A thing of the past – LAB leads of 20%+? – politicalbetting.com
The latest polling table sets out what has been the most recent movement in the polls – they are just about all showing leads in the teens for Starmer’s party – a far cry from February when almost all the firms had gaps of 20%+,
Can't see Sunak doing anything other than hanging on till October 2024 at least, or very possibly January 2025.
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
A small but not convincing Lab lead is what SKS needs at the moment, it takes away the complacency. A lot could happen in next 18 months that could trigger a Tory GE (yes a war) but also an SNP revival, an economic boom and some other scandal/war on wokery nonsense. I half expected a possible Tory GE this Summer if a better than expected Local result and a coronation bounce, that aint going to happen
We are 12-18 months away from an election now. Oct/Nov 2024 probably the likeliest, but depending on how much self-destructive plotting is going on among the Tory back benches it could even be sooner.
I don’t think Labour are in a bad place at all, as the old 20+% leads are probably Truss legacy. Starmer has demonstrated that his Labour Party can attract votes, including from Conservative voters. The activist base have had a taste of winning again after the bruising Momentum wars. Starmer’s personal ratings are broadly comparing well to Sunak’s and Sunak has all manner of party issues bubbling under at the moment.
My position (not that I’m betting on this) has moved from a Lab most seats hung parliament to a small Lab majority. Still a lot can happen in a year though.
It would be very funny if Sunak called an election on the basis of flawed psephological reasoning about a 15-point Labour lead being insufficient for a Commons majority, only to see a Labour landslide as a result of anti-Tory tactical voting.
Labour leads going down because the LibDem vote is going up are very bad news for the Tories. It probably means they lose a lot more seats while having next to no impact on Labour’s tally.
With Lab+LD+ Green stubbornly around the 60% mark, what they desperately need is a move back to them from that, but it is not (at least yet) happening. Until there are strong indications of this changing, Sunak would be mad to call a GE. So, October 2024 still looks the best bet, even though that means another potentially very damaging set of local election results next May (although if the Tories get their candidate right they may have a very good shot at the London mayor now they’ve changed the voting system and made it harder to vote for key Khan demographics).
On personal popularity, there seems to be evidence from recent polls that the Sunak rise has stalled and is even be going backwards slightly. Labour’s out of touch attack line may be more effective than the paedo one. Largely because it is rooted in some reality. Whoever could have imagined it?
It would be very funny if Sunak called an election on the basis of flawed psephological reasoning about a 15-point Labour lead being insufficient for a Commons majority, only to see a Labour landslide as a result of anti-Tory tactical voting.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
We are 12-18 months away from an election now. Oct/Nov 2024 probably the likeliest, but depending on how much self-destructive plotting is going on among the Tory back benches it could even be sooner.
I don’t think Labour are in a bad place at all, as the old 20+% leads are probably Truss legacy. Starmer has demonstrated that his Labour Party can attract votes, including from Conservative voters. The activist base have had a taste of winning again after the bruising Momentum wars. Starmer’s personal ratings are broadly comparing well to Sunak’s and Sunak has all manner of party issues bubbling under at the moment.
My position (not that I’m betting on this) has moved from a Lab most seats hung parliament to a small Lab majority. Still a lot can happen in a year though.
Also both opposition parties now have battalions of extra councillors, bringing extra people and new money (since both Labour and LibDem councillors contribute some of their allowances to party funds) to their campaigning.
Total UK councillor numbers for Labour are now back to where they were during the Corbyn years, and for the LibDems back to their 2011 total - i.e. what they had after they took the first year's hit from the coalition.
Can't see Sunak doing anything other than hanging on till October 2024 at least, or very possibly January 2025.
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
Just my 2p-worth ...
Much of the parliamentary Conservative Party is made up of morons (Matt Vickers), simpletons (Natalie Elphicke) and aged bigots. There are a few of them with a brain who understand reality, and I believe Sunak to be one of those.
The morons and simpletons believe current policies not only are working (Stop The Boats) but are popular. Sunak knows better. So he question for me isn't just does he wait for the last possible moment, it is what does he try and push through as the final roll of the dice?
