Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
Although a strong anti-tory, this is also my sentiment. I was in favour of the country moving towards coalition governments, GE 2020 has knocked back coalition governments in the UK hard. I have sporadically in more detail posted, that the Lib-Dems really blew it in that first week by not negotiating hard over the coalition agreement. Then once in government, the Lib-Dem ministers were often actively supporting Tory policies, rather than a more neutral "this is a Conservative policy in the coalition agreement". As the LDs are only ever going to get into government as part of a coalition, they really should have been sharper, when given the chance.
Yes, and the tension between "selling" coalition government and maintaining their anti-Tory policy stances was immense.
You go into a coalition, not to prop up your political opponents, but to stop them having power all to themselves. The LibDems didn't spend nearly long enough thinking that through.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
True, but then local media and national media are different. If we had a significant public difference of view, it would get written up 'straight' in the local paper by some school-leaver aspiring journo, and that would be the end of the matter. If the headline or story were favourable we could keep a copy for future use online or in our leaflets as we wished. And Labour wouldn't say much about it as it didn't suit their narrative.
If in national government a difference had emerged between a LibDem minister and their Tory counterpart, it would have dominated media coverage for ages, with all manner of other politicians being repeatedly asked about it and all manner of journos looking to get a bit of career advancement on the back of 'uncovering' some new angle or tempting some junior minister into saying something dumb. And all the time the opposition would be making hay and going on about "chaos" and "division".
Which is a problem for any government, coalition or not - the media pressure to try and wedge the tiniest of internal differences and hence the huge pressure on senior politicians to tow the party line and keep their own thoughts to themselves are not good for our democracy IMHO.
I guess so, it’s a very tricky business weighing up of pros and cons of public agreement and disagreement. More evidence of the cancerous effect of tabloids in our body politic.
Not to tediously pull everything back to Scotland, but the referendum loomed over much of the coalition years, and likely contributed to the chumminess and the united front mentality. Danny Alexander (who he?) seemed to particularly revel in his role.
Their full blooded support for the GRR bill bearing fruit?
I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between people inclined to vote Lib Dem and bothered about whether a woman can have a penis is fairly thin.
Having said that an activist down here did say the other night that she had been getting the question on the doorsteps. Not so much recently but back in the early spring.
Surely The Goldie Looking Chain's "Your Mother's Got a Penis" settled this question for good?
I do remember listening to Black Uhuru in concert singing "London's got a penis" which I took to be a reference to Nelsons phallus, but sadly it was just a dropped H.
More seriously though, an increasing number of us have family or friends who are Trans, and instinctively side with them over a government and media who depict them as depraved perverts, when we know they are not.
Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday from a teacher:
Does anyone know why and how the courts ever came to assume that "computer data is correct"? It seems like a strange thing for anyone to have ever believed in the first place, given how easy it is for bugs to be present in computer code.
"Call for reform on digital evidence In May 2021, the British Computer Society (the official body for IT professionals in the UK) called for reconsideration of courts' default presumption that computer data is correct.[342][343]
The presumption that computer evidence is correct is based on a naïve and simplistic understanding of software systems. Large systems are complex and lay people cannot discern whether these systems are reliable or be confident that they can spot errors as they happen. It is difficult even for experts to judge the reliability of systems or detect any but the simplest errors.[344]"
I believe (but will have to dig up some references to be sure) that the legal principle of computer infallibility came about during the early days of computing, when it was suggested in court that all a computer was doing was executing simple mathematical principles & as such could reasonably be assumed to be operating correctly.
At the time, this was possibly a basically correct, if simplistic view, that became established by case law. The problem was that it very rapidly became completely out of touch with reality as systems became more complex than “a box that can do nothing more than process a pile of punched cards that represent a set of bank accounts”.
By the time the PO Horizon system was implemented it was a ludicrously out of touch principle. But the legal system can be very hard to shift, even when it’s completely wrong: Judges hate overturning principles on which previous cases have been decided, even if they are manifestly unfair & will often refuse to do so no matter how convincing the evidence.
Interesting. But surely even in the early days of computing it was possible for bugs/errors to find their way into programs?
You see it with juries and DNA evidence.
They think it is infallible when the reality is the average human sheds 600,000 skin cells every day and there are innocent reasons why your DNA can be at a crime scene.
Don't even get me started on those people who think lie detector tests are infallible as well. They are as reliable as a Scottish subsample.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
Although a strong anti-tory, this is also my sentiment. I was in favour of the country moving towards coalition governments, GE 2020 has knocked back coalition governments in the UK hard. I have sporadically in more detail posted, that the Lib-Dems really blew it in that first week by not negotiating hard over the coalition agreement. Then once in government, the Lib-Dem ministers were often actively supporting Tory policies, rather than a more neutral "this is a Conservative policy in the coalition agreement". As the LDs are only ever going to get into government as part of a coalition, they really should have been sharper, when given the chance.
I don't think anyone - including the LDs - was expecting a coalition scenario. They probably had not considered the possibility or properly wargamed it. Charles Kennedy clearly saw the dangers early on, though.
Mr. Sandpit, leaving aside the legal aspects etc it'll be interesting to see how Twitter (and Tucker's) video attempts go.
YouTube has been the undisputed king of that for a long time. Twitch has outdone it on live-streaming, though that's also something YouTube offers. Microsoft's streaming effort Mixer[sp] failed fairly quickly (they pulled the plug, after a poor strategy of throwing huge sums at big names like the Fortnite chap whose name escapes me instead of trying to foster a healthy mid-tier of streamers).
I don't think it will work, since it cuts against Twitter's defining business model. We will see.
