we’ve seen but both a higher Reform figure and a higher retention number. To be fair, the 17% going to Labour represents 7.5% of the entire electorate so it’s not a small number of actual voters.
I follow the R&W England sub sample – this week Labour have 46%, Conservative 29%, Liberal Democrat 12%, Reform 8% and Green 4%. The Conservatives won England 47-34 in 2019 so the swing in tonight’s poll is 15% from Conservative to Labour while the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat is 9%.
This would mean the 193rd most marginal Conservative seat would fall on a straight line UNS – R&W no longer ask about tactical voting and some of the regional sub samples look a little odd but putting them all into a single England number may or may not be of any help.
It’s overly nasal vocalisation, rather than anything wrong with his larynx - try imitating him; it’s dead easy to do.
Successive governments have ignored the problems, though, as they became more difficult to fix.
SKS' simple problem is that he doesn't inspire. I read his New Statesman piece and it's the same sort of vacuous slogans with little about what it means: Ok, you will produce green energy. Fine, but unless we are going to become Norway Mark 2 and export a hell of a lot of the stuff, green energy doesn't by itself produce much in the way of growth. His other policies are equally vacuous.
My prediction - and mark it down here folks - is the Conservatives will scrap a low (less than 20) majority.
I'm confident of the timescale because I am due to retire in about another twenty years' time. It has this depressing feeling of inevitability about it.
I can now see myself voting for Sunak's party, over my local MP, Sir Kir Royale