On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
The Tories ended STV in mayoral and police commission elections without a referendum.
The biggest scandal of the day is VAR. Yet again Fulham robbed this time by a handball goal. Last time a player pushed over in frnt of the ref who ignored it as did VAR. Fulham should sue. VAR needs sorting out.
Lot of anger from Brighton this am about var favouring Spurs
Worst idea ever for football. Wrecks the games and makes more mistakes than the refs used to. Total garbage.
Yet almost every other sport includes some equivalent of VAR at the top level and largely uses it to uncontroversial bemeficial effect, and has been doing so for years while football pigheadedly maintained its impossibility. Then, latterly, football does an about turn, acts as if it invented the concept, and implements it in a uniquely shit way which appears to disrupt the game without leading to better decisions. Once again, the conclusion seems inescapable that football is the stupidest of all the sports.
Its almost hard to avoid the conclusion it's been done in a deliberately shit way. Right from the start the delay, the decisions, it's just been very odd.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
This country has undergone numerous electoral reforms over the years, but off hand I can’t think of any that came with a referendum. (There have been new electoral systems set up for new assemblies that came following a referendum.) Votes for those who don’t own property, votes for women, the abolition of multimember Commons seats, various Lords reforms, local election reform in Scotland, the abolition of SV for mayoral elections, introducing ID requirements for voting, the introduction of party registration, etc.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
The Tories ended STV in mayoral and police commission elections without a referendum.
You think they equivalent to voting for our Westminster government?
Labour's poll leads are so massive any result close to that is a majority, and a big one at that. A hung Parliament is increasingly less likely, I think.
Hopefully a return to politics as usual (pre-2015) in Scotland, leaves a smaller landing zone for a completely hung Parliament. I think we could still see any result from something that looks like 1992, to something that looks like a reverse of 2015 or 2017. 300 Lab v 280 Con sounds a reasonable guess, that’s 100 seat reversals.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
We can’t afford to bring alleged rapists to trial is really not going to cut the mustard. I am pretty sure people will take additional taxes on wealth to sort the criminal justice system out.
How many Rapists were not brought to trial when Keir Starmer was DPP..
I’m not sure that the SCons intended that their tactical voting wizard wheeze would start a split in their own ranks.
Seems entirely predictable. On the ground it's what SCON know is the best practical option, but they'd have to be fools to not know that nationally the party would not accept such an idea, when they are going to need the fearmonger campaign to end all fearmonger campaigns to stay in power.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
What you are saying is that there is no other path possible, that the current government of the UK is the only thing anyone could do. This is another Conservative supporter talking point. We shouldn’t blame the Tories because this is the best anyone could do.
This is grade A nonsense. Countries all round the world show a myriad of different paths.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
We can’t afford to bring alleged rapists to trial is really not going to cut the mustard. I am pretty sure people will take additional taxes on wealth to sort the criminal justice system out.
I'm pretty sure they won't, but they'll think they will when told about it, so the effect is the same in a campaign.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Are we not seeing right now, the limit of how much self-government can be managed in Scotland?
Labour's poll leads are so massive any result close to that is a majority, and a big one at that. A hung Parliament is increasingly less likely, I think.
I suppose this very much depends on your assessment of whether there is a settled mood in the country for a change of government that isn't going away, or if people are simply expressing a general sense of malaise and dissatisfaction that can be reversed if inflation eases off and the overall mood music becomes a little less funereal. We also have to remember that the Tories have a very large client base amongst wealthier older voters, who are also the most likely cohort to turn out.
Labour aren't offering very much at the moment apart from being Not Tories. If being Not Tories is enough, they win outright. If a sufficient number of voters conclude that Labour is an empty vessel and decide that that nice Rishi isn't such a bad chap, the polls narrow and we get a Hung Parliament. If the economy picks up a bit in 2024 and Hunt finds cash for a few judicious bribes before the election, and then Starmer has a stinker of a campaign like May in 2017, the Tories might even win outright instead.
I'm going to have a small wager on a Conservative majority, if I can get a long enough price. I don't think it's the most likely outcome, but it's not wholly implausible, either.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
The Tories ended STV in mayoral and police commission elections without a referendum.
You think they equivalent to voting for our Westminster government?
I mean - really???
If it’s in a manifesto, why not? No previous reform to the voting system - including compulsory ID - has required a referendum. But I wouldn’t worry, Labour won’t do it - unfortunately.
SNP are determined to destroy themselves, having these lunatic Greens doing anything other than cleaning the toilets is madness. Their latest wheeze
Shoppers face price hikes on drinks by up to a third under the Scottish Government’s controversial drinks recycling scheme, which has been compared to a poll tax on the poor. The Sunday Mail can reveal the cost of common items such as beer, water and fizzy juice will soar way beyond the extra 20p-per-item recycling fee when the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is launched in August.
Former cabinet secretary for rural development Fergus Ewing said he was astonished by the latest revelation and launched a blistering attack on the SNP and Greens scheme.
Brilliant idea and tax beercans and wine bottkes macdonalds crap and coke bottles and anything people throw out of their cars. It would create an industry of auto cleanup.
will be a ponzi scheme for their pals running it and crooks who will get round it and claim the refund multiple times. Will also mean a severe drop in choice as manufacturers will not bother to sell in Scotland. Madness.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
Seems entirely proper under our representational system. Particularly if they started at a lower level. Its already been mentioned the Tories did that, without even being in the manifesto (there was some vague words about defending FPTP only, nothing specific iirc).
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
Heathener, you quite rightly castigated me for cheering Johnson's Savile attack on Starmer. I said it was good politics, you claimed it was an immoral , unfair slur. These attacks on Sunak are a million times worse. This campaign should stop. If you support the personal attacks on Sunak over the sentencing of nonces you could be accused of hypocrisy.
Labour have far more substantive material with which to bury Sunak. The corruption coming out of his COVID grants to business (and organised crime) is mind blowing. And he signed the cheques to purchase the unusable PPE.
P.S. You only post during the hours of darkness. Are you a vampire?
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
Is Starmer really so utterly thick? Rishi sending his stormtroopers in under cover is absolute genius.
Does anyone remember the Peter Cook film, the Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer? Starmer appears to be as foolish as the Labour Prime Minister played by George A. Cooper
Thanks a bunch. That's given me my earworm for the next couple of days.
The Labour justification for going dirty is that the Tories went dirty first, which is probably true. But it appears based on the premise that the Tories won't retaliate by getting even dirtier, or that Tories getting dirty doesn't work and Labour getting dirty does.
What if the Tories are more effective at grubbing around in the dirt?
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
The Labour justification for going dirty is that the Tories went dirty first, which is probably true. But it appears based on the premise that the Tories won't retaliate by getting even dirtier, or that Tories getting dirty doesn't work and Labour getting dirty does.
What if the Tories are more effective at grubbing around in the dirt?
Post May, the gutter is their manor. This is very foolish from Labour.
The PB Tories suddenly seem to have become very confident. A few luvvies and disillusioned Corbynites attacking him over some attack ads and one 11% opinion poll lead (remember the 10% Deltapoll... remember what the last Deltapoll poll was?) mean Starmer is doomed. Meanwhile, despite being a brilliant PM, Sunak's ratings are inferior to Starmer's.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
The Tories ended STV in mayoral and police commission elections without a referendum.
You think they equivalent to voting for our Westminster government?
I mean - really???
Is there some rule that's not allowed? One counter example isn't exactly much precedent.
I don't think they'd do it, but I'm unpersuaded by the attack of vapours some get at X or Y happening without a referendum as though that's some cast iron rule.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Are we not seeing right now, the limit of how much self-government can be managed in Scotland?
It just shows that devolution is not the answer, limited due to all the big decisions being made in London all that has happened is a mafia have taken over and made hay with the pocket money. Like running a race with your legs tied together and will end in change, even the fearties will get fed up at some point and say enough is enough. As we go further downhill the threat that you will lose a fiver a week without london will be obvious crap to even the dimmest caveperson.
It seems that after an election when most voters decided “they’re both as bad as each other”, and put their vote against the bad one with the blue rosette, Labour have decided to run on “they’re both as bad as each other” again. Not a winning tactic. Need to get back on to the parlous state of public services, and if they want to do attack ads on Sunak they should focus on the super rich out of touch thing - much easier to get that to stick.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
The biggest scandal of the day is VAR. Yet again Fulham robbed this time by a handball goal. Last time a player pushed over in frnt of the ref who ignored it as did VAR. Fulham should sue. VAR needs sorting out.
Lot of anger from Brighton this am about var favouring Spurs
Worst idea ever for football. Wrecks the games and makes more mistakes than the refs used to. Total garbage.
Yet almost every other sport includes some equivalent of VAR at the top level and largely uses it to uncontroversial bemeficial effect, and has been doing so for years while football pigheadedly maintained its impossibility. Then, latterly, football does an about turn, acts as if it invented the concept, and implements it in a uniquely shit way which appears to disrupt the game without leading to better decisions. Once again, the conclusion seems inescapable that football is the stupidest of all the sports.