As an aside, it now gives Fox a strong incentive to brief and leak against Carlson. And they'll have plenty of material.
Fox have spent the last week briefing heavily against Carlson, so no change there.
How Twitter goes about monetisation and working with video content creators, is going to be really interesting. They’ll need to do. A lot of platform development, and something of a recommendation engine so that people can find programmes easily. Many will watch live, which is a pain in the arse to do on Twitter at the moment.
As Robert @rcs1000 has said, where Youtube is dominant is the use of data to target advertisers, and the availability of a lot of data to creators to enable them to better target videos. This gives them an inbuilt advantage over other platforms, because of the power of Google behind them.
Other platforms have been unable to replicate that level of monetary reward for creators, although most in the commentary/podcast space, at least in the US, now make the majority of their income from their own advertising within the programme.
Carlson had by some margin the biggest Cable News show. In terms of total US audience for any commentary programme, he’s probably second behind only Joe Rogan, who’s making $100m/year from a Spotify exclusive deal.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
A Lab/LD coalition bringing in PR would solve the problem for them of course.
The Tories will wait to the bitter end. They will cling on to power and hope to brainwash the Iargely ignorant and ill-informed public. Whether it will work - who knows?
I have genuinely no idea what difference this will make, nor the extent to which it will favour any party. I guess extra seats in London ought to favour Labour a bit? Not huge differences, but fine margins could make the difference between minority and majority government.
London gets 2 extra seats which will benefit Labour, but overall the changes are expected to give the Tories an additional 10 seats. Wales will lose 8, and Scotland 2.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
How can I put this gently. Most members of your party Do Not Care about other people. That isn't the Conservative Party of old, or even of recent times. But the nasty tendency has always been there and sometimes surfaces (cf Peter Lilley and his little list).
It is perfectly possible for progressives to be conservatives. But they really struggle for primacy in a party which has weaponised ignorance and cruelty to attract the pro-Golliwog vote.
Will Plaid act like grownups? If they do they should annoint Rhun as Leader with Delyth as Deputy. That would shore up the heartlands vote and should ensure they maximise their MPs in 2024 (?). Then when Rhun stands down to move to Westminster the Leadership passes automatically to Delyth who should strengthen their vote in the Valleys for Senedd election in 2026(?). Rhun would still maintain a major leadership role as UK spokesman and would feature heavily in UK broadcasting (Question Time etc).
But will Plaid act like grownups or will the bickering factions (Leanne) make too much noise....
QTWTAIN if past form is any guide.
Incidentally where would Rhun stand if he went for Westminster? Presumably Ynys Môn but it would be a 'brave' move politically even in the current Tory doldrums.
He has said he wants to stand in Ynys Môn where he has a strong personal vote - 'brave' but not unrealistic. Recent UK polls show Plaid winning here in any case, but it is close.
Couple of things would give me pause, in his shoes:
1) The rise of English immigration to the island since 2019, looking for cheap housing in a lovely location with decent (well, compared to most of West Wales) transport links;
2) Ynys Môn last unseated a sitting MP in 1950.
As against that, he undoubtedly does have a personal vote and one of the English immigrants in question is the MP who by all accounts is a bit of a muppet as well.
I think we can safely say that Tory incumbent will be unceremoniously kicked out - the only question is whether seat will be won by Labour or Plaid. It is very tight between them - Rhun's personal vote should swing it to Plaid - any other candidate and seat would probably go to Labour
Does anyone know why and how the courts ever came to assume that "computer data is correct"? It seems like a strange thing for anyone to have ever believed in the first place, given how easy it is for bugs to be present in computer code.
"Call for reform on digital evidence In May 2021, the British Computer Society (the official body for IT professionals in the UK) called for reconsideration of courts' default presumption that computer data is correct.[342][343]
The presumption that computer evidence is correct is based on a naïve and simplistic understanding of software systems. Large systems are complex and lay people cannot discern whether these systems are reliable or be confident that they can spot errors as they happen. It is difficult even for experts to judge the reliability of systems or detect any but the simplest errors.[344]"
I believe (but will have to dig up some references to be sure) that the legal principle of computer infallibility came about during the early days of computing, when it was suggested in court that all a computer was doing was executing simple mathematical principles & as such could reasonably be assumed to be operating correctly.
At the time, this was possibly a basically correct, if simplistic view, that became established by case law. The problem was that it very rapidly became completely out of touch with reality as systems became more complex than “a box that can do nothing more than process a pile of punched cards that represent a set of bank accounts”.
By the time the PO Horizon system was implemented it was a ludicrously out of touch principle. But the legal system can be very hard to shift, even when it’s completely wrong: Judges hate overturning principles on which previous cases have been decided, even if they are manifestly unfair & will often refuse to do so no matter how convincing the evidence.
Interesting. But surely even in the early days of computing it was possible for bugs/errors to find their way into programs?
Oh, absolutely. There’s a wonderful piece in the literature of computing somewhere by a mathematician who worked on the early computers about the realisation that they were going to spend a significant chunk of the rest of their working career trying to find the errors in their own programs.
This assumption was always a legal fiction: a fiction that became progressively more & more egregiously out of touch as time progressed & computing systems became ever more complex. But once established, like much case law, it proved almost impossible to shift due to a combination of judicial conservatism & the lack of technical knowledge required to understand just how badly wrong this principle was.
Will Plaid act like grownups? If they do they should annoint Rhun as Leader with Delyth as Deputy. That would shore up the heartlands vote and should ensure they maximise their MPs in 2024 (?). Then when Rhun stands down to move to Westminster the Leadership passes automatically to Delyth who should strengthen their vote in the Valleys for Senedd election in 2026(?). Rhun would still maintain a major leadership role as UK spokesman and would feature heavily in UK broadcasting (Question Time etc).