Last week's elections showed that the voters aren't as thick as your average Tory MP. They want delivery, so if Sunak wants any hope of winning the election he needs to come up with *something* practical that he can actually deliver.
It would be very funny if Sunak called an election on the basis of flawed psephological reasoning about a 15-point Labour lead being insufficient for a Commons majority, only to see a Labour landslide as a result of anti-Tory tactical voting.
Heathener's mistaken view of her own seat suggests there's some heavy lifting to do in order to get ordinary voters to understand who is best placed to beat the Tories in each seat, though.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Labour leads going down because the LibDem vote is going up are very bad news for the Tories. It probably means they lose a lot more seats while having next to no impact on Labour’s tally.
With Lab+LD+ Green stubbornly around the 60% mark, what they desperately need is a move back to them from that, but it is not (at least yet) happening. Until there are strong indications of this changing, Sunak would be mad to call a GE. So, October 2024 still looks the best bet, even though that means another potentially very damaging set of local election results next May (although if the Tories get their candidate right they may have a very good shot at the London mayor now they’ve changed the voting system and made it harder to vote for key Khan demographics).
On personal popularity, there seems to be evidence from recent polls that the Sunak rise has stalled and is even be going backwards slightly. Labour’s out of touch attack line may be more effective than the paedo one. Largely because it is rooted in some reality. Whoever could have imagined it?
"out of touch" fingers Sunak very neatly - he absolutely is and always has been. But then you take a step away from Sunak and look at other Tories, and suddenly "out of touch" is apt for so many of those as well.
The Tories have been selling fantasy politics for ages. A "war" on "woke" which is poorly defined and seems mainly to exist in gammony media outlets. "Levelling Up" - the red wall is almost uniform now in seeing this as a massive lie. "Stop The Boats"...
"Out of Touch" aptly describes Tory MPs like David Duguid, who proclaims to be working with the local fishing fleets and how great the new Brexit deal is for them, even as the local fishing bosses (who campaigned for Brexit) detail just how bad things are.
Eventually reality trumps unreality. I just wonder how many of the moron and simpleton ranks of the Tory MPs will understand this before they find themselves in mid-air falling into unemployment.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
It would be very funny if Sunak called an election on the basis of flawed psephological reasoning about a 15-point Labour lead being insufficient for a Commons majority, only to see a Labour landslide as a result of anti-Tory tactical voting.
Heathener's mistaken view of her own seat suggests there's some heavy lifting to do in order to get ordinary voters to understand who is best placed to beat the Tories in each seat, though.
No doubt in their real target seats the Lib Dems will be pumping out several "Two-horse race" leaflets a week.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
Can't see Sunak doing anything other than hanging on till October 2024 at least, or very possibly January 2025.
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
Just my 2p-worth ...
Part of Sunak's strategy is to have an election after inflation has been brought under control and people are starting to feel more optimistic.
Now there's every chance that backfires, but to have any chance of working it needs time. So I don't see any chance of an election prior to May 2024.
I'd also be surprised if he hangs on for a winter election campaign given the risks around fuel bills, NHS etc over winter months.
So that leaves a fairly narrow plausible window of between May and October 2024.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Can't see Sunak doing anything other than hanging on till October 2024 at least, or very possibly January 2025.
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
Just my 2p-worth ...
Part of Sunak's strategy is to have an election after inflation has been brought under control and people are starting to feel more optimistic.
Now there's every chance that backfires, but to have any chance of working it needs time. So I don't see any chance of an election prior to May 2024.
I'd also be surprised if he hangs on for a winter election campaign given the risks around fuel bills, NHS etc over winter months.
So that leaves a fairly narrow plausible window of between May and October 2024.
If he goes in June or September a fairly significant chunk of his voters will be on holiday. If he goes in July or August the press will crucify him for disturbing their own holidays.
May or October are his optimal months. I suspect for the fuel bills reasons the start of October would be more likely.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
Can't see Sunak doing anything other than hanging on till October 2024 at least, or very possibly January 2025.
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
Just my 2p-worth ...
