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Conservative losses: Just how low could the Tories go? – politicalbetting.com
Conservative losses: Just how low could the Tories go? – politicalbetting.com
Best for Britain published the results of another MRP poll on Tuesday, which had the Conservatives winning 129 seats at the next General Election. This was for 28.8% of the vote (excluding don’t knows and non-voters).
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See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzNo0vR_dU, 1:18.
There is nothing more pathetic than an inaccurate pedant.
An interesting further piece of analysis might be if there's any correlation between the size of a swing at a general election compared to the last on the one hand, and the accuracy of UNS as a predictor for the total number of seats won. In other words, is UNS less (or more) likely to apply given huge swings. Perhaps it's been tried somewhere, but I might have a go at that at some point.
Of course, beyond a certain point, the size of the governing party's majority doesn't really matter, except to gamblers, and can even be damaging if they facilitate dissent amongst its MPs, or remove excuses for its inevitable failures and cockups. There's not much difference between the legislation that a 150-majority government can pass and a 250-majority government.
I think we may see some swingback to the Tories after Starmer and Labour's "don't frighten the horses, be everything to everybody" platform meets a GE campaign.
On the other hand, one should never underestimate the Tories capacity for self indulgent self immolation either.
Both will get what they deserve.
The Tories are heading out the window, the only remaining question is whether that window is on the second floor or the tenth....
1. A huge Tory collapse would surely see the LibDems win many more seats than is being predicted.
2. A lot of the predicted Labour wins are close to or within the margin of error. That means many would not turn out to be Labour wins.
The adjusted number that reallocates most DKs to the Tories - and which produces something like a 370 to 220 outcome - is much more likely to be where things currently stand, based on polling and the local election results. That says to me that with some swingback the Tories have a not entirely unrealistic chance to prevent Labour getting a majority, but next to no chance of preventing Starmer being the next PM.
If the Russians did blow the dam, the lack of coordination on their part is astonishing. But could it have been the Ukrainians after all?
The destruction of the KHPP dam is affecting Russian military positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. The flooding has destroyed many Russian first line field fortifications that the Russian military intended to use to defend against Ukrainian attacks. Rapid flooding has likely forced Russian personnel and military equipment in Russian main concentration points in Oleshky and Hola Prystan to withdraw. Russian forces had previously used these positions to shell Kherson City and other settlements on the west (right bank) of Kherson. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces relocated their personnel and military equipment from five to 15 kilometers from the flood zone, which places Russian forces out of artillery range of some settlements on the west (right bank) of the Dnipro River they had been attacking.[6] The flood also destroyed Russian minefields along the coast, with footage showing mines exploding in the flood water.[7] Kherson Oblast Occupation Head Vladimir Saldo, however, claimed that the destruction of the KHPP is beneficial to the Russian defenses because it will complicate Ukrainian advances across the river.[8] Saldo’s assessment of the situation ignores the loss of Russia’s first line of prepared fortifications. The amount of Russian heavy equipment lost in the first 24 hours of flooding is also unclear.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-7-2023
It was Russian incompetence and/or willingness to sacrifice assets so it didn’t look like it was them
There's something else out yesterday which should really worry tories and which may interest @MikeSmithson
Carol Vorderman, bane of the Conservatives, along with Best of Britain are planning the biggest tactical voting operation ever seen in the UK.
Given the anti-Conservative sentiments around, this multi-pronged tactical vote could produce some remarkable seat losses.
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1666466720171565056
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/06/07/plans-for-a-mass-tactical-voting-campaign-to-defeat-an-unholy-alliance-of-conservatives-and-reform-uk/
https://twitter.com/ermineah/status/1666333208495915008
Murder by other means:
“Russian forces are actively preventing 🇺🇦 authorities from rescuing ppl trapped by flooding in occupied areas…Local civilians are the only hope for many residents, with Russians barring 🇺🇦 rescue services & outsiders from the area”
https://twitter.com/berlin_bridge/status/1666559226037121025
And devastates a region of their own country for a decade.
And the only combatant with past form is Russia. Who controlled the dam at the time of its destruction.
It's theoretically possible that it was Ukraine, but it takes a wilful blindness to think there's much doubt about who did it.
Crucial is where the DKs and WNVs go as approach the election itself.
The trouble for SKS is that the more he declares on policy the more reason he gives to natural Conservative voters to rally around the flag.
Nothing to worry about there, absolutely.
The strategic imperative is to regain their land without devastating the infrastructure
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2023-06-07/ty-article/.premium/tucker-carlson-trafficks-in-antisemitic-tropes-about-ukraines-zelenskyy-on-twitter-debut/
The former Fox News host described the Jewish Zelenskyy as "sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of Blackrock" and later described him as "our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian 'friend' in a tracksuit." He also posited without evidence that Ukraine may have been responsible for the explosion of a Soviet-era dam in Ukraine's southern Kherson region...