But will Plaid act like grownups or will the bickering factions (Leanne) make too much noise....
QTWTAIN if past form is any guide.
Incidentally where would Rhun stand if he went for Westminster? Presumably Ynys Môn but it would be a 'brave' move politically even in the current Tory doldrums.
He has said he wants to stand in Ynys Môn where he has a strong personal vote - 'brave' but not unrealistic. Recent UK polls show Plaid winning here in any case, but it is close.
Couple of things would give me pause, in his shoes:
1) The rise of English immigration to the island since 2019, looking for cheap housing in a lovely location with decent (well, compared to most of West Wales) transport links;
2) Ynys Môn last unseated a sitting MP in 1950.
As against that, he undoubtedly does have a personal vote and one of the English immigrants in question is the MP who by all accounts is a bit of a muppet as well.
I think we can safely say that Tory incumbent will be unceremoniously kicked out - the only question is whether seat will be won by Labour or Plaid. It is very tight between them - Rhun's personal vote should swing it to Plaid - any other candidate and seat would probably go to Labour
I do not think we can safely say that at all. I think we can say it is more possible than it would usually be, but I would be very very wary of making dogmatic predictions about Ynys Mon. It is such an unusual seat and so many factors are at play in it.
Incidentally it was also a sensible decision to leave it untouched for that reason.
Interesting. But surely even in the early days of computing it was possible for bugs/errors to find their way into programs?
Yes, absolutely. This is a quote from Maurice Wilkes, one of the pioneers of computing in the UK:
“By June 1949, people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.”
(The EDSAC was a very early computer, which had at that time a memory of just 512 words of 18 bits each. So any program for it was by definition very small and simple. The "punching equipment" was to transcribe your program on to paper tape that could be read into the computer.)
Their full blooded support for the GRR bill bearing fruit?
I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between people inclined to vote Lib Dem and bothered about whether a woman can have a penis is fairly thin.
Having said that an activist down here did say the other night that she had been getting the question on the doorsteps. Not so much recently but back in the early spring.
Surely The Goldie Looking Chain's "Your Mother's Got a Penis" settled this question for good?
Now there's a band who clearly understand the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Impressive.
Don't worry, it is only Goldman Sachs, they seldom get it right, but if they are right, this buggers up the Tories.
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
Diesel purchased for £1.379 this morning. UK average £1.5651 according to the RAC...
That is really cheap, best I have seen up here so far is £149.9
Filled up with diesel near Dunoon at £1.319 on Monday. Petrol was £1.369. Local garage is still £1.569 for diesel. How can a 25p difference be justified?
Diesel purchased for £1.379 this morning. UK average £1.5651 according to the RAC...
That is really cheap, best I have seen up here so far is £149.9
Filled up with diesel near Dunoon at £1.319 on Monday. Petrol was £1.369. Local garage is still £1.569 for diesel. How can a 25p difference be justified?
The Gov't needs to do something about diesel, it's obviously the main commercial fuel for food & goods so the blatant profiteering will be feeding directly to inflation.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
May 24 has one thing going for it. As Con are defending a high watermark from the 2020 component of the 2021 local elections, the chance of an LE result perceived as good enough to trigger a June election is negligible.
More likely is a woe is me LE reaction if those elections are standalone and the depressing effect that may have on any GE called later..
Calling the GE on the day of the locals would avoid that particular bout of fallout. To me, that's the best argument to be made for May.
Exactly this. You can't sustain a "it might be ok narrative" into the Autumn of 2024 if you've just lost another 1000+ councillors in May 2024. I'd bet on May 2024.
Diesel purchased for £1.379 this morning. UK average £1.5651 according to the RAC...
There was something about diesel being the best alternative for gas for certain industrial processes. When gas got expensive and unreliable following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, companies switched to diesel, which was already lacking refinery capacity due to the shift away from diesel for automotive after the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Their full blooded support for the GRR bill bearing fruit?
I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between people inclined to vote Lib Dem and bothered about whether a woman can have a penis is fairly thin.
Having said that an activist down here did say the other night that she had been getting the question on the doorsteps. Not so much recently but back in the early spring.
Surely The Goldie Looking Chain's "Your Mother's Got a Penis" settled this question for good?
Now there's a band who clearly understand the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Impressive.
Thanks Quincel. Good to see @TSE's arguments against January '25 given extra impetus here.
2025 is out. So is this year.
So when in 2024?
The 'reeking of fear' point is an important one. It's possible to lose the campaign before it has even begun. John Major in 1997 not only delayed until the last minute, he also ensured the longest campaign in memory. It smacked of desperation and the newspapers smelled the fear from the outset.
Labour will win the election because the anti-tory vote is extremely strong. In the actual vote (locals) and opinion polls Lib-Lab are polling 55%. The Conservatives are in the 20's.
What has changed since 1997 is that people like me are much more savvy about tactical voting and we're also a lot more angry with the Conservatives. We will do anything to boot them out. I voted for 3 LibDems last week and we turned the council yellow. At the GE I will vote Labour in a Lab-Con marginal.
And remember, Omnisis who last polled the Labour lead at 21% also correctly called the local election NEV lead at 9%.
It's over for the tories. It's a question of when, not if.
