How Starmer compares with other opposition leaders at this stage – politicalbetting.com
How Starmer compares with other opposition leaders at this stage – politicalbetting.com
One of the great things about the pollster Ipsos is that it has been carrying out political surveys in the UK since the mid-1970s. In the early days, it was known just as MORI but now it is part of the international polling group Ipsos.
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https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article245527312/Deutsche-Wirtschaft-ist-in-die-Rezession-abgerutscht.html
However, he does have the advantage if I read the polls aright that people may not like him much but they are coming to really despise Sunak.*
The next election looks to be a Mercutio style one to me. Minor parties and the 'who gives a fuck' vote are likely to do well.
That in itself would disadvantage the incumbent and help Starmer.
But all that said - I agree an overall majority looks a very long shot.
*In it's own way that in itself is unfair. He's not much cop but he's a considerable improvement on at least his two immediate predecessors.
Morning all! Lets all enjoy the spectacle of today's *legal* migration numbers and the mouth-foaming from a right wing. "We're not racists" they insist, they just want all foreigners to go away. Which isn't racism, its jingoism, bigotry, false patriotism where the Empire still dominates the world, all that bollocks.
Starmer's attack on this yesterday was clever, because it calls out the hypocrisy. What may be less clever is that it doesn't face into the reality that much of the WWC red wall vote is as I describe - jingoist and bigoted. They don't want anyone who isn't them living there, never mind people who speak funny.
@MrHarryCole
Now foreign fishermen will be invited to man British boats amid a major skills shortage - as the Government’s migration promises lie in tatters…
Up here there are free "learn to sail" courses for schoolkids in the holidays. My (almost) 12 year old daughter enjoyed the beginner course so much she went on the next one. But this is absolutely about trying to get locals into the industry. As well as fishing there is a big support industry sending ships to oil, gas and wind offshore platforms.
Do we actually do enough to get kids to want to go to sea? It was Escape and Adventure for previous generations, but now? Yu get those things by getting spotted by Simon Cowell...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65681015
I honestly hadn't thought about how the proposed reforms might cause issues with student accommodation.
There is something deliciously ironic though in Conservatives calling for rental reforms to screw landlords by giving tenants more rights and Labour arguing against them in the name of flexibility.
We live in what has been regularly one of the least racist countries on the planet and still is. You simply slander the good people of this nation with your own bile.
People worry about immigration because they can see with their own eyes the impact on housing, infrastructure, wages and public services.
Many of us on the centre-right are proud of what the UK has done for Ukraine and Hong Kong over the past year, and believe that a skills-based system is better than a free-for-all based on nationality, that had the effect of driving down wages for the very poorest in society.
The issue is Labour are so incredibly far behind. They have fewer seats than when Kinnock started his marathon in 1983.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1988-1997
This link works:
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1661496322980028423
The package he is offering now is dull, boring and safe. Which is exactly what he needs. I still think he will make a small majority with the help of a serious dod of seats from Scotland.
He is no Tony Blair or even David Cameron but he has been a significantly better than average LOTO.
But I agree with the rest.
Certainly true but I'm not sure he wasn't being kind.
Right now, both the polling and the local election results point to an overall Labour majority. Like Mike, though, I am sceptical of one actually materialising. But this is hunch-based not data-based. Governments that have been in power for a while take some shifting. The 1997 election was the exception, not the rule.
I mean I'm not interested in migration but a lot of people are, and the Tories have continually missed targets without being punished for it - but Sunak will.
All down to Scotland to swing it now.
Heath did win an election he was widely expected to lose. Equally, he did it from opposition not government.
I wonder what the SNP would demand if they were somehow cut to under 30 seats? Difficult to argue that as a mandate for SindyRef II. But they have nothing else they could plausibly demand. I think the one thing we can say with certainty is that Yousaf would find a way to mess things up.
Looking as a consumer, it is all very well having the price cap cut in July when I'm using very little energy, what counts is where this is going for the winter ahead - you'd like it to be further down or at least flat.
So, serious question. How is what rcs1000 had as the 2-3 year European project of diversification from Russian gas going? And are the futures for winter delivery still looking OK?