Tories should be 'truly terrified' of her. She matches ferocious intelligence with political attack. She has become something of a heroine of mine!
And I hope that when I'm in my sixties I look as gorgeous as she does.
I wonder what this means for Brighton Pavilion. A Labour win?
The flood will continue for weeks. And it's an enormous distractions of Ukrainian effort - only one side gives a damn about trying to rescue and rehouse those affected; the other is shelling them.
I'm guessing Caroline Lucas has read the writing on the wall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Brighton_and_Hove_City_Council_election
Do I have to be clearer?
If it does goes red next year, it will be a shame to lose Green representation in parliament.
The Russians on the ther hand possessed the means and the motive. On the other hand, I wouldn't rule out sheer incompetent mismanagement. We've seen plenty of that in this war.
Reading between the lines of that, I think you’re right. Being a good constituency MP is actually hard, time consuming work - as well as being the de facto figurehead of a party and a movement.
It’s a shame though, and I say that not just as a Green Party member.
But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?
Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.
So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?
He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.
So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.
The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.
Even so, the Tories need to go to protect democracy from their sleaze, lies and incompetence, and to put an end to their increasingly authoritarian tendencies. It will still be a run down country, but there will be an intention to heal it rather than divide it further.
Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.
I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.
I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.
I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.
I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.
That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
Francis Pym was sacked by Thatcher in 1983 for saying "Landslides don't on the whole produce successful governments". He was right though, and I think too big of a majority makes a government arrogant and complacent. We saw this with New Labour too.
Not much in the way of markets yet on the size of a majority, and the ones on Smarkets have poor liquidity.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/fact-check-why-rowan-atkinson-is-wrong-about-electric-vehicles
I agree with your current estimate, but the result stands on a knife's edge. It wouldn't take much for to shift it to an extreme outcome - say 50 or 250 seats depending on how it goes for them.
I recommend small stakes for those willing to take the risk.
New satellite images showing the consequences Russia's destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power facility in southern Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1666687074244739072
It's rash to attribute to mischief something that can explained by incompetence.
Not Kakhovka Dam alone: Russia destroys dams in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast
https://khpg.org/en/1608812358
It feels so much like that now...........
Sunak already sounds stale. Someone's told him the secret to getting your message across is constant repetition but what they didn't tell him is that the message itself has to resonate otherwise you sound like a speak your weight machine that's gone wonky.
https://www.focaldata.com/
In most polls he has also increased the Tory voteshare to 25-30% from the 20-25% Truss was heading for before she resigned when the Tories really were heading for rock bottom and just 0-50 seats ie even fewer than the LDs got from 2001-2010
This was deliberate. Their version of the Nero strategy.
This is the bunch that parked long columns of armoured vehicles in traffic jams for *weeks*. And did little when the Ukrainians would attack the lead vehicles, the rear vehicles and then attack what was in between - this was done multiple times over many days.
As a much quoted Ukrainian soldier commented - “We are very lucky that they are so stupid.”
And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.
That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?
I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
In which case if Starmer uses Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs to vote on English domestic policy and English laws then it would surely see a huge demand to return to EVEL or even for an English Parliament
If "existing policies" is taken to mean a balance between tax and spend, that's unlikely to change much. The British public doesn't show any sign of wanting a radically smaller state, and stuff costs what it costs. (I'm expecting some "we didn't know the Tory mess was this bad" rises in 2025, but not massive ones.)
But if that means attention goes on other reforms, that's probably a good thing.
Perhaps most importantly, both main parties have, at times, been stripped back to their deep core vote. An increased pool of voters have become used to changing parties, I think.
Add in tactical voting, possible voter strikes against the Tories…. and only constituency level poling will help us.
This makes prediction beyond the following, a coin flip.
1) Labour largest party nailed on
2) Labour majority more probable than not.
It should be noted that only last week she was calling for the wholesale extermination of the Ukrainian people.
As Russia's propagandist-in-chief Margarita Simonyan broaches the idea of ending the war, ostensibly because Ukraine is getting too strong to counter without an attack on the West itself, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on how Russian propaganda works...
https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/1666503453135237121
There are monitoring stations all over Europe (for a start) - any actual data, yet?
My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.
They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.
The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.
It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
But, unlike sane Labour in 2015-20, it's not easy to identify the remnants from which such a party could arise again. The survivors of a 2024 defeat could easily be the worst of the party, not the best.
I have to believe that they're there, but at the moment they're scuttling around in the long grass, like the mammals were 66 million years ago.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1666623627691687938?s=20
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1666636977515405314?s=20
One other thought - much of that water was used not only for nuclear cooling but for irrigation. In one of the world's most important agricultural areas. Expect food prices to jump again this autumn.