The Labour/Liberal vote is not interchangeable. If that were so, 1935 would have been the last Conservative victory.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
Although a strong anti-tory, this is also my sentiment. I was in favour of the country moving towards coalition governments, GE 2020 has knocked back coalition governments in the UK hard. I have sporadically in more detail posted, that the Lib-Dems really blew it in that first week by not negotiating hard over the coalition agreement. Then once in government, the Lib-Dem ministers were often actively supporting Tory policies, rather than a more neutral "this is a Conservative policy in the coalition agreement". As the LDs are only ever going to get into government as part of a coalition, they really should have been sharper, when given the chance.
Yes, and the tension between "selling" coalition government and maintaining their anti-Tory policy stances was immense.
You go into a coalition, not to prop up your political opponents, but to stop them having power all to themselves. The LibDems didn't spend nearly long enough thinking that through.
Being the junior coalition partner is almost always a mug’s game. You have limited influence, and you have to defend things you don’t believe in.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Nice idea. Russia’s Dunkirk, but with clapped out campervans and Ladas in place of small boats.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, having more voters who are actually paying attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
The other reality was that the so-called "rainbow coalition" idea was a non-starter. Forget the political ramifications of all other parties cobbling together to keep the Tories out of power and just do the maths.
There simply wasn't a majority to be had for a rainbow coalition. It would have been hugely unstable, with endless bickering until it rapidly fell over and another GE followed which surely the Tories would have won comfortably. Same result had the Tories tried to do it alone for a few months.
Forming a stable government with the Tories was the only game in town for Clegg. Whilst C&S had its supporters, I understand the argument that having argued for years about other parties than the big two it would be daft to pass up the opportunity once given. So coalition wasn't crazy, only the way they went about it.
The danger for the country is if we find ourselves in a similar position again. Tories above 300 but short a majority, no two party coalition available from the opposition and no one (understandably) willing to form one with the Tories. I assume we would just have to have another GE.
Their full blooded support for the GRR bill bearing fruit?
I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between people inclined to vote Lib Dem and bothered about whether a woman can have a penis is fairly thin.
Having said that an activist down here did say the other night that she had been getting the question on the doorsteps. Not so much recently but back in the early spring.
Surely The Goldie Looking Chain's "Your Mother's Got a Penis" settled this question for good?
Now there's a band who clearly understand the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Impressive.
You knows it.
Goldie looking chain of course referring to their Lib Dem regalia / the string of marginal seats across the Home Counties.
In fact I might use that as a new electoral reference, like blue wall. Lib Dem’s stand to make major progress in the GLC.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Nice idea. Russia’s Dunkirk, but with clapped out campervans and Ladas in place of small boats.
Perhaps the SNP can sell their motor home to Vlad and all their financial difficulties are gone.
Thanks Quincel. Good to see @TSE's arguments against January '25 given extra impetus here.
2025 is out. So is this year.
So when in 2024?
The 'reeking of fear' point is an important one. It's possible to lose the campaign before it has even begun. John Major in 1997 not only delayed until the last minute, he also ensured the longest campaign in memory. It smacked of desperation and the newspapers smelled the fear from the outset.
Labour will win the election because the anti-tory vote is extremely strong. In the actual vote (locals) and opinion polls Lib-Lab are polling 55%. The Conservatives are in the 20's.
What has changed since 1997 is that people like me are much more savvy about tactical voting and we're also a lot more angry with the Conservatives. We will do anything to boot them out. I voted for 3 LibDems last week and we turned the council yellow. At the GE I will vote Labour in a Lab-Con marginal.
And remember, Omnisis who last polled the Labour lead at 21% also correctly called the local election NEV lead at 9%.
It's over for the tories. It's a question of when, not if.
The Labour/Liberal vote is not interchangeable. If that were so, 1935 would have been the last Conservative victory.
Not fully interchangeable, sure. And the degree of interchangeability varies from one election to another. Compare 1983/2019 with 1997/2001.
But right now, red and yellow votes are looking pretty interchangeable. And I suspect that matters more than anything else.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, having more voters who are actually paying attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
The other reality was that the so-called "rainbow coalition" idea was a non-starter. Forget the political ramifications of all other parties cobbling together to keep the Tories out of power and just do the maths.
There simply wasn't a majority to be had for a rainbow coalition. It would have been hugely unstable, with endless bickering until it rapidly fell over and another GE followed which surely the Tories would have won comfortably. Same result had the Tories tried to do it alone for a few months.
Forming a stable government with the Tories was the only game in town for Clegg. Whilst C&S had its supporters, I understand the argument that having argued for years about other parties than the big two it would be daft to pass up the opportunity once given. So coalition wasn't crazy, only the way they went about it.
The danger for the country is if we find ourselves in a similar position again. Tories above 300 but short a majority, no two party coalition available from the opposition and no one (understandably) willing to form one with the Tories. I assume we would just have to have another GE.
The Lib Dem’s would have lost out, after 2010, whichever course they chose.
Diesel purchased for £1.379 this morning. UK average £1.5651 according to the RAC...
There was something about diesel being the best alternative for gas for certain industrial processes. When gas got expensive and unreliable following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, companies switched to diesel, which was already lacking refinery capacity due to the shift away from diesel for automotive after the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Presumably his effect has now unwound.
IIRC there was also a Russian refinery, from which a lot of diesel was being imported directly to Europe. This hasn’t been replaced, which is another factor in the gap between petrol and diesel prices.
The General Inspector of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer, was informed during his visit to Ukraine last week that the Leopard 2A6 tanks delivered by Germany are already in combat against Russian troops. https://twitter.com/deaidua/status/1656193967107497984
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
How can I put this gently. Most members of your party Do Not Care about other people. That isn't the Conservative Party of old, or even of recent times. But the nasty tendency has always been there and sometimes surfaces (cf Peter Lilley and his little list).