Are there any more shocks potentially left in the system before this ends?
This evening MPs are expected to approve a 30 day ban from the Commons for Margaret Ferrier, who broke Covid rules.
A recall petition will be triggered in Rutherglen and Hamilton West and a by-election could be looming…..
If there is a by-election, Scottish Labour has high hopes of winning this seat from the SNP.
Sir Keir Starmer is in Scotland today and I’ve heard he’s expected to visit Rutherglen tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/stvkathryn/status/1661636791206641664
Labour will gain the seats it needs there by doing no more than standing still. The Starmer approach is perfectly adequate for this purpose.
It is hard to see prices coming down to anything like what they were before the invasion when Russian gas was both cheap and plentiful but on a year by year basis this should be a driver of lower inflation for the rest of the year at least.
As I have politely pointed out on here before, the target immigration number of so many is zero, or preferably a negative number. Their aim is to keep people out, the means of migration is merely a target along the route to foreigners go home.
You are a long long long way away . Try knocking doors on some of these red wall estates and actually ask people what they think.
I completely disagree with your analysis. The left are desperate for the right to be up in arms about the migration numbers because it confirms all their prejudices and justifies their hate. In reality the majority of the right lament our failure to train our young people properly and recognise we need significant migration until we address that.
You and a few others don't like me holding the mirror up to the right. And that's fine. But I'm still going to do it. You defended Braverman's attack on Pakistanis as not being racist because she is "asian" - as if her Indian heritage and Pakistani heritage are interchangeable. It is this blind ignorance which so many of your fellow right wing voters demonstrate on a daily basis. Don't know, don't care, they're all the same.
Now, Conservative support is busted. If normally Tory-inclined people consider Starmer boring but safe then they're not going to be going out of their way to vote conservative. They might not quite bring themselves to vote Labour or Lib Dem, but there's nowhere near the same "choose your tribe" vibe as 2019 nor is there the "don't rock the boat, things seem to be looking up" vibe of 2015.
2015 also saw 2 big electoral map changes that made future Labour wins more difficult: the SNP replacement of Labour in the central belt and the Tory wipe out of Lib Dems in the South and SW, in seats Labour weren't competitive in. The former raised the bar for a Labour majority; the latter lowered the bar for a Tory majority. Both look set to unwind at least partially this time.
Can we talk about what you and Sandpit and others have said, the left's/my "hate".
There is bile and hate being issued. Not by me. Its by Iain Duncan Smith. Nigel Farage et al. I have said repeatedly that concern about migration is not racist, that a country has the right to decide on migration policies and numbers. A points-based system that works is ok with me. In the early days the points weren't being issued where there was need. But it now is more freely and the migration numbers back that up.
We're bringing in migrants with skills we need as a country. Which the right demanded and successfully implemented. So why is it so upset with the result? They are upset about it. Not me or the left. I'm entertained. Laughing. Not angry.
Shall we discuss the actual issue? I entirely agree with your statement about us being one of the "least racist" countries. 100%. Because this isn't racism. So many of the foreigners that native want to go home are as white and European as we are. Poles. Romanians. People who look like us and worship like us. And we still don't want them.
That isn't racism. They are our race. Its jingoism. Petty bigotry. Dislike of the other.
Weaning ourselves off mutual economic dependency with China is a different business. My conversation with a mainland Chinese colleague today was worrying. She is convinced Xi will invade Taiwan within the next 3 years. If that happens, the Ukraine experience suggests that the West (including Japan and Korea) will hit back hard with comprehensive sanctions and more weapons supply to Taiwan. The Taiwanese economy itself would be in ruins. The world would plunge into a stagflationary recession. In turn China would call in all its belt and road favours and try to lock down half the world's basic commodities. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Sunak could engage in the dialogue which suggests we need economic migration from the Indian Sub-Continent now because it takes time to train domestic doctors and nurses, and when we have enough we will pull up the drawbridge. But whilst we have Braverman who is so out of touch she demands we "train" home grown fruit pickers, any sensible debate is out of the question
Yousaf's party is still in front on Westminster voting intention - but the level of backing has dropped in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon's resignation and the probe into party finances, figures suggest.