Its almost hard to avoid the conclusion it's been done in a deliberately shit way. Right from the start the delay, the decisions, it's just been very odd.
But only in England. The World Cup passed off relatively smoothly. We don't seem to get the same delay then controversy in European games. Not with this frequency anyways.
The Labour justification for going dirty is that the Tories went dirty first, which is probably true. But it appears based on the premise that the Tories won't retaliate by getting even dirtier, or that Tories getting dirty doesn't work and Labour getting dirty does.
What if the Tories are more effective at grubbing around in the dirt?
The Tories don’t even need to get their hands too dirty either - there’s plenty of friendly media, and the likes of Farage, who will happily get in a mud fight with Labour. There’s also plenty of the far-left still around, who will happily stand up for any of a number of fringe causes with which 90% of people disagree.
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
They are already paying higher taxes from last week.
I’m not sure that the SCons intended that their tactical voting wizard wheeze would start a split in their own ranks.
Seems entirely predictable. On the ground it's what SCON know is the best practical option, but they'd have to be fools to not know that nationally the party would not accept such an idea, when they are going to need the fearmonger campaign to end all fearmonger campaigns to stay in power.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true, and events as usual will probably be somewhere in between.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
The weird thing about Labour going dirty is they could have done it slightly armed length and and feigned disappointment-but-it-has-a-point kind of thing.
Instead they've conceded that Braverman for example says awful stuff so they will too, their spokesman referred to her, so they are not even going to get to pretend to be outraged next time she does something like that.
I am enjoying the relief from the aura of competent government Sunak gives off. Indeed I’m quite happy for him to continue until Autumn 24. But then I will be voting for whoever can kick the Tories out. For me, the party must be punished for what they inflicted on us between 2019 and 2022.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true
Both can be true cos SKS is up against Rishi, and Sarwar is up against Useless
The Labour justification for going dirty is that the Tories went dirty first, which is probably true. But it appears based on the premise that the Tories won't retaliate by getting even dirtier, or that Tories getting dirty doesn't work and Labour getting dirty does.
What if the Tories are more effective at grubbing around in the dirt?
The Tories don’t even need to get their hands too dirty either - there’s plenty of friendly media, and the likes of Farage, who will happily get in a mud fight with Labour. There’s also plenty of the far-left still around, who will happily stand up for any of a number of fringe causes with which 90% of people disagree.
And Labour have so many better options to go dirty. Mud that will actually stick because people are inclined to believe it: sleaze and corruption over PPE, hints of tax evasion, ultra wealthy donors, double standards on using private medicine, etc etc.
The record on criminal justice is woeful but implying it’s because the Tories are “soft on crime” just doesn’t ring true for most voters. Whereas showing it’s because of police and justice services cut to the bone and incompetence in the system absolutely rings true. The issue is the Tories talk tough but don’t actually achieve anything.
Slightly disappointed in the header to be honest. It starts with a fairly good pun which seems to me to highlight an important point, that SKS is something of an empty suit, devoid of ideas, vision and principle. Instead we go into satisfaction scores which is the consequence of this rather than the cause.
The fact that Sunak is on course to take the lead on satisfaction scores shows that people are concerned about this empty space of pointless ambition but it seems very unlikely that it is going to stop Labour winning, possibly even with a small majority.
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
They are already paying higher taxes from last week.
And the voters are pissed at the Tories for that. But Labour saying "hold my pint" on tax rises is brave.
Which of course is why they won't admit it. But if you want better services, it is not going to come from Labour "efficiency drives". Because they are just Tory cuts, aren't they? It is not going to come from borrowing - the Truss Interregnum did for that possibility. So a suitably cynical voter will assess either a) nothing will improve under Labour or b) taxes will go up significantly under Labour with the not inconsiderable risk that nothing much will improve either under Labour.
I’m not sure that the SCons intended that their tactical voting wizard wheeze would start a split in their own ranks.
Seems entirely predictable. On the ground it's what SCON know is the best practical option, but they'd have to be fools to not know that nationally the party would not accept such an idea, when they are going to need the fearmonger campaign to end all fearmonger campaigns to stay in power.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true, and events as usual will probably be somewhere in between.
Well in fairness whilst not all was swept before then in 2017 May flattered to deceive in rUK while Scon won (for them) a fair number of seats.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
It seems that after an election when most voters decided “they’re both as bad as each other”, and put their vote against the bad one with the blue rosette, Labour have decided to run on “they’re both as bad as each other” again. Not a winning tactic. Need to get back on to the parlous state of public services, and if they want to do attack ads on Sunak they should focus on the super rich out of touch thing - much easier to get that to stick.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
Having only seen a couple in ten years here, this spring we seem to have acquired a beautiful green woodpecker, who is filling the air with his crazy cackling call.
Chiffchaff have been calling for the best part of three weeks, but no sign yet of the blackcap.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true
Both can be true cos SKS is up against Rishi, and Sarwar is up against Useless
Are you going to break the habit of an after timing lifetime and predict how many seats newly anointed political colossus Sarwar is going to win at a GE?
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
That's some distance wide of the mark. The consequence of housing being such a dominant factor in our economy is that mortgage-free owner-occupiers have, by and large, a very easy time of it. There's an enormous group of voters in this category who are, at once, free of all housing costs (except buildings insurance or service charges,) and sitting on a hugely valuable asset. At the older end of the distribution, these people will also have benefited from 13 years of triple-locked state pensions (at least matching inflation, and running well ahead of it in most years, such that the average pensioner household now has a higher income, after accounting for housing costs, than the average working age household.) At the younger end of the distribution, they'll be looking forward to an enormous, life-changing windfall when their parents shuffle off, paid completely tax-free on all but the most valuable estates.
The two-thirds or so of people over 50 who have paid most of their mortgages off or already own outright have never had it so good. They are more likely to bother to vote than anyone else, and even those who have been left cold by the entire Johnson-Truss debacle are going to need very little persuading to return to the fold come election time.
Labour is stuck because the asset riches of the rich grey vote are the obvious place to go to get the money it needs to pay to repair public services, but it's terrified that the nanosecond it mentions anything about property taxes, a wave of Tory attack ads will appear and Sunak can play to win with his client vote united behind him. They are too afraid to tackle the Tory core head on, by appealing to everyone else to vote them in to relieve the winners of the last thirteen years of some of that loot, but equally without the loot they can't credibly promise significant improvement to their own supporters. In triangulating and attempting not to upset anyone, they are at dire risk of presenting the electorate with a bland porridge that nobody finds appealing.
You can neither improve public services nor make your own voters wealthier if you are so timid that your offer essentially boils down to managing decline in a nicer way than the other lot. There's nothing positive there for anyone to believe in.
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
I’m not sure that the SCons intended that their tactical voting wizard wheeze would start a split in their own ranks.
Seems entirely predictable. On the ground it's what SCON know is the best practical option, but they'd have to be fools to not know that nationally the party would not accept such an idea, when they are going to need the fearmonger campaign to end all fearmonger campaigns to stay in power.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true, and events as usual will probably be somewhere in between.
I imagine that a SNP-Lab swing voter is more likely to vote Labour if they believe they are actually going to win, and be more inclined to vote SNP if they believe Labour are going to lose and that there needs to be 'a strong voice for Scotland' against the Tories. Humsa or no, to ultimately make a significant break through SLAB very much need Starmer to seal the deal down South.
It seems that after an election when most voters decided “they’re both as bad as each other”, and put their vote against the bad one with the blue rosette, Labour have decided to run on “they’re both as bad as each other” again. Not a winning tactic. Need to get back on to the parlous state of public services, and if they want to do attack ads on Sunak they should focus on the super rich out of touch thing - much easier to get that to stick.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
Having only seen a couple in ten years here, this spring we seem to have acquired a beautiful green woodpecker, who is filling the air with his crazy cackling call.
Chiffchaff have been calling for the best part of three weeks, but no sign yet of the blackcap.
Spring is a little late here in central France despite a warmer than average late winter. I think it just shows how unusually early most recent springs have been, with the exception of 2021 and 2013. Bumblebees are out today though.
The weird thing about Labour going dirty is they could have done it slightly armed length and and feigned disappointment-but-it-has-a-point kind of thing.
Instead they've conceded that Braverman for example says awful stuff so they will too, their spokesman referred to her, so they are not even going to get to pretend to be outraged next time she does something like that.
I think they've mistakenly carried the same assertive, almost dismissive attitude that has been so effective for getting a grip of the party, into their broader political strategy.
It's strange because Starmer himself always comes across as convivial.
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
NI on pensions is just simple inter generational fairness though. It should be in every manifesto. Or better still just abolish NI and replace with a higher income tax rate.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
Brentford +5 Fulham +5 Liverpool +5 Aston Villa +2 Newcastle +2 Forest +2 West Ham +2 Leicester 0 Man Utd 0 Arsenal -1 Chelsea -1 Palace -1 Everton -1 Southampton -1 Wolves -1 Bournemouth -2 Leeds -2 Spurs -3 Man City -4 Brighton -6
Happy Easter, mr. Sandpit (et al). Hope you have an egg or two.