All of the failures of acquiescent modern BBC journalism on show on R4 Today this morning. A ten minute interview with the head of Palantir Technologies, to spout his panglossian cliches about AI and data grabbing, with virtually no pushback from Nick Robinson whatsoever. Essentially a long company advert, except on an issue with very far-reaching social, moral and military implications for all of us. Brian Redhead in the '80s would have had none of it, nor even John Humphrys in the 1990s.
1. Scottish independence referendum of 2014 split the country and it's still split
2. Patent unfairness of election results - nearly 4m UKIP votes in 2015 and not a single MP elected
3. Very clear unhappiness amongst millions of English voters reflected in the Brexit referendum. Nothing settled, they're still unhappy
4. Both big parties threw out ludicrous leaders - Corbyn vs Johnson
5. The collapse into madness and illegality of the 2017 parliament
6. The collapse into illegality of the 2019 parliament
7. Northern Ireland teetering on the edge of a resumption of violence for several years as the defeated unionists throw a strop now that Sinn Fein are top
If we assume that there is a thumping working majority for ABC parties, I expect that heavyweight constitutional reforms will be a key part of the 2024 parliament. Whilst there are basic issues around restoring public services to deal with, I expect there will be a desire not to miss the big picture stuff as the 1997 parliament did.
If the Tories are slaughtered and reduced to a sub-1997 pile, perhaps even they would welcome the electoral reforms which would be a key part of this. And before anyone says "that isn't the priority of voters", it is the wrapper around all other issues. People are increasingly fed up with politics and politicians. We need to restore that trust or we can't ever do anything more than fiddle around the edges.
The header notes: "There are, of course, a whole load of caveats to this analysis.". It's about generating discussion, which this does.
I recall deliberate flooding of agricultural land was part of the defence of Kyiv last year too.
Korea expects to deliver 30+ of the more capable air defence version in the next few years.
Korea, Poland celebrate rollout of Warsaw's first FA-50
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=352491
I suspect that their timing was off and what they wanted to do was to catch the Ukrainian attack on the ground that was going to be flooded, taking out many of these fancy, new, western tanks. They presumably thought that the attack was under way.
Beyond the actual pointlessness of it all, why on earth does he think publicising it on his twitter account helps him one iota?
It isn't how much money we spend which is the problem, it is how we spend it. The Tories in opposition used to whine about PFI contracts. And then in power presided over a huge explosion in new PFI contracts. Where these are silly - £40 for a lightbulb anecdotage - then renegotiate them. Contracts which are patently unfair are illegal for consumer matters, simply extend that principle into other areas.
The Tory nutter right want a bonfire of EU regulations. What we need is a bonfire of contracts. Cut tens of billions out of HS2 not by shortening it, but by removing the cost of building it to last for 4.6bn years and the contractor being on the hook if it is destroyed by the Sun going nova. Etc etc etc.
Cruella as HS, they deserve a shoeing...
As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
When Starmer becomes PM and is invited to events are you going to say the same ?
See Germany with PR where the AfD now on 19% and Linke has seats in the German Parliament too or Italy with PR where the hard right Meloni is now PM, or Spain with PR where Vox will win significant numbers of seats in the Spanish Parliament next month on current polls or Ireland with PR where SF tops the polls or Sweden with PR where the Sweden Democrats are now second biggest party or New Zealand with PR where New Zealand First have often won MPs.
See also Israel with PR where hard right nationalist and Orthodox Jewish parties have great influence over government. Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany too after using PR to get a foothold in the Reichstag
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/23573733.brighton-mp-caroline-lucas-stand---letter-full/?ref=ebln&nid=944
So whilst you see an advert for Palantir I see one for the UK despite our media’s finest trying to do the country down. Perhaps the British media might find that one day instead of criticising the country for being crap they could realise that the crappest part is the media and sort themselves out before casting their prejudices.
The idea Starmer would not attend social events in the course of his duties is utter nonsense
'@tomhfh
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39m
Thank you Caroline from the bottom of our hearts for helping this country end its troubling addiction to economic growth.
You really smashed it out of the park on this one. Our sluggish economy owes you and your nimby friends a lot as to how it got her'
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1666701124278136832?s=20
'@tomhfh
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34m
Truly thank you Caroline for you and your party campaigning so successfully against our economic prosperity💚
Against new runways
Against new housing
Against new train lines
Against new nuclear
Against competitive tax rates
Against new solar farms
Against new wind infrastructure'
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1666702457961955328?s=20
Their line was “Rishi’s holding a summit but the EU and China are already writing rules” rather missing the point that it’s an attempt to agree on *global* rules