And some 2014 Yes voters are now more likely to back Labour, it is claimed.
Research by Ipsos shows a slight "weakening" of the link between supporting independence and voting SNP.
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,snp-support-down-as-yes-voters-eye-labour-poll-finds?
As, of course, is Kate Forbes. A good friend of mine who has had quite a lot of dealings with her in his business speaks very highly of her, describing her as the best and most dangerous leader the SNP could have had. Thankfully the errors of the Sturgeon era are not so easily eradicated.
The comment that someone made - “But building X houses would change the character of the country” (or some such) was quite revealing.
Would it be so hard to add a label to each line, rather than a key on the side?
We can debate how and why we have the strains you mentioned, or what we could do about them. But the immigration influx. That is something that the "Australian-style points-based migration system" has allowed. The same system that the right spent years demanding we have.
It is not open door migration. People now have to apply, be scored, pay us money, and then we choose whether to let them in or not. And we choose to. We have replaced anyone coming in, with the people we want and need coming in.
So why are the right up in arms? You described this as "wank" despite heavy reporting in all media over the last day or two, and more today with the latest figures. The right very much are up in arms about their system. Why?
I pointed out a while back that the new Migration and Borders 2023 Redux bill allowed ministers to set a cap for refugee numbers, and that many want the number to be zero. The same is true with legal migration. Close the open door, we want to choose. Then we choose, no not that many. We need them. No we don't.
So how many is the target of many on your side of the spectrum?
So Sir Keir/Anas, what would you say to the 50% of Scots who support an independent Scotland and the two thirds who favour rejoining the EU?
I look forward to the mealy-mouthed answer with relish.
The new total will include 174,200 Ukrainian refugees and 160,700 Hongkongers fleeing repression in China — groups entering the country via special visa schemes that command considerable public support.
It will also include large numbers of foreign students — they totaled 485,758 last year
https://www.politico.eu/article/tories-brexit-done-uk-conservatives-on-immigration-rishi-sunak/
We have reached a stage where nobody wants to take on an issue and sort it out in case it leads to unpopularity, same applies to Labour.
Wrt numbers that cahnes every year in line with the economy, but persosnally I think we should only be looking at importing key skills until such times as we have reorganised our economy and put the 5 million odd non- workers back in to employment. By hhat time we could well be facing a different jobs crisis on the back of AI and no longer have the position of 1 million job vacancies but rather the reverse.
Anyway I now have to head to the dentist so have a good morning and no doubt well take up this conversation again
But the empirical experience is that less than 100k is only doable by really pulling the drawbridge up. The consequences of doing that for Britain's economy and conscience are pretty grim.
Assuming that the Conservatives are headed for opposition, ditching that figure might be their Clause Four that hints that they're ready to be taken seriously again.
"You can’t grow your population at 700,000 a year – where on earth are you going to house these people? We build about 180,000 new homes a year.
Of course more than a million have come because this is a net figure, if it does turn out to be 700,000.
You just can’t grow the population at that pace. The pressure it places on public services and housing … The whole government needs to work together to deal with unprecedented population growth, which just is not sustainable."
He has been a full-throated supporter of the very points-based system which has allowed these people in. So if it wasn't the system itself that was the prize, what was it? To stop people coming.
The government needs to face into a difficult challenge. If we are not going to allow people in using points to fill critical vacancies, then we will need to compel people already here to take these jobs and in many cases likely move.
That could be fascinating to watch. "If you want to keep claiming benefits, you need to move to Wisbech and work in a food factory".
On my LinkedIn feed this morning, an email from the recruitment consultants inviting applications to become members of the newly announced London Policing Board.
You have to fill in a form and send in a 2 minute video. Well that will be easy: here you go 11 articles on what is wrong with the police and what needs to be done. Read those. Call me when you've read them.
On iPlayer there is a reading of a book called "Into the Night" - an account of a primary school teacher's year as a special Constable in London. It is well worth hearing because it describes well the reality of the daily job for policemen and how hard it can be and what good policing tries to do.