Part of Sunak's strategy is to have an election after inflation has been brought under control and people are starting to feel more optimistic.
Now there's every chance that backfires, but to have any chance of working it needs time. So I don't see any chance of an election prior to May 2024.
I'd also be surprised if he hangs on for a winter election campaign given the risks around fuel bills, NHS etc over winter months.
So that leaves a fairly narrow plausible window of between May and October 2024.
If he goes in June or September a fairly significant chunk of his voters will be on holiday. If he goes in July or August the press will crucify him for disturbing their own holidays.
May or October are his optimal months. I suspect for the fuel bills reasons the start of October would be more likely.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
Well, that explains the current polling figures.
An ever bigger issue for Sunak is rallying his base for the GE, where far more votes have been lost over direct defections to opposition parties.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
It's not a well understood condition. Stress is almost certainly a factor, as is the makeup of your gut bacteriome (a very active area of research with the availability of cheap gene sequencing). Nothing much you can do about the latter for now - though the first pills containing bacterial spores to treat the condition are in late stage clinical trials.
Short term, look up high FODMAP foods (beans definitely fall in that category), and avoid them.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
The UK government really should pay reparations to the families/descendants of people who were ruled by the British Empire.
HMRC knows my bank details.
Scotland should be first in line given we are the last colony and have had it for the longest time.
Well, this is the thing.
Once people know that demanding an apology for historic injustice might potentially secure them a payout, then everyone will be asking for one - because they want a payout.
It's actually rational. You get free money and to feel all virtuous for little downside, except fuelling polarisation here.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
The UKIP/BXP vote has been strongly courted by, and largely gone to, the Tories. The problem is that this has driven a lot of other Tory voters away now that the opposition is not scary. People like Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman may tickle the right, but the right is not big enough to deliver an election victory in the absence of a Corbyn-like figure on the other side of the aisle and at a time when the country feels like it is heading in the wrong direction.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
Peppermint
Specifically, peppermint tea.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Or peppermint pills.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
Peppermint
Specifically, peppermint tea.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Or peppermint pills.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
Peppermint
Specifically, peppermint tea.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Or peppermint pills.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
That sucks, I'm sorry
There are some subjects even I wouldn't pun on, boss.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
Peppermint
Specifically, peppermint tea.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Or peppermint pills.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
That sucks, I'm sorry
There are some subjects even I wouldn't pun on, boss.
It was a long time ago, and Casino needn't worry as he doesn't have the relevant body parts.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
It would be good to understand what the pull factors are. An existing link to the UK - ie, other family members already here - seems to be one, but it is not something we seem to know much about, at least publicly. Context is also quite important. We get far fewer asylum seekers than most big European countries.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Does show how quickly things can change though.
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
How does IBS come about and how do you get rid of it?
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
Peppermint
Specifically, peppermint tea.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Or peppermint pills.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
The UK government really should pay reparations to the families/descendants of people who were ruled by the British Empire.
HMRC knows my bank details.
Scotland should be first in line given we are the last colony and have had it for the longest time.
Well, this is the thing.
Once people know that demanding an apology for historic injustice might potentially secure them a payout, then everyone will be asking for one - because they want a payout.
It's actually rational. You get free money and to feel all virtuous for little downside, except fuelling polarisation here.
This explains how politicians like Trump have been successful before and will be again - rather than agreeing to any payout, they would be sending out a bill. It is deplorable and beyond the pale but 'cutting foreign aid' was always a popular policy.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
It would be good to understand what the pull factors are. An existing link to the UK - ie, other family members already here - seems to be one, but it is not something we seem to know much about, at least publicly. Context is also quite important. We get far fewer asylum seekers than most big European countries.
Also, a lot of this is legal immigration of people coming over here, doing our jobs.
Now, if the prematurely retired were to do their duty and go back to work... thought not.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
I don’t have one (there is no single solution), but crucially I’m not the one who went to the electorate promising that I do.
There are factors beyond the control of any single country. The tides of history are ebbing from the Westphalian nation state, as post-national information-age systems grow. Environmental pressures from climate change. Countries - often colonial constructs that have lost their Strongman leadership - that have been held together by string and fumes are collapsing.