It is perfectly possible for progressives to be conservatives. But they really struggle for primacy in a party which has weaponised ignorance and cruelty to attract the pro-Golliwog vote.
I’ll bet this cost is dwarfed by the amount that councils, of every political shade, spend on councillors’ allowances. They are sacrosanct. Much more so than food banks.
Looking at the sporting calendar for 2024 we have the UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany - 14 June to 14 July and then the Olympics in Paris 26 July to 11 August.
Let's suppose that period is out for the general election campaign.
We could have an election on 13 June. This would mean dissolution of Parliament on 8 May as there needs to be at least 25 working days for the general election timetable.
This is possible since the local elections will be on 2 May.
Don't worry, it is only Goldman Sachs, they seldom get it right, but if they are right, this buggers up the Tories.
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
What does Goldman Sachs think households (not industry) use gas for? Cooking and heating, perhaps, but there usage is driven largely by the weather, with no-one turning thermostats up in the middle of summer just to take advantage of low gas prices.
Diesel purchased for £1.379 this morning. UK average £1.5651 according to the RAC...
There was something about diesel being the best alternative for gas for certain industrial processes. When gas got expensive and unreliable following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, companies switched to diesel, which was already lacking refinery capacity due to the shift away from diesel for automotive after the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Presumably his effect has now unwound.
IIRC there was also a Russian refinery, from which a lot of diesel was being imported directly to Europe. This hasn’t been replaced, which is another factor in the gap between petrol and diesel prices.
The true price of diesel is pretty much level with unleaded, indeed premium unleaded at the Costco this morning was £141.9 - and the only diesel Costco sell is premium (Reg unleaded was £134.9) The prices on forecourts ought to be within 3 to 5 pence. They aren't. It's profiteering.
The refinery situation etc may have been true previously, but it isn't now.
Don't worry, it is only Goldman Sachs, they seldom get it right, but if they are right, this buggers up the Tories.
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
It's an important point. Prices came down in part because people cut usage. Will that be sustained? We were very fortunate to have a mild winter. Germany has been too weak for my liking on the military front but they've done a remarkable job re-orienting their gas supplies. LNG will never be as cheap but it'll have to do.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
The Lib Dem’s would have lost out, after 2010, whichever course they chose.
I agree, but I also think (especially with the benefit of hindsight!) they could have played the hand they were dealt better and maybe come out with some more long-term gains and less heavy losses from the period.
The Lib Dem’s would have lost out, after 2010, whichever course they chose.
I agree, but I also think (especially with the benefit of hindsight!) they could have played the hand they were dealt better and maybe come out with some more long-term gains and less heavy losses from the period.
They should never have voted for tuition fee increases, and they could have manufactured some rows with the Conservatives, to show they were fighting their corner.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Some friends of mine organised a litter pick. A route across the pleasant but frequently regrettably litter strewn Mersey Valley followed by a few drinks in Chorlton Green. However, the litter picking aspect was scant; the Mersey Valley was weirdly tidy. It seemed dozens of people had already had the same idea. Which is, I suppose, a good thing.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Losing against NATO is heroic. Losing against "little brother" Ukraine is humiliating. Important for the narrative.
Looking at the sporting calendar for 2024 we have the UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany - 14 June to 14 July and then the Olympics in Paris 26 July to 11 August.
Let's suppose that period is out for the general election campaign.
We could have an election on 13 June. This would mean dissolution of Parliament on 8 May as there needs to be at least 25 working days for the general election timetable.
This is possible since the local elections will be on 2 May.
A 2 May general election would need to be announced by 26 March, given the election timetable. Easter Sunday is the 31 March 2024, so would fall in the first part of the campaign - I would not see that as a problem.
This would suggest a March Budget in the week of the 11th or 18th to spread the good news of tax cuts?
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Losing against NATO is heroic. Losing against "little brother" Ukraine is humiliating. Important for the narrative.
Yes, that’s how they’re trying to frame it domestically. If that’s their ‘off ramp’ for a comprehensive defeat, then all is good.
Of course, they’d go completely mad if any NATO troops actually turned up to fight in Ukraine, rather than simply helping the Ukranians defend themselves.
The Lib Dem’s would have lost out, after 2010, whichever course they chose.
I agree, but I also think (especially with the benefit of hindsight!) they could have played the hand they were dealt better and maybe come out with some more long-term gains and less heavy losses from the period.
They should never have voted for tuition fee increases, and they could have manufactured some rows with the Conservatives, to show they were fighting their corner.
The LibDems should have left the coalition a few months before the election in order to campaign on their own rather than as part of the outgoing, Tory-led government. It would probably have helped the Conservatives too; remember few foresaw the collapse of Labour in Scotland and that David Cameron expected another hung parliament.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
I was planning on doing a piece along these lines on Sunday.
I'm now convinced that May or July 2024 will be when the next GE will be held.
Normally I'd say June 2024 but that will clash with Euro 2024 and bandwidth issues.
If Sunak goes long to October/November then there's the risk that the US Presidential election could dominate.
The last thing Sunak needs is Trump endorsing the Tories.
Or RDS saying the Tories should listen to the ghastly and ludicrous popinjay that Kemi Badenoch.
A Trump endorsement will be worth at least 5% to the Tory opponents.
Can anyone explain the appeal of Bad Enoch to a certain strand of PB Tory? She comes across as yet another common-or-garden culture warrior to me, and completely out of her depth.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Yes, true. And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
Does anyone know why and how the courts ever came to assume that "computer data is correct"? It seems like a strange thing for anyone to have ever believed in the first place, given how easy it is for bugs to be present in computer code.