In the first episode he describes being in a van with colleagues and the men describing openly their views of the women they see - their thoughts on their arses and whether they fit with their faces or vice versa and whether they'd do them and so on.
He's shocked but mainly at his own reaction. He doesn't raise this with his superiors unlike, say, racist language because he concludes that if this happens with no-one checking themselves it must be so widespread that the superiors must know it is happening. So no point telling them what they already know. That is your bad culture right there. That kind of thinking about women is deeply embedded and it is not hard to find in groups which are largely male, almost without anyone realising it is happening or why it might be sub-optimal or why it might not lead to good outcomes.
The iPlayer link is here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lypd.
The problem is that the people who could work do not live near the jobs. There are not affordable houses available to them, nor do they have the support for their kids should they move. Which is why we import foreign workers.
Unless we want to see the collapse of the care sector, chunks of tourism and big chunks of the food/farming sector, we need workers. And if the door will be slammed shut and the points-based system switched off, that leaves the problem of how you fill factory jobs in anglia with WWC single mothers from Stoke...
I was wrong to say Brexit would pull up the drawbridge to the UK, but thanks to you we now see a record net migration of 606,000 from other parts of the world.
I thank you all for your vote which made this possible.
(home grown) economic migrants failing to pick, or pack enough fruit on time.
(Source for housing numbers: https://www.atticstorage.co.uk/blog/empty-housing-in-england-and-the-homeless/)
Not one political party in the UK is serious about either limiting immigration, or building enough stuff to make immigration sustainable.
Frankly people like you who reach for the "racism" nonsense when people voice their concerns about immigration are as much a part of the problem as the NIMBYest curtain-twitcher in the Home Counties.
Is this a version of Oriental Lassitude? the well known phenomenon of everyone in the Far East being too lazy to do a days work...
"We’ve got 2.5 million people on long-term sick leave. We’ve got very many disabled people who said they want to work and can’t get jobs. We’ve got a lot of people who left the workforce during Covid, older people typically, who we need to get back into the workforce. So the argument there are no Britons for these jobs does not really stand up to the test of those figures."
So two problems:
1. How do you compensate these "workers" who are compelled to move to another part of the country. And for the locals about to be flooded by the chronically sick and disabled, will NHS facilities be beefed up to cope with this new demand?
2. How do you compensate the employers who have these "workers" imposed upon them? Productivity and absence will be major issues if the "workers" are too ill.
This is the typical crayon politics from a right wing who insist they have the "common sense" solutions and nobody else has any ideas. What he proposes will not work, at a very basic level and even more so when you consider the details.
Yet they keep saying this stupid, and have moron media repeat it, and there is now a client vote so dulled by this avalanche of "news" that they don't ask how. But we can't then talk about the actual issue or actual ideas to resolve, because Crayons.
"We’ve got 2.5 million people on long-term sick leave. We’ve got very many disabled people who said they want to work and can’t get jobs. We’ve got a lot of people who left the workforce during Covid, older people typically, who we need to get back into the workforce. So the argument there are no Britons for these jobs does not really stand up to the test of those figures."
So two problems:
1. How do you compensate these "workers" who are compelled to move to another part of the country. And for the locals about to be flooded by the chronically sick and disabled, will NHS facilities be beefed up to cope with this new demand?
2. How do you compensate the employers who have these "workers" imposed upon them? Productivity and absence will be major issues if the "workers" are too ill.
This is the typical crayon politics from a right wing who insist they have the "common sense" solutions and nobody else has any ideas. What he proposes will not work, at a very basic level and even more so when you consider the details.
Yet they keep saying this stupid, and have moron media repeat it, and there is now a client vote so dulled by this avalanche of "news" that they don't ask how. But we can't then talk about the actual issue or act How -practically - do we make this work? IDS went up the valleys and told the unemployed there were loads of jobs in Cardiff. He was right. Bar jobs. Hospitality. Late shifts. Proposed as a solution for people with kids and no child support and of course no public transport to get them all the way home.
Great as a Crayon solution, useless in the real world. Inner city single mums are not available to work in a bar in Devon tourist spots for the summer. Or Wisbech food factories. However much Crayons get deployed.
He's good - but he's not that good.