Re pull factors, AIUI a relatively small proportion of migrants into Europe head to the UK, with drivers including family and community ties.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Does show how quickly things can change though.
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
The thread header seems to me to owe quite a bit to the latest R&W poll with a Lab lead down to 12% but with the LDs up to 16%, that is 4% higher than any other LD poll rating this year. No doubt the LD success in the local elections has done the LDs some good in GE polling, but whether that is anything more than a transitory blip remains to be seen. The general pattern from this and the most recent polling prior to the local elections is still a Labour average lead in the mid to high teens.
The last two polls from R&W and Omnisis, both newbie polling companies, deliver very different Labour net leads of 12% and 21% respectively, but have the combined Lab + LD + Green total at 61% in both cases. There is very little succour for the Conservatives in that.
Off topic-ish, after Rishi’s unqualified support for the wonderful job done by the Met during the coronation, isn’t their abject apology over same going to make him look a bit stupid?
Connectedly, there’s nothing quite like reading about a Met apology immediately followed by watching footage of them tasering an unarmed man and killing his 2 dogs.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
Vast numbers of Afghans fled the Taliban, well before 9/11.
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Does show how quickly things can change though.
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
Events, dear boy. Events…
'Events' can probably be survived; events plus repeated shots to one's own foot are more problematic.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
@Casino_Royale I guess we could always seek a payout from Denmark and Norway, both very rich countries. I believe a vast number of Anglo-Saxon coins have been found on Danish sites.
@Casino_Royale I guess we could always seek a payout from Denmark and Norway, both very rich countries. I believe a vast number of Anglo-Saxon coins have been found on Danish sites.
Screw them. It's the French we should be going after. Look at the damage they did with the Hastings campaign of 1066 or the Harrying of the North in 1069. They owe us bigly.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
The thread header seems to me to owe quite a bit to the latest R&W poll with a Lab lead down to 12% but with the LDs up to 16%, that is 4% higher than any other LD poll rating this year. No doubt the LD success in the local elections has done the LDs some good in GE polling, but whether that is anything more than a transitory blip remains to be seen. The general pattern from this and the most recent polling prior to the local elections is still a Labour average lead in the mid to high teens.
The last two polls from R&W and Omnisis, both newbie polling companies, deliver very different Labour net leads of 12% and 21% respectively, but have the combined Lab + LD + Green total at 61% in both cases. There is very little succour for the Conservatives in that.
A week before the vote took place, Omnisis produced a local election poll that got the result almost exactly spot on. It's worth looking at its other polling in that light.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
The UKIP/BXP vote has been strongly courted by, and largely gone to, the Tories. The problem is that this has driven a lot of other Tory voters away now that the opposition is not scary. People like Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman may tickle the right, but the right is not big enough to deliver an election victory in the absence of a Corbyn-like figure on the other side of the aisle and at a time when the country feels like it is heading in the wrong direction.
Yes, and the culture war makes the fundamental error of assuming that "if I think this, all right-minded people also think this". Where "this" is fear of woke and hatred of refugees.
What makes it even more tragic for the Tories is that they can't point to a single policy success. Never mind Stop The Boats, there are more boats than ever. Rwanda remains a masturbatory fantasy rather than the place we deport invading aliens to. Braverman even failed to berate Essicks police for going after the Golliwog & Racists pub.
The point about puce-coloured vein-bulging voters is that once you have whipped up their blood pressure you actually have to deliver. Before they die of a massive heart attack.
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
Vast numbers of Afghans fled the Taliban, well before 9/11.
The UK are getting tiny numbers of Afghans relative to other countries. There's 3m+ in Pakistan and 1m in Iran.
Only Macron can solve the boats issue so Sunak has to ask him to name his price. It'll surely be high as it would cause a significant domestic political problem in France. There's also the possibility that Le Pen will immediately do a Johnson on whatever is agreed when she is POTFR.
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Does show how quickly things can change though.