Edited extra bit: Mr. F, it's faintly ironic. Excepting the vaccine rollout and Ukraine, the Government could be attacked on almost anything. Yet Starmer/Labour managed to find something that seems unreasonable.
I agree with this. With the added point that since the DPP was on the sentencing guidelines committee, and Sunak wasn’t, Starmer may or may not have lit a fuse leading under his own chair.
A deadly attack - and one with no blowback - would be to have highlighted how long it takes to get offenders into jail - the huge court back logs. Which means that some offenders, while on bail, are carrying on the day job…
Happy Easter, mr. Sandpit (et al). Hope you have an egg or two.
Edited extra bit: Mr. F, it's faintly ironic. Excepting the vaccine rollout and Ukraine, the Government could be attacked on almost anything. Yet Starmer/Labour managed to find something that seems unreasonable.
I agree with this. With the added point that since the DPP was on the sentencing guidelines committee, and Sunak wasn’t, Starmer may or may not have lit a fuse leading under his own chair.
A deadly attack - and one with no blowback - would be to have highlighted how long it takes to get offenders into jail - the huge court back logs. Which means that some offenders, while on bail, are carrying on the day job…
I suspect this campaign has a way to run. Especially now it has everyone's attention.
Meanwhile;
"apparently a bunch of MPs got so drunk at an event in Waltham Forest that they had to be taken to the A&E of the local hospital" "Whipps Cross?" "I'd say, he's apoplectic"
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
Is Starmer really so utterly thick? Rishi sending his stormtroopers in under cover is absolute genius.
Does anyone remember the Peter Cook film, the Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer? Starmer appears to be as foolish as the Labour Prime Minister played by George A. Cooper
Thanks a bunch. That's given me my earworm for the next couple of days.
I’m not sure that the SCons intended that their tactical voting wizard wheeze would start a split in their own ranks.
Seems entirely predictable. On the ground it's what SCON know is the best practical option, but they'd have to be fools to not know that nationally the party would not accept such an idea, when they are going to need the fearmonger campaign to end all fearmonger campaigns to stay in power.
As we see here there’s a whole strand of Schrödingers Tory Unionist that simultaneously believes that Starmer flatters to deceive in rUK while SLab will sweep the Nats before them. I can’t really see how both can be true, and events as usual will probably be somewhere in between.
Well in fairness whilst not all was swept before then in 2017 May flattered to deceive in rUK while Scon won (for them) a fair number of seats.
So a similar sLab prediction?
If SLAB manage to match the Tories in 2017 and win a dozen seats they'll be doing very well.
I agree with those who state that the Scottish party's fate depends primarily on the success or otherwise of the UK campaign. If Starmer does well, the SNP get knocked down to somewhere around 2017 levels. If he does badly, no change.
The only thing that can cause an SNP collapse is if the party is declared bankrupt and ceases to exist, but then its members would create a clone and that would win instead.
The weird thing about Labour going dirty is they could have done it slightly armed length and and feigned disappointment-but-it-has-a-point kind of thing.
Instead they've conceded that Braverman for example says awful stuff so they will too, their spokesman referred to her, so they are not even going to get to pretend to be outraged next time she does something like that.
Braverman hasn't made any personal attacks on other politicians as far as I'm aware.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Are we not seeing right now, the limit of how much self-government can be managed in Scotland?
No. I think it demonstrates that there is some stuff that works better at a UK or EU level. A confident, independent Scotland would (hopefully) recognise this and work with others to implement policies like:
- the census - bottle scheme - defence - large infrastructure projects (HS2 to Glasgow)
It seems that after an election when most voters decided “they’re both as bad as each other”, and put their vote against the bad one with the blue rosette, Labour have decided to run on “they’re both as bad as each other” again. Not a winning tactic. Need to get back on to the parlous state of public services, and if they want to do attack ads on Sunak they should focus on the super rich out of touch thing - much easier to get that to stick.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
Having only seen a couple in ten years here, this spring we seem to have acquired a beautiful green woodpecker, who is filling the air with his crazy cackling call.
Chiffchaff have been calling for the best part of three weeks, but no sign yet of the blackcap.
Spring is a little late here in central France despite a warmer than average late winter. I think it just shows how unusually early most recent springs have been, with the exception of 2021 and 2013. Bumblebees are out today though.
we are getting it lovely here just now, bees been about for last week or two and everything bursting into bloom. Able to sit out in tee shirt last couple of days as well.
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
They are already paying higher taxes from last week.
And the voters are pissed at the Tories for that. But Labour saying "hold my pint" on tax rises is brave.
Which of course is why they won't admit it. But if you want better services, it is not going to come from Labour "efficiency drives". Because they are just Tory cuts, aren't they? It is not going to come from borrowing - the Truss Interregnum did for that possibility. So a suitably cynical voter will assess either a) nothing will improve under Labour or b) taxes will go up significantly under Labour with the not inconsiderable risk that nothing much will improve either under Labour.
I don't know about other sectors but education has been efficiency driven into a brick wall. Any more efficiencies require funding. Printers and laptops which get repaired. Not in a few weeks, or at half term. Decent WiFi. Not the cheapest available. Repairs to the building. Available stationary. Not too expensive, but the kinds of things the private sector takes for granted.
Reading this thread, anybody would think Labour and Tories are neck and neck in the polls. They're not - though they may be in a year's time.
I think people are getting over-excited about Labour's attack ads. The first couple weren't great, though the last one was fine. But it's just a moment in time, a snapshot of campaigning, and Labour will swing their attention to other matters in due course. It looks to me as if the 'law and order' theme is designed for next month's local elections. Labour will have a spreadsheet outlining campaigning themes until the next GE, and the focus will shift every month or so. Whatever else people think about Starmer and his team, they seem pretty well organised.
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
NI on pensions is just simple inter generational fairness though. It should be in every manifesto. Or better still just abolish NI and replace with a higher income tax rate.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
Nobody's going to get rid of NI, precisely because it functions as a parallel income tax system from which the elderly, of whose opprobrium almost everyone in political life seems to be desperately afraid, are exempt.
I still maintain that the only good thing Liz Truss managed during her five minute reign was to get rid of Sunak's Health and Social Care Levy, which threatened to turn into an automated ratchet for successive administrations to screw more and more money out of the young and the poor, so that the better-off elderly could afford to keep going on Mediterranean cruises every year for the remainder of their lives and pass on huge estates to their kids free of tax when they eventually expired. I'm astonished that Hunt hasn't brought it back.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
On topic, I hope for the country’s sake the Tories lose. Thirteen years would be enough for a superb government. This lot were out of ideas five years ago.
I hope for democracy’s sake that the Tories lose. One party states are a bad thing. We want a government with a modest majority and an opposition that seems to have a decent chance of replacing them and will keep them on their toes. The Coalition years were the first time we’d had that since the 1960s and the years since have not been notable for good governance.
Most of all I hope for the Tories’ sake that they lose. Five more years of this and they will suffer a shellacking they will never recover from.
The Conservatives were corrupt in 1997, after 18 years in office. Labour were corrupt in 2010, after 13 years in office. The Conservatives are now corrupt , after 13 years in office. We probably need more frequent changes in government.
The ideal result at the next election would be something like Labour 335 seats, Conservatives 250, Lib Dems 20, Others 45.
I don't want Labour to have a majority.
Labour on 300 seats and Lib Dems on 30 and the Conservatives on 275 seats would suit me. They'd have to drop the batshit and do vote by vote deals, and there'd be an even present threat of LDs/Tories combining to outvote and block Labour.
My fear is that, dependent on LDs and SNPs, the tendency would be to more bstshit rather than less.
I don't think the SNP should feature.
The LDs absolute priority would be europhilia but we saw under Cameron how little influence they had on foreign policy even in a formal coalition with double the seats.
I think the LDs absolute priority would be electoral reform. That would also suit most of the Labour Party and transform Britain, even if the subject is boring to a lot of electors.
Are you suggesting there should be electoral reform without a Referendum on it?
The Tories ended STV in mayoral and police commission elections without a referendum.
You think they equivalent to voting for our Westminster government?
I mean - really???
Were I a LibDem negotiator in a hung Parliament, I’d go for STV/AV for all (English) local, mayoral and PCC elections. It seems we’re all agreed that this wouldn’t require a referendum. It would introduce better voting systems to all those elections. And, if you want electoral reform for the Commons, demonstrating ordinal voting systems work locally is helpful.
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
NI on pensions is just simple inter generational fairness though. It should be in every manifesto. Or better still just abolish NI and replace with a higher income tax rate.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
Nobody's going to get rid of NI, precisely because it functions as a parallel income tax system from which the elderly, of whose opprobrium almost everyone in political life seems to be desperately afraid, are exempt.
I still maintain that the only good thing Liz Truss managed during her five minute reign was to get rid of Sunak's Health and Social Care Levy, which threatened to turn into an automated ratchet for successive administrations to screw more and more money out of the young and the poor, so that the better-off elderly could afford to keep going on Mediterranean cruises every year for the remainder of their lives and pass on huge estates to their kids free of tax when they eventually expired. I'm astonished that Hunt hasn't brought it back.