"Call for reform on digital evidence In May 2021, the British Computer Society (the official body for IT professionals in the UK) called for reconsideration of courts' default presumption that computer data is correct.[342][343]
The presumption that computer evidence is correct is based on a naïve and simplistic understanding of software systems. Large systems are complex and lay people cannot discern whether these systems are reliable or be confident that they can spot errors as they happen. It is difficult even for experts to judge the reliability of systems or detect any but the simplest errors.[344]"
I believe (but will have to dig up some references to be sure) that the legal principle of computer infallibility came about during the early days of computing, when it was suggested in court that all a computer was doing was executing simple mathematical principles & as such could reasonably be assumed to be operating correctly.
At the time, this was possibly a basically correct, if simplistic view, that became established by case law. The problem was that it very rapidly became completely out of touch with reality as systems became more complex than “a box that can do nothing more than process a pile of punched cards that represent a set of bank accounts”.
By the time the PO Horizon system was implemented it was a ludicrously out of touch principle. But the legal system can be very hard to shift, even when it’s completely wrong: Judges hate overturning principles on which previous cases have been decided, even if they are manifestly unfair & will often refuse to do so no matter how convincing the evidence.
Interesting. But surely even in the early days of computing it was possible for bugs/errors to find their way into programs?
You see it with juries and DNA evidence.
They think it is infallible when the reality is the average human sheds 600,000 skin cells every day and there are innocent reasons why your DNA can be at a crime scene.
Don't even get me started on those people who think lie detector tests are infallible as well. They are as reliable as a Scottish subsample.
That’s a foul calumny on Scottish subsamples.
It is my understanding that lie detector tests are as truthful as Fucker Carlson.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Yes I was being conservative if anything. So the 5/4 is a corker. Basically only a shock Con comeback or them hanging on for a Jan 25 poll derails it.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Yes, true. And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
I would be interested to see an Economist grade evaluation of the effect of the Bank Holiday. From what I saw, many people were out and spending.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Yes, true. And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
The company I work for does work with a children’s charity. Stuff like rebuilding playgrounds. Even just redecorating a child’s bedroom. We provide the free labour.
I find DIY/building/hobby engineering work at a moderate level a relaxation anyway. It is good to see some of the younger people waking up to how the other half live, as well.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Yes, true. And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
I would be interested to see an Economist grade evaluation of the effect of the Bank Holiday. From what I saw, many people were out and spending.
Bank Holidays are often cited in official statistics, especially whether Easter falls in Q1 or Q2.
There’s a clear sectoral difference, with hospitality and retail benefitting, but other industry suffering.
This specific BH, for the Coronation, would be less in theory, because the event itself generates a large amount of inbound tourism. Although it could also be argued that, with the Coronation on Saturday, there was no need for the holiday on Monday.
A number of councils that vetoed the expansion of cost of living support such as food banks and made cuts to public services spent tens of thousands of pounds on coronation celebrations over the weekend - despite polls showing most Brits were not interested in the ceremony.
Conservative-run Bromley council, which spent £50,000 on the coronation, refused to fund so-called "warm banks" during the winter, saying the £2,500 cost per centre "isn’t a good use" of money.
According to Open Democracy, the council said it would be taking the money to fund the coronation celebrations from its community fund, which is traditionally used to give grants to charities.
If we do any more coronations then Royals should pay for it themselves, or a special tax on monarchists should be applied.
There was of course the national day of volunteering on the Monday, which saw lots of local community and charity work across the country for free
Only because the wider economy was damaged by an additional bank holiday.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
It wasn't that formal - people just did it. I don't think anyone bothered with any paperwork.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
What that is good for though, is letting the management grades work on the front line for the day.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Yes, true. And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
Sure! And there's something to be said for such 'get out of the rut and try it once' sampler events, too. But still better value comes from regular volunteering once one has settled in.
I've done quite a bit of volunteering and volunteer management in my time, from both sides of the fence. And off the cuff events can be really problematical, especially if politically important. I once got into hot water with senior management for refusing to be 'volunteered' to lead a field trip because the organiser refused to insure it or do it under the aegis of a relevant national society which does provide the insurance. My employer couldn't cover that and I'd have been liable for everything, personally, if someone had broken an ankle or worse, and the country in question was not a simple walk in the park.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely, if the other two events have already happened ,but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
Don't worry, it is only Goldman Sachs, they seldom get it right, but if they are right, this buggers up the Tories.
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
It's an important point. Prices came down in part because people cut usage. Will that be sustained? We were very fortunate to have a mild winter. Germany has been too weak for my liking on the military front but they've done a remarkable job re-orienting their gas supplies. LNG will never be as cheap but it'll have to do.
Good morning
Over the last 6 months we made several changes in our energy use including using air fryers rather than the oven, electric throw blankets, reducing the thermostat and generally switching off items rather than leaving them on standby
Our energy bills have fallen by approx 30% and as this is now our established way of dealing with energy we will not return to putting on the heating anything like as much, and the energy saving on the oven is remarkable
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
I am a regular volunteer but most volunteering drives are tokenistic, sadly. Not only are they typically beset by red tape, they also act as an excuse for rightwingers to cut spending on public services: "We don't need to keep the canal clean because some blokes from Stockport turned up on a bank holiday to pick up some crisp packets between a few beers."
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
Nice ?
Nice enough to do rather well at Facebook
Really, what are his key achievements at FB?
Being paid an awful lot for doing not very much other than pretending it isn't evil?
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
Nice ?
Nice enough to do rather well at Facebook
Really, what are his key achievements at FB?