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
Events, dear boy. Events…
Events tend to happen to governments rather than oppositions, though. What the Tories need from here is a substantial change in overall voter sentiment. It's not just about people feeling better off and seeing the country heading in the right direction, it's also about convincing them that the same would not be the case under Labour. It's absolutely doable, but it's a tough ask.
@Casino_Royale I guess we could always seek a payout from Denmark and Norway, both very rich countries. I believe a vast number of Anglo-Saxon coins have been found on Danish sites.
Screw them. It's the French we should be going after. Look at the damage they did with the Hastings campaign of 1066 or the Harrying of the North in 1069. They owe us bigly.
I guess you could say we’re quits, after the campaigns of Edward III, the Black Prince, and John of Gaunt.
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Does show how quickly things can change though.
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
Events, dear boy. Events…
'Events' can probably be survived; events plus repeated shots to one's own foot are more problematic.
Also, there comes a point where a relationship breaks down so badly that it can't be repaired. True for people, businesses, political parties. Sunak's inability to extend the pool of "I won't vote for you yet, but I might consider it" voters must start to be a worry at some point.
And whereas the Conservative problem in 2019 had an obvious solution (Get you-know-what done), it's much harder to see what Sunak can do to reset his relationship with the voters he needs. There aren't many voters to his right, and the centrists don't like what he's letting Suella get on with.
Keep buggering on and hope for an Event, I guess. But it would have to be a damn big one
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
Labour leads of>20 are unlikely to be true. More likely to be a need for an alteration to methodology... again....
Labour is the generic not the Tories party. In actual elections people refine their choice to pick the candidate who will actually beat the Tory. What the locals confirmed is that Labour + LD + Green is currently at 60%+, as the polls have been saying for a long time, and that the Tories are sub-30%, as the polls have also been saying.
Something I need to spend a little more time wrapping my head round too is where the UKIP/BXP vote has gone. The Con+Kipper vote was consistently in the 45-50 range aggregate for much of the previous decade. Now Con+RefUK are down in the 35% range, a pretty fundamental shift.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
I see immigration is in the news again, soon to be double pre Brexit figures. DT but not paywalled.
I guess part of the issue here (beyond many false economies of the 2010s) is that while Rishi is tough on boats, he is not tough on the causes of boats.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
There are push factors, as you mention. There are also pull factors. Why come to the UK, if they are already in France? Are they suffering those push factors there?
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
Vast numbers of Afghans fled the Taliban, well before 9/11.
The UK are getting tiny numbers of Afghans relative to other countries. There's 3m+ in Pakistan and 1m in Iran.
Only Macron can solve the boats issue so Sunak has to ask him to name his price. It'll surely be high as it would cause a significant domestic political problem in France. There's also the possibility that Le Pen will immediately do a Johnson on whatever is agreed when she is POTFR.
The problem needs to be sorted, before the boats get to France. That means co-operating with other governments and Friendly North African thugs.
Mr. F, the Harrying of the North killed about 75% of the people in Yorkshire, if memory serves (from Marc Morris' very good book on the period).
It's bizarre that some feel entitled for wrongs done to people who are not them, from people who did not do the wrongdoing. And pathetic that some feel inclined to indulge this irrational greed.
Mr. F, the Harrying of the North killed about 75% of the people in Yorkshire, if memory serves (from Marc Morris' very good book on the period).
It's bizarre that some feel entitled for wrongs done to people who are not them, from people who did not do the wrongdoing. And pathetic that some feel inclined to indulge this irrational greed.
So I get double compensation for being a Yorkshireman of Pakistani heritage.
Hurrah.
I’ve often wondered just how successful I would have been in life if I didn’t live in such an oppressive country for minorities.
It might have given me the self confidence in myself to succeed.
Although Rishi Sunak is justly proud of becoming Britain’s first prime minister of Indian origin, he has never openly discussed the extraordinary history of his paternal grandfather.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
Comments
If I were in his shoes I'd prefer an extra few months in power -- with a majority (so the chance to do stuff, which is what politics is all about) and with the hope that something might happen -- to the small chance I might only lose badly, not very badly.