NI also has the 'benefit' that the 13.8% employers NI is kept off payslips despite the employee being effectively the one paying it.
I agree with Helen Lewis that Starmer is “ruthless” in the sense that he is determined, focused on winning, and not sentimentally bound to factions or individuals. But to me the word implies a clarity of purpose which he does not have. Yes, he is determined to climb the mountain, but at any given moment he seems unsure of the path to the top. He kind of scrabbles around from side to side until he finds a way to get a few feet further along, and sometimes heads in the wrong direction before changing course.
His treatment of the gender issue is typical. A ruthless leader would have worked out what he thought about it by now, steamrollered internal opposition, and scraped this particular barnacle off the boat. Instead, he has shifted towards a tenable position by salami-sliced increments while allowing senior colleagues to ignore or contradict him. It is painful to watch, and typified by his latest, excruciating statement that 99.9% of women don’t have a penis. In politics, you really have to round up.
Yes, it is one of the clearer understandings of the man I have read. He comes across as a pretty decent bloke. Whether that will make him a good PM I am less sure. Things come at you very fast in Number 10. You need good instincts and the ability to act instinctively. Not sure he can.
Election is still up for grabs. However, it’s clear that their will be massive regional differences. London and Wales for example are likely to be Tory free zones (or close to).
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
They are already paying higher taxes from last week.
And the voters are pissed at the Tories for that. But Labour saying "hold my pint" on tax rises is brave.
Which of course is why they won't admit it. But if you want better services, it is not going to come from Labour "efficiency drives". Because they are just Tory cuts, aren't they? It is not going to come from borrowing - the Truss Interregnum did for that possibility. So a suitably cynical voter will assess either a) nothing will improve under Labour or b) taxes will go up significantly under Labour with the not inconsiderable risk that nothing much will improve either under Labour.
Truss showed that you can’t borrow money on the basis of empty promises and fantasies. It hasn’t stopped all borrowing. The UK Government, of course, continues to borrow large amounts of money all the time. There is room for a Labour government, or indeed any govt, to borrow more.
One can debate whether govt should or should not borrow more, of course, and for what purposes. But it’s clearly an option.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Are we not seeing right now, the limit of how much self-government can be managed in Scotland?
No. I think it demonstrates that there is some stuff that works better at a UK or EU level. A confident, independent Scotland would (hopefully) recognise this and work with others to implement policies like:
- the census - bottle scheme - defence - large infrastructure projects (HS2 to Glasgow)
Nothing will happen at a UK level if Scotland terminates the UK. Independence = divorce. That is the entire point.
An arrangement encompassing joint infrastructure projects, common defence, an invisible border with seamless trade, and an internal market with common standards (and, presumably, a common currency to remove transaction costs,) sounds suspiciously like a federation. Or a union.
SNP are determined to destroy themselves, having these lunatic Greens doing anything other than cleaning the toilets is madness. Their latest wheeze
Shoppers face price hikes on drinks by up to a third under the Scottish Government’s controversial drinks recycling scheme, which has been compared to a poll tax on the poor. The Sunday Mail can reveal the cost of common items such as beer, water and fizzy juice will soar way beyond the extra 20p-per-item recycling fee when the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is launched in August.
Former cabinet secretary for rural development Fergus Ewing said he was astonished by the latest revelation and launched a blistering attack on the SNP and Greens scheme.
Brilliant idea and tax beercans and wine bottkes macdonalds crap and coke bottles and anything people throw out of their cars. It would create an industry of auto cleanup.
will be a ponzi scheme for their pals running it and crooks who will get round it and claim the refund multiple times. Will also mean a severe drop in choice as manufacturers will not bother to sell in Scotland. Madness.
It says everything that the big companies like Coca Cola and AG Barr are pushing for this to be Prioritised by the new leader.
This is a good thread on it. Many nations have a DRS, none quite like this one.
The PB Tories suddenly seem to have become very confident. A few luvvies and disillusioned Corbynites attacking him over some attack ads and one 11% opinion poll lead (remember the 10% Deltapoll... remember what the last Deltapoll poll was?) mean Starmer is doomed. Meanwhile, despite being a brilliant PM, Sunak's ratings are inferior to Starmer's.
I wouldn't say that, but it's no longer looking like an extinction level event. A 25-30 point lead down to a 10-15 point lead is progress.
There's 18 months to go. A lot can happen in that time.
Also worth bearing in mind that Labour intend to keep going with their negative attacks on Sunak. He is a very easy target and they should not let him off.
Mike might claim to disapprove of such things, which is mildly amusing to those of us who have seen the LibDems at work, but it's naivety that has cost Labour in the past and the tories are a disgusting mob who will stop at nothing.
p.s. not saying I approve of such things. But it's politics and it's going to be dirty.
The trouble is, even if we accept Labour must climb into the gutter, Sunak is the wrong target because no-one believes he wants armed gangs of child molesters to roam the land. It is the same mistake the Tories made when portraying Tony Blair with demonic eyes. Labour ought to be targeting Tory sleaze and corruption, especially around PPE during the Covid pandemic with its echoes of Partygate. Voters made sacrifices while Tories were throwing billions to their dodgy mates. Voters will be swayed by that because they are already halfway there.
Saying Labour will reduce crime is also good in itself, especially if there is some mechanism promised, such as rebuilding however many courts the Tories have closed, but the personal attacks on Rishi are likely to be unproductive or even counterproductive.
And the fact Labour is just talking about sentencing suggests there is no serious policy there either.
Indeed. You wonder what genius Labour strategy meeting debated all the issues that are worrying people right now, and came up with Sunak being supposedly soft on child abuse as the right one to target?
Where’s the positivity and the vision? 1995-era Blair had vision and positivity in spades.
Not that I’m persuaded by it, but Labour are positive that they’re not the Tories and they have a vision of the UK not being governed by gurning sociopaths. That’s enough to convince voters atm but who knows where the notoriously amnesiac great British public will be in a year’s time?
Labour appear to be offering their own core vote next to nothing, and the Conservative core vote a bad copy of the party that has been pinning them to the ground and stuffing their all-too-willing mouths full of gold for the last thirteen years. Their entire election strategy seems to have consisted of "look at the fat blond wanker, our wooden mannequin will offer some blessed relief." Now the Tories have found a marketable replacement for the fat blond wanker, Labour is flailing about for a response.
There's no big idea from Labour, no vision, no sense of direction, no meaningful program for change. This entirely explains the dissatisfaction of Labour voters with Starmer's leadership: the hardcore partisans may be willing to sing his praises regardless, but the softer flank of Labour's support thinks "You're offering me nothing of value."
Labour are running as the Not Tory party, and that's it. Where does that leave you once the Tories have mollified their ageing core vote and the remainder of the electorate is not actively repelled by the Prime Minister, and thinks that you offer no alternative to his platform? It leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Labour needs to convert a double negative into a positive IMO. The core themes of the long Conservative years in power are declining incomes for ordinary people and disintegrating public services. Labour saying they are not the Tories might imply they won't be so bad
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
At the moment large numbers of middle-income people, currently making £30k or £40k - or with aspirations to make that much in the future - think that they’ll be the target for higher taxes. They won’t end up wealthier at all.
They are already paying higher taxes from last week.
And the voters are pissed at the Tories for that. But Labour saying "hold my pint" on tax rises is brave.
Which of course is why they won't admit it. But if you want better services, it is not going to come from Labour "efficiency drives". Because they are just Tory cuts, aren't they? It is not going to come from borrowing - the Truss Interregnum did for that possibility. So a suitably cynical voter will assess either a) nothing will improve under Labour or b) taxes will go up significantly under Labour with the not inconsiderable risk that nothing much will improve either under Labour.
I don't know about other sectors but education has been efficiency driven into a brick wall. Any more efficiencies require funding. Printers and laptops which get repaired. Not in a few weeks, or at half term. Decent WiFi. Not the cheapest available. Repairs to the building. Available stationary. Not too expensive, but the kinds of things the private sector takes for granted.
Increasing productivity nearly always requires spending money. Real investment.
It sounds to me, that what is happening in education is the reverse of “efficiency”.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
You'd probably have to raise public spending by £80-100bn pa to get back to that. Where is that revenue going to come from?
Pre-2007 was funded off a huge boom that wasn't sustainable. A sensible Labour strategy would be to demonstrate they could unlock far faster & deeper growth in the UK economy to pay for it.
But, we haven't seen that. They can't just do a reverse Truss.
The PB Tories suddenly seem to have become very confident. A few luvvies and disillusioned Corbynites attacking him over some attack ads and one 11% opinion poll lead (remember the 10% Deltapoll... remember what the last Deltapoll poll was?) mean Starmer is doomed. Meanwhile, despite being a brilliant PM, Sunak's ratings are inferior to Starmer's.
I wouldn't say that, but it's no longer looking like an extinction level event. A 25-30 point lead down to a 10-15 point lead is progress.