Persuading regulators that TikTok is the real enemy, and that Facebok is the better of two evils.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Losing against NATO is heroic. Losing against "little brother" Ukraine is humiliating. Important for the narrative.
Yes, that’s how they’re trying to frame it domestically. If that’s their ‘off ramp’ for a comprehensive defeat, then all is good.
Of course, they’d go completely mad if any NATO troops actually turned up to fight in Ukraine, rather than simply helping the Ukranians defend themselves.
This narrative also explains the effort put into fortifying the border of Belgorod and other Russian oblasts - the line at which the brave Russian army will halt the NATO advance.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
I think it's a big difference. I can't find any bookies laying "Rishi: Year replaced as PM". Probably wouldn't be able to get a bet on with them anyway!
Don't worry, it is only Goldman Sachs, they seldom get it right, but if they are right, this buggers up the Tories.
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
It's an important point. Prices came down in part because people cut usage. Will that be sustained? We were very fortunate to have a mild winter. Germany has been too weak for my liking on the military front but they've done a remarkable job re-orienting their gas supplies. LNG will never be as cheap but it'll have to do.
Good morning
Over the last 6 months we made several changes in our energy use including using air fryers rather than the oven, electric throw blankets, reducing the thermostat and generally switching off items rather than leaving them on standby
Our energy bills have fallen by approx 30% and as this is now our established way of dealing with energy we will not return to putting on the heating anything like as much, and the energy saving on the oven is remarkable
Some of the reduction in energy consumption will have been due to the mild winter, and some to the sort of hairshirty stuff that people will reverse once costs fall. Because some people were forced to use less heating than was good for them.
But all the energy efficiency measures (love my poncho with mini heaters, and have to work hard to stop my children stealing it)... they'll stay and a good thing too. Problematic for a mad dictator sitting on loads of hydrocarbons... Oh well, never mind.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
I think it's a big difference. I can't find any bookies laying "Rishi: Year replaced as PM". Probably wouldn't be able to get a bet on with them anyway!
Ladbrokes is now evens but was 11/10 when this was written. Betfred were the same a couple of days ago.
Starsports now have the price pushed out to 11-8 !
I'm in for a ton.
Though note Starsports IS year replaced as Tory leader.
Yes, that's not quite as attractive. You can see circumstances where there is an Autumn 2024 election but he remains in office while a leadership contest is held until early 2025. Arguably, there is no real need to rush into replacement in opposition.
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
I think it's a big difference. I can't find any bookies laying "Rishi: Year replaced as PM". Probably wouldn't be able to get a bet on with them anyway!
Ladbrokes is now evens but was 11/10 when this was written. Betfred were the same a couple of days ago.
That looks a cracking bet. But I can't get on with either. Thanks.
I’d guess if inflation had reduced significantly and things were looking rosier for the economy next spring they’d be best place to take a punt on that. Otherwise the risk is things “getting worse” as they do inevitably during winter
I don’t think it’ll make a difference - the Tories are seeing what years of cuts in public services looks. Doesn’t help they’ve decided to revive the EU working time directive reform rubbish as red meat to the backbenches. Won’t be a vote winner
Comments
You go into a coalition, not to prop up your political opponents, but to stop them having power all to themselves. The LibDems didn't spend nearly long enough thinking that through.
Not to tediously pull everything back to Scotland, but the referendum loomed over much of the coalition years, and likely contributed to the chumminess and the united front mentality. Danny Alexander (who he?) seemed to particularly revel in his role.
More seriously though, an increasing number of us have family or friends who are Trans, and instinctively side with them over a government and media who depict them as depraved perverts, when we know they are not.
Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday from a teacher:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/08/trans-pupils-put-school-policies-test-heated-debate-england
They think it is infallible when the reality is the average human sheds 600,000 skin cells every day and there are innocent reasons why your DNA can be at a crime scene.
Don't even get me started on those people who think lie detector tests are infallible as well. They are as reliable as a Scottish subsample.
The only use is when gullible criminals confess because they're intimidated by the magic box that can detect 'lies'.
How Twitter goes about monetisation and working with video content creators, is going to be really interesting. They’ll need to do. A lot of platform development, and something of a recommendation engine so that people can find programmes easily. Many will watch live, which is a pain in the arse to do on Twitter at the moment.
As Robert @rcs1000 has said, where Youtube is dominant is the use of data to target advertisers, and the availability of a lot of data to creators to enable them to better target videos. This gives them an inbuilt advantage over other platforms, because of the power of Google behind them.
Other platforms have been unable to replicate that level of monetary reward for creators, although most in the commentary/podcast space, at least in the US, now make the majority of their income from their own advertising within the programme.
Carlson had by some margin the biggest Cable News show. In terms of total US audience for any commentary programme, he’s probably second behind only Joe Rogan, who’s making $100m/year from a Spotify exclusive deal.
I'm amazed *anyone* can still remain a Musk fan, or a fan of his companies. I'm even rapidly going off SpaceX...
It is perfectly possible for progressives to be conservatives. But they really struggle for primacy in a party which has weaponised ignorance and cruelty to attract the pro-Golliwog vote.
This assumption was always a legal fiction: a fiction that became progressively more & more egregiously out of touch as time progressed & computing systems became ever more complex. But once established, like much case law, it proved almost impossible to shift due to a combination of judicial conservatism & the lack of technical knowledge required to understand just how badly wrong this principle was.
Incidentally it was also a sensible decision to leave it untouched for that reason.
“By June 1949, people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.”
(The EDSAC was a very early computer, which had at that time a memory of just 512 words of 18 bits each. So any program for it was by definition very small and simple. The "punching equipment" was to transcribe your program on to paper tape that could be read into the computer.)