It's not as if it's likely to save his leadership of the Conservative Party either. There's enough tension under the surface for things to erupt pretty seriously in the space that new-found opposition status would bring. And it's not as if they'd need to hold themselves together so they'd be a credible alternative Government -- Labour may not get a majority but its coalition will probably be pretty stable.
Just my 2p-worth ...
Meanwhile the government just needs to get Argentina to invade the Falklands again…
I don’t think Labour are in a bad place at all, as the old 20+% leads are probably Truss legacy. Starmer has demonstrated that his Labour Party can attract votes, including from Conservative voters. The activist base have had a taste of winning again after the bruising Momentum wars. Starmer’s personal ratings are broadly comparing well to Sunak’s and Sunak has all manner of party issues bubbling under at the moment.
My position (not that I’m betting on this) has moved from a Lab most seats hung parliament to a small Lab majority. Still a lot can happen in a year though.
With Lab+LD+ Green stubbornly around the 60% mark, what they desperately need is a move back to them from that, but it is not (at least yet) happening. Until there are strong indications of this changing, Sunak would be mad to call a GE. So, October 2024 still looks the best bet, even though that means another potentially very damaging set of local election results next May (although if the Tories get their candidate right they may have a very good shot at the London mayor now they’ve changed the voting system and made it harder to vote for key Khan demographics).
On personal popularity, there seems to be evidence from recent polls that the Sunak rise has stalled and is even be going backwards slightly. Labour’s out of touch attack line may be more effective than the paedo one. Largely because it is rooted in some reality. Whoever could have imagined it?
Nah, you must be right.
Total UK councillor numbers for Labour are now back to where they were during the Corbyn years, and for the LibDems back to their 2011 total - i.e. what they had after they took the first year's hit from the coalition.
The morons and simpletons believe current policies not only are working (Stop The Boats) but are popular. Sunak knows better. So he question for me isn't just does he wait for the last possible moment, it is what does he try and push through as the final roll of the dice?
Last week's elections showed that the voters aren't as thick as your average Tory MP. They want delivery, so if Sunak wants any hope of winning the election he needs to come up with *something* practical that he can actually deliver.
It's still a heck of a hill for Labour to climb and the winning post is high.
We shall see.
I had a tin of baked beans 12 hours ago and, well, it's like I have a CCGT station inside with no CCUS.
The prime minister of the first Caribbean islands to be colonised by Britain has said that his country is “not totally free” as long as the King remains head of state.
Dr Terrance Drew, who posed in a group photograph with the King in London on the eve of his coronation, has promised a public consultation on whether St Kitts & Nevis should become a republic.
The microstate, consisting of two islands, was the site of Britain’s first Caribbean settlement in 1623. After centuries of British and French colonial rule, it became a self-governing state in association with the UK in 1967.
Drew, who was elected in August last year, added that he would welcome an apology from the monarchy for its historic links to the slave trade.
Buckingham Palace said that slavery was something the King “takes profoundly seriously”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/st-kitts-nevis-we-can-never-be-free-while-king-is-head-of-state-zrc8hk0kj
It is possible Starmer now wins a majority on a 6%/7% national lead thanks to Scotland and ABC tactical voting.
The Tories have been selling fantasy politics for ages. A "war" on "woke" which is poorly defined and seems mainly to exist in gammony media outlets. "Levelling Up" - the red wall is almost uniform now in seeing this as a massive lie. "Stop The Boats"...
"Out of Touch" aptly describes Tory MPs like David Duguid, who proclaims to be working with the local fishing fleets and how great the new Brexit deal is for them, even as the local fishing bosses (who campaigned for Brexit) detail just how bad things are.
Eventually reality trumps unreality. I just wonder how many of the moron and simpleton ranks of the Tory MPs will understand this before they find themselves in mid-air falling into unemployment.
I;ll get over it.
The Times has pieced together the background of Ram Dass Sunak and can reveal that he was two years old when his Punjabi town was attacked by British colonial forces, leaving at least nine dead and 27 injured.
Ram Dass was born in 1917, two years before police, soldiers and pilots carried out a two-day massacre against unarmed Indian civilians in his home town of Gujranwala.