There's 18 months to go. A lot can happen in that time.
The average of the last ten polls is a lead of 17%. Progress, sure. But 10-15 seems to be being widely quoted and is entirely inaccurate.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
We can’t afford to bring alleged rapists to trial is really not going to cut the mustard. I am pretty sure people will take additional taxes on wealth to sort the criminal justice system out.
How many Rapists were not brought to trial when Keir Starmer was DPP..
It is always interesting to try and work out the actual reasons why these situations exist. Regarding the lack of convictions on sexual offences, I would suggest that this is due to the formulation of the underlying legislation relating to sex offences. In essence, this defines a sexual offence as sexual activity without the other persons consent. But if you have a 'reasonable belief' that consent exists, it is not a crime. So to convict someone, the police and the CPS have to prove 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the perpetrator carried out the act without any reasonable belief that they had the other persons consent. This has proved to be an extremely difficult test.
I would say that the ultimate cause of the lack of prosecutions in this area is the underlying legislation itself, which was bought in by... the last labour government in 2003.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
NI on pensions is just simple inter generational fairness though. It should be in every manifesto. Or better still just abolish NI and replace with a higher income tax rate.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
The IFS produced a recent report on pension reforms.
On NI they recommend an exempt, exempt, taxable system for employee NICs (ie no NICs on contributions, no NICs on investment growth but NICs on payment) similar to income tax.
However for employer NICs the recommend a taxable, exempt, exempt approach.
Numerous problems arising from the transition of course.
It seems that after an election when most voters decided “they’re both as bad as each other”, and put their vote against the bad one with the blue rosette, Labour have decided to run on “they’re both as bad as each other” again. Not a winning tactic. Need to get back on to the parlous state of public services, and if they want to do attack ads on Sunak they should focus on the super rich out of touch thing - much easier to get that to stick.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
Having only seen a couple in ten years here, this spring we seem to have acquired a beautiful green woodpecker, who is filling the air with his crazy cackling call.
Chiffchaff have been calling for the best part of three weeks, but no sign yet of the blackcap.
Saw the first swallow on Friday out on our local NNR and also got my first mosquito bite, so they've timed it well. Willow warblers were also out in force. Though similarly, not heard a blackcap here yet.
The Marsh harriers were doing their usual stunts - saw one stoop from a great height and pull a full 360 loop, though they usually flipped into what I suppose would be called an Immelmann. Nuts!
Just by way of public information... I ordered a flat white in McDonalds this morning. It was dreadful and I had to throw it away. It tasted like extremely strong instant coffee with some artificial milk foam.
Brentford +5 Fulham +5 Liverpool +5 Aston Villa +2 Newcastle +2 Forest +2 West Ham +2 Leicester 0 Man Utd 0 Arsenal -1 Chelsea -1 Palace -1 Everton -1 Southampton -1 Wolves -1 Bournemouth -2 Leeds -2 Spurs -3 Man City -4 Brighton -6
Although it doesn't give an indication of how important each VAR decision was - a decision at 4-0 is less important than one at 1-1.
The appalling failure to give a pen v man united which is as clear a penalty you could ever see a clear push when noone else was near led to the goal at the end. Instead of likely 0 2 we had mayhem at the injustice of it (and three sending off )both in terms of the incompetence of the referee and VAR failure to look at it
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
We can’t afford to bring alleged rapists to trial is really not going to cut the mustard. I am pretty sure people will take additional taxes on wealth to sort the criminal justice system out.
How many Rapists were not brought to trial when Keir Starmer was DPP..
It is always interesting to try and work out the actual reasons why these situations exist. Regarding the lack of convictions on sexual offences, I would suggest that this is due to the formulation of the underlying legislation relating to sex offences. In essence, this defines a sexual offence as sexual activity without the other persons consent. But if you have a 'reasonable belief' that consent exists, it is not a crime. So to convict someone, the police and the CPS have to prove 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the perpetrator carried out the act without any reasonable belief that they had the other persons consent. This has proved to be an extremely difficult test.
I would say that the ultimate cause of the lack of prosecutions in this area is the underlying legislation itself, which was bought in by... the last labour government in 2003.
And yet, you have the fact that the prisons have increasing numbers of elderly “historic” sex offenders on long sentences….
Just by way of public information... I ordered a flat white in McDonalds this morning. It was dreadful and I had to throw it away. It tasted like extremely strong instant coffee with some artificial milk foam.
Interesting. McDonalds usually has some of the best “chain” coffee - only reason I ever use them.
Franchise instances vary, a lot more than people think.
FPT This is an excellent post which refutes the pathetic LEON Little Englander garbage.
Leon said:
» show previous quotes Lol. Go on then. Try and find a different one or a better one. I know you personally believe Westminster should grant a vote whenever the SNP demands one but that’s simply not gonna happen. Especially now the SNP have imploded
For me it’s 60%+ YES in the polls plus a generation has to have elapsed. Then Westminster should yield
But maybe @solarflare is right and the moment has gone almost forever. 2014 was it (with a potential second bite around 2017 post Brexit). Now the stars will not align for a long long time
Should be granted if there's a Holyrood mandate. That's basic democracy. Which you're supposedly a big fan of. In fact not supposedly, you damn well are.
As for the best argument for the SNP to make for Sindy it's another thing you're in thrall to. National sovereignty. Eg the UK had this in the EU but that it was pooled to an extent was something you found so intolerable it caused you to want out.
So, how much more powerful is the case to establish it where it doesn't even exist to be pooled in the first place? You can see this, I imagine, if you think honestly about it. You would undoubtedly be pro if you were Scottish. You'd be a right wing anti woke Nat like Malcolm.
It might be interesting to form a panel of PB Bellweather voters in the run up to the GE. Specifically, former Tory loyalists who intend to vote otherwise or abstain next time. To be on the panel, one would state the current voting intention in % probability and, say, the top three reasons why and also give, say, three things that would make you revert to type. Then, between now and the GE, just notify PB if you do change your mind. A panel of 10 would be a wholly unreliable, but nonetheless interesting, tracker of how effective the various campaigns are.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit - State of public services - Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks - Commitment to impose NI on pensions - Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
NI on pensions is just simple inter generational fairness though. It should be in every manifesto. Or better still just abolish NI and replace with a higher income tax rate.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
The IFS produced a recent report on pension reforms.
On NI they recommend an exempt, exempt, taxable system for employee NICs (ie no NICs on contributions, no NICs on investment growth but NICs on payment) similar to income tax.
However for employer NICs the recommend a taxable, exempt, exempt approach.
Numerous problems arising from the transition of course.
Why build onshore wind, when the next generation of offshore is probably cheaper (bigger turbines are better, biggest turbines only possible offshore)?
U.K. has enough potential offshore to provide multiples of the entire demand for the national grid - the current estimates for potential growth are something like “proven reserves”.
SNP are determined to destroy themselves, having these lunatic Greens doing anything other than cleaning the toilets is madness. Their latest wheeze
Shoppers face price hikes on drinks by up to a third under the Scottish Government’s controversial drinks recycling scheme, which has been compared to a poll tax on the poor. The Sunday Mail can reveal the cost of common items such as beer, water and fizzy juice will soar way beyond the extra 20p-per-item recycling fee when the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is launched in August.
Former cabinet secretary for rural development Fergus Ewing said he was astonished by the latest revelation and launched a blistering attack on the SNP and Greens scheme.
Brilliant idea and tax beercans and wine bottkes macdonalds crap and coke bottles and anything people throw out of their cars. It would create an industry of auto cleanup.
will be a ponzi scheme for their pals running it and crooks who will get round it and claim the refund multiple times. Will also mean a severe drop in choice as manufacturers will not bother to sell in Scotland. Madness.
It says everything that the big companies like Coca Cola and AG Barr are pushing for this to be Prioritised by the new leader.
This is a good thread on it. Many nations have a DRS, none quite like this one.
Yes, we also already know that their chums "Non Profit" company that will run it has CEO on 400K a year before it even gets off the ground. Lots of gravy train jobs for certain.
The PB Tories suddenly seem to have become very confident. A few luvvies and disillusioned Corbynites attacking him over some attack ads and one 11% opinion poll lead (remember the 10% Deltapoll... remember what the last Deltapoll poll was?) mean Starmer is doomed. Meanwhile, despite being a brilliant PM, Sunak's ratings are inferior to Starmer's.
I wouldn't say that, but it's no longer looking like an extinction level event. A 25-30 point lead down to a 10-15 point lead is progress.
There's 18 months to go. A lot can happen in that time.
The average of the last ten polls is a lead of 17%. Progress, sure. But 10-15 seems to be being widely quoted and is entirely inaccurate.
It's not entirely inaccurate given the polls of the last 48 hours.
A key problem with the UK - and in comparison with many other countries - is that, with our services, we unduly focus on the process rather than what we want the result to be.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
Thanks for proving my point that the NHS wasn't the 'envy of the world' before 2010.
Now could you tell us how many more tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands more employees the NHS requires to get to some predicted output metric ?