European gas prices could rise in the second half of this year and nearly treble from present levels in the winter, according to Goldman Sachs.
Analysts at the US investment bank said that lower-than-expected prices in recent months following a mild winter could make European households more likely to increase their gas usage.
Goldman expects a rebound in demand as households respond to lower prices by using more gas. This increase in usage, combined with greater demand for liquid natural gas (LNG) elsewhere in the world and “winter weather risk” could push wholesale gas prices above €100 per megawatt-hour.
Gas prices are presently about €36 per megawatt-hour. They have fallen sharply in recent months, leaving gas stocks in the European Union and Britian at a high as the winter heating season comes to an end.
On March 1 stocks amounted to a seasonal record of 685 terawatt hours (TWh), and storage was almost 61 per cent full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed. Gas storage inventory is far above the 39 per cent seasonal average for the last decade.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gas-prices-in-europe-may-treble-warns-goldman-sachs-dmfc55wz0
139.9p at Costco..
Shocking statistic regarding the Post Office scandal. 0% were actually guilty, but nearly all of them were persuaded to plead guilty nonetheless.
https://evidencebasedjustice.exeter.ac.uk/current-research-data/post-office-project/
Part of the TSB fraud prevention screening is that they just straight up block you from transfering money if you tell them it's for crypto
https://twitter.com/EuanYours/status/1655953196043624450/photo/1
https://twitter.com/YudinGreg/status/1656074583559262208
"Greg Yudin
@YudinGreg
Defeat. A thread 1/23
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Presumably his effect has now unwound.
In fact I might use that as a new electoral reference, like blue wall. Lib Dem’s stand to make major progress in the GLC.
But right now, red and yellow votes are looking pretty
interchangeable. And I suspect that matters more than anything else.
https://twitter.com/deaidua/status/1656193967107497984
Let's suppose that period is out for the general election campaign.
We could have an election on 13 June. This would mean dissolution of Parliament on 8 May as there needs to be at least 25 working days for the general election timetable.
This is possible since the local elections will be on 2 May.
The prices on forecourts ought to be within 3 to 5 pence. They aren't. It's profiteering.
The refinery situation etc may have been true previously, but it isn't now.
Which is, I suppose, a good thing.
Volunteering for one day, also, is almost useless.* Often of negative value bevause of all the checks, training, etc.
Edit: except in cases such as Cookie's litter pick. Even then, there are all sorts of issues suich as insurance.
This would suggest a March Budget in the week of the 11th or 18th to spread the good news of tax cuts?
Baykar unveils Kemankeş mini cruise missile to augment TB2 drone's strike capability
https://twitter.com/ShephardNews/status/1656056565256929282
Of course, they’d go completely mad if any NATO troops actually turned up to fight in Ukraine, rather than simply helping the Ukranians defend themselves.
I do share your reticence about volunteering, though. I work for a public sector organisation which gives its staff one day off a year to 'give something back'. Except as a public sector organisation, we are already, theoretically, benefiting the public. So on our day giving something back we have some fairly highly skilled - and therefore expensive - people doing things like tree planting. Nice for the people involved, if they like tree planting, but not terribly good value for the public purse.
I’ve worked for a couple of private-sector companies who have done something similar. It’s often an insightful experience for the managers.
Honestly, you could make one by most definitions from hobby parts, complete with miniature jet engines.
Getting a "decent" payload is probably the hard part without ending up on lists.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
And I'll backpedal further: even if volunteering doesn't provide terribly good value for the overall balance sheet, there is more to value than that. Holding events where people meet each other, get out in the fresh air, get a feeling of achievement, come away from feeling better about themselves and each other and their community and the world and their ability to make a difference - there's value in that, albeit very difficult value to measure.
It is my understanding that lie detector tests are as truthful as Fucker Carlson.
I find DIY/building/hobby engineering work at a moderate level a relaxation anyway. It is good to see some of the younger people waking up to how the other half live, as well.
I'm in for a ton.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05775/SN05775.pdf
Bank Holidays are often cited in official statistics, especially whether Easter falls in Q1 or Q2.
There’s a clear sectoral difference, with hospitality and retail benefitting, but other industry suffering.
This specific BH, for the Coronation, would be less in theory, because the event itself generates a large amount of inbound tourism. Although it could also be argued that, with the Coronation on Saturday, there was no need for the holiday on Monday.
I've done quite a bit of volunteering and volunteer management in my time, from both sides of the fence. And off the cuff events can be really problematical, especially if politically important. I once got into hot water with senior management for refusing to be 'volunteered' to lead a field trip because the organiser refused to insure it or do it under the aegis of a relevant national society which does provide the insurance. My employer couldn't cover that and I'd have been liable for everything, personally, if someone had broken an ankle or worse, and the country in question was not a simple walk in the park.
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely, if the other two events have already happened ,but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
Over the last 6 months we made several changes in our energy use including using air fryers rather than the oven, electric throw blankets, reducing the thermostat and generally switching off items rather than leaving them on standby
Our energy bills have fallen by approx 30% and as this is now our established way of dealing with energy we will not return to putting on the heating anything like as much, and the energy saving on the oven is remarkable
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65543018
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
But all the energy efficiency measures (love my poncho with mini heaters, and have to work hard to stop my children stealing it)... they'll stay and a good thing too. Problematic for a mad dictator sitting on loads of hydrocarbons... Oh well, never mind.
I don’t think it’ll make a difference - the Tories are seeing what years of cuts in public services looks. Doesn’t help they’ve decided to revive the EU working time directive reform rubbish as red meat to the backbenches. Won’t be a vote winner