Three aircraft sent from a Royal Air Force base in Lahore were used to drop bombs and machinegun unarmed civilians, including young children, at the Khalsa High School Boarding House, Gujranwala town centre and nearby villages. It is understood that the family, including the prime minister, had no idea about their grandfather’s roots.
Video of the Sunak family home, abandoned after Partition in 1947 and now derelict, is accessible online and the house is only a short distance from the town centre and the school that came under fire.
Surviving records confirm that ten bombs and 1,000 rounds of machinegun fire were directed at the Indian targets. One bomb was dropped deliberately on the school.
During the atrocities on April 14 and 15, 1919, police, army and air force units were ordered to tackle civilian protesters responding to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in nearby Amritsar.
The Amritsar atrocity, highlighted in the 1982 film Gandhi, is well documented. Less attention was paid to the terrified families of Gujranwala, although their sufferings were noted six months later by the government-sponsored Hunter Committee that was eventually set up to investigate the disturbances in Punjab and other provinces.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-grandfather-background-family-history-v9tr0p7w2
The UK government really should pay reparations to the families/descendants of people who were ruled by the British Empire.
HMRC knows my bank details.
My instinct is that the polling (and voting) reflected frustration with immigration (plus Get Brexit Done) rather than a truly rightward shift - and similarly I don’t think we’ve become a nation of social democrats either.
Now that Brexit has been done and realised practically zero benefit, least of all the cynical promises around healthcare, and the supposed party of immigration control has visibly failed to control immigration (plus I don’t think most of the electorate are daft enough to be fooled by the Rwanda plan) I guess the question is for many: why vote Tory again?
That they’ve shat the bed on the economy is as fundamental an issue too - again, you ask, what is the point of the Conservative Party if immigration is out of control, taxes are high and the economy is fucked?
Now there's every chance that backfires, but to have any chance of working it needs time. So I don't see any chance of an election prior to May 2024.
I'd also be surprised if he hangs on for a winter election campaign given the risks around fuel bills, NHS etc over winter months.
So that leaves a fairly narrow plausible window of between May and October 2024.
How decidedly unWoke of you.
May or October are his optimal months. I suspect for the fuel bills reasons the start of October would be more likely.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/08/net-migration-brexit-data-suella-braverman-rishi-sunak/
Their people quite rightly smell a rat.
An ever bigger issue for Sunak is rallying his base for the GE, where far more votes have been lost over direct defections to opposition parties.
Stress is almost certainly a factor, as is the makeup of your gut bacteriome (a very active area of research with the availability of cheap gene sequencing).
Nothing much you can do about the latter for now - though the first pills containing bacterial spores to treat the condition are in late stage clinical trials.
Short term, look up high FODMAP foods (beans definitely fall in that category), and avoid them.
It's the one thing herbal tea is good for.
Some possibly relevant context to the 'closure of the modular homes factory' being discussed recently.
Once people know that demanding an apology for historic injustice might potentially secure them a payout, then everyone will be asking for one - because they want a payout.
It's actually rational. You get free money and to feel all virtuous for little downside, except fuelling polarisation here.
Memorable.
If the Conservatives hover around 30%, a 20 point lead needs Labour around 50%, which leaves very little for anyone else. So yes, that's probably it for monster leads.
Probably doesn't matter, because the Conservatives need to get to/above 35% to scare Starmer, and that's a long way off...
I'm still fascinated by this graph (physics teacher, remember; it's what graphs do to us.) At the moment, there's only 35% of the sample prepared to give significant consideration to voting Conservative. And whilst that number fell under Johnson and fell some more under Truss, it hasn't really risen under Sunak. At the moment, he's got Truss-traumatised Conservatives back in the tent, but that's it and it won't be enough.
Another thing. Going back to the vaccine bounce, people didn't really switch off from the possibility of voting Labour. That gave space for the slow but surprisingly relentless switch in polling in the second half of 2021, before the scandals really started to hit. Harder to see that happening now, because so many people are rejecting the Conservatives out of hand.
