Would a new Tory leader save a number of seats? – politicalbetting.com
Would a new Tory leader save a number of seats? – politicalbetting.com
On some seat projections based on current polls then maybe 150 Conservative MPs could be ousted at the general election. That would be in excess of the 146 MPs that went down when Tony Blair’s New LAB came in at GE1997.
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Anyway house in recess 20 July to 4 September, no time to start anything in next 3 weeks, get to September and we are seriously in the endgame. Sunak can just privately say that challenge leads to early General Election.
Anyone care to guess how big her payoff will be? The last one got £2,800,000.
https://twitter.com/Feargal_Sharkey/status/1673697846623600641
Admittedly if you rise above a certain level as an executive in British business it's almost impossible not to make a fortune (all those immense bonuses, golden handshakes, failing upwards etc.,) but it is especially egregious in circumstances such as these.
Small quibble - "...there is little doubt in my mind that Sunak has not been the force that his party expected when he became leader in October last year..." - did anyone expect him to be a 'force' ?
Not as bad as the predecessor was probably the height of their expectations.
Please not Truss again - though her return might be the one event to unite Luckyguy and DougSeal in unbridled joy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/27/supreme-court-decision-on-election-law-00103942
Only three of the loons - Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch - dissented.
There's already been an unusual number of leadership changes. Having another would look ridiculous and only add to a feeling of the party being more interested in fighting itself than appealing to the electorate.
I just do not see a challenge to Sunak and he will lead into the next GE
The country, maybe understandably, are in denial of how serous an economic situation we are in and, while I cannot see anyone other than Starmer as the next PM, what I can see is years of hard toil and impossibly difficult decision irrespective of the occupant of no 10
Maybe a good time for the conservatives to go into opposition and decide what they stand for, but if it is the right and ERG faction then it is over for me with them after 60 years but for 1997 and 2001
I agree with everything Mike has written and send him best wishes for continued recovery @MikeSmithson
Also totally agree with @Big_G_NorthWales below.
I sense most of the party is resigned to this defeat now and it will hopefully enable them to reboot. It may take one more lurch to the right, and the inevitable heavy defeat that comes with it, for them to come to their senses and return closer to the centre and the centre of people's hearts.
It really feels like the run up to 1997.
But a change is also fraught with risk. You don’t want to end up with Mogg. Probably better to pack the cabinet with old hands and overhaul the no10 machine.
Without change it’s a sleepwalk to oblivion.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
In 1997 John Major's government bequeathed to New Labour an economy in rude health. The tories had detonated their economic competence on Black Wednesday fiver years earlier and from that moment on, they were doomed. However, leaving the ERM actually paved the way for this country's economic prosperity.
Right now things are dire, not just in the short term but on far more serious macro fundamentals.
I think Starmer and Reeves probably DO realise it and they will try to tackle it. But none of the parties are being wholly honest with the public.
Sky suggests that this will be a serious problem for the next government which they said at present is likely to be labour
It is clear the climate change advocates have little thought as how practical their proposals are and the cost implications to most voters
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Tories sub 100 seats is very possible on current polling trends, and a true wipeout to 3rd or 4th party status not completely implausible.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
What will happen is the entire car market will crash because people will hang on to what works, pending the multiplication by 25 of the size of the power distribution network.
RFK in an interesting piece in The Atlantic. He is a strange combination of bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories and lucid analysis. I suppose it is the latter that gives some validity to the former.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/robert-f-kennedy-jr-presidential-campaign-misinformation-maga-support/674490/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The new Labour government will have all of these restraints and more given the suspicion generated to international finance by their obsession with windfall taxes. They will find themselves severely constrained. They will blame the Tories for this and, of course, they have a point, although the deficits go back to the time of Gordon Brown as Chancellor.
If we, as a country, want greater autonomy we need to start living within our means. That is increasingly difficult given the assets already sold and the profits that already belong to others (those moaning about the water industry should reflect on this) but it is absolutely essential. This is the prism through which every policy needs to be looked at: will it drag in further imports or will it allow us to grow exports? Ultimately, almost nothing else matters.
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
No one will be happier than me if Labour hit entitled boomer layabouts hard and help the young and enterprising, especially on housing. But with a big majority they'll obviously shovel cash at their core vote - public sector layabouts, benefit dependents and every failing industry that lobbies for a subsidy, while pursuing green fantasies. And, like every government, they'll probably be too terrified of alienating their new supporters to get proper building done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B
Whilst pro-Russian shills are proclaiming this as a game-changer, I'd argue it's a sign of desperation. The S-70 is a new platform, they may only have two of them, and it was used from within Russia. There is little point in using it operationally unless they are short of planes.
It should be said that the S-70 and its capabilities seem quite cool - if it works as advertised. And being Russian, there can be some doubt about that.
They might not have any great solutions, but they seem about as aware as the rest of us that we're deep in the shit.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
We import half our oil; a drop in prices is net beneficial.
BFBA*
* Brenda From Bristol Applies
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
Magic, eh?
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
His latest tale is that the 1918 flu resulted from vaccine research.
I don't think it will work. Partly because, whatever the right wing rump imagine, most people realise we need radical solutions to sort out this country's mess.
I don't think fear of change is right now a weapon. People are ready for it.
You could end up with Sunak, Truss, Johnson or their acolytes. Aside from wearing blue and pandering to the boomer generation and shafting workers they have little in common with each other on how the economy should work.
Too many current Conservatives - and the party's supporters - are interested in ideology over the good of the nation and its people
It might even work if they don't spend several years over the legislation.
Sorry if this is old hat and has been discussed here before, but it's a book political anoraks should read. It charts some extraordinary moments in this country's political history over the last 40 years.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Civil-Servant-Jeremy-Heywood-Powerful/dp/0008353123
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
Pompeii archaeologists discover 'pizza' painting
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66031341
...Archaeologists at the Unesco World Heritage park say the newly-uncovered fresco depicting the flatbread, painted next to a wine goblet, may have been eaten with fruits such as pomegranates or dates, or dressed with spices and a type of pesto sauce...
https://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1673327475458297858?t=RQ4eeKmVEoyO12e1VK5P7Q&s=19
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
I suspect that the next government will be formed by the party that proves it can navigate the current choppy seas and bring us out the other side. Then they can start nationalising Tescos or bringing back foxhunting.
Thing is, the Cons have a deficit to start with having "presided over" the current mess.
So if you drew a line from, say, Rishi becoming PM onwards it would be just about even stevens. However, you can't draw that line; the baggage that the Cons have will be an anchor on their chances, albeit they are likely to make ground back as (if) the economy recovers, inflation peaks, etc.
Still too high a mountain to climb, however, and I think a narrow Lab majority is most likely.
It marked a genuine period shift in politics I feel - the moment the party lost basic credibility among many core and casual supporters. Everything they try is undermined by it.
Agreed, even if it sounds terribly old-fogeyish. But I predate Mrs T's regimes and the subsequent Tory ones.
Food security in itself is another and related issue, and one on which I have been much derided here for being unhappy at seeing the UK food and fishing industry slowly destroyed on the excuse that artichokes can be grown and imported from, say, Australia.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
He made a fairly serious error, in hindsight, in getting involved in the campaign at all. He should have said he was putting the arrangements to the people and would implement their wishes and left it at that.
Not nearly as serious as the error in holding the referendum at such short notice without time to think through the implications and prepare for it though.