SNP are determined to destroy themselves, having these lunatic Greens doing anything other than cleaning the toilets is madness. Their latest wheeze
Shoppers face price hikes on drinks by up to a third under the Scottish Government’s controversial drinks recycling scheme, which has been compared to a poll tax on the poor. The Sunday Mail can reveal the cost of common items such as beer, water and fizzy juice will soar way beyond the extra 20p-per-item recycling fee when the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is launched in August.
Former cabinet secretary for rural development Fergus Ewing said he was astonished by the latest revelation and launched a blistering attack on the SNP and Greens scheme.
Brilliant idea and tax beercans and wine bottkes macdonalds crap and coke bottles and anything people throw out of their cars. It would create an industry of auto cleanup.
will be a ponzi scheme for their pals running it and crooks who will get round it and claim the refund multiple times. Will also mean a severe drop in choice as manufacturers will not bother to sell in Scotland. Madness.
It says everything that the big companies like Coca Cola and AG Barr are pushing for this to be Prioritised by the new leader.
This is a good thread on it. Many nations have a DRS, none quite like this one.
Yes, we also already know that their chums "Non Profit" company that will run it has CEO on 400K a year before it even gets off the ground. Lots of gravy train jobs for certain.
The thing to watch for is this -
1) Headline company is non profit or low profit. 2) The operating expenses are a bit high 3) All the operations are contracted to a set of offshore companies, charging above the market rate.
It’s an old scheme - much used by a certain bearded chap who likes planes, trains, records and rockets.
Those attack posters seem fine to me. Neither Labour or the Tories can claim any moral high ground after the last decade of shenanigans, so watching them rip the shite out of each other is good sport. I actually didn't even know it was Easter today, until I ordered some plumbing fittings from screwfix, and it said I couldn't pick them up until tomorrow. I sort of knew Easter was this month, as overpriced egg shaped chocolate was for sale in the supermarkets and local Facebook groups were full of mums asking if there were any Easter egg hunts they could take their kids to (what?) but that was the limit of my interest. In all the limited bits I've seen on posts about Easter, none have mentioned the actual religious significance of the day. I'm not religious in the slightest, but even I found that bizarre.
Malcolm is doing us a favour in reminding us that party leaders covering up problems only lead to them being uncovered later. I rather wonder whether the SNP will get a real hammering in in any elections in the near future, to the probable advantage of the Labour Party. However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
Are we not seeing right now, the limit of how much self-government can be managed in Scotland?
No. I think it demonstrates that there is some stuff that works better at a UK or EU level. A confident, independent Scotland would (hopefully) recognise this and work with others to implement policies like:
- the census - bottle scheme - defence - large infrastructure projects (HS2 to Glasgow)
Nothing will happen at a UK level if Scotland terminates the UK. Independence = divorce. That is the entire point.
An arrangement encompassing joint infrastructure projects, common defence, an invisible border with seamless trade, and an internal market with common standards (and, presumably, a common currency to remove transaction costs,) sounds suspiciously like a federation. Or a union.
You're not wrong! That's why I voted No, then Remain.
I think there is room for a bit more devolution to Scotland, and reworking of the Fiscal Framework and so on. But we should also sort out the relationship between the SG and Local Authorities.
A key problem with the UK - and in comparison with many other countries - is that, with our services, we unduly focus on the process rather than what we want the result to be.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
Scenario A - £2 of extra spending on the NHS to get £1 of output Scenario B - £1 of extra spending on the NHS to get £2 of output
Which is better for the nation's health and wellbeing ? Scenario B of course.
But how many politicians and NHS worshippers would prefer scenario A ?
A key problem with the UK - and in comparison with many other countries - is that, with our services, we unduly focus on the process rather than what we want the result to be.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
If the Tories have a period in opposition, it might be an opportunity to make the case for a "European style" health system. It would allow them to show how much they are willing to learn from Europe and also avoid the political dead end of an NHS bidding war with Labour.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
Thanks for proving my point that the NHS wasn't the 'envy of the world' before 2010.
Now could you tell us how many more tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands more employees the NHS requires to get to some predicted output metric ?
Again with this narrative that any change is impossible. We had a better NHS under Labour; the NHS has deteriorated under the Conservatives. Voters might, understandably, want to go back to how things were under Labour (or some other non-Conservative alternative).
These repeated claims that there’s nothing that can be done aren’t going to win the Tories the election.
I agree with Helen Lewis that Starmer is “ruthless” in the sense that he is determined, focused on winning, and not sentimentally bound to factions or individuals. But to me the word implies a clarity of purpose which he does not have. Yes, he is determined to climb the mountain, but at any given moment he seems unsure of the path to the top. He kind of scrabbles around from side to side until he finds a way to get a few feet further along, and sometimes heads in the wrong direction before changing course.
His treatment of the gender issue is typical. A ruthless leader would have worked out what he thought about it by now, steamrollered internal opposition, and scraped this particular barnacle off the boat. Instead, he has shifted towards a tenable position by salami-sliced increments while allowing senior colleagues to ignore or contradict him. It is painful to watch, and typified by his latest, excruciating statement that 99.9% of women don’t have a penis. In politics, you really have to round up.
I don’t know that a short article can completely sum anyone up, but it certainly rings true.
I note Carlotta didn’t quote this bit, which suggests qualities likely to be rather more useful in government than campaigning. … He rarely has a strong, intuitive feel for a policy issue, or for political positioning, or for the right decision in a fast-moving situation. But they also say that this weakness is mitigated by a strength which is in some ways its flipside: he listens. He wants to hear the arguments and he tries to address his own areas of ignorance. He does not assume he is the smartest person in the room and he is not stubborn. So he learns on the job, slowly...
It sounds, if anything, quite conservative (of the better kind).
A key problem with the UK - and in comparison with many other countries - is that, with our services, we unduly focus on the process rather than what we want the result to be.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
Not sure about your analogy. The 2.05 to Manchester via Stafford is usually cancelled.
A key problem with the UK - and in comparison with many other countries - is that, with our services, we unduly focus on the process rather than what we want the result to be.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
Scenario A - £2 of extra spending on the NHS to get £1 of output Scenario B - £1 of extra spending on the NHS to get £2 of output
Which is better for the nation's health and wellbeing ? Scenario B of course.
But how many politicians and NHS worshippers would prefer scenario A ?
Except that is not what we are getting.
Productivity is declining in the NHS, for the same reasons that it is piss poor in other sectors of the economy. The problem is lack of investment in technology, in redesigned modern buildings, in staff development, in staff retention. Increasingly it is running on empty.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
Thanks for proving my point that the NHS wasn't the 'envy of the world' before 2010.
Now could you tell us how many more tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands more employees the NHS requires to get to some predicted output metric ?
Again with this narrative that any change is impossible. We had a better NHS under Labour; the NHS has deteriorated under the Conservatives. Voters might, understandably, want to go back to how things were under Labour (or some other non-Conservative alternative).
These repeated claims that there’s nothing that can be done aren’t going to win the Tories the election.
Most people understand we have just asked the NHS to cope with a once in a century workload, of a disease about which little was initially known and for which a range of treatments have been required. We are also learning that it has a from of "long Covid" which is going to put strains on the NHS for years to come, with perhaps a significantly increased cardiac workload. Not to get into the mental health issues which may take a decade to fully unravel.
That all happened on the Tories' watch. Most people understand those exact same issues would have arisen had Labour been in power.
Labour strategists are cock-a-hoop with how the adverts have landed. The first advert tweeted has received 20.8 million views, making it arguably the most successful Labour attack in recent memory. A party insider said: “Nice doesn’t win elections. They have got used to Labour shirking the dirty stuff. That’s changed.”...
...The party is not going to stop there. According to senior Labour sources, one of the next attack ads will suggest the PM has “effectively decriminalised rape”.
It will claim that under the Tories “only 1.6 per cent of rapists have been charged”. A source said: “We aren’t talking to Twitter. We are talking to the vast majority of the country who want to see child rapists locked up and know the Tories have destroyed the criminal justice system. [Sunak] is leading the government that is responsible and he has got the man [Jeremy Hunt] who butchered the NHS as his chancellor.”
It is understood Labour drew up the messages some time ago and have been waiting for the right time to deploy them....
...It has even been claimed that a group of former Tory election staffers have turned against their own party and approached Labour to help formulate their election strategy.
This is all ultimately for nought if the Labour Party won't advance a viable alternative. As with all the rest of the myriad problems with public services, they need to formulate a plan to fix them and find from somewhere the colossal sums of money needed to pay for the plan.
It's where the money's meant to come from that's likely to prove their undoing, in the end. They can probably get away with a certain amount of borrowing to invest for infrastructure projects, albeit that they're going to have to be extremely careful not to repeat the mistakes of PFI and end up saddling public sector organisations with even more debt servicing obligations. However, ultimately they need to service the ongoing costs of, for example, paying more for care home places so the staff can be paid enough not to sod off to Aldi, and putting tens of thousands of extra police on the streets, by raising an awful lot of tax.