Most illegal immigrants are undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey, placing themselves in the clutches of dangerous and amoral criminal groups, simply because the alternative is worse. Hating, abusing and displacing the ones who get here is expensive and unproductive. Actively contributing to the up-fuckery of countries like Afghanistan has not helped.
What an admission that you were in fact subdued prior to 1277/46 (delete according to taste)...
What would be your solution to the problem; if indeed you see it as a problem requiring a solution?
Well that's a sound basis - I wonder why we bother with the polls, we could just consult the Squareroot of not a lot.
I remember it very clearly, because the first sign of my partner's cancer was pain that resembled IBS, and she went to the doctor and he sent her away with that diagnosis and told her to take peppermint pills. Which we tried for several days until it became obvious it was something more serious, and the rest is, sadly, history.
That's what I call a climax...
That would be.. brave
The Tories had one of the worst election results ever in the May 2019 euros, a few months later they won a GE, and then the next year there was a peak where near 60% of the electorate would consider voting for them.
Now, 3 years later they are in the doldrums again.
The last few years have been a rollercoaster. The electorate are pretty fickle.
It is deplorable and beyond the pale but 'cutting foreign aid' was always a popular policy.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/tennessee-rejects-federal-hiv-prevention-funds-looming-public-health-and-financial#.ZFlHjmx_B1s.twitter
Now, if the prematurely retired were to do their duty and go back to work... thought not.
There are factors beyond the control of any single country. The tides of history are ebbing from the Westphalian nation state, as post-national information-age systems grow. Environmental pressures from climate change. Countries - often colonial constructs that have lost their Strongman leadership - that have been held together by string and fumes are collapsing.
Re pull factors, AIUI a relatively small proportion of migrants into Europe head to the UK, with drivers including family and community ties.
Asking a bloke who makes personalised messages these days.
The last two polls from R&W and Omnisis, both newbie polling companies, deliver very different Labour net leads of 12% and 21% respectively, but have the combined Lab + LD + Green total at 61% in both cases. There is very little succour for the Conservatives in that.
Connectedly, there’s nothing quite like reading about a Met apology immediately followed by watching footage of them tasering an unarmed man and killing his 2 dogs.
https://twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/1655609584378163212?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
To get one of the main parties down to the core votes takes effort and persistence.
On the part of the party in question.
Both float back to 30%, when they stop self harming on a daily basis.
Anyway, back to your scientific demolition of the polls...
My referendum result is the will of the people
Yours is a constitutional outrage
He has been bought by the Russians
What makes it even more tragic for the Tories is that they can't point to a single policy success. Never mind Stop The Boats, there are more boats than ever. Rwanda remains a masturbatory fantasy rather than the place we deport invading aliens to. Braverman even failed to berate Essicks police for going after the Golliwog & Racists pub.
The point about puce-coloured vein-bulging voters is that once you have whipped up their blood pressure you actually have to deliver. Before they die of a massive heart attack.
Only Macron can solve the boats issue so Sunak has to ask him to name his price. It'll surely be high as it would cause a significant domestic political problem in France. There's also the possibility that Le Pen will immediately do a Johnson on whatever is agreed when she is POTFR.
And whereas the Conservative problem in 2019 had an obvious solution (Get you-know-what done), it's much harder to see what Sunak can do to reset his relationship with the voters he needs. There aren't many voters to his right, and the centrists don't like what he's letting Suella get on with.
Keep buggering on and hope for an Event, I guess. But it would have to be a damn big one
Unless that mandate is superseded by another electoral mandate.
Mr. F, the Harrying of the North killed about 75% of the people in Yorkshire, if memory serves (from Marc Morris' very good book on the period).
It's bizarre that some feel entitled for wrongs done to people who are not them, from people who did not do the wrongdoing. And pathetic that some feel inclined to indulge this irrational greed.
Hurrah.
I’ve often wondered just how successful I would have been in life if I didn’t live in such an oppressive country for minorities.
It might have given me the self confidence in myself to succeed.
Japan, South Korea to link radar systems to track N.Korea missiles
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-south-korea-link-radar-systems-track-nkorea-missiles-source-2023-05-09/
HMG have been giving money to firms his wife has interests in without declaring it properly or at all.