Low and middle income earners have already been bled white and there's no indication that Labour are willing to milk the obvious source of extra revenue which is asset wealth - residential and commercial property, stocks and shares. So where's the money to pay for all this stuff?
And there's no indication that increasing spending on public services would lead to an equivalent improvement in them.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Voters have one fairly simple comparator to call upon. The state of public services under the last Labour government vs those now. Unfortunately for the Tories that comparator is pretty stark. No need for theory - there’s empirical evidence aplenty.
So you cannot explain how Labour (or anyone else) is going to wave this magic wand and turn 'a disaster about to collapse' back into 'the envy of the world'.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
Thanks for proving my point that the NHS wasn't the 'envy of the world' before 2010.
Now could you tell us how many more tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands more employees the NHS requires to get to some predicted output metric ?
Again with this narrative that any change is impossible. We had a better NHS under Labour; the NHS has deteriorated under the Conservatives. Voters might, understandably, want to go back to how things were under Labour (or some other non-Conservative alternative).
These repeated claims that there’s nothing that can be done aren’t going to win the Tories the election.
So its wave a magic wand, cut spending on the NHS by tens of billions, reduce the NHS workforce by over 300k and we're back to the NHS of 2009.
Voters can want what they want but getting it costs money.
So where do the extra tens of billions of pounds and extra hundreds of thousands of workers come from ?
I agree with Helen Lewis that Starmer is “ruthless” in the sense that he is determined, focused on winning, and not sentimentally bound to factions or individuals. But to me the word implies a clarity of purpose which he does not have. Yes, he is determined to climb the mountain, but at any given moment he seems unsure of the path to the top. He kind of scrabbles around from side to side until he finds a way to get a few feet further along, and sometimes heads in the wrong direction before changing course.
His treatment of the gender issue is typical. A ruthless leader would have worked out what he thought about it by now, steamrollered internal opposition, and scraped this particular barnacle off the boat. Instead, he has shifted towards a tenable position by salami-sliced increments while allowing senior colleagues to ignore or contradict him. It is painful to watch, and typified by his latest, excruciating statement that 99.9% of women don’t have a penis. In politics, you really have to round up.
Yes, it is one of the clearer understandings of the man I have read. He comes across as a pretty decent bloke. Whether that will make him a good PM I am less sure. Things come at you very fast in Number 10. You need good instincts and the ability to act instinctively. Not sure he can.
I disagree. What you’re describing is an ideal which doesn’t often exist - and certainly hasn’t in recent years. We’ve had too many PMs who’ve been all instinct, and it’s been disastrous. I’d prefer someone who actually thinks about what they’re doing - and any assessment of Starmer next year is also going to require paying close attention to his top team.
Comments
I mean - really???
This is grade A nonsense. Countries all round the world show a myriad of different paths.
However, he also says, I think, that the LibDems are very prounionist. I seem to remember that the old Liberal party was very pro-devolution and wonder why policies have changed. There is no reason in principle, why both Wales and Scotland, and indeed those parts of England, which wish it should not have as much self-government as they can manage.
People need to believe the positive - they will become wealthier and public services improve.
Labour aren't offering very much at the moment apart from being Not Tories. If being Not Tories is enough, they win outright. If a sufficient number of voters conclude that Labour is an empty vessel and decide that that nice Rishi isn't such a bad chap, the polls narrow and we get a Hung Parliament. If the economy picks up a bit in 2024 and Hunt finds cash for a few judicious bribes before the election, and then Starmer has a stinker of a campaign like May in 2017, the Tories might even win outright instead.
I'm going to have a small wager on a Conservative majority, if I can get a long enough price. I don't think it's the most likely outcome, but it's not wholly implausible, either.
Labour have far more substantive material with which to bury Sunak. The corruption coming out of his COVID grants to business (and organised crime) is mind blowing. And he signed the cheques to purchase the unusable PPE.
P.S. You only post during the hours of darkness. Are you a vampire?
Has anyone seen Arnold Rimmer and Starmer in the same room?
What if the Tories are more effective at grubbing around in the dirt?
Meanwhile, despite being a brilliant PM, Sunak's ratings are inferior to Starmer's.
I don't think they'd do it, but I'm unpersuaded by the attack of vapours some get at X or Y happening without a referendum as though that's some cast iron rule.
How much of the current Sunak fightback is just one of those tides in the affairs of men is hard to know. Certainly the lower Starmer ratings in these polls don’t really come off the back of any particularly bad news for him. The ads were too recent. I think they’re just the equal and opposite of rising Sunak ratings rather than any kind of apocalyptic Gotterstarmerrung news cycle.
In brighter topical news it’s a lovely bright but chilly Easter morning on the galerie mâconnaise of our French place, the Easter bunny has been and most mini-eggs found, the wood pigeon is cooing over the sound of spring birdsong and I have Blessed be the God and Father off Easter Day from Hereford Cathedral playing on the Bluetooth speaker with my coffee.
The World Cup passed off relatively smoothly. We don't seem to get the same delay then controversy in European games.
Not with this frequency anyways.
189k more employed by the NHS than at the 2019GE yet we're continually told that the NHS is a disaster which is about to collapse.
Instead they've conceded that Braverman for example says awful stuff so they will too, their spokesman referred to her, so they are not even going to get to pretend to be outraged next time she does something like that.
corruption over PPE, hints of tax evasion, ultra wealthy donors, double standards on using private medicine, etc etc.
The record on criminal justice is woeful but implying it’s because the Tories are “soft on crime” just doesn’t ring true for most voters. Whereas showing it’s because of police and justice services cut to the bone and incompetence in the system absolutely rings true. The issue is the Tories talk tough but don’t actually achieve anything.
The fact that Sunak is on course to take the lead on satisfaction scores shows that people are concerned about this empty space of pointless ambition but it seems very unlikely that it is going to stop Labour winning, possibly even with a small majority.
Which of course is why they won't admit it. But if you want better services, it is not going to come from Labour "efficiency drives". Because they are just Tory cuts, aren't they? It is not going to come from borrowing - the Truss Interregnum did for that possibility. So a suitably cynical voter will assess either a) nothing will improve under Labour or b) taxes will go up significantly under Labour with the not inconsiderable risk that nothing much will improve either under Labour.
So a similar sLab prediction?
Chiffchaff have been calling for the best part of three weeks, but no sign yet of the blackcap.
The two-thirds or so of people over 50 who have paid most of their mortgages off or already own outright have never had it so good. They are more likely to bother to vote than anyone else, and even those who have been left cold by the entire Johnson-Truss debacle are going to need very little persuading to return to the fold come election time.
Labour is stuck because the asset riches of the rich grey vote are the obvious place to go to get the money it needs to pay to repair public services, but it's terrified that the nanosecond it mentions anything about property taxes, a wave of Tory attack ads will appear and Sunak can play to win with his client vote united behind him. They are too afraid to tackle the Tory core head on, by appealing to everyone else to vote them in to relieve the winners of the last thirteen years of some of that loot, but equally without the loot they can't credibly promise significant improvement to their own supporters. In triangulating and attempting not to upset anyone, they are at dire risk of presenting the electorate with a bland porridge that nobody finds appealing.
You can neither improve public services nor make your own voters wealthier if you are so timid that your offer essentially boils down to managing decline in a nicer way than the other lot. There's nothing positive there for anyone to believe in.
I’m happy to go first:
Constituency: Skipton and Ripon, Conservative May 24,000 (6%)
Previous record at GEs: 100% Conservative
Current intention: 70% Labour or LD depending on any tactical agreements
Reasons:
- Brexit
- State of public services
- Treatment of younger generation
What could change my mind:
- Labour manifesto commitment to onshore wind farms in AONB or National Parks
- Commitment to impose NI on pensions
- Strong polling by Ref Party in S&R
Humsa or no, to ultimately make a significant break through SLAB very much need Starmer to seal the deal down South.
It's strange because Starmer himself always comes across as convivial.
Having said that over here we have the grotesque chaos, the grotesque chaos, of youngsters in their 20s scuttling around on demos to prevent their featherbedded grandparents from having to wait until the grand old age of, er 64 to get a pension.
Brentford +5
Fulham +5
Liverpool +5
Aston Villa +2
Newcastle +2
Forest +2
West Ham +2
Leicester 0
Man Utd 0
Arsenal -1
Chelsea -1
Palace -1
Everton -1
Southampton -1
Wolves -1
Bournemouth -2
Leeds -2
Spurs -3
Man City -4
Brighton -6
https://www.espn.co.uk/football/english-premier-league/story/4722849/how-var-decisions-have-affected-every-premier-league-club-in-2022-23
Looks like a pretty random result.
Although it doesn't give an indication of how important each VAR decision was - a decision at 4-0 is less important than one at 1-1.
A deadly attack - and one with no blowback - would be to have highlighted how long it takes to get offenders into jail - the huge court back logs. Which means that some offenders, while on bail, are carrying on the day job…
Meanwhile;
"apparently a bunch of MPs got so drunk at an event in Waltham Forest that they had to be taken to the A&E of the local hospital"
"Whipps Cross?"
"I'd say, he's apoplectic"
https://twitter.com/jackbern23/status/1644987576678248450
Happy Easter, everyone.
I agree with those who state that the Scottish party's fate depends primarily on the success or otherwise of the UK campaign. If Starmer does well, the SNP get knocked down to somewhere around 2017 levels. If he does badly, no change.
The only thing that can cause an SNP collapse is if the party is declared bankrupt and ceases to exist, but then its members would create a clone and that would win instead.
- the census
- bottle scheme
- defence
- large infrastructure projects (HS2 to Glasgow)
Any more efficiencies require funding. Printers and laptops which get repaired. Not in a few weeks, or at half term. Decent WiFi. Not the cheapest available. Repairs to the building. Available stationary. Not too expensive, but the kinds of things the private sector takes for granted.
I think people are getting over-excited about Labour's attack ads. The first couple weren't great, though the last one was fine. But it's just a moment in time, a snapshot of campaigning, and Labour will swing their attention to other matters in due course. It looks to me as if the 'law and order' theme is designed for next month's local elections. Labour will have a spreadsheet outlining campaigning themes until the next GE, and the focus will shift every month or so. Whatever else people think about Starmer and his team, they seem pretty well organised.
I still maintain that the only good thing Liz Truss managed during her five minute reign was to get rid of Sunak's Health and Social Care Levy, which threatened to turn into an automated ratchet for successive administrations to screw more and more money out of the young and the poor, so that the better-off elderly could afford to keep going on Mediterranean cruises every year for the remainder of their lives and pass on huge estates to their kids free of tax when they eventually expired. I'm astonished that Hunt hasn't brought it back.
Not that it was 'the envy of the world' before 2010 even without Stafford, Maidstone and all the other hospital scandals of that era.
Now perhaps relying on false nostalgia for some none existent golden age of public services is all that is needed before an election but it rapidly wears out once in government.
One can debate whether govt should or should not borrow more, of course, and for what purposes. But it’s clearly an option.
An arrangement encompassing joint infrastructure projects, common defence, an invisible border with seamless trade, and an internal market with common standards (and, presumably, a common currency to remove transaction costs,) sounds suspiciously like a federation. Or a union.
This is a good thread on it. Many nations have a DRS, none quite like this one.
https://twitter.com/mrblairbowman/status/1644273903706021889?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
There's 18 months to go. A lot can happen in that time.
It sounds to me, that what is happening in education is the reverse of “efficiency”.
Pre-2007 was funded off a huge boom that wasn't sustainable. A sensible Labour strategy would be to demonstrate they could unlock far faster & deeper growth in the UK economy to pay for it.
But, we haven't seen that. They can't just do a reverse Truss.
Progress, sure.
But 10-15 seems to be being widely quoted and is entirely inaccurate.
Regarding the lack of convictions on sexual offences, I would suggest that this is due to the formulation of the underlying legislation relating to sex offences. In essence, this defines a sexual offence as sexual activity without the other persons consent. But if you have a 'reasonable belief' that consent exists, it is not a crime. So to convict someone, the police and the CPS have to prove 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the perpetrator carried out the act without any reasonable belief that they had the other persons consent. This has proved to be an extremely difficult test.
I would say that the ultimate cause of the lack of prosecutions in this area is the underlying legislation itself, which was bought in by... the last labour government in 2003.
“As success in reducing long waits in the early part of this century continued, the Labour government raised the stakes by announcing a new, more comprehensive target in 2005 that no more than 10% of patients should wait longer than 18 weeks from referral by a GP to treatment in hospital. This meant another change in waiting list data in 2007 to better capture what would now become a more overarching measure of the complete waiting list/time experience.
“Within two years – by 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012 the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020.”
https://ifs.org.uk/news/our-complex-and-poorly-targeted-system-tax-subsidies-pensions-needs-reform
On NI they recommend an exempt, exempt, taxable system for employee NICs (ie no NICs on contributions, no NICs on investment growth but NICs on payment) similar to income tax.
However for employer NICs the recommend a taxable, exempt, exempt approach.
Numerous problems arising from the transition of course.
The Marsh harriers were doing their usual stunts - saw one stoop from a great height and pull a full 360 loop, though they usually flipped into what I suppose would be called an Immelmann. Nuts!
Spring definitely here.
I ordered a flat white in McDonalds this morning. It was dreadful and I had to throw it away. It tasted like extremely strong instant coffee with some artificial milk foam.
Franchise instances vary, a lot more than people think.
This is an excellent post which refutes the pathetic LEON Little Englander garbage.
Leon said:
» show previous quotes
Lol. Go on then. Try and find a different one or a better one. I know you personally believe Westminster should grant a vote whenever the SNP demands one but that’s simply not gonna happen. Especially now the SNP have imploded
For me it’s 60%+ YES in the polls plus a generation has to have elapsed. Then Westminster should yield
But maybe @solarflare is right and the moment has gone almost forever. 2014 was it (with a potential second bite around 2017 post Brexit). Now the stars will not align for a long long time
Should be granted if there's a Holyrood mandate. That's basic democracy. Which you're supposedly a big fan of. In fact not supposedly, you damn well are.
As for the best argument for the SNP to make for Sindy it's another thing you're in thrall to. National sovereignty. Eg the UK had this in the EU but that it was pooled to an extent was something you found so intolerable it caused you to want out.
So, how much more powerful is the case to establish it where it doesn't even exist to be pooled in the first place? You can see this, I imagine, if you think honestly about it. You would undoubtedly be pro if you were Scottish. You'd be a right wing anti woke Nat like Malcolm.
U.K. has enough potential offshore to provide multiples of the entire demand for the national grid - the current estimates for potential growth are something like “proven reserves”.
Take health. Instead of saying "we want a well-funded health system that deals with the population's health in a holistic way and which is primarily free for patients" and then working back from that to think what is the best way to deliver that, 90%+ of the conversation is about the NHS and - worse - all the plans, proposals etc have to be done in the context of what works within the NHS framework.
The NHS may be the best way to do this indeed but it's like saying "the only way we can get to Manchester is the 2:05 train via Stafford." Talk about any other way of delivering the end goal and you are immediately accused of wanting to turn Health into a U.S.-style situation.
A lot of that I know is political. Ideally there would be a bipartisan framework but that isn't going to happen because both sides - particularly Labour - have their grounds for keeping it partisan.
Now could you tell us how many more tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands more employees the NHS requires to get to some predicted output metric ?
To give you a clue here is NHS spending by year:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget
and NHS employment by year:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/c9lg/pse
1) Headline company is non profit or low profit.
2) The operating expenses are a bit high
3) All the operations are contracted to a set of offshore companies, charging above the market rate.
It’s an old scheme - much used by a certain bearded chap who likes planes, trains, records and rockets.
Keir Starmer does/doesn't. Under Labour he'd change his mind a further 234 times, and still be confused.
I actually didn't even know it was Easter today, until I ordered some plumbing fittings from screwfix, and it said I couldn't pick them up until tomorrow. I sort of knew Easter was this month, as overpriced egg shaped chocolate was for sale in the supermarkets and local Facebook groups were full of mums asking if there were any Easter egg hunts they could take their kids to (what?) but that was the limit of my interest.
In all the limited bits I've seen on posts about Easter, none have mentioned the actual religious significance of the day.
I'm not religious in the slightest, but even I found that bizarre.
I think there is room for a bit more devolution to Scotland, and reworking of the Fiscal Framework and so on. But we should also sort out the relationship between the SG and Local Authorities.
Scenario B - £1 of extra spending on the NHS to get £2 of output
Which is better for the nation's health and wellbeing ? Scenario B of course.
But how many politicians and NHS worshippers would prefer scenario A ?
These repeated claims that there’s nothing that can be done aren’t going to win the Tories the election.
I note Carlotta didn’t quote this bit, which suggests qualities likely to be rather more useful in government than campaigning.
… He rarely has a strong, intuitive feel for a policy issue, or for political positioning, or for the right decision in a fast-moving situation. But they also say that this weakness is mitigated by a strength which is in some ways its flipside: he listens. He wants to hear the arguments and he tries to address his own areas of ignorance. He does not assume he is the smartest person in the room and he is not stubborn. So he learns on the job, slowly...
It sounds, if anything, quite conservative (of the better kind).
The 2.05 to Manchester via Stafford is usually cancelled.
Productivity is declining in the NHS, for the same reasons that it is piss poor in other sectors of the economy. The problem is lack of investment in technology, in redesigned modern buildings, in staff development, in staff retention. Increasingly it is running on empty.
That all happened on the Tories' watch. Most people understand those exact same issues would have arisen had Labour been in power.
Voters can want what they want but getting it costs money.
So where do the extra tens of billions of pounds and extra hundreds of thousands of workers come from ?
What you’re describing is an ideal which doesn’t often exist - and certainly hasn’t in recent years.
We’ve had too many PMs who’ve been all instinct, and it’s been disastrous. I’d prefer someone who actually thinks about what they’re doing - and any assessment of Starmer next year is also going to require paying close attention to his top team.